Caspar 18 July 2021

One week out from the gathering of the clans. Lots of moving parts, especially given the new Covid surge. We'll savor the last week, enjoying this most beautiful of places to live, and trying to be ready for a couple of weeks of life on foreign soil.

As with every trip, the last few weeks before we travel are times for us to appreciate the wonderful, bursting-with-life place where we live. A walk on the tidal bench at low tide shows an amazing life soup. A trip to Ukiah for some dental work allows us an unexpectedly good inland seafood lunch at Left Coast Seafood:

Vicissitudes abound. Our wonderful plan to control the bramble patch in our northeast corner yields up a Stop Work Order from the County, following a kerfuffle with a newcome neighbor. Becoming a Caspar takes a dozen years at least.

We finally have time to examine my father's arrowhead collection; a good friend buys us a fat book on arrowheads, and we determine that it's above our pay grade to sell on eBay. We contact experts in the midwest, who offer to buy the whole collection, worthless reproductions and all – who knew that modern-day knappers were contrfeiting indian artifacts? We take picture, package the whole shebang, and send it away.

These opposite are reputedly bird points – small heads – that are probably mostly reproductions. 

A mother racoon and her two children move in under the roof of our outside wall strawbale, and one morning she tries to get them to climb by themselves. “Mom, that's too high,” they say. Mom retrieves them mother cat style, by their scruffs, and the return to their digs. 

An orb weaver builds an awesome nest outside the bathroom window, and morning dew bespangles it.