Saturday morning up with the smokes and walk around despairing of summer’s cattail growth but nothing to be done…right on time at nine Romero and Willey’s criminal show up and make short work [barely an hour where the loading took five] of the truck, disappearing back to playa manias.
The day proceeds from there, L. definitely recovering, Scott digging on the country and me sorting RR paintings, feeling a little throaty but maybe it’s just the smokes…
Dinner with Dave on the porch, salmon and corn, appetite off a bit…and in the night the throat seems more than smoke. Sunday morning Jonboy arrives for a halcyon day of electrical while L. and Scott are soon down the road, dropping the Penske in Sparks and safely over the hill around 3:00. I sort and rack all the narrow works, eventually sweep up…
Goin’ into evening feeling illin’; same for the night and Monday, having whatever she had and glad not to be spending days on the road with it.
Do do some weeding, watercolors of deserta obscura, and lots of minimal waiting out the whatever. Which persists, and a weird day, too; windy, deeply hazy, strange…smoky unto dark.
Tuesday comes up with tiny splats of rain, slightly hazy still but cool; another day of small tasks, catch-up stuff, loading summer’s paintings, watercolors in the morning and a wall of dust moving in just after noon.
Disturbing brownness going grey at end of day, feeling ominous for some reason, which our lawyer’s emails about Guerrero fail to alleviate…so into the night to read, sleep and wake, 6:40 up and around the ponds, last breakfast on porch [clearer and clearly not summer anymore].
…out the gate at eight, dry washboardy roads down to Doyle; 395 to 70 to Vinton; around Sierra Valley to 89…
89 to 80 and California traffic getting stupider all down into and across the valley for a latish lunch, unload…Benicia.
Take the truck to Chuck’s to check the check engine light that’s been on since Alturas in June…fire up the ’45, etc. etc…
And so to continue, a world, dry world, of many California things…
anon.
M
Hope your froat is better…the smoke doesn’t help at all…the toll is high in Middletown/Cobb.
My ancestors used the same guide as the Donner Party but they came over earlier that year and took the southern route to settle in Farmersville/Exeter. Thence outward.
And onwards! Yes, froat mush improofed, thanks.
Is that photo of the lone tree from the porch and then the photo of the house from the tree?
That’s pretty much right; usually you can see another thirty or so miles past the tree…and the view of the house was taken a few hundred yards south of it.
Nice photos and nice vehicular line-up in front of your Benicia abode! Sorry to hear about bad throat and smoke; hope you’re mo bettah now.
Feeling lucky to be on the coast here; a tad more moist and much less smokey than our friends east of Mokelumne Hill, who lost their ranch to the Butte fire, or the HUNDREDS of homeless in Middleton…yikes!
Strange times…lots of whales breaching just offshore, gobbling up anchovies. And so it goes….
We LOVE anchovies! Ordered extras on our Caesar Salad split at Lucca just the other night…
Sad and bad about the fires; didn’t see much evidence coming over the hill Wednesday, but that was the one day of dampness…