Cheese Challenge

"No one chooses to be cheesy!"
I wouldn't be so sure.
Don't mystery writers find cheese easy
To use as metaphor?

Just listen to the tough detective:
"She's full of holes as Swiss!" -
a description that's effective
for a bullet-riddled miss.

Tattoo

The Sunday Scribblings prompt is TATTOO.

I've never craved tattoos as body art -
except your name tattooed upon my heart.

H is for Houses - Berkeley styles

Daughter Candace Shock took these pictures of Berkeley houses during the many weeks that she stayed with me after Otto's death. She didn't include one of the more common styles, derived from the Mediterranean, perhaps because she grew up in one, the one in which I still live. She has returned to her own husband and household in Ontario, Oregon. My son Otto is here for this week, and soon (maybe Wednesday) I will begin sharing the house with a friend.

Here a Tori gate sits easily next to a driveway

This is a house I have long admired for its architecture
and the way in which the current owners
have painted it to show its decorative details.
It's a shame about those overhead wires, isn't it?

Some of said decorative details.

Details on a somewhat less elaborate Victorian.

And this little Victorian cottage boasts solar panels on its roof.
Very Berkeley!

There are many half-timbered houses

I think a witch might like this one.

Another delightful little Victorian - and too many overhead wires.

Details. Please enlarge this photos by clicking on them.

To link to other ABC Wednesday participating blogs, go to Mrs. Nesbitt's ABC Wednesday Round 5 or click on banner at top of page. And hope that MakLinky is behaving better than he did last week.

Keys

The prompt for Sunday Scribblings is "key". While I suspect that the intention of our prompter was that we should write metaphorically about abstract keys, I am going to be very literal and write about honest-to-goodness, real-life, fit-into-a-lock keys. Dozens and dozens of them.

My children (if one can call senior citizens "children") and I (but mostly they) have been sorting Otto's belongings, clothes to go to various charities, millions (literally) of pieces of paper any one of which might be of vital importance, odd items that have accumulated during the fifty years that we have lived in our current home, thousands of slides, snapshots, photographs, certificates etc.

And KEYS, all carefully marked, but not always in such a manner that it is easy to fit them to the many keyholes and locks in our large house and our Mendocino county vacation houses ("the cabins").

These are a few that daughter Candace and son Otto were trying to fit to their appropriate keyholes.

It has rapidly become obvious that husband Otto and I had become unintentional pack-rats. It wasn't that we were acquisitive, but rather that we never threw anything away. Candace points out to me that she has found at least twenty more keys since these photos were taken.


No, I'm not planning to leave this house full of joyous memories, but there will be a little more space in the the drawers and closets. I am too lazy today to photograph the boxes and boxes of pencils and pens or the two large packing boxes that Candace has filled with empty ring binders (planning to donate them to women's shelters where the children of the sheltered women need back-to-school supplies).

Be sure to go to Sunday Scribblings to find what many clever writers have written about keys.

G is for Giant Sequoia

Well, gee whiz, here Mrs. Nesbitt's ABC Wednesday Round 5 is at G!



Giant Sequoias are the world's largest trees in terms of total volume ....They grow to an average height of 50-85 m (165-280 ft) and 6-8 m (18-24 ft) in diameter. Record trees have been measured to be 94.8 m (311 ft) in height and 17 m (57 ft) in diameter. The oldest known Giant Sequoia based on ring count is 3,500 years old. Sequoia bark is fibrous, furrowed, and may be 90 cm (3 ft) thick at the base of the columnar trunk. It provides significant fire protection for the trees....(from Wikipedia)

Grandson Byron Shock at base
of Giant Sequoia in Sequoia National Park
photos by Candace Shock

Grizzley Giant
Mariposa Grove
Yosemite National Park

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