Grokking the Magnificance

I live in the mountains with an incredible plethora of deciduous and evergreen trees surrounding me. Here, on the edge of a majestic wilderness, I have made my home for over thirty years. Still, I am stopped dead in my tracks daily by the fantastic beauty of these massive creatures. Likewise, there are billions of people inhabiting this earth, and when I take the time to really grok an individual, I am amazed by their beauty. Well, last evening, Steve and I were coming home from a Memorial Day Pot Luck Dinner Party when we came around a turn and saw a beautiful oak with the evening sun shining it’s golden rays upon it. I asked Steve to pull over so I could get out to take a few pictures of this majestic oak. I have passed by this tree for over 30 years and only this last evening, I recognize its full glory.

Steve continued driving us home, and, again I asked to get out at our driveway because I couldn’t stand being in the car any longer. I had to bask in the liquid golden light. My favorite time to shoot photographs is the hour before sunset, and also I love taking pictures by moonlight and candlelight. I feel so blessed to live here in this gorgeous, peaceful, wild place I call home.

Majestic Oak

This Precious Moment 

Gone in a Flash

Last evening, my husband, Steve reminded me that I had said I wanted to finish watering the garden after dinner. As I made a beeline outside I witnessed the hillside east of my house blanketed in an almost blinding, red-orange light. Knowing it would be gone in a flash, I rushed back into the house and grabbed my camera in time to capture the moment. And then, in the twinkling of an eye, the show was over.

In a Twinkling of an Eye 

You Should See Him Dance

You might be wondering what made the man in the photograph below make such faces. Was it something sour that he ate or maybe it was bitter? Perhaps both? Or had he been suddenly shot out of a cannon? (As opposed, say, to being squeezed gently from a cannon.) Or did he smell something that was foul? Who is this character?

Actually, my son Calvin and his wife Stacey were visiting this past Mother’s Day. While showing him my new Dimage X50 camera, I suggested we try the Multi Frame feature and asked Calvin to make some faces. I pressed the button, pointed the camera, and away he went making some extreme faces. The rest is visual history.

Rubber Face 

Dancing in the Light 

Our Side of the Hill

We live 2,200 feet above sea level on a hill facing the west. Some days, like yesterday, when the sun is just right, we can see a strip of ocean, even though it’s over 20 miles away. On our side of the hill, the water drains into the Big River, which eventually empties into the Pacific Ocean near the town of Mendocino, about 35 driving miles from us. Less than a hundred yards north-east of our home is a ridge that divides the watershed. The water on that side of the hill goes into Eldridge Creek, which then flows down to the Russian River. Eighty-five percent of the time, our hillside is influenced by coastal weather patterns. The Ukiah valley, just nine driving miles to our east, has much less of a coastal influence. The higher temperatures (it can get up to 115!) can make life pretty sweaty. Up where we are there’s more coastal breezes and fog, so the atmosphere is not so dry and our temps rarely get over 95. That’s still hot, but we’ve come to appreciate that our summers are cooler than down in Ukiah.

Yesterday morning, I noticed the fog coming and going. After putting on some rain boots, I walked outside to explore the misty morning beauty surrounding my home. The sun had just come over the hill, shining softly through the fog and trees. Walking quietly so as not to alarm them, I successfully captured some of these light rays in my camera. Heavy dew soaked the garden plants, and they looked like sparkling jewels glistening in the morning light. I feel so Blessed to be able to share this time, and these pictures, with you.

Foggy Spring Morning 

Clary Sage Diamonds

Glistening dew covered borage jewels 

Over Five Feet of Rain

It poured here from Tuesday afternoon through late into the day Wednesday. We wound up with 3.4˝ in roughly 24 hours. Night before last, I had to wear earplugs because the rain drummed like thunder and I couldn’t sleep. This last storm raised our total rainfall for this year to over 61 inches. That’s over five feet of water!

Our pond is overflowing, which is a good thing since it is our only source of water. It means that we should have plenty of water for our home and garden this summer and autumn. We are off the grid (we don’t have PG&E), and we create our electricity with solar panels and hydro (a high tech water wheel). The abundance of rain makes it so we can create electricity with the extra water in our pond, which really helps when it’s cloudy a lot, as it has been lately, because solar doesn’t do squat unless the sun is out.

We also have a propane generator for backup when our batteries get low. Last year the rain had mostly stopped by early March, and we had to stop using the hydro to save our water. Now, with over seven inches of rain so far in May, we have an overflowing abundance. What a blessing! And it’s supposed to get warm, even hot, this weekend. All I can say is, it’s about time!

Our pond is full again! We saw a huge Egret there a few days ago. 

Wild turkeys strutting their stuff 

Party Animals

Flocks of wild turkeys roam the mountains that I call home. I enjoy watching them strut around, and listening to the sounds they make as they walk by the house. During harvest time, they have devoured all of my grapes, even though they are fenced. Since wild turkeys have wings, and learn how to use them, they just laugh hysterically as they fly over my eight foot fence on their way to feasting on my luscious grapes.

You may notice that the photo I’m including is not very clear. It’s because the flock was a couple of hundred feet from the house. (I took the picture from inside our home yesterday), and enlarged it so you can better see the details of the birds.

Mystery and beauty at Mendocino Botanical Gardens 

Lilies and lilypads at Mendocino Botanical Gardens 

Loving my new Dimage X50

I am not a techy kind of person. When I first met my husband, Steve, almost ten years ago, I had vowed to stay away from computers. My previous husband was crazy about them. He had just gotten his new computer set up with all the new software. That was back in the eighties when you had to know how to speak computerese (or at least MS-DOS) to do stuff on computers. His new computer had a small green screen, and you had to use C prompts and stuff like that. He had gotten in the tub, and I asked if I could use it. Since I didn’t know what I was doing, I would ask before doing “anything”. I would yell from our computer room, which was the size of a broom closet, to the bathroom, whatever the computer said to me. He finally got tired of me asking if it was OK and said go ahead, that I couldn’t hurt it. The computer said, “Do you want to re-format?” or something like that, and since he said that I couldn’t hurt it, I hit “yes.” I didn’t know that meant that it was going to erase everything that he had put on his new computer. Wow, that sure pissed him off. That is why it took me almost ten years, and a whole lot of sweet talking from my new partner, Steve, to get enough courage to get on a computer.

I just got a new camera a week ago. It is a Konica Minolta Dimage X50. It is so easy to use that I almost feel as though I am cheating. The macro feature is awesome. I can get closer than three inches to an object and focus it. I can carry it wherever I go because it is so small. Another feature that I adore is the large two-inch LCD screen that enables me to clearly see what I have just shot. the menus are easy to read as well as to understand, and in just one week I have already taken hundreds of pictures, several of which I am absolutely delighted with and will share in the virtual pages of this blog.

Flowers overlooking the sea 

Coastal Flowers Out of Control

Steve and I spent a fabulous day at the coast visiting the Mendocino Botanical Gardens. It was stunningly beautiful, as it always is. The foxglove and rhododendrons were completely out of control, and the pink and purple flowers on the cliffs were truly spectacular.

Shakti Mudra along with Peace and Calming help me fall asleep without drugs 

Sleeping without Drugs

A long, long time ago in the land of pre-menopause, falling asleep was easy. I would climb in bed, lay in my favorite sleeping position, and fall asleep. It would be just a matter of minutes until I was off to dreamland. Then I started going through menopause, and began to experience sleeping problems. Besides having a difficult time going to sleep, I would have nights of tossing and turning, and flipping and flopping. Some nights I would be burning and sweating like I was simultaneously on fire and drowning. Then I would kick the covers off, and lie relaxed in the moonlight until I started shivering.

It has been about 23 moons since my bleeding stopped. The hot flashes have mostly settled down, but it can still be challenging to fall asleep. I ended up getting a prescription for Ambien to make it so I could rest on those nights when I just couldn’t fall asleep. That drug was so helpful that it became difficult to fall asleep without it. Then I became afraid of addiction to it, and. Ambien can indeed be addicting, especially when used regularly for longer than a few weeks or at high doses. People who have been dependent on alcohol or other drugs in the past may have a greater chance of becoming addicted to Ambien.

It has been over two weeks now that I haven’t taken any Ambien to fall asleep. What is working for me is the combining of ancient ways: essential oils and mudras. Peace and Calming helps me relax and gives me a deep sense of peace. Mudras are hand positions for your hands and fingers. Shakti Mudra is done by placing your ring fingers and baby fingers together. The other fingers are loosely bent over your thumbs, which are placed on your palms. In Mudras, Yoga in Your Hands, Gertrud Hirschi describes and illustrates how to use a wide variety of hand mudras.

Vibrant Evening Light 

My Enchanted Driveway 

View from Orr Springs Road 

Orr Springs Road

Orr Springs Road is both an incredibly beautiful and treacherous. It was one of the first roads from the valley of Ukiah to the coastal town of Mendocino. In fact, it used to be the stagecoach road. When I first started driving it in the early seventies, only the first four miles west of Ukiah were paved, as well as the last two miles to Mendocino. In the winter, the road would get squirrelly, and cars would slide off the road. One time as I followed my then husband to town in the rain, his truck slid off the road right in front of me.

In the summer, the road became a washboard and the dust covered our windshields like a blanket. We wore out cars like wearing out cheap shoes. Some people didn’t want the road to be paved, because they feared that doing so would make it so everyone and their brother would come live out in the hills with us. When it was still a dirt road, city slickers who didn’t want to get dust on their car would never take our road. It scared the shit out of people who were from flat places like Chicago and Phoenix. To this day, people drive off the road all the time—some to their deaths. There are still places where the road is only a single lane, and if there are two vehicles, one of the vehicles has to slow down or stop to allow the other car to pass.

As a little girl in the early eighties, my daughter, Christina, would sit on her step-dad’s lap and “drive” his Volkswagen bug up and down the hill. Both her and her brother, Calvin, became incredibly familiar with Orr Springs Road. When Christina finally got her learner’s permit at age fifteen and a half, driving up Orr Springs Road was a snap. Her challenge was driving in town, parallel parking, especially the freeway. Now that was scary.

Dripping Sage 

Green Tongues

Green Tongues sing of spring
In the Mother of all language,

Iridescent suggestions of color
Identifying moments which arrive

Like church bells ringing
In the season of renewal −

These days, too perfect to permit disbelief,
Shine provocatively with secret wisdom

And soar beyond our imaginings
To land in the far clearing of our memories,

Strutting and preening like peacocks
Singing in green tongues,

Cocking their tails and daring us to follow,
Knowing we cannot and laughing –

This beautiful poem was written by my beloved husband, Steve Ryals.

Jeweled Poppies 

Kale flowers abound 

Revitalized Moss 

A Pleasant Surprise

Our rainy season normally runs form about October 15 to April 15. May rains, especially significant ones, have been rare the past few years. In drought years, which are common in Northern California, we may not get much rain after February. Here we are at the beginning of May and we got over an inch of rain yesterday. I tried taking some digital photos from inside because I didn’t want to get my camera wet. However, I wasn’t satisfied with shooting through our winter-weary windows. So, I stepped outside and took this picture of the glistening moss on two bay trees next to the entrance of our yurt. The moss looks pretty happy compared to just a few days earlier, when it looked all shriveled and dry and covered with dust. Yesterday afternoon, the hills were an electric green vibrant with life after a good soaking. Purple vetch is marching over our hills, blanketing the wet earth in heavenly shades of spring.

Hmm, ice cold sugar water

Minolta DSC 

Slow Death by Soda

For many people, sodas are a way of life. The average American drinks an estimated
56 gallons of soft drinks each year. Many people know that tap water isn’t a healthy liquid to drink, and some of them drink soda instead. They probably don’t realize that the main ingredient in a soft drink (aside from sugar, of course) is tap water. Chugging more than one sugar- sweetened soft drink a day appears to significantly increase a woman’s chances of developing
diabetes, says a Harvard study. Not only that, sugar in pop combines with bacteria in your mouth to form an acid which attacks the teeth. Sodas are also linked to weight gain (Duh…!) So, if sodas are so bad for us, why do people drink them? Addiction to sugar! The average soft drink contains 10 teaspoons (around 160 very empty calories) of sugar. There are at least 76 ways sugar can ruin your health.


What is the best drink in the world? That would be good, clean water. For most people, that means filtered water. If plain water is too boring for your taste buds, I enjoy taking a quart of pure water and adding two drops of lemon, grapefruit, clove, or peppermint oils. My favorite brand of essential oils is Young Living Essential oils. They are the purest, highest quality oils that I’ve ever found.