Tag Archives: SoSC

SoCS – If I Had a Bigger Garden

The Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “if.” Linda invited us to start our post with the word “If.”

~ ~ ~

If I had a bigger garden, I would plant more fruit trees and vegetables.

I have a good size garden and am grateful for all the flowers in my garden. My picture folder showed my garden was barren in 2003. I planted the flowers and trees a few at a time for the last eighteen years. I set a mental budget for gardening and didn’t spend too much money each year. Probably I spent the most this summer when I replaced many annual to perennial flowers.

Flowers in My Garden

I also tried to see what grows well in my garden. Some part of my garden gets full sun all day, while other part gets either the morning sun or evening sun. After we planted the Cypress trees in the backyard, they block the sun in the winter as the earth tilted.

Another factor about gardening is the soil and watering system. Hubby is in charge of the sprinkler system. He also takes care of the lawn while I take care of the flowers. He installed the sprinklers according to the needs of the lawn. As a result, some flowers get too much water, and some don’t get enough water. Well, I have to improvise and make change now and then. I don’t mind doing that. What I did was to plant the flowers that need more water in the areas that have more sprinkler heads and planted the flowers that don’t need so much water in the areas further from the sprinkler heads. Of course, I could ask him to add sprinkler heads in some areas.

I started with one patch of Lily of the Nile (African Lily). African lily can withstand drought because of its large, fleshy roots. Roots spread and fresh shoots grow. I transplant them on several spots and the sixty feet wide slopes in the back yard behind the retaining wall, spaced them every eight feet in eight patches. The photo below is in the front yard.

Lily of the Nile (African Lily)

When we renovated the front yard, I bought ten rose bushes, and they turned out to be in different shades of pink. Then I felt in love with the white iceberg roses and bought ten bushes.

Throughout the years, I planted different flowers. As mentioned above, I experimented with the kinds that do well in my garden. The flowers above and below included in this post are what I currently have.

Year-round: Geranium, Hibiscus, Pentas, Periwinkle (Vinca) Lantana, and Snapdragon

Spring: Freesia (yellow and purple) and Clover

Summer: Daylily and Sunflower

Winter: Cyclamen and Camelia

I have planted the bulbs for Daffodil and Iris, hope to see the flowers next year.

Fruit Trees

So far, I have two plum trees, one apple tree, and one orange tree. We hope to plant a dwarf lemon tree, blackberries and raspberries. Berries are invasive, so I need more planning before planting them.

Vegetables

I planted kale, orange and green bell pepper, and squash. They are not ready to harvest yet. I love to grow more vegetables if I had a bigger garden.

2019-2020 SoCS Badge by Shelley! https://www.quaintrevival.com/

.

SoCS – If I had a Bigger Garden

.

.

SoCS – Puzzling about the Tidepools

 The Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “puzzle.” We use it any way we’d like!

I’m thankful to live close to the water all my life, places such as Hong Kong, Portland in Oregon, Seattle in Washington, and Orange County in California. Water is gentle, soft, soothing and yet it can be powerful and forceful.

I love walking around Laguna Lake, which is one mile from home. It takes 3 minutes to drive or 20 minutes to walk there. I also love to take day trips to the beaches. The most visited beaches are Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, and Laguna Beach. They are about 30 to 33 miles from home and take about 35 to 45 minutes to get there.

Hubby and I went to Laguna Beach on Wednesday, September 15. It had been almost two years since our last visit. It is a small city with less than 10 square miles, but there are a lot of things to do for the locals and visitors. The weather treated us well with mild sun, clear sky and a gentle breeze.

When we visited Laguna Beach years and years ago, we took many quarters to feed the parking meters. Eventually the parking meters are converted to taking credit card payment even though the coin slots are still there. When we came on the weekends, we usually circled around many times to find a parking, but on this day, we spotted many available spaces closed to the beach.

It was lunchtime when we arrived, so we went to our regular seafood restaurant right by the beach to have lunch. Hubby had a fish and chips, and I had a Fettucine Alfredo with shrimp. Hubby had three bottles of Bud Light. I ordered a Genius Taut for its bitter taste but drank only half of it because I’m allergic to alcohol. Hubby helped to share half of mine.

We visited several art galleries. I enjoyed many of the contemporary, abstract art as well as the landscape, and portrait. We saw some contemporary and inventive sculptures and also realistic sculptures.

A similar piece of this painting costs $10,000
This sculpture is about 24″ high, costs $8,000

There are three beach valley ball nets on the beach. On our previous trips, we saw people playing valley balls, but it was quiet on Wednesday. I wasn’t sure if it was a pandemic restriction or because it was a weekday.

My favorite thing is walking from the beach valley ball area to the tidepools to look at the little sea creatures in the rocky area where the ocean meets the land. This area has many pockets of sea water usually filled with snails, sea slugs, sea cucumber, mussels, sea stars, hermit crabs, and small fish. Families came with their children, who went from one pocket of water to another to look at these sea creatures.

As we walked closer to the tidepool area, to my surprise, the area was diminished significantly. Only a couple of pieces of rock were above the sand, and the lower rocks were not there. Hubby saw my puzzling look, saw the rows and rows of tire tracks on the sand, and said, “It seems like they brought in truckloads of sand.”

“Why did they cover the tidepools with sand?”

The remaining couple pieces of rocks above the sand didn’t collect too much water with sea creatures in them. I was somewhat disappointed. The sand level looked like higher than what I remembered. It could have been between the timing of the tide and the timing of adding sand to the beach. The tide was coming in and the waves were high by the time we were there. The tidepools could be under the water. The more I think about that, the clearer I see those tidepools under the water.

I had fun taking tons of photos and videos of the waves pounding the beach and the rocks. There were two surfers, one on the left and one on the right of the video.

.

2019-2020 SoCS Badge by Shelley! https://www.quaintrevival.com/

Thank you for reading.

Have a wonderful weekend!

SoCS – Puzzling about the Tidepools

.

.

SoCS – Hairpins

Linda G Hill at Life in Progress said, “Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “pin.” Use it as a noun, use it as a verb, use it any way you’d like. Have fun!”

Here are two of the seven rules:

1. Your post must be stream of consciousness writing, meaning no editing (typos can be fixed), and minimal planning on what you’re going to write.

2. Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be. One sentence – one thousand words. Fact, fiction, poetry – it doesn’t matter. Just let the words carry you along until you’re ready to stop.

~ ~ ~

I have medium-length hair most of my life except a few years when short hair was in style.

When I was in elementary school, my hair was at the shoulder length. I parted the hair on the left and pin up the front to the right. I looked at my childhood pictures and noticed the curled end because my hair has natural waves.

Some movies remind me of the hairstyles I once had. When I was a teenager, I looked like a young adult because of the hairdos. The following are the hairstyles I tried, not in a particular order.

I remember having the flicked-up style for my medium-length hair. I used large rollers to roll all around the end of the hair outward to create the flick-up. Since my hair has natural waves, I had the advantage to hold the flick-up all day.

I also had the beehive style. The beehive style is to make the hair have an exaggerated look, which involved scraping a small amount of hair at a time, then applied the hairspray all over before combing the outer layer to make it look like a beehive. Some ladies still wear that style if their hair is short and thin but want to make it look thick and full. With my medium-length thick hair, beehive style made me look like wearing a hat piece.

The bun hairstyle was fun to make, and I wore a single bun in the back near the top of my head. I first put up a ponytail, then divided up the hair into the top half and bottom half. For each half, I wrapped the hair around my finger and tugged the end inside toward the center, then pin the hair with hairpins to create a donut shape bun.

I liked the simple and clean look of the Pageboy style, but it had to maintain a certain length to keep the style.

I take pride in my thick, somewhat wavy, and long hair. The longest hair I had was at the midway between my shoulder and the waist. During the six months of chemotherapy for my cancer in 2009, I lost about 80% of the hair gradually. I know many people shave their heads, but I didn’t want to do that. When going out for a walk or go to meetings, I wore a hat. The hair was getting thinner and thinner, and I treasured every strand. At one point, my husband said I looked like a punk. There were a few strands longer than the rest. With great effort, I trimmed it to make the end look more even.

My daughter was coming from Portland, Oregon to visit me in the summer at the end of my chemo treatment. I didn’t want to shock her with my look. Every two months, I took the side view and the back view of my head showing the gradual loss of hair to prepare her visit.

It took two years for my hair to grow back to the length I wanted.

When I have my hair trimmed, usually I want to keep the length, but have it layered. Once I had a guy trimming my hair. Even after I described to him how I wanted it done, he kept trimming it and trimming it. When it was done, my hair was short. I was so mad. What made me more upset was when he said, “Short hair looks good for your age.” What a jerk!

I don’t want a guy to do my hair unless he also has long hair!

2019-2020 SoCS Badge by Shelley! https://www.quaintrevival.com/

Thank you for reading. Join us for fun by clicking this link.

Have a Wonderful Week!

.

.