Life of Wry

From our walk today around the creek.

I think I like the black and white. It’s in portrait setting and I focused in on a particular cluster, and this is how my camera handled it: it focused in on three clusters. Huh.

This is the same bush (though on the other side of the path), also portrait, but from a distance, and in living color..

I really liked these flowers.

And here’s a nice, shady tree canopy..

I’m pretty happy about this one… it’s a painting by Lucy, a dear friend Monica and Dror’s, whom we’ve also become friends with after so many years of birthday parties and holiday gatherings. She’s a talented artist who has worked in a variety of media. In her own words:

In the process of immersing myself in art for teaching purposes, I also began doing my own art again.  I have focused for years at a time in various media: jewelry making, acrylic painting, kiln formed glass, and encaustic collage.  Since 2020, I have been working primarily in acrylic paint, incorporating gelli prints and painted papers to add depth and textures to my work. The pandemic’s silver lining for me was more time in the studio and more time in nature.  My love of trees is lifelong, so it is my great joy to have found ways to incorporate tree imagery into my art. The trees in my work are based on specific trees that I have encountered on the paths I walk: those that catch my attention with their angles and lines and especially the shapes between the branches.

Here are some examples of her trees, excerpted from her website.

This is the one I bought at a recent exhibit of her work (in a Berkeley gallery):

And this is where it lives now…

I think it looks pretty good there! I had that spot in mind when I chose that particular painting, among so many options.

I absolutely LOVE the late afternoon light (or this time of year, early evening*) as it pours through our west facing windows. The room’s brilliantly aglow, you should see it. It’s pretty great.

(*) 6:58pm, actually.

Picked our first eggplant of the summer. It doesn’t get any better than this!

Oh my, what a fun evening we just had. I joined Sabrina and Bill and we headed to Sonoma State’s Green Music Center for a completely fabulous concert in a stunning venue. Not my pic, but it shows the setting..

A huge percentage of the seating is at tables “on the green” where you can sit and eat food brought or bought. There is open grass seating around the perimeter, and inside that building is a theater (open to the rear) and the actual stage; you can buy tickets to be inside (probably a lot more expensive). Our outdoor table seats were 50 bucks.

Here are a couple shots I did take …

Eating at tables, so civilized!

There are restrooms inside the building, and if you go in to use them, you can sneak a peak inside the theater (gorgeous).. and get a closer look at the stage.

This was before the concert started:

This is the stage when Nickel Creek was playing..a picture I took when I went inside mid-show.

A quick word on the concert… it opened with a woman named Monica Martin.. incredibly lovely voice, a bit saucy and damaged, but loved every song she did (with another woman who played the guitar and did harmonies).. (they projected video on a large screen since we, outside, could not see the stage).

I am just blown away by Nickel Creek, though. They have been together since 1993, played consistently through about 2006, maybe 8-10 albums, a bluegrass grammy, lots of nominations for same, plus Country Music Award nominations, then took a break, and reunited sort of recently. Violin (Sara Watkins), mandolin (Chris Thile) and guitar (Sean Watkins). There was also a guy in back who played bass.

Bluegrassy, folk, roots, country… I was just drop-jawed through a whole bunch of it and totally sucked in for all of it. Some super high energy, some deeply lulling and affecting. All hugely engaging. Definitely a fan.

This guy, Chris Thile, is the center of the universe. Incredible mandolin. He is also the person who took over for Garrison Keillor when he left A Prairie Home Companion.. 6-7 years ago? Wish I had taken a better pic.. he had such stage presence! (Google him.)

Sara Watkins is shockingly talented… (again, not a great pic)

And her brother Sean, the third guy, was slightly more background, but a key player and incredibly impressive. I think all three were regular guests on Prairie Home Companion all those years ago…

Not kidding. It was just amazing, a great night of music. So glad I went.

T’was Janet’s birthday today and we celebrated with a nice dinner on the patio. How ’bout that!

Her birthday was the nudge I needed to clean up the patio.. which meant cleaning the tables, chairs and umbrella, tidying up the garden, knocking dust, cobwebs and debris off of everything, and doing some (quite a bit of) weeding while I was at it. Kinda overdue, glad it’s done.

Some show-off pics:

The ap was humus and baba ganoush to go with the homemade pita we had (dough from Dror, baked and re-baked here). Presentation: Jim

Dinner was grilled salmon, marinated in soy, brown sugar, rice wine vinegar and a couple other things I can’t remember, served on brown basmati with a topping of cilantro, red onions, sesame oil, toasted sesame seeds… which was just delicious! Good job, Jim!

I made a salad with our garden yellow cherry tomatoes, Dror’s clay pot potatoes, avocado, walnuts, dried cranberries, pepitas, red onion (maybe from our garden), croutons, with Seka Hills olive oil and their raspberry balsamic vinegar. Excellent.

Dessert was, by request, that fabulous lemon pound cake we’ve been making for almost two years now.. it’s a keeper.

And here we are!

Cheers to the birthday girl:

Elliot’s and my approximately semiannual Berkeley breakfast and walk. As usual, a true pleasure. Thirty-four-year friendship and counting!

No shots of Bette’s Diner (a departure from our usual Rick and Ann’s), but here are a few from the stroll in Cesar Chavez Park, down by the Berkeley Marina. Chilly, windy, foggy…. a perfect summer day in the Bay.

A foggy SF city skyline…

Carved out of a big boulder!

I thought this walkway art was also pretty clever..

Sorry, just gotta. I pulled all the carrots up. The ones on the end of the big giant flowers were bad. The ones on the end of tiny, delicate greenery were the best. Huh. Lots didn’t even make it into the house! Three of the ones below cannot even be penetrated with a sharp knife… terribly hard (woody?) inside.. like steel! So the entire carrot harvest (today) yielded about three hopefully edible carrots — at this point, can’t speak to the flavor. CONCLUSION: Carrots not really worth it. Will add to the list of veggies we’ll not plant again (this list also includes celery and beets).

Also: yellow pepper (not sure what it is), more candy yellow cherry toms, some chard and one big red tom.

I decided to pick the nectarines.. but they are ALL GONE! How can that be? There were dozens… where did they go? I’m researching now….

Green and yellow were the colors of the day.

Putah Creek’s particularly green these days:

That is not grass, folks! That is rivulets of duck weed.. cool patterns!

And then there were yellow things to see today as well…

Not sure what these pompom blooms are …

And .. a splash of yellow that somebody placed on this marker…

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And, just because I really loved what I made for dinner.. baked chicken meatballs (ground chick, red onion, egg, breadcrumbs, Jamaican sauce, cilantro, garlic powder, s/p) that went over brown basmati with a Jamaican Jerk sauce (pineapple juice, brown sugar, ketchup, Worcestershire, garlic, onion powder, red-pepper flakes, salt, cornstarch). So easy, so good.

I mean…

I rather liked our 4th of July this year. We attended Monica and Dror’s annual Middle Eastern Feast for the first time. For decades, we’ve stayed local and enjoyed all the fourth’s fixins that Davis offers… pancakes breakfasts, bike races, kid parades, fireworks at Community Park, of course. One year, we ventured up to the foothills to see Susan and Jim honored as parade marshals in the Dutch Flat parade and 4th of July celebration, which was very sweet. We’ve been out of town a time or two… but mostly we have loved the hometown festivities. I have to say, it’s not the same without Peter, so happy to find new traditions.

So, this year, the Matalon-Frame shindig it was. Thirty-ish folks and look at this spread!

With only a couple of exceptions, Dror (a guy from Israel), made all of it. Chicken shwarma, homemade pita bread, baba ganoush, humus, labneh, tahini, veggies galore, olives, various sauces… it was just absolutely fabulous.

It wasn’t as warm down in the bay area today, but it was pleasant enough to sit outside!

Jim and I had long, fun conversations with Lucy, Charlie, Monica, Dror, Ben, and Nina. And ate superb food. My kinda celebration.

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I’ll be honest, I’m just not feeling a lot of love for what our country has become in the last 7-8 years. There has been such a profound collapse of morality, truth and decency, all of which I lay at the feet of one person. I am so deeply resentful of the hate and division he’s worked so relentlessly to foment. Real leaders in democracies don’t divide their people, they do everything in their power to unite them. Real leaders wake up in the morning thinking about how to help their people, how they can better their lives. Not divide them, not hurt them, not destroy anyone in opposition. Today, on America’s biggest celebration of itself, the twice-impeached, twice-and-counting-indicted former president — and, shockingly, the leading contender for the GOP nomination in the next presidential election — started his day by reposting a Fuck Biden meme. In trademark petty fashion, his opening message of the day was that he’s more popular because people wear his red hats and fly his giant flags. “No Biden hats anywhere. Never seen one!”

Happy Birthday America.

His small minded pettiness, vindictiveness and vulgarity….all on display. I can’t bear it. So.. no, celebrating America feels hypocritical and hollow these days. Would rather take a break on faux patriotism and eat some great Middle Eastern food with friends in Oakland.

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We got home just in time to hear the fireworks start up in Community Park. No time to get up there (or interest, really), but standing in the middle of A Street, I could catch a few of them: