Lovely to sit in my office in WP 668 (the 1916 railroad caboose in our San Jose backyard) and listen to spring rain. Lovely to have spring rain in the middle of California’s big drought!
Images Copyright 2015 by Katy Dickinson
Tag Archives: Willow Glen
Dumping the Landline
Northern Californians who lived through the Loma Prieta Earthquake of 1989 often have a fondness for landlines – phones that use a metal wire telephone line for transmission rather than a mobile cellular line, which use radio waves. After Loma Prieta, only the landlines worked. Nonetheless, this week, we are dumping our landline phones. Beside that our family uses our personal iPhones much more frequently – even within the house as an intercom, the number of daily telemarketing calls have become overwhelming.
Our energy company Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) is proud that they “…have helped customers connect more solar systems than any other utility in the country”. However, that means we get far too many landline calls from companies aggressively wanting to sell us solar systems. While I support the installation of home solar power in general, our house in Willow Glen has a beautiful 80+ year old ceramic tile roof in good condition – not appropriate for solar panel installation. We only receive about six landline calls a day and usually four or more of them are telemarketing calls from solar vendors. I called PG&E and they say they are not responsible. We are on the Do Not Call Registry and routinely ask the companies to “Take Us Off Your List!”. Nothing has helped against the relentless tide of telemarketing. Enough!
The calls that we get that are not from solar power shills are often from companies trying to sell us new construction or carpet cleaning. Only one or two calls a week on our landline are from friends and family. Now that I am working from my home office daily, I would rather take my chances that the cell phones will work after a major earthquake than talk to six telemarketers every day. At least on an iPhone, I can easily block unwanted callers.
John is now transferring our home phone number to Google Voice on our temporary ZTE phone. In a week, we will have reduced our daily frustrations, saved $71/month in payments to AT&T, and have more space on our desks where the landlines used to be. Hooray!
28 Feb 2015 Update:
Our house is old enough to have a niche for a wall telephone. What do I do with that now that the landlines are dead? Maybe a sculpture niche? The birds are not sure if they want to share their corner with a cat sculpture…
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Photos Copyright 2015 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews
Guadalupe River – Happy to Be Wet
When you live on a river, its lifecycle is of daily concern. The Guadalupe River in San Jose was dry in summer 2014 for the first time since we bought our house 18 years ago. California is in a major drought, with last month the first completely rainless January since 1849 (presumably, when record keeping started).
We are now in our second rainstorm of the winter. The Guadalupe riparian corridor is home to a wide variety of wild animals which are dependent on its water and ecosystem. Some of the larger creatures we see regularly in our garden include: Jerusalem Cricket (Stenopelmatus), garter snake (Thamnophis), Alligator lizard (Elgaria coerulea), American swallowtail butterfly caterpillar (Papilio polyxenes), arboreal salamander (Aneides lugubris), California Slender Salamander (Batrachoseps attenuatus), Horsehair worm (Nematomorpha), as well as the more common ducks, geese, song birds, humming birds, hawks, vultures, raccoons, opossums, cats, skunks, and squirrels (grey, black, and gold). The river is also home to both steelhead trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and chinook or king salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha). I am sure they are as happy as we are to be wet this week!
Here is what the Guadalupe looked like yesterday from the bridge at Alma/Lelong:
Roughly the same views five months ago (September 2014):
Images Copyright 2014-2015 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews
Big Rain: Happy Salamanders and Mushrooms
After years of the worst drought on record, San Jose just started December with 766% of our “normal” rainfall. At least the salamanders and mushrooms in my garden are happy!
Images Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under News & Reviews
Happy Lizards
My recent redesign of my garden’s Willow Glen street planting beds is enthusiastically approved of by the alligator lizard community. I took out some large ratty irises and replaced them with lavender and yarrow. Now, there are lizards happily sunning themselves on all of the rocks. One bold fellow even decided to sit on my garden spade for a while.
Images Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Home & Family
Easter Egg Hunt 2014
This morning was our annual backyard Easter Egg Hunt – a very popular event among our friends, family, and neighbors. About 15 children (ages 18 months to 21 years) joined the search for hundreds of plastic eggs filled with chocolate candies. For the adults, there were two specially hidden eggs: gold and silver. Only the following poems gave clues to their locations:
I know a bed where the wild thyme blows,
Where iris and nodding rosemary grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious lemondrops,
With sweet musk-roses and with nasturtium:
There sleep sweet bees sometime of the night,
Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there snake throws her cold enamell’d skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.I have 3 guards for my home-place
The same number of eyes and legs between them
They keep for me in a safer space.
One would walk if he were fitted for a mind-Chem
but instead keeps me in the cool.
One is anxious but smiles except when asleep
One at ball’s drop can only drool
One was born only to be buried down deep
Can you find my comfy ark?
Or will you get lost in the barks?
Thanks to the Associate Easter Bunny, my daughter Jessica for her contributions to the poems (from Washington DC), and thanks to Paul and John for helping create today’s festivities! Clara and Paul and Dan teamed up to find the gold and silver eggs – and were rewarded with Peeps Chocolate Eggs for their hunting prowess.
Each Spring, I work for weeks to make our garden a demi-paradise for this event – full of flowers and rock borders suitable for hiding eggs. Easter coincided this year with the seed storms of the cottonwoods on the Guadalupe River in San Jose. Fluffy white seeds blow over everything like dry snow – so much spiderweb removal was needed, especially on WP668, our backyard caboose.
It is such a joy to watch the children filling their baskets, then re-hiding eggs for each other once the hundreds of eggs hidden in the morning by the Easter Bunny have been collected. A delightful celebration of new life and renewal!
21 April 2014 – On the day after the Easter Egg Hunt, I am still finding eggs in the garden (some after the dogs have chewed them)…
Images Copyright John Plocher and Katy Dickinson
Filed under Church, Home & Family, News & Reviews
Paul was Admitted to SJSU!
My son Paul was just admitted to San Jose State University (California’s first public institution of higher learning – founded in 1857). He will be studying Art and Studio Practice for a SJSU Bachelor of Arts degree. Paul will graduate with his Associate of Arts degree in Studio Art from Foothill College in June 2014 and start at SJSU in September. We are so proud of him! You can see Paul’s art portfolio on his website: Paul’s Element.
I am particularly happy that Paul got his acceptance package after reading yesterday’s sad article “Students With Disabilities Aim For A College Degree, But Often Get Stuck” (by Joy Resmovits in The Huffington Post). In my last blog entry about Paul’s progress, I presented some of our challenges with the educational system. Paul’s hard work and dedication have now paid off. Hooray!
Images Copyright 2014 by Katy Dickinson
Filed under Home & Family, News & Reviews
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