Solar Return

5.2.24

It’s not my birthday, but the sun crosses 13 degrees 01 minute of Taurus at 4 PM today. It’s Thursday, Ganesh has brought cake, so we are planning a celebration in the garden. It’s the peak of the season, the yellow orchids are blooming, tiny Violette just opened, Joasine Hanet is covered with buds, the grapefruit tree and the mystery pink rose are perfuming the air, the apples are cross-pollinating. Since rain is predicted for my actual birthday (again) I will do an end-run by celebrating today.

I have been inspired to putter in the garden, and have worked all week since the rains stopped. I have a space of time after Texas, Petaluma, Page Street, before I head out for a week re-treat, a gift of a parkup at a “cabin” in the Gold Country, where I hope to reboot my watercolor practice. I bought a thick pad of Fabriano watercolor paper and some Pitts pens to add to my pile of unused materials, sigh, so busy.

I have been productive in other realms–the template of the backyard is decades wide, a sort-of miracle. Somewhere around 1994 I salvaged flagstones from the yard at Emerson Street, and we laid them around the legless Weber grill we used as a portable fire pit. There is another patch of flagstones near where the shed used to be, where the propane grill Peggy gave me lives. There is a rectangular brick spiral floor Steve installed in the corner to make a little room for the clawfoot bathtub we had found on the street. He also built the bamboo fence and gate I patched and stablized a few posts back.

I have a number–nay, a plethora–of patio chair frames, and have tried several means of reweaving them. Some have not been successful, like the neon pink landscape tape that wouldn’t hold a cat, and faded instantly, and the multicolored strands of landscape twine that were too stringy and unwieldy. I tried a couple of methods of restoring the hoop chairs, including copying the original canvas–I now recall that I got those from Grif in torn condition–that had to be 35 years ago. They have been wandering around the yard as ghosts, even as the rope-on-wire contraption I attempted sat un-damaged through many years of sun and rain exposure. The clothesline I wove onto the foot stool has also stood the test of time, but I haven’t found that exact type since.

Last week I stopped into O’Reilly’s looking for some 80’s era 8 amp fuses for Westina’s cigaret/interior/stop light circuit, after replacing and rewiring the socket, and in the sale bin I found a 50′ roll of orange cord for a measly $3. I have bought cord before, wildly unsuitable, uncomfortable, or worse. This was all I needed, appropriate materials in neon orange, to inspire a new attempt. Stringing, unstringing, restringing errors, it took bits of two days to get to this point. I left the hoop and the center ring (where did that come from?) in its current shade of rusty metal, which took on a satisfying purple tone against the green and orange. Might still move that knot to the left . . . right leg. Why knot?

Late yesterday I pulled the old rope-and-wire version apart and reworked it, 12 loops instead of 16, with a salvaged plumbing slip-nut, or whatever it’s called, as the center ring. Oddly, I had begun to paint the rope orange at some point. It has been living in the elements, poorly attached to the hoop chair frame for many years, and the rope is still strong and not too shabby (chic).

I remember Steve’s comment that inspired me to start my garden business over thirty years ago: “You’re never happier than out here with the worms!” Yes, we are.