The Front Garden Still Waits

 The two-storey Victorian house I live in has a small front garden instead of a grassy lawn.  A garden there was a very good idea, especially since the land slopes. It has problems, though.  The major plants are non-native, Japanese shrubs that have to be kept trimmed. Their berries aren't eaten by the native birds.  One bush was eight feet tall.  I attacked it the year the house was painted.  The lilac bush was planted too near to the steps. 

Up until this year the upstairs neighbor and I have kept the bushes trimmed way back.  The lilac bush got out of control. This year the garden was a bit too much. I had the stress of waiting to find out the future of my job of over ten years, my spring outdoor allergies, and newly discovered food intolerances.  

This year the yard was taken over by milkweed and bittersweet.  I don't look forward to tackling the bittersweet. Last year it took two hours to dig up the weeds in one square foot of ground.  The unwanted saplings—two are maple and catalpa—are growing very well and need to be eliminated. I tried a couple different ways in the past that wouldn't harm the soil and they didn't work.  Now it's time for the age-old technique of girdling the trees.  I bought my first hand ax today.  

September this year seems to be very promising. The weather is usually still mild.  There's still a good amount of daylight.  I am not working forty hours a week. I think I'm almost excited about it. The next steps are washing my gardening jeans and buying more yard waste bags.  I have misplaced my gardening gloves, inside I think, and I hope my old winter gloves will work for now.  I plan on cutting all the green stuff shorter so I can get at the roots.  Then I should be able to girdle the trees. It's recommended to cut two bands down to the sapwood on each tree trunk.  Then it'll be back to grubbing up everything else.  I know butterflies love milkweed.  I'm going to keep a small patch of them. The birds, beeds, and butterflies should love the native flowers I plan to grow there instead. Somehow I have to dig up the bushes.  I have an idea about that though.  The last change will be planting lilac bush saplings centered in the back between the windows as it should have been planted.  

I don't even know what the ground is like.  There is black landscape fabric down.  Here it could be anything from sand, to clay, or large pieces of rock or construction debris.  I guess a good sign is the milkweed, goldenrod , and hostas are very healthy.

I don't have the energy I used to and I've had difficulty getting used to that.  It's something to do with menopause, poor digestion, and allergies.  I really want to do this though.  At least once I eliminate the unwanted growth it should be better.

The last assortment of flowers I came up with. I have the seeds, too.  I know trying to grow seedlings in a less than sunny apartment that I keep cool in the winter is not a good idea.  I don't have the extra room for a table of flats.  Nor do I want to pay for equipment to do it well.  I'm going to scatter the seeds that I have on the ground this fall and hope for the best.  Since they are perennials native to this area, some should grow.  Hopefully it won't take too long before the garden is a patch of colorful flowers.  I think the garden will be like my genealogy, never quite finished.

A Familiar Situation

I seem to remember that I started this blog when I was unemployed.  Well, guess what! I am again.  I spent over the last ten years as a client [customer] service representative.  I was initiating requests on behalf of  provider offices and imaging facilities for many different types of procedures. I came to love the job.  However, my company experienced some set-backs and laid off about half its employees. 

This time around is different.  There are jobs out there.  However, my car died the same year I moved.  This past winter a friend gave me his car, and that died too.  Living and working at home without a car worked well.  Finding another remote job is the difficulty.  With the prices things are today, I don't see being able to obtain another car.  Once I do have a car, I'm not sure if I'd have any more discretionary income. I seem to recall any time I had some, I had to use it on the car. I am currently reduced to either working locally, using the local buses, or remotely, my preference.  The majority of the openings locally are either retail or health-related.  There could be something good hidden here, though.

I worked many years as an administrative secretary/assistant.  That combined with customer service seems to get me attention.  There are many positions where they want bilingual Spanish speakers.  It has been a long time since I spoke Spanish well.  I'm currently using Duo to relearn the language.  I have surprised myself by remembering much more than I thought I would.  Once I get more proficient, I think the local senior center might be able to help me find someone to practice with. The other thing I would like to learn is bookkeeping. I read "Bookkeeping for Dummies," but it's not the same thing.  I'll have to see what the web can turn up for me.

Expect this to get active again.  Somehow it helps the situation.

Landing on My Feet

 I can't believe I haven't blogged in so long. It seems like so much has happened.  

One of the biggest was the COVID-19 pandemic.  It wasn't that long after I moved the pandemic hit New York State hard. We had to quarantine at home and wear masks when outside. Many businesses had to close. Aisles in grocery stores were one-way. We had to stay six feet away from everyone.  My habit of shopping in the evening turned out to be a good safe guard.

Pandemic quarantine and PTSD was not a good combination.  I found out my primary care physician dropped me with no notice.  It was very difficult finding a new physician when practices were not accepting new patients. Doctor's visits by video and phone became vital and I took advantage of that until I could find a physician. I got counseling over the phone. I developed pandemic-related insomnia.  

YouTube became very interesting during the pandemic.  Bondi Vet from Australia posted a new, long episode every week highlighting cases their vets handled.  It introduced handsome vet Chris Brown and the reptile park.  The Prehistory Guys began their series on Britain before the Romans invaded.  I found Morgan Gold's Gold Shaw Farm, about a man forsaking the business world to start a farm in Vermont. I discovered Britain's gardening series Ground Force and Love Your Garden.  I bet you didn't know gardening shows could be funny. It almost matched the excitement of watching each Time Team episode for the first time.

Living in the 2020 apartment, I discovered that I was allergic to the chemical used to soften the water at the apartment complex. I had never lived with softened water. My one experience was that it didn't taste good.  Living with it gave me terrible indigestion, poor digestion and made me feel like a balloon ready to burst. It made my eyes swell and gave me double vision. I had to buy six gallons of water a week to prepare food, drink, and give the cats water.  It was just as well my lease wasn't renewed.  

In one year, the rental scene had changed quite a lot.  The monthly rent was at least 100 dollars more a month.  Companies were still buying up buildings and raising rents.  They wanted first and last months rent, security deposit and they wanted the rent only to be 30 percent of the tenant's salary.  I don't think I even know people who had that kind of salary. The choices I had were abysmal. One was in a building a stone's throw from the railroad track, and it was a busy route.  It was also along the river. As a believer in Global Warming, I didn't think that was a safe choice, let alone noisy. Two others were small basement apartments, one in downtown Albany, the other a few blocks away where later there were be some shootings. I do not like city life to begin with.

Fortunately I was working from home and could move anywhere in the country.  Realistically I could only look within easy commute from where I was living.  The closest areas were already hit with climbing rents so it still wasn't a sure thing.  One evening I saw an apartment advertised on Facebook and knew I had to be the first one to see it.  It was in Gloversville, about an hour's drive away.  I had never been there but knew of the place.  I drove up the main street. There were handsome brick and stone commercial buildings downtown.  It was a small downtown that had definitely had seen better days and there were empty storefronts.  It looked as though the city was trying and making some progress.  There were a lot of Victorian houses.  

I was looking for a Victorian house in an area that was just on the edge of a commercial area.  Most of the commerce were service industries now.  I was the first one to be shown the apartment. It was a first floor apartment with tall windows that made it light.  It had a front and back porch on the side.  The neighbor had a garden that I could see from the living room and knew my cats would love watching it. I could have my cats with no extra fees. The windows, the furnace, the heating system,  the appliances and the bathroom were all new.  It turned out later the walls had been insulated too.  There was a living room, dining room, a full kitchen, two bedrooms, a large closet in the living room and one behind the kitchen. There was yard all around the house, especially in the back.  There were two driveways and a garage in back. I could walk to the laundry mat and to the supermarket.  It was also easy to walk to the pharmacy, post office, and businesses downtown. There was a daily bus system that went to the community college and to Amsterdam. I knew my car wasn't going to last much longer.  There was no reason so say no, so I didn't. That was over two years ago now.  The COVID-1 relief payments definitely helped pay for the move.

Gloversville is like the village I lived in, if it had gotten a little bigger. The majority of the houses are Victorian. I've never seen a place with so many porches.  There's usually green space around the buildings, if not generous yards.  Mine is just big enough. I feel comfortable here.  The people are friendlier here, too.  There is one odd thing.  Usually, when I am walking anywhere and I'm at a corner waiting to cross, people will stop and motion for me to cross, no matter what color the light.  I always wait on the sidewalk, never in the crosswalk. 

I obtained all the COVID-19 vaccines. The first shot made me sore and fatigued.  The second shot made me feel inebriated.  I didn't have a reaction to the booster.  I never developed COVID, but in the spring of 2022 I developed shingles on the left side of my head.  I had to be different. I had a mild case, but the pain in my ear was incredible, as was the fatigue.  The medicine worked. I had residual pain but didn't want to take any analgesic that made me tired. I researched and made up an immune-boosting, anti-inflammatory tea that not only eliminated the pain, but helped my allergies and my digestion was well.  It tasted good, too. This year I discovered it's also leveling out my cholesterol levels.  

I tried getting the shingles vaccine after the fact as a friend's doctor told her to do.  I had an allergic reaction to it.  The area got very red and swollen.  I discovered the vaccine used the same chemical that was used to soften the water in Niskayuna.  What were the chances? My tea is safer. 

Favorite Authors

Most of my books are still packed up and in storage in another town. I need to down-size what I currently have in my apartment so I can bring them in, and to sort out and eliminate at least half (ow!). I can't afford to buy any books. The library's digital library is notorious for having only the first book of series. I'm not a reader who will willingly consider any mystery or romance novel. After recently losing my mother, mysteries have to offer me something besides preoccupation with murder and death. I still have so much to do that I feel guilty about reading for pleasure.  A reader is what I am though and sometimes I crave a good book so much it drives me nuts and reading one is the only way to regain my sanity.

At one point to regain some equilibrium I thought about the authors I like and whose newer books I would like to read, and hopefully purchase. This is my list in alphabetical order.

Barbara Allan's Trash N Treasures mystery series: (Hyperlinks aren't working so I'll have to add them later.) II found this book at a sale. I'm not sure why I like this series written by wife and husband team by Barbara Collins and Max Allan Collins. Maybe it's the unpredictability of life in a small southern town. 

Donna Andrews's Meg Langslow mystery series:  Once again I found this series by buying a book at a sale. I don't know if you could find a funnier mystery series. All the titles have a bird in them. The series' heroine is Meg Langslow in Virginia who seems to be in the eyes of storms involving her extended, eccentric family and murder, somehow finding a way to resolve everything.  So far my favorite is Owl's Well That Ends Well about a murder at a sale-of-the-century yard sale. Who wouldn't enjoy reading about people dressed up as giant birds dancing a chorus line on a Victorian porch?

Annie's Attic mystery series: Another book sale find. This series is a little unusual in that that authors change. The main character is Annie Dawson who moved to Maine after inherited her grandmother's house there and belongs to a weekly knitting group. Not all the mysteries involve death, which I find quite refreshing. One mystery is about the woman in an embroidered picture her grandmother made. Another was about the deed she found in the attic. I wish more authors would consider other types of mysteries that we know are in life.

 

 Lillian Beckwith's Hebrides series:  This time I found almost the entire series of novels at a church sale. The author had to relocate to Scotland's Hebrides Islands for her health and there beginning in the late 1950s started writing and publishing novels about her life there. It was a way of life only lightly touched by modernity. People worked hard as fishermen and crofters, partied just as hard, and attended church on Sundays. They still spoke Gaelic and were as likely to follow ancestors' teachings as they were a modern specialist's. I'm not sure if I have read them all yet because I thin they tend to be reprinted.

Rita Mae Brown's Mrs. Murphy mystery series: This series uniquely involves the main human character's pets Mrs. Murphy the tabby cat,  Tee Tucker the corgi dog, and Pewter the gray cat. Throughout the books they interact with the animals and wildlife on Harry Harristeen's Virginia farm and alternately help and protect Harry as she is irresistibly drawn to solve a murder. I enjoy the animals' dialogue and observations on life. In her later books the author began writing about Revolutionary War characters whose lives and mysteries are intertwined with Harry's community.

 

Laurie Cass' Bookmobile Cat mystery series: I found this in my library's digital offerings. Minnie Hamilton is a young librarian in rural Michigan whose cat Eddie stowed away in the library's new bookmobile to become an instant local celebrity within the book-reading community. I've only just started reading the series. I can identify with the main character since I am also a short, cat-loving book lover and I enjoyed visiting rural Michigan. 

Bailey Cates' Magical Bakery mystery series: I needed some interesting audio books to help me get things done and I found the first two novels in this series as audio books at the library near work. Young Katie Lightfoot joins her aunt's bakery in Savannah, Georgia, and in the course of events learns that her aunt is a witch. While I don't believe in witchcraft, I feel there are things that can't be explained and who wouldn't want a little help in making things come out right.

James Herriot's semi-autobiographical series on vet life in rural Yorkshire, England. I began reading the American editions of Mr Herriot's books when I was still borrowing books from the Philmont library. I read about care and concern for animals in pre-WW II England when medical care was very limited and rural people were still living and speaking as their ancestors had for generations. The stories are livened by the Farnon brothers and some of the practice's unforgettable clients and animals. I collected all the books and still read them occasionally.

Sofie Kelly's Magical Cat series: Kathleen Paulson is a transplant to rural Minnesota who finds and rescues two kittens who each grow up to have a magical ability. She is a librarian who was hired to renovate the Andrew Carnegie Library and after finding so many friends in her new community decided to stay. I wish I could relocate there myself since I like the friends in her books so much. I also wish the original artist would come back to design the book covers. I finally remembered to email the author/publisher to voice my opinion that the last four covers are boring.

Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series: Yet another book sale find. After her father becomes late, traditionally built Mma Precious Ramotswe decides to open up a detective agency in Botswana, Africa. These are slower paced books taking care to explain the country of Botswana and its traditional ways in a loving and entertaining way. Mma Ramotswe's new life brings in new people such as her ambitious secretary Mma Grace Makutsi and her steady friend and mechanic Rra JLB Matekoni as well as the unreliable and colorful apprentice mechanics who offer to save the ladies from a cobra in the office but have no idea how to do so.

I watched the first episode of the BBC series on YouTube and I was very disappointed. Mma Ramotswe is not driving her dearly loved white van, but a white pick-up truck. Rra JLB Matekoni's business is given the name of the garage that he had to take to task for shoddy work, not Tloweng Motors. The acting wasn't very sincere but campy. It was disrespectful to the author and to the series' fans.  Stay with the books.

Sofie Ryan's Second Chance Cat mysteries: Sofie Ryan is the same person as Sofie Kelly so I thought I would try reading this series as well.  I was not disappointed. Sarah Grayson owns a second-hand and repurpose store in Maine. She is assisted by handsome and enigmatic Mac, a talented teenager and her grandmother's retired friends. When one of their friends is accused of murder, the seniors band together as Charlotte's Angels to solve the murder and prove they are still useful and not to be underestimated. The cat in the series is Elvis, a black cat with a mysterious scar on his nose who charms customers and is addicted to Jeopardy!  The author has created another world that I would like to be a part of.

Patrick Taylor's Irish Country Doctor series: Retired doctor Patrick Taylor writes about medical practice in rural Northern Ireland in the 1960s. It is set in mythical Ballybucklebo that the Irish Troubles never reached. After writing a triology passed on the Irish Troubles, Taylor began the Irish Country Doctor series, admitting they were a balm for his soul. I think he must enjoy thinking up medical tales and mysteries and problems that the locals have to resolve. He's written 14 books in the series as well as a cookbook. He may have written An Irish Country Girl just to write a good Irish ghost story. Young Barry Laverty receives his medical degree and begins as assistant to family doctor Fingal Flaherty O'Reilly and to be taken care of by housekeeper Maureen "Kinky" Kincaid. He finds Fingal has his own way of taking care of his patients, his blustery temper a cover-up for a man who goes out of his way to help his patients with their problems and still holds dear a wife he lost while serving during WW II. At the back of each book is a glossary of Northern Ireland terminology and recipes. I discovered many of these terms have entered American language.

 

 

Sucking the Life Out of Us

This is directed to anyone who has money invested, including pension plans. Do you realize that this method of making money is sucking the life out of Americans? We have inflation because of the Federal Reserve. I know we have inflation because my expenses have doubled since 2003. The Fed raises interest rates so there are more returns on investment. And where is that money coming from? Us working people.

The Capitalistic investment system is sucking the life out of me almost literally. My salary is the same as it was in 2003. My rent takes half my salary. It was very difficult to find a decent apartment in the fall of 2019. I can only afford the employee contribution of about $240 monthly for my health insurance, but I can't afford testing, procedures or even eye glasses. I can't afford the recommended treatment for my cat's arthritis. I can't afford to have my car repaired. I can't afford fun:  books, streaming services on-line, any subscriptions, a take-out meal, craft supplies, concerts on-line or not. How would people WITH investments like to live like me?

 

In case you think I am a crank, I have a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from what used to be a highly regarded college. I am a published author. I've had the same employment position for almost seven years. However, I have been underemployed my entire adult life because this economy has been so focused on businesses involved in the capitalist cycle and I could never make enough money for any sort of cushion to get myself farther.

The investment process takes more and more money away from people leaving with less and less. Now it's really hurting me. I am not giving up though.

I AM THE BEST ME THERE IS AND YOU CAN'T CHANGE THAT!

Soft Purple Mystery Yarn

 At September's yarn yard sale I bought two balls of mystery yarn that I'd like to identify.

 

The yarn is a fingering weight, fuzzy animal fiber plied with a synthetic strand with an aurora borealis quality. It doesn't have a lot of elasticity. I discovered that I like to wear a cowl that has a little sparkle to it and I thought this would be nice. I need to find out how many yards this has. I thought of using Ravelry to figure it out, but even using filters I'm given many thousands of choices. I remember seeing this for sale on Webs' web site at one time. I can't even remember the company. I'm hoping maybe someone might recognize this.

Cat Blankets a Success

I really liked the cat blanket that Midnight Knitter of Yarn, Books & Roses made for her cat MacKenzie out of multiple plies of different animal fiber yarn. Emily loves premium animal fiber and I thought both cats would like the cushiony feel under their feet. As I related in a previous post, I found multiple balls of animal fiber yarn at a yarn yard sale at a price to good to refuse.  

The two blankets were quick and fun to knit. The first blanket I used a strand of Great Adirondack merino and one of mohair both in hydrangea, a strand of what I suspect was purple merino and silk since it had a sheen, and red violet mohair. I used size 13 needles in a garter stitch, slipping the first stitch purl-wise to make a nice edge.

This is the first blanket. The weather was still warm when I finished it but Emily seemed to like it.

I spied both cats kneading the finished blanket and looking very blissful. I knew the blanket was a success when they fought over who would lie on it. They've both had their turns. (Please ignore the filthy chair. It's 14 years old and surface washing does nothing. I need to steam clean it. I'm waiting for the heat to be on consistently.)

The bluer one seems to be the favorite. One day I tricked Molly into lying on the pinker one. Her sister suddenly decided to sleep in the box in the cat tree where Molly had been sleeping. I put the pinker blanket on the top of the lower level box to make her feel better.

Although the bluer blanket is still prized, Molly seems to like the pinker blanket too. For that I used the other ball of hydrangea merino, red violet mohair, purple and pink wool.  It's not quite as fuzzy as the other one. I don't know if the bluer blanket's appeal is the color or the fuzziness.

By the end of winter they will probably both be well used.