So many choices, so little space in our cart. We're at Eden Plains Nursery in Knightsen in search of some new plants for our front yard. Roni has some ideas in mind for the project, which is a good thing because all this greenery is going to cost us some green if we go crazy with the plantings. Photo by Glenn.
September 29, 2020: It’s the first days of autumn and the mercury is pushing 100 degrees right now, but at least one of us is chillin’. That would be Ben, who recently won a long-sought promotion at the grocery store and is now adjusting to his new duties as Frozen Department manager.
Just another apocalyptic day in paradise. It's Sept. 9, and the world is shrouded in eerie orange, thanks to wildfire smoke blowing in from the east. We're looking west across the Cline vineyard toward Mount Diablo. Photo by Roni.
September is Hatch chile season, so Roni picked up a few and decided to try roasting them in the oven. Photo by Glenn.
The roasting was a success. Now she plans to remove the skins to make a salsa. Photo by Glenn.
Our front lawn hasn't worn well in the three years since we planted it, so Roni has some new ideas for how to green up the space. Step 1: rake up the dead sod. This came up very easily, which proves how dead it was. Photo by Glenn.
Eden Plains Nursery has a huge selection of plants to choose from. Roni points out some of the ones she likes for our front yard. Photo by Glenn.
Cart in tow, it's time to load up with what we plan to take home. Photo by Glenn.
We were accompanied around the nursery by this cat, which we learned later is named Hazel. She was very friendly and eager for a belly rub. Photo by Glenn.
Since we're talking about cats, here's ours. Phoenix has chosen an unusual pillow for his afternoon nap. Photo by Glenn.
Time for a peacock update. Since we last posted pics of our resident birds, we can see one of the babies has gotten quite large, sort of looking like a chicken at this point. We hope it will survive to adulthood. Photo by Roni.
Our Delta is famous for its crawdads, but in the three decades we've lived in the area we've never encountered one this large that wasn't on a serving plate. This very live crawdad was spotted in the grass at Big Break Regional Shoreline, perhaps dropped there by a bird or some other unsuccessful predator. Photo by Roni.
It's a Saturday evening and we've decided to check out the food at the new Oakley Bistro on Main Street. We've ordered a bunch of food to go. Now we have to wait. Photo by Glenn.
The main seating area of the Oakley Bistro looks pretty naked, thanks to COVID-19 restrictions on indoor dining. That hasn't stopped dozens of people from coming by to place take-out orders. Photo by Glenn.
The Oakley Bistro boasts hand-tossed pizzas prepared in a brick oven. We decided to order a small combo to try it out. Photo by Roni.
Roni's Greek-style beef wrap sandwich comes with criss-cut fries. Photo by Roni.
Glenn went for the chopped steak and cheese sandwich on a roll that included spicy peppers and fries. Photo by Roni.
For dessert we each got a tiramisu cup. Not so bad. Photo by Glenn.
We celebrated Ben's promotion to Frozen Department manager at the grocery store with, what else, an ice cream cake from Cold Stone Creamery. We added the lettering and topper ourselves — a scene from the Disney movie "Frozen." Photo by Roni.
Ben got the good news a couple of weeks ago, ending a lot of speculation about what was going to happen to the department after the previous manager announced her departure for a move back home to Arkansas. Ben had been learning the ropes under her guidance for several months, doing occasional fill-in shifts amid his regular duties as a courtesy clerk. But he had sought the gig full time because of its mostly stable morning hours, meaning his schedule would be more dependable.
And those hours are early. Five days a week, Ben is up before the crack of dawn for the start of his 6 a.m. shift, and that has taken some getting used to on our part as well. If we’re lucky, we sleep through his morning routine and never hear him leave the house. Some days that has been tough to ignore, as he sometimes heads out early to grab a cup of coffee from the Starbucks across the street. But it is a minor inconvenience considering how hard Ben has worked for and wanted this new position with its full-time hours.
In his new role, Ben is responsible for maintaining the store’s inventory of frozen goods. He has to place orders for products and treads the fine line of having enough of the staple items customers want and not too many of the novelty products that manufacturers push but that don’t always sell well.
Mama and papa are very proud of him, especially when we reflect on where we all were six years ago wondering if he would ever have a job, let alone one that would become a career as this one appears to be doing for him. We celebrated his promotion with a take-out meal from Ramen 101 and an ice cream cake from Cold Stone Creamery; it was fittingly decorated with characters from the Disney film “Frozen.”
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ONI HAS BECOME a one-woman army when it comes to home improvements. Tired of a lot of talk but little action on the many projects we have pending around the house, she decided to dedicate herself a couple of hours each day to getting the yard in shape — both front and back. The problem has been that we are on opposite schedules lately between sleep and work, so when one of us is raring to go on weed removal or the like, the other usually isn’t.
Roni, being the morning person, has been taking advantage of the cooler temperatures to rake up dead grass, leaves, weeds and piled sand to make our landscaping more presentable. Her goal is not only to keep up with the neighbors and their superior front yards, but also to keep the city’s code enforcement department at bay in the event they decide our bare dirt that masquerades as a front lawn doesn’t pass muster.
We’ve honestly tried to keep things green, but without automatic sprinklers and having failed to properly prep the front yard to receive the sod we rolled three years ago, landscape maintenance has relied on us manually watering things, which doesn’t work well. So Roni has come up with a plan to plant shrubbery instead of grass, and that meant a trip to the local nursery.
We ventured to Eden Plains Nursery in Knightsen on a Thursday afternoon recently, eager to compare plants and search for a few that look good without the need for a lot of water. Eden Plains is one of our favorite spots for garden supplies, as they have a large inventory at great prices and specialize in several plants you won’t find at the big box stores. There were quite a few succulents in addition to rows of hybrid roses and fruit trees. Lots of grasses, too, that are drought tolerant. It might have been tempting to buy up the place, but we figured we’d start with a few items to test whether we like them in the front yard, so we stuck with ornamental garlic plants and ordered a pair of creeping juniper bushes. The juniper wasn’t in stock, but it should be there to pick up in a few days.
The other thing we needed for Roni’s plan was crushed rock. A lot of it. We’d used black bark when we originally landscaped the island around the plum tree and the median strip separating our driveway from the new neighbors’ house. That was cheap and worked well until the winds kicked up in the winter and blew most of the bark away. So Roni switched to lava rock, buying a couple of small bags from Home Depot to replace the bark near our driveway.
We liked the lava rock well enough that we decided to do more of the yard in it. But somewhere between when we bought those original bags and today, the manufacturer switched to bagging smaller rocks. The ones we found at Home Depot this time were more the size of gravel and light enough that we feared they would blow away as easily as the bark had. So Roni hunted around until she found the lava for sale in bulk at Brentwood Decorative Rock.
We should have brought the pickup truck for this hauling job, but it currently has a dead battery and is loaded down with stuff to take to the dump, so we had to rely on Roni’s Toyota Corolla instead. We found the lava rock, pre bagged, in three sizes. We bought four bags of the largest size rocks, then added a couple more bags of river rock for use in the backyard. It was a good thing there was a guy there to help load them for us, because those bags collectively weighed about 500 pounds. We had to get Ben’s help unloading them at home, and all that grocery work paid off as he was the only one of us able to lug them from the driveway all the way to the backyard without breaking a sweat.
Roni’s continued her cleanup efforts for at least a week since then, and we’re happy to report that both yards are looking better than they have for a couple of years. But there is still much work to do, not the least of which is figuring out how to remove two trees that have overstayed their welcome. More on that soon, we hope.
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T HAS BEEN a hot, smoky and miserable summer, due in no small part to the ongoing wildfires burning up large portions of our state. What has made things worse for us is that on the rare occasions when we have been able to open our doors for a cool breeze, our cats have seen to it that they don’t remain open for long.
Phoenix, in particular, thinks he was born to be an outdoor cat, despite the fact that we have never let him outside voluntarily. On the occasions when he does manage to slip through an errantly open door, he is so frightened of the great outdoors that he wanders around with his fur puffed out resembling something like a feline with a bad ‘80s big-hair do.
We thought we had mostly cured his wanderlust when we added a clasp to the base of the screen door by our dining room patio. The door is made from lightweight PVC and we’ve had it for more than 20 years; it’s been one of the best investments we ever made, allowing us to create good natural air flow during cool summer evenings that has saved us a ton of money on PG&E bills. But it is showing its age and has warped somewhat, making it easier for the cats to open.
The clasp helped secure the bottom of the door so that Phoenix and Phyre couldn’t just push it open. Unfortunately, the added force needed to free the clasp when we needed to open the door managed to weaken the bottom of the frame, and it was starting to fall apart. The final blow came one recent afternoon when Phe figured out that he needed only to rip a larger hole in the insect screen to make his egress. That resulted in us having to leave the sliding glass door closed until repairs could be made. No more cool evening breezes.
We’ve been thinking about one day replacing the sliding glass door with a French door that would be less prone to getting clogged by the sandy environment we live in. That would mean ditching the PVC door as well, but for now that is out of the budget and so we decided to repair what we already have. To fix the broken screen, we decided to invest in the upgraded “pet screen” available at Home Depot. It is made from tougher plastic fibers than traditional window screen so that kitty claws can’t harm it so easily.
But when we went to replace the screen, the PVC door literally fell apart in our hands. We discovered that its parts are held together by wood dowels, and those dowels had rotted away with time and exposure to the elements.
So after a trip to the hardware store to pick up new dowel material and some metal corner braces to reinforce the frame, Glenn reassembled the door and put the new screen in the grooves. It was an okay repair, but unfortunately the pieces didn’t fit together as well as before and we were left with some gaps that make it so the metal clasp doesn’t latch correctly. The cats have already discovered they can push the door open, so despite having a better screen we are once more forced to leave the sliding glass door closed until we figure out how to fix our mistakes.
Until then, no cool breezes.
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S PREDICTED, SEPTEMBER was a quiet month for our investments. Concerned about the direction of the stock markets during what is traditionally a volatile month, we made no individual stock purchases and sold just one option that netted $75.
The good fortune that was a 4-for-1 split of our Apple (AAPL) stock in August proved to be a double-edged sword in September as investors decided to lock in profits and in the process knocked down the share price by about 20 percent from the all-time high. That meant a dent to our account equity and available margin that limited our ability to sell new options. That will probably continue to be the case in October, although we are looking ahead to Oct. 16 when we have a bevy of options contracts expiring, a few of which are deep in the money and will have to roll into later months if we don’t want them exercised on us — which would be bad.
The coronavirus continues to be a drag on the national economy, and on our retirement accounts as well. With jitters over a slow recovery, election season and a possible resurgence in COVID-19 cases worldwide, many of our energy and consumer-oriented stocks have yet to rebound and possibly never will. Dividend cuts continue to rear their ugly head, undermining the strategy we set forth nearly two years ago. It has left us uncertain about how to proceed going forward, whether to hold on to our “losers” or sell them at a substantial loss and move on. Options have enabled us to make up for some of the lost income stream, but that is clearly the more hands-on approach as opposed to receiving passive dividend income from good stock investments. We suspect the answers will come into better focus as the year draws to a close and we look ahead to 2021 — hopefully one that sees the end of COVID.
