This month I added life (finally) to every pocket of our living wall. The dogs knock out some of the lower plants once in a while, so I try to put the heartier ones down there.

I’ve sacrificed the potted rose bush as my luck with roses at this house has been erratic. The gardeners who constantly trimmed the front rose bushes at the Hayward house had them blooming many times a year, including the dead of “winter.” So in the potted wall at the end of our deck, the small rose bush is abandoned and that pot is eagerly and efficiently being overtaken by a succulent. I’d be happy if 90% of our garden became succulents as they are so easy to grow and so pretty to me. Indeed, I’m on a Nextdoor.com group called, “Wait a Succulent” with other lovers of the African rose and whatever else these other types are called. I’m easy to buy gifts for because succulents are a no-brainer.

We’re hoping our adolescent lemon tree will survive with intense watering, as well as the palm tree we planted in the front. All our other trees seem to be thriving, even though our plumb tree needs pruning. The garden is constantly undergoing changes with dogs running into things, but we reinforce the garden and most plants survive the inadvertent brutality. We added two bona fide compost bins which are helping with the plants which will help with the potting material and the added benefit is that it helps reverse carbon emissions.

Our bamboo is starting to leave its previously allotted area, so we’re not sure how we feel about that. We sort of wished for the extra privacy, but it might be a case of “careful what you wish for” if we cannot keep it contained.

You’ll see the damage the atmospheric river did to our neighbor’s backyard. We can now see into the neighbor up the hill’s backyard!

I’ve had these scenes from Italy, including the nighttime mountainscape of Naples, in my family since before I was born. I saw them in pictures at my grandparents’ home and I remember them being in my parents’ living room no matter where we lived my whole life. I believe they were obtained by my parents who had part of their chaperoned courtship in Naples. I’ve been going to Naples my whole life.

When my mother’s house was destroyed by fire in 2016, these paintings survived and were professionally cleaned. They came out of storage after she died of cancer a few months later. I had no room for them in my home in Hayward, so my daughter, who had moved back to the Bay Area again, took them for the year she lived right on Lake Merritt in Oakland. I don’t think she ever put all three up and now I think I know why, although it may not have even been her fault if they were damaged while being professionally cleaned.

Upon getting the pictures back when she moved back to New York, I saw there was some serious damage to the bottom corners of the largest frame, which she had not disclosed to me, so that stung. After moving to Vallejo in 2020, I had a wonderful space in the family room with our cathedral ceilings to mount them so I can now see them every day. While most people did not notice it, the damage to the frame pained my heart every day.

At one point before I relinquished them to my daughter, I did observe drips had formed coming down the face of a few of the paintings. That too is imperceivable from a distance. I might also have to settle for that being the cost of the professional cleaning and just remain grateful they survived the fire as well as they did.

So the good news is that when I was lamenting the frame damage, a good friend suggested I use a gold marker to fill in the gaps. I didn’t even know that there was such a thing and I was a little skeptical. However, as an avid fan of the Antiques Roadshow, I did not think a serious investment in the frame would be worthwhile, but then again, who knows?

So I went online and ordered some gold Sharpies. I was skeptical about it, but I just kept on coloring it in, and voila! While I neglected to take the “before” pictures up close, you can find them in an earlier posting on my blog when I first mounted the pictures. I’ll try to find those and link them here. All told, I’m extremely happy that it is much less obvious at a glance that there was frame damage, and one would really have to scrutinize the frames to find it since they are up so high. Now my only concern is that if we put a skylight in that room, as we’re intending to do, that we do not do any further damage to the paintings themselves.

Here are the “after” pictures:

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We got the hot tub early!