time

An Orchid and Its History

I took this photo back in 2011. I had bought my first DSLR, a Nikon 7000, after using a friend’s D70 for over a year. Back then I was not only learning to take pictures, managing ISO, exposure, aperture, etc., but also learning editing software. Lightroom was at version 3 I think, not the CC or Classic of today. Since then I have played with a number of different post editing programs, but in reality don’t use any of them to the maximum potential. Do I want to?

Certainly I am better at editing than I was 12 years ago. Then HDR was sort of “the thing” and I pushed things a lot, and often with rather dreadful results. Before having my cataracts removed, I also starting pushing colors as my vision declined. Now I still look at color as a very important part of photography, but of late I am looking more at contrast, complementary colors, and the sorts of things you look at in painting.

Pictures are still what I look at more than anything, whether photos, paintings, drawings, or just the world around me. The visual is always what intrigues me. Some people are sensitive to sound or scent or taste, and I wish I had the ability to experience them as deeply as I do the visual. I wonder what synesthesia would be like – does it enhance or confuse?

Anyway, back to editing. Below is the above orchid edited in 2011 in black and white.

And below is a new BW edit of the same . . .

Interesting how times and experience change us . . .

Catching My Breath

There are times when everything seems to go south, and even when you know it will work out, it wears you out. Waiting for things to get fixed. Waiting for Monday to call customer service. Waiting to hear from customer service. All the waiting is really pretty boring and aggravating. What do you do in between?

I waited. I made phone calls. I waited for answers. In between I realized that I was making myself crazy. So, some sewing. Shopping. Cleaning out the front flower bed (half way done, but today the wind is blowing and it’s stinking hot). The side patio, for container gardening, got chopped. I filled up the 96-gallon clippings bin with all sorts of things. The patio looks naked. However, it is also ready for next spring. Bulbs are dormant, and new ones will get popped in sometime soon.

I have been making myself a nightgown out of flannel. Sounds cozy, eh? Well, mine is not sweetly flowered flannel. No, it is gaudy and has a whole bunch of sharks swimming around.

Too cute, eh? I still need to put in the placket / casing for the elastic drawstring, pick out unwanted threads, and hem it.

The post office called me twice. Problem solved. (Thank you USPS!) Insurance administrator called. Problem solved. Ummmm, what else? That’s it.

Can you believe all this took a couple of weeks to get settled down?

Gardening

There is something about the smell of dirt, whether in the form of sodden leaves and dirt in the fall rain, or a pot of soil, or spreading amendment into a garden bed.

For years I had a house with a fenced-off area for gardening. I grew tomatoes and corn and lettuces and lemons and figs for the most part. There was a 40-foot tall avocado tree too, but it was old and diseased. The soil was clay, and if I watered it, I could sink into it up to my ankles unless I put paving stones around the beds. It wasn’t the best of situations, and had I the wherewithal, I could have rototilled amendment to make a better bed, but it never happened. Still, going out to play in the soil, plant and weed and pick were some of the best bits of summer.

Since then we have moved. The guy we bought our current house from put in too many trees, and now we are paying the price of having them removed over time. About a dozen more to go (that’s down from about 20). Then, a small back hoe or something is going to need to come in to dig down to get at roots and such – probably 24″ or so – and put in a new watering system and dirt. In hindsight, I should have done it when we moved in, but that is hindsight! With foresight, I am planning ahead. It will take time and money and a bit of thought, and perhaps even a landscaper or professional.

Only one tree is going to be saved – the crepe myrtle (above).

However! All is not lost as I have a Dog Free Zone (a.k.a the “DFZ” – a side patio where the dogs are forbidden, and is fenced off). There is also a small flower bed in the front yard, and gardening areas for a fig tree and roses.

We have a couple of tangerine trees in pots on wheels which we roll around on the back patio to collect the sun. Today I did some transplanting of flowers into larger pots, pruning, and general clean up. After that, I started some old seeds in starter containers – things like cucumber seeds from 2008, long beans, mesclun, holly hocks, lupines, stock and carnations, pimientos and cayenne peppers. If they come up, great; if not, at least I tried, right?

Flowers and vegetables and fruit – all are better when home grown! Besides what I put in today, I also have a couple of tomatoes, odd bulbs, lilies, zinnias, more peppers (about 12 or so), mint, milkweed, lavender, alyssum, sunflowers, marigolds, and few other bits and bobs that attracted my attention these past months. Front and back are getting spruced up!

Gardening is one of the great joys of retirement, a beautiful spring, and an unfolding summer season . . .

A New Job

With the official retirement date of April Fool’s Day, I have been rethinking a lot of what I do and want to do. Being retired is really like taking on a new job. You have to figure out what is important, what is not important, and instead of someone directing your daily traffic, you are the one who has to make the decisions. Of course, the daily chores of living set up a schedule in a way, but what if you just decide not to pay attention to them? I think – I know – my life would totally fall apart! I like my dishes and laundry done, bills paid, and a clean and ordered living environment – especially my studio – but I also want to have the room to be messy and creative. That is really my new job: what to do with my free time.

And what do I want to do? I am finding my priority is painting and drawing. These are my longest and deepest loves, ever since I can remember. Philosophical battles wasted a lot of my time; rather than just doing things, I thought about their values. These values were really external ones – who will value what I do? In the end, it really doesn’t matter because I am not painting or drawing for an audience other than me. That said, I also want to schedule – yes, schedule! – time for reading, writing, photography, socializing, sewing, spinning, knitting, baking, gardening, some travel. Everyone says my time will be really easy to fill. I had my doubts, but no more.

Having a return-to-work date from medical leave prior to the retirement decision kept these thoughts at bay. Now, the world is wide open. Enjoying retirement is my new job, one to cherish. It’s like being a kid again, really! The summer – however long it is now – without school – lies ahead.

Since I put in my resignation and applied for my retirement funds, an interesting shift in viewpoint or perspective has occurred. I’ve been out on medical leave since last summer, and always had a return date for work. First it was in January 2019, and then the last day of March 2019. (Nothing fatal, just a health situation that is taking a bit longer to “fix” than originally thought, and as I was planning to retire in July of this year, I just moved things up.)

There were “return to work” dates in my head. Having those dates is very different than having a seemingly infinite time that retirement provides. No schedule, no obligations to a job – just my life.

I feel as if I am standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon – which I have done from different vantage points – and the experience is heady and scary! The bottom of the Grand Canyon is a long way down – and the view to the other rim is miles and miles away. The river is to be traveled. The sky is vast and filled with stars and clouds and songbirds and ravens and raptors. What adventures await? That is up to me to decide as much as is in my power.

The freedom is the most exciting part – the freedom to choose to do something or not do something. The freedom to be lazy, to read, to take a walk, to have lunch with a friend, to chat on the phone, to write, to paint, to draw, to do photography, to dig holes in the yard (that has to wait – too much rain!), to shop, to bake, to cook, to sew, to design, to think, to live, to wait, to plan, to anticipate.

All of this is sprawled out like a puddle of water, an ocean, moving into nooks and crannies that have been ignored in face of the 10-11 hour work day when the only options are get up, drink coffee, have breakfast, get washed and dressed, drive to work, work, shove lunch in my face while I work, work some more, drive home, have dinner, clean up after dinner, go to bed.

Don’t get me wrong – I enjoyed my job, but I was tired of the lack of time for myself, to be with family and friends, tired of feeling every moment in my life belonged to someone or something else (the job, my students, my responsibilities at work) or spent on the daily chores of living (dishes, cleaning, bills, budgeting). To savor anything personal had a pressure on it to do it quickly and efficiently so there would still be time for another activity. Personal relationships were nearly impossible to maintain, even at home. I think my health also suffered because of 5 years of this crazy schedule – so I got to practice for retirement with medical leave and enjoy some time of my own.

And now, I own my time except for what my biological clock and fate has in store for me. It’s something I treasure every day.