It seems too early, but the pomegranates have formed and are plumping out every day.  They haven't turned red yet, but this tree in my neighborhood promises a bumper crop.  One a year is about all I can handle and even then the only thing I can do with it is scrape it out and put it in a salad.  

 

During WWII my sister and I lived with our paternal grandparents in Los Angeles.  Their property backed up on an alley for access to the garage and across the alley was a property with a wire fence and a pomegranate tree.  I now believe that the hole at the bottom of the fence was intentional so that the neighborhood kids could reach under to "steal" the fruit.  There was always fruit on the ground near the hole!  With grandmother and aunt we made pomegranate jelly.  It was a huge job and involved a cone shaped sieve and cotton bag to squeeze the juice out of the seeds.  The jelly was a gorgeous clear red and I thought it was the very best jelly ever.   But not enough for me to ever go to all that work to make some these days.  

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Remembering 08-09-18

Today was my mother's birthday.  She was born on August 9, 1906, but she only lived to 65 when she died of an aortic aneurysm in February 1972.  I think she had a sad life and I believe she suffered from depression, as I do.  Her father was a tyrant and took her out of school when she was just a sophomore and got her a job as housemaid to Dr. and Mrs. Babbitt in a big house in NE Portland. They paid him for her service.  She never did go back to school, but worked at a number of different jobs.  She met my father when she was working for a huge laundry and one of her fellow employees was Ella Spencer, whose son, Ellery, came to pick her up after work.   His family didn't approve of her, mainly, I think, because she was not educated.  She was "common" besides.  Not that the Spencers were gentry.  So, they made it difficult for her.  Then my father died in 1942 of kidney disease and she was left with two babies and a house that was only about three quarters built.  My father was a millwright and he was building the house after work and on weekends.  As many people did then, they lived in the basement while he continued building the two stories above.  

She had to work and it was difficult finding child care for her two little girls.  We lived various places for short periods of time and for about six months in a Catholic boarding school for children whose parents couldn't take care of them.  That was an adventure as we were not Catholic.  I don't know how we happened to be accepted.   However, we kept getting sick and the school couldn't keep us.  About this time our grandparents house burned down and the decision was made to move to Los Angeles where their daughter, her husband, and their baby girl lived.  Vernice was the only daughter and Gordan, the other son, was off to war in the Pacific.  They convinced our mother to let us live with our grandparents in LA and we drove down the coast in an old jalopy with grandmother, aunt, baby, and the two "orphans".  Grandpa traveled down on the train with Buddy the dog in a crate.  

When World War II was over in Europe in April 1945 mother married one of her co-workers at the Railway Express Agency, where she was a package handler.  Soon she and her new husband came down on the train to retrieve her two girls.  It was not a happy marriage, he was a drunk, and a mean one at that.  We regarded him as our mother's husband, but not as our father.  Very sad all around.  

My sister married and had four sons and a daughter who lived nearby, so mother was able to enjoy her grandchildren.  I moved to SCalifornia as soon as I turned eighteen and could legally do so and eventually lived with my grandmother again for a couple years before going out on my own again.  I visited Portland every year or so.  I could drive the 24 hour, 1000 mile trip easily when I was in my twenties.  And mother came down on the train a couple times to visit.  But the years passed quickly and she died in February 1972.  I was divorced and had yet to meet my 2nd husband, who I think she would have enjoyed.  

Hers was a sad life and she was so talented.  For many years she made costumes for the Portland Rose Festival parade.  And repaired and dressed dolls for the "Toy and Joy Makers" which was operated by the fire department.  That was an era when toys were not discarded, but repaired, repainted, and redressed for some other child to enjoy.  She was the personification of the saying, "make a silk purse from a sow's ear".  And I do believe she could have.   

Colleen Dingley with brother Arnold  c.1912

Colleen Dingley  c1926

This is a studio portrait taken at her work, a photo studio where she did the hand tinting of photographs since this was before color film was used.   She tinted this one.  

Colleen Dingley Spencer  c1941

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Friday Feet - Kids 06-29-12

Not precisely "feet", but feet and legs and hands and arms and.... !  These little kids, supervised by their parents, were having such fun in this fountain in Orem, Utah, just outside the restaurant where Beverly Hart and I had lunch.  It was a hot day and they were oblivious to anything other than those lovely jets of water.

 

 

 

Flowers & Fruit 06-06-11

In looking at birds at the Arboretum on Saturday we also were able to look at the plants and trees.  Things have grown a lot in the years (maybe a decade) since I last visited and I seem to have forgotten the names of plants I once knew.   Here is one new to me and an old friend.

 
The guide pointed out this Monkey Hand Tree which has flowers that attract the hooded orioles resident to the area.  It is a medium to large tree (up to 40 feet) which originates in Guatemala and S.Mexico

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiranthodendron

The "cup" of the large flower holds nectar for the birds and the monkey's hand reaches upward.

You can see the size of the flower in the hand of one of the birders. 

These are the flowers of the pomegranate tree.

 
And here is a very young pomegranate - it will grow to maybe six times this size and turn red as it matures.

When I was a child my sister and I lived for several years during WWII with our paternal grandparents in Los Angeles.  I suppose I was too young to know that pomegranate trees didn't grow in my neighborhood in Oregon, but we did think they were wonderfully exotic.  They were common in the backyards in LA and hung over the fences into the alley behind our grandparents' house.  We were little thieves and would reach with sticks under the fences to fish out those lovely red orbs that had fallen on the ground.  I doubt that anyone minded and it was so wonderfully "evil"!  We just cracked them open and ate the seeds out of hand.  But I always wished there was more juice and less seed!   

Lovely rain! 02-07-09

Since this string of storms coming down from the north Pacific started on Thursday we have added two inches to our total rainfall this year. I think it is now at 6.50 inches and there has been about two feet of snow in the local mountains. I know that people in other parts of the country have endured terrible weather this winter, but I can't help but rejoice in our current rainfall count.

This puddle reflects the clouds and also the trees in the little park behind our house. It is a puny puddle! When I was growing up just outside Portland, Oregon, all the streets in our area were unpaved. Huge puddles developed until someone 'raised the roof' and the county would come fill in the larger ones (with dirt). The lady on the next corner who kept big white geese objected to them filling in the 'pond' at her intersection because her geese enjoyed it so much. She had a mouth on her and the county passed her by. One of the neighborhood boys pushed me into that one once - I was more afraid of the geese than getting wet. They could really bite.

Ominous clouds over Garden Grove on the drive to Long Beach today.

And fluffy white ones piled up over the ocean.

I wonder what type of cloud this is. It certainly indicated fickle winds - perhaps it was involved in the rain spouts over the ocean.... one in Long Beach.