Category Archives: Orchard Valley Roasting

Lucky me…

About six weeks ago Joanne and I were in downtown Campbell on a Saturday morning… having a cup of coffee and relaxing a bit. As we were leaving Orchard Valley Roasting, who should we come across but this fine Grey African Parrot (and its caretaker).

Being something of a large-bird fan, I asked the caretaker if I might visit with her Parrot – whose name is French and means “to kiss”. (I’ve run that through Google translator and came up with enough variations that I’ll not attempt to recall its actual name.) The bird immediately came to me and crawled up / down my arms / shoulders and as they often do, began preening me just a bit – apparently I never look quite right to Parrots because they always try to clean me up a bit.

We visited for about 10 minutes – lots of feather stroking, soft-voice talking and human-preening going on – and eventually coaxed the Parrot to return to its caretaker and went our separate ways.

On a personal note, it’s always such a pleasure to visit with even somewhat rancorous Parrots / birds as they usually settle down pretty quickly with me; parting ways with them is often a down-moment for you-know-who.

Life, huh?

Yesterday was quite a day around here.

Bike ride in to town early in the morning – nice, cool weather. Coffee, catch up on the 2.5 pages of local news in the Merc. Ride back home to shoot film (er, pixels) of ‘Liv harvesting tomatoes… we’ll get those up soon. Joanne and ‘Liv carving, burning and adding color to Chloe’s (‘Liv’s sister) birthday present – nicely researched, selected and applied to wood by ‘Liv and Joanne. I headed off to lunch with a friend / former co-worker that I met 14 years ago next month; he’s 39 now (he was such a gnarly puppy when we met), married with two children, busy career… sorting through life’s challenges and priorities, as we all do.

And so it was with great fear and trepidation that we took Delilah to meet her oncologist @ 1:45 yesterday afternoon. Wonderful place, all bright’n’shiny, very professional in appearance and operation… it was as professional and nice as a facility for humans – perhaps more.

Initial exam of Dee by a vet’s assistant, followed by our 1st meeting with the Vet. We found her oncologist to be warm, friendly and open. We confirmed Dee’s medical history (she had read her files from Kirkwood Animal Hospital and spoken with Dr. Ueno) and she gave us the basics on Dee’s situation: The biopsy revealed Dee’s cancer to be a slow-growth variety – if it hadn’t already spread to another place and they were able to remove the cancerous area, Dee would have a 90% chance of complete recovery / no further cancer. To determine the extent of her situation, Dee needed to have a chest xray… so, off they went.

Dee was returned to us in 5 minutes. Great news! Treatment options for the existing cancer are radiation and surgery, but with the location of Dee’s cancer, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to get all of the cancer with surgery and radiation is 16 days of daily visits and a pretty miserable recovery.

Or amputation of the leg.

The doc tells us that cats do remarkably well with 3 legs; we’re encouraged by this and through our relationship with Claire (Mike and Mimi’s pack member), we know 3 legs are better than no legs… and no pack member. We ask about the recovery period – how painful, how long? Dee stays in the hospital 1-2 days after surgery so they can monitor her pain around-the-clock and from there, she’ll need to adjust and find her way. How soon should we have it done? The next couple of weeks or seriously risk spreading of the cancer.

So there we are. We’ll make arrangements early in the week and begin the process of everyone moving forward.

Challenges and priorities, we’ve all got ’em and have to deal with them, yeah?

As always, thanks for visiting, be well and don’t forget to write when you get work 🙂

hal
btw – no small btw, either – we say thanks to each of you for your heartfelt inquiries and good wishes for Dee, they are much appreciated.

Made my first CampbellFarmer score today…

Sitting outside of Orchard Valley Roasting yesterday morning, Ted (local guy) and I were discussing our “crops”. Turns out Ted raises a few melons and beans @ his place. I mentioned we had, oh, about 100 lbs (and counting, every day) of ripe apples and I’d be interested in swapping a few apples for a coupla melons. Deal, says Ted.

Today when I cruised down there to meet Al for an 8:30 coffee, Ted showed up with these two nice samples… good thing, too, cause I brought him a half-dozen apples. Turns out he wants them for pies, so I’ll swing by there this afternoon with a small bag full of the crisp, green Gala’s and he can pick them up the next time he’s by the shop.

Oh, and, hello to Sara and her husband – apparently looking for people to swap veggies with, too!

right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot… Maybe this is how these local things begin… with baby steps. If you’re interested in exchanging goodies that you grow here / nearby Campbell, shoot me an email (twobigcats at gmail dot com) and we can begin connecting the community dots.

If not, I get all of Ted’s extra melons.