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Technology troubles were at the root of why summer came and went without any posts here.  One morning in mid-May, shortly before I was heading to the other coast for a visit with family, my HP Windows 7 laptop refused to wake up.  Some of the LEDs blinked, but the screen stayed black.  The diagnosis turned out to be a failed mother board, so it was not going to be a simple fix.   Because the family visit was triggered by my father having been very seriously ill, repairing the computer simply went to the back burner for several weeks.   I limped along with my old XP laptop for email and web browsing and my spouse’s Kindle for Skype. 

While repairing an older laptop seemed of dubious economic value, I hoped that it would be possible since it had a very nice docking station and migrating to Windows 8 was not remotely something I wanted to do.  Besides, it was summer and playing out in the garden was preferable to spending hours in front of a computer re-installing and tweaking programs and dealing with a brand new, bigger than any previous set of “windows annoyances”.  So I told the tech to try for a replacement motherboard.

Unfortunately, his usual supplier did not have the required board.  He did find another vendor who claimed to have a brand new (not used or refurbished) board.  It was a little more expensive than the initial estimate, but still in the same ball park.  He was very slow to ship.  Finally, around the July 4th holiday, the board came, was installed and I got my laptop back.  Things were back to normal at last!

The next morning, the laptop was back to non-functional, much like the initial failure.   We suspect, that it was a refurbished board, not new.  And he was even slower in refunding the purchase price when the failed board was returned.  I hope that vendor has some bad reviews now.

After some research, the tech found a company that would repair the mother board.  It would replace defective or know to the troubled parts and return an improved working board that was guaranteed to work.  This would cost more than a replacement board, but it was supposed to be including upgrades.  This one also turned out to be a very slow vendor.  And then when the board finally arrived and was installed in the laptop, the result was a big nothing.  The machine would not even power on.

At that point it was Labor Day weekend, the end of summer and it was time to give up on the repair and start dealing getting a new laptop set up.  I am still baffled how Microsoft thought that removing features from Windows in version 8 was a good idea for customers who actual do use “windows” and want something more than is available on a smart phone. 

We returned from a trip visiting family in the Fresno area with half a dozen very large pomegranates. Pomegranate jelly seemed like the logical thing to do with them.  Actually, that was about the only thing I could imagine.  With something like apples I might have a lot more options.  With pomegranates, my experience is pretty limited.  Almost nonexistent, actually. 

As far as I recall, the first time I encountered a pomegranate, I was a freshman in college.  Right before we went home for the holidays, the dinner was a fancy buffet which included ice sculptures and decorative fruit arrangements.  I remember that one of the my group for dinner grabbed a pomegranate and made a fuss about it.  Like a lot of other things that year, it was a new experience.  Since then I have seen a lot more pomegranates – in the produce department in the fall or hanging on someone’s tree, but never actually had one in hand. 

So besides instructions for making jelly and a recipe for the pomegranate variety, I needed to find out how to get the seeds out and extract the juice.  The process went well for a first try and we ended up with four and a half jars of jelly as a result.

Shortly the arrival of fall came the weather.  Summers on the central coast have so little variation in the weather that if the local forecasters didn’t go out and report from various community events, it would be hard to prove we weren’t seeing reruns. 

In the past few weeks we have had some rather hot days, a couple warm and humid ones, and even a few cool days that actually felt like an autumn day.  And then we had our first real rain.  Since I was planning to water so the ground would be soft enough to weed and plant some groundcover seeds, I was happy to be spared the effort of dragging the hose around and adjusting the sprinkler to get at the needed spots.  A week later, the weather was very hot again and all of a sudden there were thousands of baby weeds popping up.  What had been looking like an hour or so with the hula hoe turned into a project for Roundup.  It cooled again after the area was sprayed, but then got hot again. 

As the weather cools once more, it looks like the weedlings are dying off.  As there is no rain in the forecast, I probably should water the area to confirm it is ready for the clover seeds to be planted.

I had tried making bread several times with results that were better suited for construction or door stops than for eating.  Typically this effort was the result of frustration after visiting the grocery store. My preferred bread not being restocked and I could not find another kind that I liked. 

In the fall 2010 I reached that state again, but this time decided to try it using a bread machine.  While the machines make funny shaped loaves, but had positive reviews for the quality of the bread. I purchased one of the least expensive models and a couple of cookbooks on making bread with a bread machine. And I was very surprised that after a little experimenting, it actually worked as advertised!

Since then we have been enjoying a lot of home made bread and almost no store bought.  It has been mostly “hearty” multi-grain bread with lots of healthy extras that is delicious toasted with preserves in the morning.  But it has been a bit too heavy for sandwich use.  Finally I got up the nerve to try a sandwich bread.  Much to my amazement it turned out perfectly.  The pictured light whole wheat loaf had a softer texture and sliced nicely for sandwiches.  Hopefully the experiment will be repeatable.  Maybe one of these days I will try making my own hamburgers and hotdog rolls.

I have lived in California long enough that it now seems normal for the hillsides to be green at Christmas and by Memorial Day weekend they have turned a crispy brown shade (otherwise called “golden” in the tourist information.)Summer weather is typically month’s of the same forecast — just minor adjustments for the temperature highs and lows.

This year has been an exception in that respect.  Late rains were just enough so that some faint patches of green still remained on most of our nearby hills by the end of May.  The weather for the first weekend in June has been even more remarkable.  It actually rained! Not the “it never rains in California in the summer” rain where most of it dries before hitting the sidewalk.  Not the coastal fog so thick that the moisture drips from trees.  But actual, normal, enough to refill the bird bath, real rain.

So it rained on a couple of parades.  Countless outdoor events were dampened.  Some crops were at critical stages and received damage. But compared to the floods, tornadoes, fires and other natural disasters in the recent news, this was more of a case of Mother Nature providing many California residents a little something extra to help us remember the weekend events.