Merry Solstice, Christmas and Happy New Year!

A Closer Look at Our Little Acre

We got many compliments on the previous edit, and I am learning to slow down and focus in with my video camera. This edit reflects more detail.

The Sonoran Desert has shapes, colors, and textures large and small. On our own little acre where we have cleared and planted, each plant has become a familiar friend.

The soundtrack is Brahim Fribgane playing the oud. Born and raised in Morocco, Brahim Fribgane brings to his music the rich and varied musical styles he grew up with - North African, Gnawa, Berber, Arabic and Andulusian music. His oud style ranges from the clear, "singable" melodies of folkloric Berber songs to beautifully complex and soulful Arabic music.

November at San Simeon

The heat of summer is forgotten as we wear long pants and a sweater in the mornings, then shed layers as the sun in a cloudless blue sky heats up the days. We had some rain a week ago. One hardy creosote bush responded with flowers. The devil's tongue barrel cactus is budding with deep red flowers.

We have spotted the owl in the eucalyptus tree several times. Judging by the offal on the park bench directly below its perch, and the scattered feathers on the driveway, the owl has been a successful hunter.

Much thanks for the many kind comments.

"Thanks Shari for sending the video and well done Tom-you certainly capture the desert garden, loved the music and was that an owl because it was great capture!" 

 " OMG. ... This is amazing, beautiful, sculptural, spiritual, melodic, under the watchful eye of the owl, and the moons glow. Wow. The hardscape, the stately cactus the protector of the many pots, and steps of continuous beauty. You have created, recreated the essence of Turkey, Australia, India etc, all them warmer exotic places that I have unfortunately not gotten to yet,. Congrats on so much hard work, and grace and beauty that you have shared with us and all that come by your place." 

 "What a beautiful garden that we would like to discover for real !" 

"Very beautiful yard, vegetation and even an owl! I love the editing with such lovely music as always." 

"WONDERFUL!!!! I really plan to see all that/YOU next… May? I hope I hope!!!!" 

 "One word: Fabulous!! makes us wish we were there." 

"🙏🏼 What a masterpiece you’ve created! The video is an amazing meditation in the midst of chaos." 

"Lovely lovely lovely! Thank you!!!" 

"So very nice! Great job, Tom. Such a perfect sanctuary! Thanks for sending, Shari! Always love seeing your place, in real life or in pictures!" 

 "Thank you for sharing views of your magical desert gardens. It's raining cats and dogs here--has been for days and no end in sight. ... It's such an interesting mix of plants, pots, whimsical items, paths, walls, furniture and level upon level of beauty. You two are sensational stewards of the land." "A lot of work but looks beautiful and well done!" 

 "Your garden arts are amazing, so to know you think Tom’s display being wonderful is quite the compliment!" 

"What a wonderful tour of your Oasis. Wish I could teleport down there for a few days and suck up the sounds and smells you capture so well." 

"Love the movie….the ending is WOW. Your place is so wonderful….I love it and miss my time there." 

"Thanks, that’s wonderful., and so much warmer and sunnier than say, Whidbey Island November-June. You’re lucky to have all those wonderful rocks to play with. " 

 "WOW.........put me into another place inside and out. Especially like the owl and crescent moon at the end of day. Thx a million for sharing your WONDER FULL garden."

Saint Simon

It's only a coincidence, but then, so many coincidences are intriguing.

We live on San Simeon Drive. It's named after a San Simeon Ranch that used to be in this area. The Spanish had a nice custom of naming things after saints. In this case, the namesake is Saint Simeon the Stylite, a Fourth Century ascetic saint who achieved notability for living 37 years on a small platform on top of a pillar near Aleppo in what is today's modern Syria.

Since we ditched the idea of dish/cable television, Shari and I converted to the internet. We already had subscribed to Netflix and Prime. We exchanged DirectTV for a subscription to Britbox.

Much of the time we simply watch YouTube. It's amazing what you can find on YouTube — intelligent documentaries, house buying in the British and French countryside, travel programs, early music concerts, old movies and television shows. We've watched all the Sherlock Holmes movies with Basil Rathbone and many of the Sherlock Holmes television programs with Ronald Howard.

I remember watching television as a kid in Australia. By golly, the original Aeroplane Jelly commercial is on YouTube. Just search for it. The 1950's Robin Hood series starring Richard Greene is there, as is Jet Jackson — but neither has aged that well.

One day I searched "The Saint". Shari vaguely remembered the TV show. I have specific memories watching the program in Sydney on the family boob tube — in glorious black & white. Which it is.

We have been watching an episode of The Saint in the evenings ever since. It's a bit of a dinner routine. Many episodes of the first season are uploaded to YouTube, plus a few programs from later seasons, including color from seasons five and six.

We ran out of The Saint episodes that we hadn't seen. Although many of the 114 episodes (six seasons, 1962 to 1969, go figure) are on YouTube, only about a dozen are watchable. Most are in a strange, unwatchable format posted, no doubt, by the copyright owner: a frustratingly small screen set within a distracting background screen.

Frustrated, I searched online for DVD's.  They exist. The entire The Saint series on 33 (thirty-three) DVD's. Prices from $44 to $150. We went with $44 via eBay. No problem. Less than a week later, I ripped all 114 episodes and loaded them onto my external hard drive.

We dial up an episode at whim on our big screen TV through our Roku USB input.

I have to be honest. I never liked Roger Moore in his later role as James Bond. He always seemed out of shape.

When I first searched for The Saint on YouTube, I was curious why we liked the show so much in Australia. Well, Roger Moore as Simon Templar is dashing and debonair, lithe and svelte. No question. His expressions are timeless; the stories are always light, entertaining, and have a good ending.

Each show begins with Simon's introductory monologue to the camera, then someone recognizes him by name. Camera re-frames on Simon to leave space above his head where a halo suddenly appears. Simon looks up, as if at his own halo, and smiles. Theme music plays. The episode is introduced.

Although almost all episodes were shot in English studios, camera crews took establishment footage from all over the world to create a masterful illusion of international intrigues in London, Paris, Rome, Buenos Aires, Mexico, Costa Brava, Cannes (of course), Canada, Bahamas, New York, Athens and Cornwall. It's fun just to see vintage 1960's cars, trucks and buses on the roads.

Simon Templar is a gentleman who doesn't back off from a fistfight, and who is never taken in by a beautiful woman.

Simon drives his Volvo sports car (license plate ST-1), plays opposite beautiful women and cunning men, has an obligatory fist fight or two in each episode (much more convincingly playful than Roger as Bond), and, against all odds, mischievously solves the problem of the day in a very honorable, gentlemanly, and unexpected manner — nay, even saintly.

So here at San Simeon, we have become enamored of The Saint Simon Templar. We also like living on a small dead-end street named after Saint Simeon the Stylite.

Coincidence?

Chipmunks, Dirt Piles & Rocks

The front of our San Simeon house is the pretty much the first domestic place you see driving in. It has a rock slope below the house, an area I call the Cirque. The rock is Catalina granite boulders and rocks — pale somewhat soft, with quartz veins and sparkling mica.

Granite isn't granite without mica and quartz.

I like Catalina rock. It's local. It's where we are situated, and what naturally exists in our washes and Foothills. It's subtle and pretty. At least it was until the pack rat, tiny white mice, and cute, abrubt-speedy chipmunks moved in.

First was the pack rat hoarded debris. Swept some up then spooned dry concrete into the cavities. Hosed it down. Looks solid. Mostly islands of Catalina rock poking out from grey cement treacle.

We have had lots of rodent activity this summer. We hired a pest control service ...
but that's another story.

Concreting that slope made sense. The scupper that drained about a quarter of the roof splashed and poured down that same part of the slope. The flow of erosion had already washed some dirt away and made the rocks collapse inwards some. That area needed the concrete.

Then I noticed increased chipmunk activity. Fresh green gouges had been chewed out of my prized hanging cactus and torch cactus.

The other clue was big dirt piles on my Catalina rock slope, like ugly mining tailings of which there are already way too many in the Copper State.

The clincher was seeing chipmunks hanging around on that rock slope, then disappearing in small holes above the dirt tailings.

Casus belli. It meant war.

It was war.

My weapons were cement blocks, stucco, gravel, 60 lb. bags of pre-mix concrete, chicken coop wire, wheelbarrows full of dirt, and my hard earned experience with the various burrowing reptiles and mammals we have here in the Sonoran Desert.

And stripping the heavy rocks off, then strategically stacking them back up.

The slope is beginning to take the shape of two terraces, which means two solid surfaces on which the traverse the slope and attend to pruning.

I still have a couple of days work left. Hopefully, what I am doing will hold them there varmints.

Smoke in the House

Water heater burn-out.

It happened once before, an unusually acrid smell and smoke wafting out the door that leads to our small, centrally located utility room; the one that holds the heat exchange system, water heater, alarm system, door bell, vacuum cleaner, and IKEA shelves holding boxes and piles of shoes, boots, winter hats, sewing machine and notions, light bulbs, extension cords, spare cushions, fabric ….

Just outside the door to the utility room is the security system smoke alarm. It makes a phone call to a light bulb in Central Alarm headquarters and someone there calls the house (Are you okay? What is your security code?), or the person calls the fire department and they also call us, or all of them call us.

The alarm went off. We ran towards the noise and immediately noticed the smoke coming out from the utility room. We ventured inside fearful of flames. There was just acrid smoke coming from an electronic control box of the heat exchange system. The unit was fried.

A heat exchange system has two parts. A large unit inside and another large unit outside and plumbing in between that circulates a heat-cold retaining fluid. If it runs one way, it takes heat out of the house. If it runs the other way, it brings heat into the house. It was an old system that probably dated back to when the house was built, 1978.

We replaced the entire system. We even paid for the rental of a crane to hoist the outdoor unit over the concrete block wall that serves as its enclosure. The gate was too narrow.

In the nine some years since, we have enjoyed our new system. It is much quieter than the old. It's still pretty noisy, but that old system, each time it turned on, made an exploding noise like someone hit the metal ducts with a sledge hammer.

Friday a week ago: déjà vu. Acrid smoke smelling like burnt rubber poured out from the utility room. Disturbingly enough it did not trigger any smoke alarm. Fortunately, it was early morning when Shari and I are most active. Shari noticed it and grabbed me as I returned from walking Nazar the Wonder Dog. We were frantic. The water heater was smoking.

I rushed outside to the circuit breaker box, realized I needed reading glasses to decipher the electrician's handwritten labels, rushed back, couldn't identify the water heater circuit, and started guessing. I never did find it, but the smoke did stop. The stench lingered for days, but it stopped smoking.

I unscrewed the panels that cover the two heating elements, the one above with sensors and controls and the one below. It was the one above. It fried. The tank itself had failed. Probably the slight alkalinity of our Tucson water had eaten through the sheet metal and water had leaked into the surrounding insulating layer and filled it up all the way to the control box electronics which shorted and smoked and fizzled until it fried itself out. (And, thank God, tripped the circuit breaker. I just hadn't noticed.)

The good news was that July means summer in the Old Pueblo. This time of year, cold tap water isn't. It's quite tepid. So cold water showers are actually quite pleasant and refreshing.

The water heater replacement took place four days later. It took Jeff and Tracy six hours.

See, we have a solar panel on the roof that heats another circulating, heat absorbing fluid that is piped down into the utility room through a heat-exchange manifold that heats water circulating out from the water heater tank. When the sun is out, the water heater doesn't need to fire its electric heating elements. The solar system takes over.

A Borg. "Resistance is futile."

New water heater. "Vacation mode is futile."

What the solar-assist system means from an installation perspective is a lot of copper tubing. Our water heater doesn't look just like a water heater. It looks like a water heater that has been absorbed into the Borg collective. It has copper pipes all over the top — water out and back into the tank, gel from and back to the solar panel on the roof — the copper-clad heat exchange manifold itself, and the small pump and control panel that governs the solar gel circulation.

We kept the front door open so Jeff and Tracy could do their work and gather tools more easily. The indoor thermometer read ninety degrees.

They fabricated new copper piping to replace the old. The soldering produced enough smoke to trigger the smoke alarm. We got calls from both the fire department and Central Alarm. Well, at least we knew the alarm system worked.

After six hours of installation, Jeff showed us how the touch screen worked on the solar control box. To put it in vacation mode, tap up here, see the icon appear there, then tap down there three times (I kid you not) and the vacation mode icon appears here and you touch there to confirm. To turn off vacation mode, you do the same in reverse. His fingers seemingly raced over the panel like a teenager's two thumbs texting on a smart phone. After six hours of increasing owners' heat exhaustion, we didn't really need to know vacation mode.

We were more interested at looking at Tracy's and Jeff's smart phones. While Jeff was writing up the bill, Shari showed Tracy her paintings in the living room.  Turned out Tracy was an artist by training and avocation and a plumber only by necessity. He pulled out his smart phone. Turned out Jeff also painted. He pulled out his smart phone. Both showed us photos of their paintings. They were not only good, their styles were very original.

Боже мой! (bozhe moi) Oh my God!

Fire in the Catalinas

Mother Nature has her moods.

Lightning strikes started the fire on Friday,
June 5, on the west side of the Santa Catalina Mountains. It jumped over the ridge and into Pima Canyon on Monday. Last night, Wednesday night, Finger Rock was on fire. Ribbons of fire burned eastwards. By morning, smoke obscured the mountains and drifted down the washes past our house and into the city.

The local newspaper reports that this fire, together with a fire in Alaska, are the highest priority for fire-fighters nation-wide. Bighorn was only 10% contained on Thursday night. Warnings are being issued for some evacuations.

All video taken from our backyard. The updated video (as of Friday morning) shows the fires pretty much extinguished, but the media is still reporting that it's only 10% contained.

Postscript: The video caught the eye of a Eurovision reporter in Switzerland. He may use some shots.

Taking Pictures

George Kotolaris (1929-1990)

Editing pictures and video is a hobby, but pointing a camera at people can be a bit awkward — for me and for the subjects.  People may like the edited programs years later, but at the time, they tend to groan and joke so I feel a bit self-conscious.

Recently I have been thinking of George Kotolaris, Seattle’s iconic, garishly dressed, and somewhat unhinged but harmless eccentric and gate-crasher. He too had a hobby of taking pictures of people. That was back in the days of film cameras. I doubt if his Kodak Brownie had film in it, but he pointed his Brownie often, asking people to pose, often with his mother, Pansy.

I would regularly see George and Pansy at St. Mark’s, the Episcopalian cathedral on Capitol Hill. Each Sunday from late 1970 to about 1973, I used to chauffeur Joshua Green to St. Mark's for church.

Joshua Green was another Seattle institution. He and his family owned Peoples National Bank, the third largest bank in Washington at the time, before it was gobbled up by US Bank. He came to Seattle from Mississippi when he was seventeen. That was in 1886.

Joshua Green (1869-1975) and his wife, "Missy".
Both lived over a hundred years.

He made his fortune in the shipping business running a mosquito fleet during the Klondike gold rush 1896-1899. As roads and automobiles proliferated in Puget Sound, he saw the handwriting on the wall and in 1927, he got out of the maritime shipping business to devote himself to banking. His shipping company became the nucleus for the then newly formed Washington State Ferry System. He was a multi-millionaire back in the days before wealth got concentrated in billionaires. In 1968, Governor Dan Evans named him Washington Man of the Century.

My brother got the job of Joshua Green's weekend chauffeur and passed it on to me in late 1970 after I got out of high school. I was seventeen. Joshua Green was a hundred and one.

I would help Mr. Green out of the car and up the cathedral stairs, then wait in the car until I saw him come out at the end of whatever Episcopalians do for Sunday service. George and Pansy were often with the congregation coming out of the church, George trying to take pictures of the old man as I would be trying to get him back down the stairs and settled in the front seat of the car. So George was a bit of a nuisance.

Which is a bit how I feel pointing cameras at people — a bit of a nuisance.

Every Sunday as we drove away from St. Mark's Cathedral, and I do mean every time, the old man would remark, “I don’t know why I go there, but I feel better afterwards.”

Outdoor TV

Evenings are warm, the garden is pleasant, and we can pick up our Wi-Fi signal in the garden. For years I have been wondering about watching video outdoors -- like the drive-in movies of long ago.

We finally did it. In these times of social distancing, we can invite a couple over and entertain outdoors and watch the telly, all the while keeping a discrete distance.

Wild Weed Flowers

Spring is grass and weed season in the Sonoran Desert. Many are bristly and sticky, and some are not particularly pleasant to look at (e.g., popcorn flowers, if I have identified these all too common plants of which there are over forty varieties). There is one plant that shoots its seeds when touched. These are not friendly or pretty plants and I dislike grass. So each spring, I pull grass and weeds from all over our little acre.

Last year I made friends with two weeds and learned their names: bristly nama has gorgeous purple flowers and flat-top buckwheat (a/k/a skeletonweed) has a beautiful lacy, coral-colored, umbrella-like superstructure when it dies back. I learned to recognize the shoots and let them grow. I also collected seeds from desert marigolds, brittlebush, and some tiny golden flowered plant clusters whose name I have not been able to identify. These all grow by the side of our very own San Simeon Drive. I scattered the seeds about our little acre.

Good winter rains, another two packets of California poppy seeds, and another two packets of mixed desert wildflower seeds, but mostly not pulling up everything that sprouts, have resulted in a spectacular and surprising bloom this March. Particularly surprising are occasional single plants bearing white, yellow or blue flowers. I have no idea where they came from.

It is still too early for flat-top buckwheat flowers, the creosote bushes are just beginning to flower, and cacti buds are appearing, so there will be more. But what I already have collected with my video camera fills about twelve minutes.

Here is the resulting edit, but if you can watch YouTube on a big screen telly, it looks much, much nicer than on a laptop.

The Evolution of the Cement Pond

A drama in seven Acts.

Act I - The Pond Unveiled

Even when we first moved into San Simeon in winter of 2007, they told us the swimming pool water was old. "They" was some guy who runs a swimming pool maintenance and remodel outfit.

We kept feeding the water chlorine.

Several pool maintenance employees later, many years of old time savvy service from Cliff (blessings upon his soul), a couple of years of new savvy pool service from Thad, a total of thirteen years later, we decided to drain the cement pond.

The trouble with swimming pool water is that the cumulative effect of chlorine renders the chemistry harder and harder to manage (no pun intended). In addition to calcium and other particulates, there is an acid that builds up, the dreaded cyanuric acid, so you have to add more, and even more, and even ridiculously more chlorine to kill algae. That's about as much as I know. We had one guy come out to measure the particulates and our water rang the bell at 2,321 ppm. Normal range is 400-800, but he told us he had measured some pool water several times higher than ours.

I wanted to procrastinate, but Thad and Shari convinced me it was a good time to drain and refill.

It took five hours on February 15th for a sump pump to drain the pool into the gully to our north. That's where some palo verde trees grow that serve as a visual barrier. Some unpleasant folks recently built a remarkably ugly, two-story billboard house to our north. Its master bedroom balcony has a narrow opening through which to spy upon the east part of our pool. Not that they would see much: maybe chest high as we go up to the pool steps. Still, I want those trees to grow even taller and more dense.

I had no idea our cement pond was so big, or that 25,000 gallons occupied such a vast space. I had not appreciated how steep are the slopes of the cement shape that defines the pool. The water's buoyancy masks the steepness, particularly of the three steep, narrow steps that we use to gracefully enter the pool.

Act II - The Pond Wrecked

We decided to flush the swimming pool and thought, "Why not wreck it while it's empty?"

We hired an experienced wrecking crew equipped with pneumatic jackhammers the size of electric drills. Warned of the noise and dust, we notified neighbors and covered everything we could with tarps and sheets.

The crew showed up early, around seven in a cold morning, and started making noise at about quarter to eight. Our pool is larger than most, so it took them about five hours to chip away everything that covered the inside of the pool.

Unbelievably, after hours of punishing work, they took off for the next wrecking job that same day.

Act III - The Pond Tiled

We wanted a different and striking new finish for our cement pond. We opted for an antique, natural look.

We love the result: a primitive look of creatively mottled patterns of black and white.

The subtle impression reminds us of the zebra skin wallpaper we uncovered behind the toilet tank in the guest bedroom. Two tanks; different sizes; same values.

We thought we were ready to fill the big tank up with fresh water, then realized something was missing: a border. We needed to install a line of tiles around the rim as a sort of contrasting frame for the rustic black and white look.

I couldn't reach high enough at the deep end, so we hired Joab, a master swimming pool tile setter. Over two days, he prepared the surface and nailed the flexible boards on which the tiles can rest as the thinset hardens. The next day he buttered and set the tiles in thinset, then grouted. It wasn't long before the mortar and grout hardened and Joab removed the boards. A job well done.

Finally, we are almost done with the remodel. Spring is in the air and we have ordered a new solar cover. All we need do is add water.

Act IV - Pebble Technology

. . . so . . . yeah . . . we didn't stay with the primitive look. Turns out we had bought into a package deal and the best was yet to come.

Pebble technology. It's what's "now" in swimming pool plaster. Embedded in the extra hard cement mix are tiny colored pebbles. Naturally, we had to have it. We chose Tahoe blue.

It takes a small and experienced army to refinish a swimming pool. Preparations begin early. Title and pool deck are taped and covered over. Two lines are strung in a cross over the huge hole in the ground. The line that feeds the pebble technology slop and all electrical extension cords are draped over the suspension lines. Men wear metal clogs that go "Click! Click" as they walk over and spread the dark cement sludge.

Cement plaster and pebbles come in sacks carried in a mixer truck with a large hopper fed by a man wearing a handkerchief as a mask. It is mixed with water in the correct proportions and pumped through a long flexible hose. The fluid mix spurts and splashes out like thick water from a fire hose.

A small army of men spread the mixture, smooth it, brush it, then smooth it even more and gently water to expose a polished surface of embedded pebbles. Voilà! Tahoe blue. To hasten the hardening process and minimize slump on the steps and sides, a blow torch is used to dry the pebble technology slop.

We kept Nazar the Wonder Dog inside.

You couldn't pay me enough to work this hard or this skillfully. This crew was done in about four hours. They pumped out the water from the bottom, cleaned up, then, like the wrecking crew that jack-hammered and hauled away the old plaster, they left for the another job that same day.

Act V - The Pond Washed

Cement, as we know, is caustic. So what better to wash the finish than acid? Seems like a good idea, especially if you are not the one that has to do it.

The small army of plasterers left the pool to dry overnight. The next afternoon, two men and a Pima Pool and Plastering truck showed up. The jefe, a middle aged man, spoke a few words of English. Very kind, very reassuring, and quite incomprehensible. My Spanish was of little use because he machine-gunned the Sonoran dialect.

The assistant spoke no English and wore a mask. The jefe sprayed acid wash over the plaster as the assistant brushed off excess cement. A most unpleasant job. We stayed inside to watch.

I only figured out what the jefe had been assuring me after they had set up and started work. Thick hoses sucked the toxic mixture from the bottom of the pool into hazmat tanks in back of the truck

As with previous crews, they finished efficiently and cleaned up, ready for the next job late that same afternoon.

The jefe left our garden hose running in the bottom of the pool. Apparently, the pond was ready for water.

Act VI - The Pond's New Plaster

The trick, we learned after the acid wash, is to fill the pool from the bottom continuously. Splashing water from the top or turning off the water for a few hours is likely to result in marks or rings in the still curing cement plaster. Those marks and rings can only be removed with another acid wash. Not desirable.

It took two hours less than forty-eight to fill the pond up to the middle of its tile border. Meanwhile, we celebrated and admired the pebble tech finish. Shari took the opportunity to do some touch-up on the concrete deck that surrounds the pond, spots that would be hard to reach once the pool was filled with water.

Act VII - The Pond Fulfilled & Finale

Our cement pond slowly filled-up over two days.

We learned all sorts of things about new pool plaster. Like waiting a fortnight before using our Hayward pool cleaner. That little device, attached to a hose connected to the pool filtration pump intake, wanders around the pool bottom and sides sucking up debris. Trouble is, its wheels can mark up the still curing plaster. It's not something I would have worried about. A day later the plaster was more than hard enough to walk on; but what do I know?

Then there is the job of brushing the entire pool surface — well, at least its bottom — three times a day for two weeks. That loosens up and cleans off small particles of surface cement which, suspended in the water, get sucked to the filter pump intake. And the pump has to stay on 24/7.

I probably averaged one brush a day over a week and a half. It's hard work, plus it's been raining. Even so, the pool not only looks great, it works. As the winter of 2020 morphs into spring, it's time for a swim and a barbecue.

Springtime Poppies

I probably sowed too many seeds, but after last spring's bounty, I couldn't resist.

Wombats, Giraffes & Referees

Anyone watching the football playoffs?

My favorites, the Upper Slobbovian Wombats, are playing the Middle Willingtonian Giraffes.

The Referees are favored. The Referees haven't lost a ball game since the Mayan collapse when Chief Qetzal had Referee Coatl disemboweled for a bad call.

Cotswolds, the Movie

The Cotswolds in a hilly, bucolic area about eighty miles west of London. The wool trade of the 13th and 14th Centuries made the sheep owners of the Cotswolds particularly wealthy. It is the second largest designated "Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty" in England (after the Lakes District) and a popular tourist, vacation, and retirement destination.

Debates surround the origin of the name: whether "sheep hills" (wold meaning hills); or "Cod's hills" (Cod being a personal name).

My preferred version is "Cuda hills", a derivation from Brittonic Cuda, a Mother Goddess worshiped by local Celts in pre-Anglo-Saxon, and probably pre-Roman times.

Medieval wealth is responsible for the many beautiful churches and abbeys in the area, and Nature Herself is the origin of the local yellow limestone which turns honey golden with age and has been extensively used as building material in the Cotswolds.

Thanks to good friends who retired in the area, we elected to stay in Cirencester for three nights to give us plenty of time to visit. We were taken to Malmesbury Abbey (hence the recorded church choir) and Tetbury (where Prince Charlie has a shop) on a Sunday.

The following day, after our Boo Laundrette experience, Shari and I ventured to Stow-on-the-Wold with its two famous old ewe trees that frame the side entrance to St. Edward's Church.

Introducing Cotswolds, the Movie: