Buy a House in London?

This morning in the San Francisco Chronicle online there is a story about what it would cost to buy a house in London. The median house price in San Francisco is $713,000. (That's at LEAST three times what the median price is in Sacramento, which is near where I live.)

I thought my English friends might find the article amusing. You can read it here.

The best part of any SF Chron story is the comment section. Unlike comments in Sacramento Bee online, the SF commenters are usually knowledgeable, witty, and they can spell.

Corn Festival

If you judge by how many cars there were and how loud and long the music played, the Corn Festival a couple of weeks ago was a success.

2012 Corn Festival

The sweet corn, as advertised, was at its best. Tomatoes were ripe and wonderful. Bell peppers were huge, thick, and crunchy. There were still snow peas, black eyed peas and green beans. The melons were coming in. The gals at the counter spent long days helping people with their produce.

Anna and Aleene

? and Mari

I'll check on Mari's friend's name, I see her every day but I'm having a senior moment. I think she needs an apron with her name on it.

I carefully examined all the stuff at all the booths and found these two items to be the most and the least expensive.

Cow skull plastered with turquoise $500, something everyone needs.

You don't need this if you have an "outie."

The ladies who sell fairy outfits for little girls were back. It amazes me that people buy this stuff. I call it butt fluff, like on a Cochin chicken.

Butt Fluff, low-slung "plumber" style.

At the other end of the class scale was the hat man. I know guys must buy hats because they see how great this fellow looks and want to look like him. In England this hat might be handy to keep the rain off, Mr. Pudding needs one of these when he hikes around his neighborhood.

The classy hat man

There were decorated flower pots, decorated t-shirts and sweat shirts, decorated knick knacks and doodahs. There were even some nicely decorated people.

Leg Art

Kids got to ride ponies.

Dream time for little girls

And lots of people took their kids on the tractor ride out to the fields.

"When the adults all sit down, we can go."

The most fun I had at the Corn Festival was visiting with people who stopped by, including my newest relative, Charley.

Charley.... smile compliments of his Aunt Em

Lizard Returns?

It's possible this is the lizard I rehabbed earlier in the summer. It's by the back porch, which was its previous territory. It has a stubby tail. It's very healthy and lively. I'm going to tell myself this is the same lizard.

There are lots of tiny new lizards running around as well. Someday I hope to find lizard eggs. I've never seen them. There is a big gap in my wildlife knowledge in the lizard department because they do a great job of taking care of themselves and not causing problems. How many eggs does a lizard lay? How long does it take to incubate them? Could I hatch a couple in my new dang-fancy South Korean digital incubator?

There's so much to know.

Little Mom

 

A couple of weeks ago I was walking past the woodshed and heard the unmistakable squeaking of new kittens. There had been no stray cats around, so that was rather peculiar.

When I went inside the shed, the little cat above hissed and spat at me and ran away. I could still hear kittens, even louder. My formerly neat woodshed is a mess, a whole row of wood fell over a while back and I haven't gotten around to restacking it. I went to the corn stand and borrowed Brian. He's young and bendable and used to work for a veterinarian; he climbed back into the mess and found the babies. There were 5 of them, they didn't look more than 2 or 3 days old. We left them alone and closed the door.

The next morning I took some food out for the mama cat, but she had moved the babies out of the wood shed. That wasn't a good thing. There are too many hiding places around here that aren't safe for babies. Like stacks of pallets and boxes.

 

A couple of years ago a feral cat had kittens here. She was killed on the highway when the kittens were a couple of weeks old. I could never find them. It was awful. I looked and looked. Katherine came over and we both looked and looked and listened. I didn't want to have to repeat that experience, I prefer knowing where kittens are stashed.

I told everyone at the corn stand to watch for the new family. Especially the fork lift drivers. Then last weekend there was the really noisy Corn Festival, with thousands of people traipsing around. Mama wisely moved her babies back into my relatively peaceful woodshed.

The babies are running around there. I put food out every morning. I warn the mama when I get to the door and by the time I open it, all I can see is various-colored little tails disappearing into the wood stack. Mama doesn't run from me anymore, but she still hisses and spits. She's very small, barely past kittenhood herself. She's a ratty little thing, I don't know how she managed to look so good in the picture I took.

I'm really tickled to have some feral cats around. Hopefully they'll stay off the highway and camp out in the woodshed and the yard. The rodent population has been overwhelming this year. It could be interesting trying to catch all these kitties to get them spayed and neutered. But I'll try.

Trustworthiness

Vendor reliability

Privacy

Child safety

Second Least Favorite Call

I don't get many phone calls. I don't really want many. I love to hear from friends and relatives, of course, and I'm as likely to talk for hours as anyone. But if you're selling something, don't call my house.

I don't want my carpets cleaned. I don't care who your candidate is. I don't want to talk to you about refinancing my house. Most of these are machine-generated calls; there isn't a real person on the line so I just hang up, wishing I could remotely set off a stink bomb at the other end of the line by pressing a special code on my dial.

I have told you before that my least favorite call is the viagra salesman from a foreign country. It's a real person, usually a guy, who tells you his name is "Jeff" when it's obviously not. He starts with, "I'm calling about your last order of viagra, were you satisfied?" I have a carefully contrived answer for this. Miraculously, because my memory often fails me otherwise, I can remember this answer word-for-word and deliver it with passion. I won't recite it for you because it includes several nasty phrases and ends with telling the now-hostile fellow on the phone to take a big snoot of that viagra and go amuse himself AFTER he takes my number off his calling list, because if he ever calls here again he will eternally regret it.

Actually, maybe I really do like that call. Self-righteous indignation suits me.

Today, as I was trying to unlock the front door and stumbling my way into the house carrying packages, the phone rang. It was my second least favorite foreigner. "I am callink about dyour windoss operatink system,..." he said. "I don't have a stinking, stupid Windows operating system," I replied. He retorted, in a patronizing tone, "That iss not possible! Efryone hass this!"

My answer for this fellow was nowhere near as well-polished as my viagra script, but I did manage to get in several sentences about using a Mac and not needing his services EVER because I'll never, ever, touch a computer with Windows on it, so there! Don't ever call me again you reprehensible pest!

He said, "----k you, ma'am." I couldn't tell if he said "thank" or the other word that ends in "k" because his accent was so strong, so I simply replied, "same to you."

I'm sure this won't be my last post about annoying sales calls. There appears to be no way to get them to stop. I don't like being the ugly American, but I'm griped about the attitude these people have; that it's their right to pester and harass me into sending them money for something I totally do not need or want.

Show up at my door, you buzzard bait.

My Herd

A bunch of pigeons is usually called a "flock." But mine don't fly much, they like to graze in the grass. They're a "herd."

How many pigeons do you see? There were 5 more still in the pen.

A very colorful herd.

That's Dragon, one of the hand-raised babies, in the right front corner. He's still very tame.

I don't have to rope them or herd them with dogs. When I need to put them back in the pen, I just fill their feeder and they all hurry back in.

We haven't seen the hawks for a couple of weeks, they're probably out in the fields where there is an overabundance of voles this year. Life is good.

Johnny Popper

I told you to remember Uncle Jim. That's because this whole post is about him. This is Uncle Jim, with me and his daughter (my cousin Nancy) at Aunty Barbara's memorial.

Me, Uncle Jim and Cousin Nancy

First, to my relatives: if I'm getting anything in this story wrong I'm assuming you'll correct that in the comments.

My father, Jack, and his two brothers Bill and Jim were born on this farm. Jack and Jim were a lot more interested in farm equipment than they were in farming, and they both made their living as mechanics.

Recently Uncle Jim and Aunt Beth moved into a retirement home. Some people have pets that they take with them. Uncle Jim's pet wouldn't fit. It's a 1928 John Deere tractor.

Uncle Jim bought this as a bunch of rusty pieces and spent quite some time lovingly restoring it. It is in perfect working order. It's now on display here on the farm where he was born.

A couple of weeks ago Cousin Ken came out with his mom and dad to give the tractor a bath and get it started at the Corn Festival.

You have to hand start the tractor by spinning the flywheel. Ken tried that. And tried, and tried. He's evidently better at stopping trains than he is at starting tractors.

Johnny Popper, Rick, Cousin Ken

Rick keeps all the tractors running for Davis Ranch, so he came along and tried to start this one. He had just the right touch. Uncle Jim had been sitting under a shade tree, but when he heard his baby running, he had to come over.

Uncle Jim

Uncle Jim and Rick spent some good tractor geek time. Rick says if he'd had to farm when these tractors first came along though, he probably would have stuck with horses.

Tractor Geeks

Why is this tractor's nickname "Johnny Popper"? I'm going to attempt to show you a little movie that explains it all. In this movie, Cousin Ken is spraying the side of the barn with a hose so sparks from the tractor's exhaust won't catch it on fire.

Another Goodbye

We said goodbye this month to the lovely bride in this photo, who was marrying my mother's brother "Bud," to become my Auntie Barbara. I remember the wedding because I was the flower girl, a job I took very seriously.

There were other relatives who were in the bridal party. Uncle Orin.

Aunt Marilyn.

And Uncle Jim.

Marilyn and Orin are my mother's siblings. Jim is my father's brother. As in many rural areas, everyone knew each other; the families didn't meet for the first time at a wedding as they often do now. Uncle Jim's wife, Aunt Beth, and Aunty Barbara had grown up together in a small farming community north of Sacramento.

They didn't remain farmers. Jim and Beth moved to the suburbs, where Jim worked at the fire department as a mechanic. (Remember this tidbit of information for future use.) Bud and Barbara eventually moved to a mountain community where he worked as a Highway Patrolman.

They did remain friends, though. Theirs was the last generation, I think, that was able to retire early enough to spend lots of great years traveling together in their motor homes and truly enjoying their lives.

In my generation there are too many people who find themselves having to work until they die or barely have enough to get along. There are others who would be doing fine except they still need to support grown-up, well-educated kids who can't find decent jobs. By decent, I mean jobs that pay more than minimum wage, have even a bare minimum of benefits, and don't make them constantly subject to being laid off... jobs that give them tools to build a life on, like previous generations did.

That's another goodbye.

Bon Voyage Party

A few weeks ago I told you about Chris and Louise and their plans to take off and live on their boat. I went to their bon voyage party because I really wanted to see them "one last time." I know the Earth is round, but in my mind if you go sailing out across the ocean far enough, you're likely to fall off the edge.

The other partygoers seemed to be split; half being afraid of the ocean like I am and the other half excited by it. Some of them had already done what Chris and Louise are doing. That made me feel better.

Here is the boat. It's 32 feet long.

 To give a better perspective, here's the door with someone trying to climb out of it.

Here is the inside of the boat.

It's like a travel trailer except it has a lot of added safety equipment, like a super duper radio and a device that uses solar power to turn sea water into drinking water. I could stay in it for a couple of nights maybe, if it was tied to a dock in San Diego. I had just about convinced myself this could be a wonderful thing, sailing along the coast and coming in at night to anchor in a safe harbor and sleep.

But that's not the plan. Chris and Louise are going to sail south, well out on the ocean away from land and the shipping lanes. They will dock at a couple of places. After they visit friends in Mexico they'll turn west and head off across the vast Pacific.

I know they'll be fine, they've had more than 15 years to learn how to do this and make their plans. When they come back around to Northern California again, fit and tan, the rest of us will take a van from our assisted living homes and meet them at the dock for a welcome back party. Then we'll turn up our hearing aids so we won't miss out on all the details from their adventures.

Captain Chris

First Mate Louise

State Fair

Lauren and Jan
Photo by Katherine

I went to the State Fair last night with Lauren and Katherine. We all used to spend a lot of time there at the 4-H Poultry Show. Katherine and Bob got to participate in the auction when they were kids, which helped with their college expenses and put their pictures on big posters in the Fur and Feathers building. To help pay forward, we contributed to a poultry buyers' group for this year's crop of market poultry winners.

There's nothing like being around a big group of 4-H and FFA kids to remind one how accomplished these kids are. Both organizations get kicked around in California by the EdBiz. Not many school administrators, especially in the large urban districts, understand that you don't have to be a farm kid to benefit from these traditional clubs, and that they teach responsibility and other valuable life skills.

What a contrast to compare the 4-H and FFA kids to some of the other young folks one passes when walking through the fairgrounds!

California Beer

Wine snobbery, something that is common in California, is now making its way to the beer world as well. Bob's 4th of July party was a "bring your own" affair. Devin brought a unique bottle of beer, encased as a single bottle in a box.

These words are simply recycled from a wine label, I think. I don't drink beer. Would you try this? It sounds like fruit stew, cooked in sugar, or juice left over from a smoothie.


The party was nice. I always enjoy seeing Bob's friends. Here's one we haven't seen in a while:

Julie and Bob

Julie and Bob have known each other since Bob was 2 and Julie was 1. I doubt they remember those days, but I do. Later, they both played flute in the elementary school band. The district had a really enthusiastic music teacher who was great with the kids. I remember one afternoon when Julie and Bob decided to play "Happy Birthday" on their flutes for a friend's party. They had no sheet music, so like Lennon and McCartney, they conspired and figured out the notes themselves. It seemed like the band had a surplus of flute players. That's probably because that was the cheapest instrument. Another thing I remember about the music days is little Julie always knocking over the music stands when she sat down.   


When Bob transferred to the Waldorf school in 5th grade, he switched to a more "manly" saxophone. Waldorf had a good strings program, but kids who played wind instruments had to take private lessons. That sucked. We had a hard time finding a music teacher. The one we ended up with was disgustingly irresponsible. He wouldn't show up half the time and when he did he never remembered what had transpired at the previous lesson. It's hard to get a kid to practice when he knows the teacher will forget the assignment anyway. The teacher at the elementary school had kept the kids on their toes by handing them really hard music to play (like Darth Vader's theme) two weeks before a concert.  


Both the flute and the saxophone are still in the hall closet. Why do kids give up music when they get older? Instead of playing beer pong, they could be playing those songs we had to listen to them practice, over and over again.


Next time Bob has a party, I'll suggest that right under BYOB he adds, BYOMI - "Bring your own musical instrument."

Take Your Lumps

Yellow lumps in front of Lowe's

Bob has three days off and spent all day yesterday working on the back porch project. My job was to make the runs to Ace Hardware and Lowe's whenever he needed supplies.

My last run was to Lowe's. I was to pick up some 4 foot plug-in shop lights. A simple task, right? It could have been, except as I've mentioned before there is a gremlin that sits on my roof and routinely screws up my plans.

I had been on my feet all day and they were starting to drag, so when I grabbed a cart at the front door of Lowe's, I decided to ask where the lights were instead of enjoying a leisurely stroll through the store. I usually love to browse there, looking at all the little doodads.

I was in aisle 9 before I found a Lowe's employee and asked him where to find shop lights. He sent me to aisle 1. Aisle 1 was light BULBS, not fixtures. So I asked another employee and got sent back to aisle 10.

As I was trying to figure out which light fixtures I needed, the employee who had sent me in the wrong direction saw me and came to help. I had started to load the 7 boxes I needed, and he took over. In doing so, he didn't notice that the fixtures come in different colors so I ended up with 6 black ones and a white one. (But of course I didn't discover this until I got home.)

Then he went off to find fluorescent tubes for the 7 fixtures. Each fixture takes 2 bulbs. There are 2 in a package. He brought me 5 packages. (Again, I didn't notice this until I got home.) All of this stuff fit rather poorly in the cart, which I pushed gently to the checkout counter.

The lady at the register managed to drop two of the tube packages on the floor. She picked one up and shook it. "It's not rattling," she said. "I think it's okay." I don't know if fluorescent tubes rattle when they're broken, do you? I think that's something light BULBS do. But it's not like I know. I asked her to replace the two packages she dropped, and she did. I'm pretty sure the dropped packages were bound back to the shelf to be resold.

Anyway, I carefully packed the cart and started out to my car. Just outside the door there was a 3-foot wide strip of yellow lumps. It ran the entire width of the store, there were no breaks where I could push the cart without having it jiggle all around. I know because I went along the edge of the store looking for a break.

I finally gave up and started pushing the cart verrrrry slowly across the bumps. It rattled and it banged and it lurched. Six inches to go, and two packages of fluorescent tubes jumped off the cart and hit the pavement. The tubes broke in half before my very eyes.

I picked them up like broken swords and brandished them at a store employee who was heading my way. He had been ignoring my plight until the tubes broke and I started cursing, very loudly. I can do that. He picked up the front of the cart -- something I could never have done -- and worked it over the rest of the lumps. Then he went back in the store and got two more packages of tubes.

I have run into the nasty yellow lumps before. When I was on a walker they were treacherous. I have seen people coming out of the garden section of Lowe's with a full cart of flowers lose their load to the bumps. Flowers don't do much better at hitting the pavement than tubes do.

When I got home Bob and Jonathan unloaded the car. I told them the story and Jonathan (who knows everything) said that those yellow lumps are to let blind people know that they will be entering into a roadway.

I'm all for things that encourage accessibility, but can we think about this for a minute? There are so many blind people who go to Lowe's they need a 3 foot strip clear across the entire width of the store? Not just at the 2 entrances into the store and maybe a few more feet for good measure? If a blind person went to Lowe's, someone would have to be helping them. A sighted person can barely find what they need there. And wouldn't someone be helping the blind person find their way to the car with their purchases? Would they just be sent out the door pushing a cart by themselves? For that matter, how could a blind person be there in a car without someone else driving? This just boggles the mind.

Next time I'm going to Home Depot. I don't like it as well, but at least there's no lumpy moat around the store.

Urban Pony

Before you go any further, this is NOT me. She's a urban cowgirl in San Francisco. April Ellis makes fake ponies out of old electric wheelchair parts. There is an article about her in the SF Chronicle here.

My friend Mitzi's birthday is this week, and I thought she might enjoy this.

When we were kids, Mitzi and I used to make stick horses out of old broomsticks. We'd stuff a sock for the head and make manes out of shredded fabric. I don't remember how we made the faces. My favorite stick horse was a gray sock with a black mane.

In later years, we horse crazy girls were fortunate to each have a great REAL horse that we rode on trails over half of California.

I'm inspired by April's pony. This is something we can do when we're old(er) and decrepit(er) and need motorized wheelchairs. I think Mitzi and I could design much better horses. Mine would be bay, of course, with a big blaze face and huge ears. I'm sure Mitzi's would be black.

Happy birthday this week also to Kyle, Alex, and Amanda.

That Goat

That Goat (his real name) is still alive and well. I don't mention him very often, so I thought I would let you know that he's another year older (14?), very healthy, and ornery as ever. You're welcome to come say "hi" to him yourself. I'll stay outside the pen and take pictures. And maybe call 9-1-1 if necessary.

Whiskers in the Sun

What?

Look at your own face, old lady.

Up at Dawn

Raising chickens is a lot of fun. I especially love hatching chicks and raising them. I'm hatching chicks so I'll have birds to show this year. The down side is, I have to hatch maybe 50 to get a few that are really good show birds. The other 40 are "culls," but not in the true sense of the word. They are still very good birds, if I could find someone who needed them.

Barred Old English bantam. Not a show bird, but great color, hard to find. Off to the auction.

Dominique Bantam cockerels. The one in front has great color, a great comb.
Is already bigger than the standard. Off to the auction.

The problem is, everyone who shows birds also has more than they need. So it's a problem finding homes for the extras. I can sell a few at shows, but the shows don't start until the fall and I need to clear my cage space right now. The only avenue I've found is to take them to the Roseville Auction on the first or third Sunday of the month.

That's what I did this morning.

Last night Bob helped me catch the ones that were going. I put them in carriers overnight in the game room. Got up at 5:30 and made it to the auction at 6:30. I always feel like such a bad person when I leave the birds to their fate and drive off.

I don't feel as bad as I once did, though. With the rising popularity of backyard chickens, there are a lot of new people in the poultry world. Many treat their birds as pets, so when they have to get rid of a rooster because of zoning conflicts or complaining neighbors, and take their little darling to the auction, they are pretty picky about how he's handled. The people who run the auction seem to have adapted to this. They still have the same rickety old pens, but the pens are under a roof, not out in the sun or rain. The personnel handle the birds much better than they used to...in the old days I'd find myself snarling at those boys once in a while.

I'm always interested in unforeseen consequences.

While some of the new chicken people can drive you nuts with their "Chicken Run" mentality, overall their participation has been a benefit to us all. The feed stores have geared up to serve a bigger poultry market, so I don't have to go online to get what I need.

The game bird people have similarly had some good effects. I do not in any way approve of cock fighting, I'm glad it's illegal and hope all those idiots get caught. However, the guys who raise those birds do spend a lot of money on them. A lot of the medications, specialized feeds, and other things are available at the feed store because of the game bird market. I appreciate that. I also appreciated it when we were at the county protesting a proposed chicken regulation a couple of years ago, and the game bird raisers showed up and testified, too. It's not illegal to RAISE game fowl, only to fight them.

Anyway, I took a dozen birds to Roseville this morning. It's nice to be driving on Sunrise Blvd. early on Sunday morning when there's no traffic. It reminds me how things used to be, when I could get to Roseville in 20 minutes instead of the 45 it takes me now on a weekday. There were a few interesting people out walking at dawn. One young lady, dressed in running clothes, was scooting along on the sidewalk in a motorized wheelchair, accompanied by a young fellow who was running alongside her. She leaned forward a bit, as if she was trying to beat him to their destination.

A little further down the road a young lady in a skimpy tank top and shorts was wandering aimlessly across the 4-lane road. She had long, stringy hair that was half blonde and half brown. Her face had  a vacant look, with a weird half-smile pasted on it. On the way home I saw her again. She was on the sidewalk at least a mile further down the road. You have to wonder what was going on in her life, I wouldn't expect someone who was zonked out to be up and about that early in the morning, let alone walking at a pretty good clip.

I stopped for eggs and bacon at Denny's. I stopped at Lowe's to check out the storage sheds. I was home before 8:00. I'll be working all day to clean pens and move birds around. I still have a few babies in the house, but most are outside now and have plenty of room to grow. It looks like a good day to work outside, it's overcast and cool. I probably won't have to go to the auction again for a couple of months.