June 9, 2025

Gentle summer rain here, though the TV flickers on and off as though there is a great storm somewhere. 

Spent a chunk of the day on a painting which I thought was disappointing when I left it, but doesn’t look so bad now that I return to it. If I’d ever had an art lesson maybe they would have taught me how to deal with backgrounds. 

Pruned, weeded, planted what NEEDS to be this year’s last shipment of flowers, a big pink rose. 

A word on the haunted pool pump: when I finally got what‘s-his-name to replace the pump motor, it worked for a week, then slacked back to a drip. It pumped some paltry water out over the falls, but the suction/filtering feature was gone. Water stood still in the pool except for a trickle oozing over the rocks. I figured that was enough to keep the pool from dying. The last time I cleaned out the trap (last week) there was no detritus in it, as it hadn’t been filtering. I removed everything and felt around in the water (I almost don’t have enough arm to reach the motor) but there was not much glop to remove. Plugged it back in, and noticed that the stream was minimally better, but still not much, still not enough to inspire filtering. Once again I reconciled to a trickle that might, nevertheless, be enough. Today when I was down there fussing with something, I saw that the flow is easily ten times what it was, a veritable Niagara, filtering and pouring with the delicious tinkle of moving water. Did it heal itself? How after weeks of meagerness it is now rich and full? It is a machine, but one muct at times like this assign to it a mind of its own. 

At least four leopard frogs call my pond home. 

A bear tore out the barricade of cinderblock protecting the last airhole in the basement. Deep claw marks score the bottom of the window– which, now that I think of it, is no more than four feet from my head in sleep. Thank God bears have no application. 

Orange Hitler sends the Marines to enforce his illegal ICE maneuvers. Gavin Newsom is my hero.