Balcony Upgrade

As part of our "Year Two" experience in New Home 2.0, The Ravishing Mrs. TB wanted to upgrade our balcony experience.  Her largest complaint was that the planters I purchased were on the floor. The second complaint was they were in the crosshairs of A The Cat, who immediately would run out, try to eat them, and then throw up.  A corollary was that he would also stick his head out through the bars; between these two things, the door could not be open at all - not always an issue, but especially important when we want a cross breeze.

Also, some flowers instead of just grains and herbs would be nice.

The revisions:

Hanging planters via the InterWeb and the addition of decor.

I think I have the major herbs covered, or at least the ones we use regularly.

Beyond the sage is a Trailing Petunia.  The soil in the foreground now has Four O'Clock seeds.

More petunias and Four O'Clock seeds.

Final addition:  Netting.  It does not definitively prevent a paw from going out, but is enough of visual indicator that - with supervision - we can all be out on the balcony.

Father's Day 2026

It occurred to me as I was thinking about today's post on kindness (it being Sunday and all), that it was also Father's Day.  And while I can always do a post on kindness on Sundays, I cannot always do a post of Father's Day.  

Usually when a thought sticks in my head like this, it is for a reason.

---

My father TB The Elder and I were, as I thought growing up, little enough alike.

In retrospect - 50 odd years later - I have come to understand that my father and I did not know how to interact with each other.  He was man "in the world" as it were, a world of physical labor and leisure sports and working outside and doing things one's self, an extrovert who could approach any situation.  I growing up was quite a different sort:  quiet, shy, lost in books about fables and fairy tales and fantasy, a child of imagination who excelled at school work but not much else, an introvert who would hide at any opportunity.

Over the course of decades, as I have written here, we came to better relationship place.  I learned far more than I realized about his background growing up and how that had shaped him; he was a changed man after a near encounter with death through pneumonia changed his view of life (to be fair, retiring helped a lot as well as much of the "have to" disappeared).  He picked up the habit of reading the occasional book, which he had never done when I was growing up; I tentatively wandered into the world of doing some things for myself.

At some point he found out he was depressed - and talked openly about it.  I have (and do) struggle with depression as well.  We found a point of connection there, even if we never talked about it.

---

For all of the fact that my father did not understand what I did all the time, he supported me and my sister in all of our activities (as did my mother). It is quite likely he did not miss a single junior high sporting event for either myself or my sister.  No band performance or musical or play went by in high school without him being there. And even when I moved away and out in the world, he checked in regularly as to my activities and how things were going.

His support of my mother in her Alzheimer's diagnosis is also well documented here; from 2015 through 2021 he remained her primary caregiver.  He took care of my mother.  He learned to do the domestic things my mother had done for years:  cooking, cleaning, the finances, even washing clothes - while maintaining the Ranch and ensuring my mother kept contact with others and the firewood was cut high and dry for the Winter.

I could not possibly have had a better long term example of what being a father and husband is, even with his flaws (which, as his son, I carry too).

---

I know not everyone has the same privilege that I had to have a good father as a good provider and example.  And I know that in some cases, others have stepped in when their own fathers could or would not:  uncles, cousins, the fathers of friends, coaches, bosses, even sometimes random strangers.  Sometimes these men had a reason through blood or relationship; sometimes it was simply the right thing for them to do.

They, too, should be honoured on this day.

---

It is easy to feel sometimes that fathers are overlooked in the modern world.  Oftentimes, at least to me, it seems that they are less acknowledged and less seen, demonstrated no more clearly than in the differences between Mother's Day and Father's Day.  Mother's Day is advertised weeks in advance and has all kinds of gala and fanfare and a multitude of ways to honour and celebrate her.  Father's Day tends to end up acknowledge the Friday before, usually with gift suggestions of grilling equipment, sporting goods, or the ubiquitous tie.

Which is a shame, really.

Good men need good examples - maybe not perfect ones to be sure, but good ones. Ones that are around more often than the snippets of entertainment that we so often consume now.  And that can start with -at least in my view - good fathers.

So if you are a father, or have acted like a father to someone one, Happy Father's Day.  Keep on keeping on, knowing that you are making an influence, even if you do not always feel it.

On Blackberries And Memories

 

I know, another picture of and post about blackberries.  I can imagine what you are thinking:  "TB, have you ever seen a blackberry bush before?"

Oddly enough, I have.  For most of my life.

---

Blackberries were a common enough occurrence in Old Home growing up (as it turns out, they are common in a lot of places).  They grew along creeks that I remember from then; the creek by our house (gloriously named a "ravine") had them on either side.  They were something to avoid at best as we waded, building dams and looking for crawdads.

But I have other, deeper memories of blackberries as well.

Growing up - probably until I was 10 or so - we would go in Summer up past The Ranch to a piece of property that had been homesteaded by my Maternal Great-Grandfather.  Everything on the property had burned in the late 1950's, but the property remained in the family and was overgrown with blackberries.  We would go as a family along with my maternal grandmother and grandfather and pick blackberries in season - to be fair, more the adults than my sister and I, who would pick, wander off, play in the drainage ditch, and then return. The blackberries would come with us, where they would be washed and made into blackberry jam - which we would eat for the rest of the year.

We ate it enough that blackberry jam has become something I do not seek out.

---

Blackberries at The Ranch in TB The Elder's time were mostly a nuisance.

They popped up along the seasonal creeks in the Meadows such that they had to be cut back every year and, at the southwestern end of The Lower Meadow, they formed a practical barrier along the property line that could not be penetrated.

They were also helpful spread by our bear population, who scooped them up in season and then took the liberty of spreading them around through their "deposits".  And the blackberries happily responded - by the time we made the decision to sell The Ranch, they had started to overtake the road that was the deeded access to the property.

Someone else's challenge now, that.

---

The blackberries you see above are along a trail behind the housing neighborhood in which we live.

They are maintained some extent - in that the trail they are next to is cleared - but not much more than that.  They fascinate me, the pink flowers that come to enclose a green globe that will turn black with the season.

I confess that I track them now and, when the season comes, will start to pick them on my walk; being a public area, there seem to be no sorts of rules about such things other than not over-taking the bounty.

What a pleasant surprise to find a part of my history in a place I never expected to find it.

A Loss Of Caring

 There comes a point at which one begins to not care about things.

This sort of thinking must be - especially to the young and fired up - something that confuses and angers them.  Certainly, when you are young - when I was young - there was a certain sense of "not caring", of being a rebel in small ways that were meant to signal that you were in some way "against" the system (whatever the system was).  But the big things, the titanic things - these we must care about.

I liken it, after thinking on it a bit, to a failing relationship.

In some form or fashion, we have all been through a failing or failed relationship.  Sometimes we are the ones starting to move away, sometimes the other is the one moving away, or sometimes things are just simply dissolving. But the symptoms are all there:  we talk less, we interact less, we follow up less, we eventually just exist in the same space.  Sometimes are there things after that - active anger, hatred, court cases - but just as often (for our pedestrian relationships anyway), we simply exist in the same space. We may care in the big sense of "I hope nothing untoward happens", but things seem to end there.

I find this is becoming more true in my own life.  Simply put, I have little if any caring for almost any large issue of the day.

"But you have to live in the world."  I know.  

"But these are important things."  I have lived my life through "important" things, most of which were not really that important.

"But if you do not care, you are on "their" side (whomever's side that may be)."  Who are "them"?  Generally if you look a little deeper, there are few true virtuous individuals or organizations.  Flaws in people and individuals I can accept; being told I must not ask questions and accept things as they stand, I struggle with.  And, of course, the question "Are you on my side?" often goes nowhere.

One could call it not caring.  One could also call it peace, or at least the peace of worrying about what one can influence, of giving attention to the things that are important to one's self (even if not terribly important to the world), of perhaps beginning to see truly what matters.

Are there important things? There are.  But more and more, the world's and my definitions of those diverge.

A Year Of Haiku (XXIII): Blackberries

 

Flowers and berries:

Spring passes into Summer:

my palate awaits.

2025 Cambodia And Vietnam: Angkor Wat (II)

With the death of King Suryavarman II in 1150 A.D., construction on the temple stopped.  27 years later, Angkor Wat was sacked by the Cham (from modern Vietnam).  The capitol was relocated by King Jayavarman VII to Angkor Thom, which we visited earlier.

The bridge seems to continue on....

 

... and on.  Greeting the weary worshipper (or tourist, in my case) is a gopuram, or Entrance Tower.  These are part of the Hindu Temple tradition; there are multiple gopurams at Angkor Wat.

More Naga guardians:

View of another gopuram and the connecting gallery:

Even though an amazing and ancient structure, Angkor Wat was not immune from the modern world: bullet holes from the 1974-1975 Cambodian/Vietnam War:

Within one gopuram lies the Ta Reach, originally a statue of Vishnu:

Behind the gopuram lies 203 acres/82 hectares of enclosed space.  This would have been where those associated with the temple may have lived and performed tasks. Those buildings were built of perishable materials, and so nothing remains.

A stone causeway provided a path above the ground:

To the North and South of this inner area are the remains of libraries:

Looking towards the main temple complex:

2025 Cambodia And Vietnam: Angkor Wat (I)

 

Angkor Wat (អង្គរវត្ត, "City of Temples") is perhaps one of the most amazing man-made structures I have been to in my life.  Maybe the most amazing structure, given that it was built from 1113-1150 A.D. with no modern technology whatsoever.

(As a warning, I seem to have snapped almost one hundred pictures here, so this may take a bit.)

It was built by the command of King Suryavarman II (~1094 to 1150 A.D.) as a Hindu Temple to Vishnu, one of the principal deities of Hinduism.  The site covers 401 acres/162 hectares and is surrounded by a moat.  A rarity, the temple is oriented towards the West, not the East.

(Aerial View of Angkor Wat - Source)

The main access to the site is across a moat which measures 620 ft/190 m wide and is 3.1 miles/5 km in perimeter over a sandstone bridge.

Nagas, the serpent spirits of Asian religion, guard the entrance:

On Patience And Funks

 

(Source)

I have found myself in a funk over the past week or so.

It is not really fair to say it is "the world"; if anything, I have less idea than ever about what is going on "out there".  Which is likely for the best, I suppose. And if The Ravishing Mrs. TB and Nighean Dhonn were not in The Far Abroad right now, likely I would not see Social Media at all other than my morning grab of encouragement to send on to folks.

So it is definitely something else.

There is a weight, a heaviness to everything that is my life right now, that long sense of a road that has no landmarks, no road signs, and no end.

Is exhaustion a factor?  It probably is; with the advent of Nighean Dhonn's cat visiting us for the Summer and the fact that she and A The Cat have a slightly love/highly annoying relationship, her cat has been sleeping in the bedroom with me.  And waking me up at least 3-4 times a night to sit on my chest and tell me how grateful she is.

Week-end catchup naps have become a thing.

But I suspect that is not everything.

Work has entered that state that almost every job seems to at some point, where any glamour and excitement is gone and it is simply a grind.  Different day, same tasks, sample people, same issues, same arguments, same stresses, same last minute change of plans.  If I got two years of not feeling that way at work, that is a pretty amazing thing.

My energy level - maybe because of the two items above? - is low.  I cannot really muster up the enthusiasm to do much of anything beyond the chores that I have set for myself (In this sense, the garden has been a blessing of sorts.  And the cats and the rabbits ensure that I regularly have some recurring daily tasks.

But I really feel low right now - low energy, low enthusiasm, low confidence.

---

Is it - as the above graphic suggests - merely a case of needing patience?

In certain ways, absolutely yes.  I am someone that tends to want results now and if results do not come now, I tend to to lose interest. Or revisit a thing some months or years later only to find that not making progress in the meantime means you made no progress at all.

Part of it, I see as well, is not so much patience as it is self confidence.  This is a thing I am digging into more deeply, but I seem to genuinely feel that - outside of minor tasks and interests - I cannot really be successful at a great many things.  Which leads to not doing much at all - after all, if you think you cannot do a thing, you often do not try at all.

A lack of self confidence seems to easily lead to a lack of enthusiasm - or maybe they reinforce each other.  Everything that is not something I have to do seems a chore now, even writing.

---

Will I pull out of this?  Likely - I certainly have before.  What is of especial interest to me in this particular instance is that I do not see what would happen to make that so.

Simply put, there are no more big changes I see on the horizon.  Na Clann are effectively launched into the world.  My work schedule is largely set, which then sets everything else.  And "not working at what I am not passionate about" (Retirement I guess?) seems farther away than ever.

I feel off.  And I do not like it.  

And patience sure feels like a big ask at the moment

A Year Of Kindness (XXIII): Kindness Is Not An Act...

 

People can fake kindness for a bit, but eventually it comes across as forced or self-seeking.  

The very kindest of people do not so much do kindness as they are kindness; it is their very nature.

Play Hard, Work Hard

Part of a philosophy that my company has - similar to many companies - is the idea of "Work Hard, Play Hard".  The idea behind it is that we as workers give our all to work, and then we give our all to "play" (whatever that happens to mean).

It struck me this weekend - at an event, ironically, that was supposed to celebrate the "play hard" aspect - what a ridiculous phrase that is.

On any given week, I work in the realm of 40-50 hours, not counting occasional check-ins for individual items. That does not include my to and from work commute (thankfully, a scant 10 minutes now).  

Imagine then, in this context, if we "played" at work as hard as we worked:  40-50 hours a week. Or, I suppose, we could divide it equitably and say 20 hours of work and 20 hours of play.

Any employee actually making this suggestion would initially be humored.  If they pressed forward long enough, they would likely be quietly shuttled to a non-visible job, or simply dismissed.

The concept, more accurately phrased, is "Work hard and long,  Play hard for short periods of time".  Certainly it does not roll off the tongue quite as easily nor, I suspect, would it be the sort of thing that would encourage people to apply.  It would, however, have the benefit of being an honest assessment.

Do I think this sort of radical honesty will come to the fore?  Not really.  Nor do I expect that companies will stop using the phrase:  it sounds so good, so "right".  "I work hard, so I should play hard" we say at the end of a long shift with the energy of a snail and the reality of all the "work" we have to do to run the rest of our lives.

I wonder - if just for fun - if I started reversing the phrase to "Play Hard, Work Hard", how that would go over?

Ode To A Cigarette Butt

 You met my eye in early morning,

forlorn on the sidewalk:

white paper, scorched paper,

lipstick stained filter.

A sentinel from a late night

or an early morning?

I used to see your kind in flocks

once upon a time,

clusters of used fire-sticks 

by diners and coffee shops, in rest stops, 

along trails.

Wherever people gathered,

there you were.

Now I hardly see you at all:

times have changed, you have changed:

once a cherished rite of passage and rebellion

you are now a harbinger of death,

a reminder of a long ago.

What stories would you tell of your brief life,

smoke wafting, fire slowly creeping up your steam,

held in the hands and pink lips of the one 

who cast you aside?

I do not miss you as such,

but you do remind me 

of a not so distant past.

A Year Of Haiku (XXII): Affogato

 

Simultaneous:

hot, cold battle together,

warm creamy caffeine. 

2025 Cambodia And Vietnam: Ta Prohm (IV)

 Walking through this temple then and looking at these pictures now, I am minded of the brevity of life.

Thousands doubtless laboured to build this place.  Thousands lived here, worked here, played here, schemed here.  The vastness of human emotions and experience was live out in this place.

Now, there is nothing but the silent fallen stone, which speaks not at all of what it has seen, and the trees that have overgrown it, late comers that did not know the temple and its inhabitants in their glory.

Hundreds of years hence, will this be our own legacy too?

2025 Cambodia And Vietnam: Ta Prohm (III)

 Although crowded with visitors when we went, one can imagine the eerie silence and solitude in centuries past when the temple was all but forgotten and only the trees, birds, and animals remembered.

This was enough of a "what people think an abandoned temple should look like" place that it was used in the 2001 movie Tomb Raider.  As a result, it is sometimes known as The Tomb Raider Temple.