After being gone every single weekend since Memorial Day, I have been thoroughly enjoying time at home. This is a boring look into my boring life, which is suiting me tremendously.

I am not bored! And the cats are very very happy to have us home.

My longtime walking partner is waylaid by plantar fasciitis. I’ve been carrying weight in a backpack to make shorter walks pack a bit more of a punch. Besides, there is too much to do at home to be gone long, and it is too dark in the morning to leave early. It was steep up to this gate, but I did not trespass beyond.

A dear friend is in a super swanky skilled nursing facility in Fresno. Since I had to take my MacBook Pro to Fresno to the Apple Store (a waste of time and gas), I took her some books to read (not a waste of time or gas). It was great fun to pull a selection off my shelves. When she saw the stack, she was able to narrow it down to one that interested her the most.

The yard is in a state of awfulness, to be expected after the summer, with heat extending into October. I ordered a truckload of something called “nitro mulch”, which makes all my planting beds look cared for while slowly delivering fertilizer and holding in the moisture. (Never mind about all the leaves that will be soon landing atop the magic black dirt.)

I got overly excited about planting chrysanthemums in pots, just a few to brighten up the front walk to the house.

I drowned these and bought more. Deer ate them all.

A cabin neighbor wanted to dispose of this solid wood table, 32″ square, probably from the ’40s. We can’t stand waste, so we brought it home and scraped the peeling varnish off the top. It’s not great—perhaps “shabby chic” is the correct designation, but still, it’s a good table. We have no place for it. Hope we find a home for this little treasure!

Finally, I have been painting. Look how far this painting has come! All the cottonwoods need leaves and branches, with some brighter yellow willows in front of them. That ought to do it. “Ought”? I’ll probably keep retouching other areas, tightening up detail, brightening up colors.

Meanwhile, I continue to struggle through tech troubles. I may have found a way for readers to subscribe, but still need to figure out how to make it easier than someone emailing me and then me entering their info. And there is still Big Trouble in Photoland. Many or perhaps even most of my photos are visible on my laptop but cannot be exported, edited, or emailed. No one at Apple has an answer. If I could get them onto an external hard drive or a flash drive, then I could delete them off the laptop and make space. Alas, they refuse to budge.

So, I’ll just keep painting. And reading. And gardening.

P.S. Want to guess which book my friend chose?