Comstock Chronicles: Coming Home

from our week long cruise

After pulling into our driveway and bursting out of the car, the first thing the children did was race to find our gray cat, Frisky, and then dart to the garden to see how much the veggies had grown. Frisky accepted the children’s man-handling before skittering off to chase wind-blown leaves and insects while we inspected our raised beds. Frisky must’ve been hanging out with the wrong crowd while we were gone because Rose later found evidence of fleas on her bedspread even though we gave him a bath, flea drops, and a new flea collar last week before our departure.

In the raised garden beds, the children grabbed fistfuls of sweet peas. Some peapods had puffed up and faded to a muted green with plump peas inside. The big sunflower in the corner of one bed has doubled in size, and the bare dirt between plants has vanished beneath a canopy of cabbage greens, nasturtiums, and amaranthus. A fringe of delicate carrot tops has sprung up six inches beside the homemade bamboo trellises for our cucumbers. The beet tops are now a deep, recognizable red, differentiating them from the weeds growing beside them. Our iceberg roses have all bloomed like mounds of popcorn, and the jasmine vine is preparing for its show next week.

After perusing the vegetable garden, the boys sped off to do yardwork. The avocado tree had dropped a layer of leaves across the backyard and into the two holes the boys dug. Lee raked them up, dragged the green bin over, and packed the leaves in. Then he grabbed a fistful of dirt and exclaimed, “Ah! Dirt! I haven’t felt dirt in forever!” They worked at their holes for some time.

We’ve just returned from a week-long cruise to Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan, and Puerto Vallarta with Royal Caribbean Cruise, paid for by my mother-in-law, Gretchen Stevens, for her seventieth birthday. It was like living at Disneyland for eight days. And coming home to this little house in Uptown Whittier nestled against the mustard-yellow hills is most welcome.

We had great adventures, experienced Mexico, ate enough desserts to last us until Thanksgiving, and rubbed shoulders with very different people and some people rather like ourselves.

Our family and a cousin surveying the view out of Grandma’s and Grandpa’s balcony suite