Gardener Guy
Posted on | July 1, 2009 | No Comments
I guess my non-trail name could be GG, but then Maurice Chevalier might want to sing to me.
Two general kinds of gardeners. Vegetables and the other kind. What are they? Oh, flowers. I just went to the new Berkeley Horticultural Nursery (Berkeley Hort) site and saw so many pictures and articles about flowers and shrubs. I started to feel betrayed. My guess is that the non-vegetable part of Berkeley Hort is much bigger than the vegetable part. In fact, I know that is true. Silly people.
I am out of work right now. Harry, the coding guy, is swamped. I was very busy earlier, but am enjoying a respite. I wanted a quick, good lunch. One cabbage left. I grated half of it and one large carrot. Cole slaw. The recipe called for vinegar in the dressing, but I thought it might be fun to substitute lime juice. Good call. Lime juice perks things up. An extraordinarily good slaw. Roasted potatoes. Not a bad lunch, for something quick. Chili and cornbread tonight.
Our work continues to be well received. And one of the most rewarding parts is that our clients see the best in us and recognize it, and speak of it. Among themselves, with us, and with others.
Walk well. God is love.
Playing Hooky
Posted on | June 30, 2009 | No Comments
We are working in the face of a rapidly-approaching deadline. Most of my energy and time are devoted to getting our client’s site up.
I am working with a team of wonderful people. And enjoying ‘most every minute of the process.
Walk well. God is love.
Retire?
Posted on | June 26, 2009 | No Comments
No.
I do not want to work too hard.
No surprise there. But there were times when I did. Elaine remarked one time that I am not afraid of hard work. This after watching me weed, dig, chop, and dig some more for three months to get the first beds ready to seed.
But I do want to work. I thought about that. And it is more than the money. I do not need or want much money. I want a car that will get me to trailheads. Shoes. Not much, really. I want to be active. Purposeful. And I enjoy the creative process. The problem solving.
See the nav bar on the right side of the page? On a Macintosh using OS 10.5, it is a vertical blue band with rounded ends. If a web page is short enough to not need a nav bar, some browsers, such as Firefox and Safari displace the contents of that page to the right. Or stated another way, if a nav bar comes, literally, into the picture, the page contents are displaced to the left. At first I did not know that was the cause of the problem. I thought I had made a mistake structuring pages in the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS). Hours. Then I noticed the jump came on pages with a lot of content, and that led me to the solution. Here is the code that corrects the problem. Actually, it is a hack. It puts a nav bar on every page, regardless of the amount of the content.
/*this is to keep page from shifting to left on load in safari and firefox*/
html { min-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 1px; }
html { overflow: -moz-scrollbars-vertical !important; }
It was so very much fun to solve that problem. I found this code from another developer.
So there it is. We now have just about as much work as we want. Actually, a bit more than I want. Mark and Harry are younger and have greater financial demands. We were talking today about how much we want to do. I can help them get work and keep a limit on how much I participate. That is our likely solution. It is a fine problem to have. We are fortunate.
I wrote that one of my fantasies for a do-over life would be to live for a long time in three great cities. Right now, I had rather garden. And hike. And do some work. So that is what I shall do.
Walk well. God is love.
The Payoff
Posted on | June 26, 2009 | No Comments
Good people.
I told Harry the other day that I had longed to work with smart, congenial people doing exciting work. Dream come true.
Our clients came by today to review the site and collateral material we are developing for delivery early in July. I could see their pleasure and appreciation of our efforts on their faces. And hear it in their praise. It is good work. And most importantly we understood what they wanted and are providing it.
They just left. I am on a bit of a natural high.
Walk well. God is love.
State of Grace
Posted on | June 25, 2009 | No Comments
Angel: . . . good karma . . . . prayers, good thoughts
Grace: Which one is it?
Angel: Fate, destiny, kismet. Sure is fun watchin’ y’all wrestle with all this stuff.
Walk well. God is love.
Just Say No
Posted on | June 24, 2009 | No Comments
Remember Nancy Reagan? Her response to drug addiction: “Just say ‘No’.” Didn’t work.
So there is a War on Drugs. As with many wars, there is no progress. Billions of dollars are spent. Many, many people are killed. And there is no progress. Madness. It really is madness.
The Senate and the House of Representatives are taking up parallel bills to look at criminal justice in the United States. As soon as Prohibition was repealed, people said, “Why didn’t we do this sooner?” I hope we get to ask the question again.
Walk well. God is love.
Like Hunting Easter Eggs
Posted on | June 23, 2009 | No Comments
Last year it was blackberries. But our uphill neighbor, Dr. B, cut back her canes. Almost to the ground. Blackberries next year or the next. But few this year. This year it is strawberries!
It is warm on the hill this evening. Sweetly warm. Short sleeve weather. Gentle warmth. Fragrant warmth. The Meyer lemon tree almost always has an abundance of blossoms. And I can often smell their fragrance when I walk into the yard. This evening it perfumed the air as I checked the garden. Some kind of leaf problem on a couple of the tomatoes.
And I saw a big red strawberry, just smiling and tempting me. If you want to know about the sex appeal of a strawberry, read Michael Pollan’s book, The Botany of Desire.
I ate the strawberry, walked away to another part of the garden. Came back and hunted for another strawberry. Then another. What a very fine way to end the day.
Mark and Harry came by today. Brought their computers. We connected over our WiFi connection and got a lot of work done. Giggling like schoolgirls. Or like past-middle aged men. Mark doing his genius design work, and Harry shouting aha! frequently as he coded PHP and JavaScript. Doing interesting work with sweet, smart friends.
That is it. Not much else happened. By design.
Walk well. God is love.
I Like Where I Am
Posted on | June 21, 2009 | No Comments
But.
I just heard the Bach Prelude to the Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 in G Major.
And it reminded me that playing the cello well. Not well, but with excellence. Playing the cello is one of those things I would do if I had life to live over. And thinking that, it reminded me that every once in a while I take the luxury of imagining other things. Serving as a line officer on a destroyer. Sailing on a well-found boat for a long time. Joining the Jesuits. Graduating from law school and passing the bar in New York or California. A lifelong relationship with my childhood sweetheart — man or woman. Living in Paris and Rome and Venice for long times.
Walk well. God is love.
So Very Good
Posted on | June 21, 2009 | No Comments
A new relationship with vegetables.
Okay. I have a garden. And in my third year of gardening, there is an abundance. So much good food. But one can tire of boiled potatoes, carrots, and squash. So I am learning to prepare tasty vegetable dishes. Tonight I ate glazed carrots with thyme, artichokes with aioli, roasted potatoes with rosemary. I ate as well as one can eat. And I am a poor man.
Again. There are things we cannot control. But so much of living well is a decision.
Walk well. God is love.
Show Love
Posted on | June 20, 2009 | No Comments
“The healthy man does not torture others. Generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.”
Carl Jung
I read part of an editorial by Charles Krauthammer, who writes right wing invective for The Washington Post. An apologist for torture, he has a tortured mind. Often where he sees goodness, he confuses it with weakness. When he sees criminal outrages by government, he confuses it with strength.
Having empathy for the tortured is not enough. Some of those who are tortured are pretty wretched people, who have done terrible things and might be willing and eager to do more.
It is the need to be healthy ourselves. To want to live in a clean world that demands that we act as if we are healthy. Health is in so many ways a choice. And it is in the choosing that we are healthy.
My commander, when I served in the Third Engineer Battalion, was Lieutenant Colonel Patrick J. Donohoe. He became my godfather when I converted to Catholicism. When talking about young men in the battalion who were discipline problems, he often said that they did not know love. And how could they act with love if they had never seen it. Colonel Donohoe knew love. He and his wife, Jane, talked about each other as lovers. He helped me know love.
The light is bright. But not so bright that we have to look away from it.
Walk well. God is love.
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