Happy Fourth...and 2nd...and 17th...

Fireworks in this state are now legal to buy, sell, import and export and use publicly publically  openly by anyone who has enough money (if not brains) to do so.  Was a time when if you wanted fireworks you had to wait until the Fourth of July, when you could either go to a neighbor's house (the one on the hill with the good view) or drive to town down by the lake and ooh and ahhh  safely while people who were paid to do so risked their fingers and hands instead of yours. 

Now you have the privilege of not only blowing your own face up, but that of anyone who wants to join the fun,  with the added advantage of possibly setting your own house afire, or the neighbor's field,  barn, or horses.  Live free or die just took on a whole 'nother dimension...

Report from the back forty

Not much doing right now that seems worth writing down, I guess.  Started putting the wood in this week, and the mister is mowing the fields.  A neighbor comes and rakes it into windrows, bales it, and takes it home for his horses.

It's been hot, and dry, and worrisome.  When you live where we do, surrounded by forest,  any scent of smoke on the air gets your attention.  We spent a good fifteen collective minutes last evening deciding that yep, that was wood smoke east of us, not real close, but Out There.  By bed time it was gone, either that or the wind had shifted. 

First of September. Wow.  And a blue moon last night.

Love After Love, by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own  mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Sometimes a bit of attitude works...

Over the past few months the Republicans have been ramping up their phone calls to us registered Repubs;  for what it's worth, my own leanings are toward the center of everything with no specific party involved--but to do that would mean we'd be getting Dems AND Repubs calling, not a tolerable situation in any event.

It is, after all, Election Year.

Almost of the calls have been live, asking politely for either me OR my husband, and would we be interested in filling out a short survey?  No, we say, and hang up.  Or just hang up.  All of them have obviously been  college kids, earning maybe a penny a call;  I finally asked one of them why they keep calling here, we get two to three a day.  She seemed surprised, and I asked her to please take us off her list.  Two days of blessed silence.

Next time, it was a fella who was probably on the edges of terminal boredom, and drunk.  Seriously drunk. He asked for Wade.  Or Leland.  I said, no one here by that name.  Shock and disbelief. "You're kidding", he said.  Nope, no one by that name.  Take me off the list.  Peace, for a week. Aha, Im thinking, what just happened here.

Third time, they asked for me, by name. No one here by that name, sorry.  And, I added, in my best Stern but Nice Voice, the next time someone calls here we will be changing our party affiliation.  Period.  Not a call since. =)

Next time, we will be Democrats.

New potatoes

just had to see what was going on under there, and this is what I came up with. Three plants, a nice yield for this early in the season, and considering the drought we had in July, about 5 pounds, I'd guess. They got a bit of scab, but that's cosmetic, and comes off when the peel does, anyway.  These are Katahdins.

Happy Birthday, Albert

When you're seventeen and gettin' a bit slow, more than a bit deaf, and sometimes it's hard to decide which side of the door you want to be on,  it's nice to know the porch is there for sleeping on good summer days--and it's even nicer when someone remembers to put out the Kitty CopeSacks with enough catnip to
please even the fussy ones.  Makes a great pillow, too.

Butterfly and clover

It's been a very good year for the Monarchs, plenty of heat if not a lot of water, and they seem to be thriving on it.   I wish them well. 

Feel Good Stuff for a Rainy morning

Drum Machine

This is a very old video kinda thing, fun to watch.  Once it starts, turn up the speakers a bit.

Golden Sky


James Taylor/Iris Dement



(to get back here, click the 'back' button on your machine)

Perseids

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/10aug_perseids/

Just remembered these;  I guess last night was the peak, but they haven't disappeared yet.  Not that it would have done us much good here, even knowing,  since we had rain all night Saturday AND Sunday.  Maybe tonight.

Skunk visits

sometime this last week the grass around the garden decided to give in to the heat, and died. I went out this morning for something, and the ground in one particular section was ruffled up enough to suggest small rototillers had been at work.  Aha.  Skunk Season.  They are fussy eaters, and won't scrabble through tall grass to get at the yummy fat beetle grubs they so love--but mow the grass or have it die off, and there they are, digging up a storm. 
Bless their smelly little hearts.

It's too early to be this late

It's a kind of limbo out there.  Only the crickets seem to have anything to say about anything.  All the baby birds that are going to fly have,  the young turkeys are now gangly teen agers,  and territories that were so fiercely guarded all summer long are now crumbling, except for a few border disuptes over insects and seeds. 
Too soon to begin thinking about migration, which I suspect is more of a tug in the midsection than anything  intellectual,  and that tug can be a lot more powerful and harder to ignore.  The wind calls, and you go.

Last week, right on cue, we limped past the heat of July and into that late-summer lull with early morning ground fog and almost chilly nights.  If you close your eyes and inhale, and have been doing it regularly over a period of years,  you might think it was midAugust at dawn.   And in the greater sweep of things, it soon will be.

Brought to you by...

those folks who two years ago gave us a look into God's wallet

"Who needs flotation devices?  We've got the Water Walker!"

I'm thinking that once a year they have a contest at Church Camp, and the kid who comes up with the best logo for the marquee gets a prize.  I sincerely hope it's water wings.

oh g'wan, you know you want to

http://armorgames.com/play/12141/kingdom-rush

its wildly addictive, but can be picked up for five minutes at a time
and the games save themselves without passwords or logins.

http://www.gamepuma.com/action-games/Particles.html

and this one, blast from the past time...

early morning moonrise

                                 early, early, with the birds just beginning to warm up, this:

Google strikes again

not sure how this is going to work;  if I suddenly disappear, blog and all, off the face of the earth,  it's because of some strange strange conflict with Google and TDS (one of which is my blog, one of which is my email, both of which are running under the gmail auspices).  frankly I have no idea what's going on and even though I read it all very slowly and even allowed my lips to move while I did,  I still don't understand it.

I have a new blog addy, apparently, but I think email will still go to the (other) tds.net account.  argh.

It's way too hot for this nonsense.

deer in the daylilies

This doe is just leaving breakfast, standing belly deep among the daylilies, snacking on the brambles and rosebushes (nothing like a bit of fiber, nosiree) that seems to be her preference.  I am not complaining.

What goes bump in the night

Two nights ago I went outside near midnight to retrieve Albert, my little white cat, who has taken to sleeping in the middle of the lawn. In the moonlight he glows like a lump of phosphorous.  As I walked out onto the lawn to get him, I heard a thump and then a very large doe snorted at me and thundered by, not five feet away.  Albert, being old and deaf and a bit senile at this point was utterly clueless as to what had happened. I think too he's losing his night vision.

This morning I heard a doe again, snorting and 'barking' the way they do,  and when I went out, there was Albert, again sitting on the driveway while four large does took off for the woods.  He has been a thorn in the side for generations of deer, for 16 years.  Why, I do not know.  And Im just concerned that they may mistake him, as a friend said when I told her, for a pile of marshmallows left on the ground.  Or for a little white monster who is about to attack them.  Or for the one obstacle between them and the new hydrangea bush I planted last summer.

Happy Fourth

Wood day

8 cords, delivered.  3 cords more or less, left from last year.  Nice view from the kitchen roof, though.

Last night, in a fit of laziness and familiarity,  I tried to go down the steep back stairs in the dark rather than use a flashlight or turn on the light at the top of the stairs.  At the bottom I missed the last step before the landing and narrowly missed creating a new door to the outside.  Nothing broken, but it annoyed the knee, the ankle, and put more stress on my hip than anyone with osteo likes to contemplate.  But still upright, as they say, and still breathing. 

In thinking about that, I am once again reminded how quickly a single incident or misplaced focus can change our lives, sometimes forever.  A fall on the ice, and you end up with a fractured hip.  Turning right at a busy intersection you are rear ended by someone who is more interested in texting than driving, thereby shortcircuiting whatever was going to happen next and altering a great chunk of your life in the process.  And his.  Taking the corner on your favorite walk and see, coming toward you, someone from your distant past. 

And, of course, there are those minor things we do that alter, at least on a temporary basis, the patterns we have sewn into our brain, like inner pockets on a winter coat.  Turn left instead of right, and you avoid that accident entirely, and never know it even might have happened;  take a new route to work, get hopelessly lost, and in the process lose a lucrative contract,  one which could have helped you pay off the last of your mortgage.

We can't know what might happen, and can't live our lives in dread or anticipation of every turn, every step, every encounter.  I don't hold with the "pre-planned ' life in which we have no control over anything (and which, after all, turns us into nothing more than stage actors reading scripts),  I guess all you can do is remember to turn the lights on at the top of the stairs and pay attention on the way down.  No matter where it leads.

Archives 2

POEMS AND APPLE TREES HAVE A LOT IN COMMON

Prune to keep the center open

to light and air,

cut away anything that does not bear fruit

remove every branch crossing another

and all water shoots

that might appear.

A fruiting branch is always doing

something besides what it’s doing

at the moment. Cut away

this year’s blossom and you’ve killed

next year’s fruit waiting just behind the bud.

At any point step back, consider

any cut you plan to make, reconsider

how the thing will look with one less branch.

Every cut redefines the tree,

the blossom, and the fruit

it will bear next fall.

Question of the Day

Why do people slow at a green light?  Do they think it might suddenly turn red?
I will admit to now and then stopping for one, to let it cross the street,  but generally I prefer to take my chances with it, and sail right on through. 

Google strikes again

nine days ago I asked a simple question in the forums.  It's still sitting there waiting to be noticed.
So.  I contacted AskGoogle Answers.  oh boy, they said, we can answer this.  For $28.  I don't think so.

from the archives

SOFTLY, SOFTLY

this is the way the world truly ends
not with a whimper or a cry
but a sound of regret of the kind you make
when you see the car slide over the cliff
and there's nothing you can do
but be glad you got the dog out
even though you lost all your luggage
this is the way the world ends
not with a bang but with the sound
of a door closing softly against the frame
and you only know it's shut by turning the knob
finding it locked from the other side

this is the way worlds end sometimes
with all the finality of breaking glass
in the next room and you don't know what broke
but you've got a pretty good idea
who'll have to clean it up later 

sometimes it's entropy that does us in
everything grinding to a halt
everyone glad when it's over
the books divided up, drapes taken down
the for sale sign removed at last
but sometimes it's sharper, like the cut
from a good knife and you don't even know
you're bleeding until you look down
and then it starts to hurt
and you know it will hurt until it stops
and there's not a damn thing
you or anyone else can do but wait it out
hold on tightly until the bleeding stops
and then not move until the throbbing stops
not look until the cut heals
and you're left with only a little scar on the outside
turning white and beginning to fade

Washday scraps

My new washer came with a stern injunction to never ever never wash clothes that have been badly doused with cooking oil.  The reason given, "it could catch fire". 

Yes, indeed. Open the lid and there are all those clothes sloshing away, burning merrily...

This is what happens...

when you let what wants to grow, grow there.  This is truly a wildflower garden  right now,  with columbine, wild mustard, and clover and even a bit of vetch, as long as it behaves itself.  

Mr. Bear gets ready for summer

Folks is strange

You gotta love tech forums.  We have been stravaging about the net trying to find a solution to a problem we had been having with the new graphics card, which performed very well except when I hit Worlds of Warcraft, and it would regularly boot me from the game.  It's called a minidump, and you get a nasty bit of blue screen commentary and various other things that turn out to be related to one small bit of the chip misfiring in some way.  I posted, first, the questions about it,  and finally the fact that we solved the problem by removing the card entirely.

On two different forums I have been met with outrage, sarcasm, and thinly veiled hostility and I have no idea why.  It's kinda funny, because only one person suggested just removing or changing the chip.  Both suggest (still) that I should uninstall everything and start over. Oh, I don't think so.    And what is interesting, no one has said, good job, Im glad you solved the problem.  *g*

skunks

Woke up somewhere in the middle of the night with the odor of arguing skunks wafting through the open windows (although skunkiness can waft through solid concrete, if it chooses), so I went down and closed the cat door both ways, shut all the windows, and came back to bed.  The smell is still out there this morning so either a skunk is lying dead somewhere within a hundred mile radius, or the skunk or skunks left their mark on the old fallen timbers of the barn.  Which means we will have it forever.  Better than under the porch, or out in the shed, for sure. 

I often wonder what one does if a skunk DOES get into the house.  Flee?  Hope he remembers how he got in so he can get out? 

oy the pain, the pain

New computer is up and running, after two days of serious shouting (we seem to do that a lot) and blind alleys and dark mysterious adventures.  Right now it's downloading Worlds of Warcraft, so Im still wedded to this one.  The final step will be moving the email over, and then shut this down.  Sob.  It may be slow, it may be cranky and noisy (this new one isn't all that quiet, btw),  but like that old raggy blanket that sheds more than cats do,  it's familiar and known.  

We will live through this, yes we will. 

Deep jungle pool

Yum. Tire water. 

This seems to work

Ive found that ticks do not like baby powder.  I powder the daylights out of me, and rub it into any clothing Im going to wear outside in the garden, and not only do they not bite,  they dont even cling.  Yesterday was the acid test,  since I was digging in the garden, working with old leaves and last year's hay bales, and I only saw one all day. Nothing came in with me.  

either they don't care for the smell, or the taste, or the texture, but for whatever reason,  it works.  Its also cheaper and safer than chemical/commercial sprays, and it doesnt permanently stain your clothes the way aromatic oils and Skin-so-soft does.

Space and Time

Clothes expand to fit the available space.  The drawer that once held six sweatshirts and four pairs of jeans now will barely hold six tshirts, and only if they're 'store folded' and precisely stacked. 

Time shrinks to two thirds of what you need to get the job done, no matter how much extra time you allotted.  And if you're outside painting,  it will rain. 

Beware of anyone who says, "here, let me get that  for you" in  a parking lot.  They will be guaranteed to grab the bag with the bread in it,  and then throw the canned goods on top of that...

Good reads

I tend to shy away from popular fiction  by prolific writers, simply because it's not always that good, and for as much as 25 bucks a book, it had better be magnificent and rarely is.  However, someone gifted me with a John Grisham book this week, "The Street Lawyer" and once I started it, had to just plow right through.  Read it in one day, if not one sitting.   Not a huge amount of grue (some writers, like Patricia Cornwell, seem to be of the splattered brains genre, and it gets wayyy overdone),  and a good steady march to the end.

I have reached  the fifth book in the six-novel "Lucia" series,  always fun,  although by this time parts of it are becoming tedious--been there, done that about nine times--but it was and is still fun to read. 

And a stunning book, gently written, by Gail Tsukiyama, "The Samurai's Garden" about a 20 year old Chinese boy who is sent to Japan for his health in 1937 just after the begining of the Sino-Japanese war, and what happens to him there.  It's the kind of novel that stays with you afterwards, for quite some time.

Garden 2012

Potatoes are in,  the poppies are up and growing fiercely;  worked all day yesterday and today to start the process for next year's potato crop.  This time I'm experimenting with turning the spot into a one year intensive compost bin, and then next spring spreading it about with a nice layer of older compost and hay on top.  They seem to do extremely well growing in almost straight compost, which is just very rich dirt, without the packing factor.  It usually has the consistency of coarse sand, which makes it unsuitable as hilling up material for crops that need it,  but the yield so far has been very impressive.

Having neglected the garden for two years, for various reasons,   it will take most of this summer to get it back in shape.  And me.

Time flies like a banana, or maybe an orange

It's been quite awhile since I got this computer,  and we are in the process of assembling the bits so my husband can put together a new one for me.  Curious,  I had him check the records for when I got this.  2003.  It's done well, outlived two printers and four monitors, two UPS systems and several CD drives.  In the winter it makes growly noises if the room is too cold when I turn it on, and there is a hum thats loud enough to be annoying (like whispering in the next room) and also leaves a ringing in my right ear by the end of the day.

'Tis time, I'd say.

ick

ticks

I got up this morning to find three on the cushion I use on the computer chair, and three more in the bathtub.  Enough, already.

Dawn

This morning I realized that it was 4:45 and the sky was light enough to see across the yard.   So I got up to celebrate.  There was a symphony out there; chickadees and titmice, a pileated woodpecker in the woods, hooting, and at the edge of the field one lone woodthrush, welcoming the dawn with the rest of us.

Two nights ago when the spring moon rose, my husband took a couple photos of it (my camera isnt quite powerful enough to make it look like anything) and then later on that night discovered that people were posting the 'same shot'.  I think he was a bit disappointed to realize that there is only one view we ever see of the moon, and it's always the same. *s*

Yesterday was my first real day in the garden, and about a half hour in I got a little scared, partly because there was so much to do, and partly because it was unpleasant, physically.  So I had a bit of a talk with me
about just doing the work in front of me, not the stuff Over There,  and instead of worrying about creaks and twinges, just keep going.  and sure enough,  I felt better at the end of it all than I thought I would,  and in the afternoon the time spent was more productive. 

My Now project is to spread about four inches of hay mulch evenly over the new potato bed.  Tomorrow I will stop on my way home from Concord and pick up about 1 1/2 pounds of seed potatoes.  It doesnt sound like much, but we get such a good yield from this raised bed/heavily mulched technique I expect maybe 30 pounds or more.  Fingers crossed, of course, as they always are with garden crops.  

And Where the Hell Have YOU Been

4:30 this morning I opened the door to let the cats out, heard a squeaky noise;  and there was Sammy.  Wet, a bit skinnier, and quite eager, after four days, to get in out of the rain and the cold.  He is now sleeping it off on the big pillow in the front room.
And that explains why Toby has been so forlorn, and restless.  Sammy was Away, but not Gone.  About all we can do is accept that this is probably going to be the norm for him, and keep our fingers crossed.   Cuffy did this the first day I let him out,  just took off for two days and finally came back wet and hungry and obviously upset.  I think they try to get "home" and realize that home is what they are running FROM, not to.  The miserable cold rain probably helps, too.

So, for now, he's with us again.

Sammy

Two full days and nights, and he's not been back.  Usually when one cat disappears like this the others don't even blink.  They know the living cat, and apparently once a cat dies,  it's out of their memory banks.  This time Toby is looking lost, and subdued; then I realized that he and Sammy were, if not littermates,  at least bonded males, which is the next thing to it, and he is wondering, perhaps, what's missing in  his life right now.  Damn. 

gratitude and attitude

My uncle and  his wife were foster parents,  from the time their first child was born until they adopted the last foster child and saw him married,  a span of maybe 40 years,  providing an endless stream of short term and long term care for kids who had been put in foster care for varying lengths of time.   The kids were treated as their own,  disciplined and loved, fed and clothed.   When one of the boys decided he was going to 'escape' and took his sister with him, down over the second story porch roof and out,  my uncle said, "damn fool, we never lock the door from the inside, all he has to do is walk out."  He never expected gratitude, and Im not sure he knew he should.  Many people in that situation would have demanded it.

I think we tend to make that same mistake with the animals who live with us.  We somehow expect gratitude because it's our choice to house and feed them, keep them warm and safe and give them the affection they so obviously need.  It's asking a lot of an animal.  Not all animals respond, nor should they.  For whatever  reason, partly in their makeup and partly in their past,  they respond forever as slightly feral creatures,  unable to lay down that fear of the human.  

Sammy has taken to staying out all night.  The cat door is on what we call 'single trap' which means "one way--in only"  every night.  It's been cold this week, down near 30.  I worry about hypothermia, and critters.  But he  seems to be getting further and further from me, rather than closer.  This is the second night he's spent out there somewhere,  and Im afraid one night he won't be back.

Comfort is a full pint of Rocky Road icecream

There are some colds that arrive gently,  giving you time to lay in a supply of easy reads,  a pint of something sinfully good and  extra soft tissues...you have about three days to prepare the special fluffy pillows, warn folks that you'll be unavailable  for a week,  and you can lie back at last to wait it out.  Not because you are dreadfully ill, but because we all need a bit of pampering now and then.

And then there is  the kind that hurtles across the landscape like an over enthusiastic labrador retriever,  and within a hour of that first sneeze you have gone back to bed, afflicted with chills and fever and skin that hurts to the touch.  Your brain stops working,  there aren't enough hours in the day to sleep in,  and at certain key moments death seems desirable.    On the plus side,  after the first 24 hours,  you suddenly realize that you are no longer in agony,  the sun is shining,  and by golly,  there may be hope yet.

Bobcat

the critter not the vehicle

The animal who is supposed to be nocturnal, shy of humans, and woods-bound.  This morning there he was, crossing the driveway,  heading on down the road. 

my apologies for the strange streaks, those are bush branches between the bobcat and I.  In all my years of living around here I have heard one once and never seen any.  Now in the space of a month I've seen it twice,  going on about his business as if he owned the joint.  I cannot tell you how exciting stuff like this is

Change for the sake of change/rant

Adopted people have difficulty with changes; some of us can deal with Big Events, and yet the small ones lay us waste.   Some folks can handle personal changes (new hair style, different shopping mall) but go to pieces when they lose perceived control over something like a TV show they enjoy or a site online that they somehow feel and have been told is "theirs".  

Over the past year Google has been shifting the furniture around,  making it harder and harder to settle in.  Now they are taking all the draperies and rugs and revamping even the looks of the place.  Rumor has it the whole joint will have a new coat of paint soon.

Just about the time I get used to one way of working in here they change it again.  Mostly, I think,  because they can.  The options they give us are somewhere between few and none,  and anyone who has learned the hard way what "edit" means on a Google post or blog never touches that button again.  Google uses the term to mean "delete forEVER".  And they do.

And every change they make seems to slow the load time, the post time, even the typing time (I used to have an old Word Processing program on my 3.1 that I could outtype,  and this is now doing the same thing) has slowed to a crawl.

I got 3 years invested in this, and I would have no idea how to move it, if thats even possible.  I'm stuck. 

Sorry about the absence,  it's been a strange month, hard to settle into, I guess.  But the days get longer at each end,  the new guys are losing weight and looking more cat like and less beachball like, and its a joy to see them streaming across the yard, running  flat out just because They Can.  That somehow makes the breaking in time worth the patience.  It is, after all, about them.  Im just the doorholder.

Sammy's big adventure

Yesterday I decided if he wants to go out, Ill just leave the door open and see what happens.  A half hour later I found him sitting on the porch wiith Albert our tour guide cat.   He came in after a few naps in the leaves, a thorough inspection of the main shed, and serious tree study.
This morning I let him out at dawn,  and a few hours later I found him here:

Looks like he owns the joint doesnt he.  Toby, who seems the most aggressive of the two, only this morning went out and came back in at full speed, apparently terrified of the bird song and the space, which to an indoor cat must be agoraphobia inducing, big time.
Took him three tries before he could handle it.  I seriously don't know if these cats have ever seen grass, or felt wind, or walked on anything but flooring.  But I think they'll be fine now.  Its been a long slow trip for both of them (and for us),  and while we still cannot pick up either one, maybe in time, now, they will trust us.   Who knows.

And at last, Toby.  He is trying to chase all his new play toys, one leaf at a time. 

One Too Many Mornings and this is the first

"Down the street the dogs are barking and the day is getting dark" (Bob Dylan)

Tried to find a link to the original online but it's just not there.  The point was to be, that there are days like yesterday and Friday that always remind me of this song, (which tends to send me right into a catatonic stare);  a chilly day, but with more than a hint of spring in it, and a feel  to the air that winter lacks.  It's as if the air was more alive, primordial-soupier, preparing us for what comes next.

You can, indeed, hear dogs along the road,  car doors slamming shut, voices if the wind is right.  Sound travels over water to an embarrassing degree as anyone on a lake will tell you;  and on damp early spring air much the same thing happens, especially if the wind happens to be from the south.  Trees have yet to leaf out,  so there's nothing to slow the sounds down. 

Anyone who remembers this song knows exactly what I  mean, and anyone who doesn't, well, I can't explain it. Deliver me, always, from music in a minor key, even when it isn't.

I've begun walking after way too long away.  I think it's the only way to defeat the Fat Lady inside.  If nothing else, I will be a buff Fat Lady on the outside.  My husband said  he will loan me his GPS so I can keep track of the track I make in the woods, which almost always looks like the drunkard's path by the time I'm done. 

You forgot to change your clocks, didn't you.  *g*

spring things

Daylight savings time is coming (or is it leaving, I can never be sure which), and on Sunday we will all dutifully srping ahead (and how appropriate for Leap Year) into almost Spring. The good news is,  that extra hour of daylight in the afternoon, which means a whale of a lot more to us northerners than it does to people for whom the daylight they are saving--or losing--barely moves the needle.  However, I have been enjoying waking to an already lightened sky, and will be plunged back into 5 AM darkness.  sigh. 

Went for a walk yesterday and found reasonably fresh tracks in the snow, running a very long way in a very straight line beside a stonewall.  The size of this cannot be accounted for snowmelt,  because these have been in the shade of the wall all day, in the woods, only just beginning to get some light in late afternoon.

that boot, btw, is mine and it's a good five inches across. 

How quickly we forget

Our last (and only) major storm was October 31;  it was taken with calm resignation, and we all braced for a very long very trying winter.   (shrug) It happens.   However, it is now nearly the end of February and that resgnation has been replaced by a certain amount of glee that we may have been missed this year.

Easy to forget that not too many years back we had a foot of snow once a week for the entire month of March.  This, by the way, was nearly shoulder high.    Now we're seeing  a fine edge of panic on the weather forecasts, with storm warnings and travel advisories and such,  and people are no doubt scrambling to find the roof rakes and shovels they put away two weeks ago...

                                                                   

Bread for a cold winter day

Report from early spring in the middle of winter

The chickadees have changed into their spring songs, and the bluebirds are back, as are the robins.  This afternoon there were four tom turkeys in the field, practicing fans and strutting.  One of them, poor fella, just could not get his fan to work.  He tried, oh didnt he try, but the best he could do was  a back ruffle.   It was embarrassing to watch.

And this morning we saw a bobcat in the back field,as calm and casual as any housecat, just sitting.  He was too far away to photograph quickly, and by the time I got him in view he decided it was time to move on.  Not running, just walking away.   In all the years I've lived here, this is my first sighting.  =)

We now  have mud, with about two inches of snow sinking into it. 

And I made 6 loaves of bread.

All in all,  a pretty good day--except, maybe for the mouse that died in one of my kitchen walls a few days ago...

The cold

Last week we were invited to a birthday party for my husband.  Unbeknownst to us, the hostess had a cold.  She only told us much later, and said, "but its okay, I took cold meds."

What she and so many people do NOT realize about such things is that they relieve your symptoms and "let you get back to work" is that while you're not coughing and sneezing, you are still contagious.  So in a  way the cold that would have kept you home and safely away from the rest of us is now out there in the workforce, or at the teacher's desk, or breathing on your 85 year old granny.

Her family is now covered with colds, and has no idea how they got them.  My husband came down with his yesterday.  Sigh.

Something

In writing, and in my case poetry, when the brain goes on hiatus for a period of time,  there is always the fear that when the writing comes back  you will have lost a step or two.  What I've discovered over the years that even after twelve years of basically no-writing,  unlike ballet or other physical skills that require constant practice,  the brain picks up where you left it, and that is always a relief.  And a joy. 

I want to post this, not because it's good, necessarily,  but because for the first time in a very long time I have written something that I actually wanted to revise.

(later, much much later)  Let's just say this has been a classic exercise in putting wings on a rock and maybe if I throw it enough times it will learn to fly...


at the darkest part of the night
when the moon has set and the stars
weep with weariness
he leans over the side of the boat
flirting with his center of gravity
looks down into the terrifying cold and dark
in the primal part of the ocean
where light
never reaches the bottom
not knowing why but knowing he must,
not knowing what he's looking for
only that it's there
somewhere
calling him from a long way down
every night he goes out armed
with periscopes
until he finds what he was searching for
leans too far into it
and becomes part of the ocean,
part of the dark and the cold


--------------------------------------------------------------

Siren


after the moon has set and the stars
begin to shimmer with weariness
he leans over the side of the boat
flirting with his center of gravity
looks down into a place where light
never reaches the bottom

not knowing why but knowing he must,
not knowing what he's looking for
only that it's there
somewhere
beckoning from a long way down

every night he goes out armed
with periscopes
until he finds what he was searching for
leans too far into it
becomes part of the ocean,
part of the dark and the cold

--------------------------------------------------


Siren (3)


he leans over the side of the boat
flirting with his center of gravity
looks down into a place where light
never reaches the bottom

not knowing why but knowing he must,
not knowing what he's looking for
only that it's there
somewhere
beckoning from a long way down

every night after the moon has set
and the stars seem to shimmer with weariness
he goes out armed with periscopes
and sounding lines
until he finds what he was searching for
leans too far into it
becomes part of the ocean,
part of the reflection
of stars on dark water

----------------------------------------------


Siren (4)

not knowing why but knowing he must,
not knowing what he's looking for
only that it's there
somewhere
beckoning from a long way down

every night after the moon has set
and the stars seem to shimmer with weariness
he goes out armed with searchlights
and sounding lines
leans over the side of the boat
looking down into a place
where light never reaches the bottom

he finds what he was searching for
leans too far into it
becomes part of the ocean,
part of the reflection
of stars on dark water

Helpful hint of the day

Never lick a hot knife

it's about this diet thing

The idea is to lose weight, not suffer in the process.  That means, you find foods that work, and stick with them, because you KNOW you're gonna be eating this way, ideally, for a very long time. 

To that end I've been using a lot of brown rice,  fruit, and veggies.  I needed something that would make brown rice palatable,  and I may just have hit on it. 
One cup of dry rice will cook up to two cups of cooked, and that means I only have to do this every third day. 
-----------------------------------------------
1 cup, brown or white rice, 1 cup of water with 2 chicken boullion cubes dissolved.
a pinch of white wine
While the rice is cooking, I cut up about a cup of cooked chicken thighs, and defrost a cup or more of veggies.  Throw all that in the rice when it's done .  When you serve it, add two or three slices of chopped apple (really) and two or three slices of chopped up cheese as a topping.  A little salt, a bit of pepper, and you're good to go.  And sometimes, if I'm feeling adventurous, I dump a Tablespoon of Sweet Baby Ray's Honey Barbecue Sauce on it.  Gooood stuff. 

Rice cooked and stored in the fridge starts to lose its interest after two days, so I don't like to cook more than I can consume in that period.

its been a slow snowy day

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW4_ma67Kyk&feature=related

eagle owl video

http://www.dogwork.com/owfo8/

hidden snake alert

Anyone on Google is now, it seems, subject to a sweeeeeping amount of inspection by the powers that should not be, as to ads.  What they call  "tailoring' to our "needs" is nothing more than a poor excuse for shoving multitudes of google ads at us,  all across all google apps, domains, sites, etc.  So no matter where you go, there they are, waving themselves at you. Buy this, go here, go there, click ME.  
It sounds good on the surface,  they say its so they can find the ads for products you love or are interested in, and give you 'options' to learn more.  Pity the person who clicks on anything they are merely curious about, but decide they don't like what they see.  
Google has decided, if you click, you must be interested. 

And I found this photo from last year's garden to be most appropriate.

Addicts Anonymous

This morning I was visiting one one of my daily must-see places, and at the top of the  page was an ad for a small online game.  The promo said, in effect,  'a game to help distract you when you crave a cigarette".   I havent smoked in 17 years, and suddenly I wanted a smoke so badly it was scary.  Still do.

A lot of people have a tough time, perhaps they join Smoke Enders, they tell the whole world about it,  and of course everyone then begins to keep tabs.  "Hey, Pete, how's the smoking going?"  and Pete sits there for five minutes, white knuckled, while that terrible urge fades.

When I quit, it was cold turkey;  I was so sick anyway I didn't even want a smoke.  Good time as any, I thought.   But I never told anyone, not for at least six months, until I could get my own cravings to a manageable level.  And for the longest time  after that I would  now and then get a 'wave' of longing.  At a stop light,  with my coffee in the morning.  The body, like Pepperidge Farm, remembahs.

'tis okay

still here
not movin' much
but definitely here

been cold
been colder
now its snowing

we lived through xmas
ignored New Year's
now we get to live through wintah

two months and a bit over
and it will be spring
I'm ready

The Nefarious Fish and Game Folks

Last week I read that F/G was running a turkey count in the state, starting Jan. 1.  Cool,  I thought.  Lord  knows we have enough turkeys around here for anyone to appreciate.  So I went to the website and looked the survey stuff over.  While I was there I started wondering why F/G wanted a survey of turkeys,  since anyone with a window and four square feet of yard has probably seen dozens of them.  

Then I got it.  They want all of us to tell them how many dozens of turkeys we are seeing, when and where.  F/G is in the business of managing wildlife,  and making money for the state and controlling populations of deer, bear, moose and turkeys.  They are the ones, after all, who gave us all these turkeys in the first place, ten or so years ago,  and the success has been phenomenal.   And when they discover that oh golly we have Too Many Turkeys let's cull the herd,  it will probably be open season on them for most of the year.

I'm keeping my forty turkeys to myself.  Yessir.  They want to count them, they have to go through me first.

Mr. Bear

He has wanted to help for a very long time, and he's been so good lately I decided he'd earned the right.  This is his favorite hat and tie.  The tie was from a friend who makes leather ties, and it suits him perfectly.  You can't see, but it has bite marks on it, since he likes to nibble it when he's thinking.

He was a rescue bear, from a gift shop.  He was on the top shelf of a display filled with bears and other assorted animals, and when I saw him I knew he was just what I didnt know I needed until then. 

He has his own tray table, and a large glass of bear juice every morning with his toast.  He's a bit messy about the juice, so I always serve towels too. 

Another friend made him a furry tail, since he was a Manx Bear, and had  none of his own.  He said he always felt the lack, even though he knew it wasn't his fault, and when he got his new tail he was very happy indeed.  He kept switching around very fast to try to see it,  and nearly hurt himself, so I taught him how to use the mirror.  As he said later, it wasn't the tail, so  much as the idea of it.  And of course he was right...

Merry Christmas

Shortest Day Longest Night

Is today.  Now we start tunneling  upward, toward the light.


winter solstice


last evening
the sun went down
like gold poured
across the sky
this morning
it rose behind a carpet
of sullen
grey and the snow
began to fall

The Story Man

My dad was a volatile man;  in those days he was considered quick tempered.  Now we have a word for it;  bipolar.  And like most bipolars,  he had an equal measure of charm,  which he used to great effect.   He was good with kids;  they adored him, and he them.  He knew how to talk to them at some common level, instinctively including them in his conversations, so that no one got left out.  And part of that charm was his innate skills as a story teller. 
Some of the stories were the ones he told me at bedtime,  which ended up being so silly and so right that instead of calming me down would send both of us into gales of giggles.  He was often banished from the room when that happened, and I could hear my mother lecturing him about 'getting the child all stirred up'...but he was so far ahead of the child dev people it was scary.  Without a lick of training he knew to include my name (used in the third person, of course, oh what a coincidence) and that of an imaginary friend named Iggy.  Why  Iggy, I have no idea. And they were full of magic, and seekrit caves,  special levers to pull and special buttons to push to open the next room or next surprise, and I realize now they never really ended, because he had no idea how to get out of them-- they would always be continued until tomorrow night...

And some of the stories were those he told to other people;  "How I almost burned the neighborhood down" and what happened  "When we bought the billy goat".  I'm sure over the years they changed slightly with the telling, but by and large they were the same stories each time,  and I never tired of them.  He had me, as well as new listeners, on the edges of our seats,  and I finally realized after growing up what an amazing tale teller he really was.

It would have been wonderful to have a tape recorder then,  but it's hard to catch spontaneous on tape,  and he was such a  ham he would have been talking for the tape and not for his audience.  I've heard people do that, and it's almost always a disappointment.  You dont see  the face, the sparkle, the body language.  So best to remember what I remember of the good stuff and let the rest go.

new ways to annoy a reader

Now, I understand that Marcia Muller has been around a long time, so this isnt something new in the world, as far as writing goes, only to me.  I've noticed in many of her books (someone was cleaning out a book stash and gifted me with a stack of these) she uses some very strange word constructions, based, no doubt, on the way English is Spoke, not  how it's written. 
I'd've,  should've,  words're, people're (as in "people are strange")

And now that Ive seen her doing it, I notice that other newer writers're doing it too. Wish I'd not've seen that, it's threatening to make me crazy and stop reading her stuff, which isn't half bad, even if it does get a bit complicated...

Sue Grafton annoys in another way, by her incredible use of the personal pronoun.  "I walked out my door, taking my bag and my gun with me, went down my steps to my new car, got in, turned on the key, and drove away." 

Marcel The Shell

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/video/marcel-the-shell-1

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/video/marcel-the-shell-2


Listen to them in order, and carefully.  Sometimes that breathy little voice gets lost.  The second one is more poignant than the first, and lingers, for some reason. 

Today is the last day of hunting season

last night:

this morning:

it would appear after a certain amount of scuffling and wing flapping last evening the 40 or so turkeys and the

14 or so deer (not all seen) have decided group feeding is best accomplished in separate groups... I'd say F&G has done themselves proud this time.  The turkeys, gods  help them all, have become a public nuisance.  Good for the turkeys.               

CATch-22

When I got my two latest cats, Toby and Sam, they were enrolled  in HomeAgain, a microchipping concern, and it was done by the shelter as a courtesy.  My first few emails from them suggested I should register, yadda yadda.  I never bothered, because I could see this 'free" service had dollar signs all over it.  and frankly if I lost a cat up here, they would be tracking a fisher cat to find the microchip. 

So I decided, today, to register just because I could.  They tell me my address is already in the database, 'did you forget your password".  Hmm. maybe I did register.  So I hit "send my password" and I am told my email address is not in their database.  bwahahahahaha sob sob

If my addy is not in their database how do they manage to send me emails??   Awaiting the explanation from customer service on this one.  Breathlessly.

This is why...

I save the goldenrod all summer.  When the monarchs migrate from here the last thing standing is the goldenrod, and this is what they prefer, on their way down the road, and out to wherever they go.
All summer they feed on milkweed which apparently makes them taste just awful--and their caterpillars       as well--but in the fall they need the sugar that the goldenrod  has, apparently, to sustain them to the next resting place.  I leave stands of this stuff wherever it comes up, and my reward is seeing this.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

     There's nothing like looking out your front door and seeing 25 turkeys looking back...

Duck Season! Wabbit Season!

Hunting season is in full bang.  Some of our 'Posted" signs have been quietly removed, there are now three tree stands just beyond  the edge of our property, all facing our way.  We have called the police about someone hunting in our woods (wow is that gun loud),  and I have had our first verbal scuffle with a very defensive Fish and Game person. 

Looks to be an interesting November.

Things no one says any more

"Oh, damn, I just ran out of film"

"Oh, what a good shot, but I've only got two pictures left on the roll"

"Will my typewriter keep you awake?"

"Looks like I need a new ribbon"

"Where's the carbon paper?"

"Dont'cha just hate those encyclopedia salesmen"

"Our tv antenna blew down"

Comfort food for the weary soul

 my mantra at this time of year is, only six weeks more and then, by jingo, the days start getting longer.  My long kitchen has a window on the west, and some time in January the sun has moved around just enough that the light comes in obliquely, leaving a sunny patch on the north wall.  This  year Im planning on seeing that happen,  and take note of it. 

Little things, perhaps, but there's a lot of good eatin' in them sometimes.

War as the great leveler

if you look closely at the range on that chart between, say, 1920 and 1945, you can see that the population of the world had virtually leveled off.  Between the two World Wars, the depression, the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918 and Hiroshima,  we, as a collective "we" had managed to lower the population of the world to almost an even  birth/death ratio.   Men on a battlefield are a double problem, arent they.  One, they die, and two, they don't go home to produce the next generation. 

then and now

when my mother was born the population was here

37 years later when I was born it had only risen by a little less than four hundred million

and since then it has just about tripled

three of the countries with extremely high birth rates--Brazil, China, and India--have all found novel ways to reduce their own meteoric growth;  China has the One Baby law,  India is being reshaped by women who have been taught that sex is necessary but not 'nice' and are passing that along to their daughters;  and in Brazil voluntary sterilization is becoming the norm, almost simultaneously across the country.  A woman has one child and requests a tubal ligation at the same time.  As they put it, " the factory is closed".
We won't live to see the impact, but in 20 or 30 years, if things continue this way, the population growth could very well level out as older, more populous generations die off.

There are all kinds of revolutions, and they often start at the bottom because people want a better life for themselves and their children.

Winter Weather Event

there's a chopping block under all of this--last night it was pretty impressive, like a big white toadstool

early this morning it had grown substantially

the cats insist, however, that they Must Go Out even though they Go Out one door and race for the cat door to come back in again,  Just because they can, I suppose.

At least the wood is under cover

Sometimes around this neck of the country you get an early snow and then it melts and the memory fades until mid or late November.  We have even had snowless Christmases.  But this year it seems we have turned the corner into winter rather sharply.  Weather elves are nearly peeing with joy over the prospect of a blizzard (or near enough to count as one) tonight,  high winds,  lots and lots of snow.  Some phrases that seem to be embedded in almost every weather report so far:  'major winter weather event",  "a foot or more of snow is expected"  "eastern seaboard" (which means the SnowGod is really furious with all of us) and my favorite,  "maybe 4 to 6 inches".  I'm putting all my money on that last one.

What is interesting is seeing the yellow maple in the yard shedding enough leaves to hide the snow underneath it.

7 billion and counting

http://www.populationaction.org/Articles/Whats_Your_Number/Summary.php

Harvey, thank you for this.  It's slightly interactive, and interesting to see where you
are in relation to everyone else. 

yesterday and today

Our local wild turkeys, raiding the garden.  there were at least thirty, and if you  peer around the right side of the picture you can see em

sigh.  so much for October's bright blue skies

the Drawer of Possibilities

Everybody has at least one,  some of us have several. 

My major Drawer  has a few canning covers and lids, bandaids, an empty small flashlight, two tape measures,  Qtips, toothpicks, stray plastic bags, a baggie full of odd screws and square handcut nails awaiting the right moment when the container that does exist for them finally surfaces.  Way in the back is a marble pastry rolling pin which I have never used and never will but it was a gift, so there it stays; a pair of rubber gloves, and one garden glove waiting to be reuinited with its mate. I havent the heart to tell it its mate fell in the stove and burned up.  There's a badly scratched magnifying glass and two pair of scissors that really need to be put out of their misery.  Milk bottle caps, the top to a salt shaker that will never shake salt again..  several short pieces of dowel and one really nice longer one.  An entire box of crayola crayons, suitable for deja vu.  A deck of playing cards from the days when solitaires were spread out on the kitchen table instead of on the net.  And in the furthest back corner a reluctantly placed container of D-con, because the mice like to use that drawer too, for nesting materials and sometimes for nesting.  Mouse surprises is not the way I like to start the day.

I just realized that if that drawer were to be mysteriously looted one night the only things I might miss would be the crayons, the tape measures and perhaps the bandaids.   Something to think about.

Writing Cycles

Being a writer, and a poet, has its enormous pleasures and perks.  But it also has enormous drawbacks which most of us, as writers, seem to understand as part of the process and part of the privilege.  And when you have a distinct and goofy kind of writing cycle it gets bumpy at times.

Years ago the moderator on a poetry board  posed a question to the people who were in there.  What kind of writing cycle, if any, do you go through?   Everyone who responded got the question immediately.  One man said he wrote for six months at top speed,  and  for the next six months he could barely form full sentences but he used the time for submitting work.  Another said their cycle was on for a year, off for a year.  Someone else said they had one month cycles of writing and not-writing.  Everybody recognized their own creative rhythms and played into them.  My own is a full seventeen year cycle, like the cicada.  I write like mad for about five years, and for the next twelve decelerate until I'm not writing anything at all.

I know when 'it' has happened quite clearly.  I start to sew. Knit. Weave.  The creative process is still there,  but it's been moved into the physical rather than the literary. And the minute I start thinking about sewing something it's time to shift into that other mode.  I hate it,  but  refuse to scurry around doing journals and dailies and forcing a poem out where none existed.  As far as that's concerned, it seems like beating a weary horse because he won't run no mo'.   It's a fallow period.  Time to let the brain recharge.

One thing it does teach me is patience, and trust in my own creative processes.  It will come back, in a year or two.

thought for the day:

It isnt what you wear, it's how you wear it

Turkey season

Yesterday on one of the back roads I happened to pass a Jeep that was letting off two hunters.  Neither of them would I have wanted in my kitchen, or even strolling across the yard.  Each had an overunder shotgun, capable of bringing down large marauding moose, and were wearing the old red and black check hunting jackets.  As they started toward the edge of the field one was waving his gun around as he walked, swing swing swing.  They kept looking up into the trees as if they expected the turkeys to be roosting up there in the middle of the day.

In this instance my money is on the turkeys. But just to help things along, as I drove by I  hit the horn, for about 600 yards.  Probably nothing more than a gesture, but any turkey strolling about that field might have the sense to head for cover. 

And if nothing else,  I felt it was my little statement about the way of the world when grown men go after the dangerous wild turkey that has been hand fed by the Fish and Game people...some things just feel good when you do them, empty gesture or not

Of rain and music in the key of F

This is not a good day, or even week, to listen to music in a minor key. And so here I am, listening to David Gray,  "Foundling" which seems to be all composed in minor keys.  Something is growing, something wants to be born.

Maybe that inner drought is over. Apres moi, le deluge. Who knows.

Reunions 'r' soooo not Us

Got our invitation to our upcoming 50th highschool reunion.  We both graduated from the same class, so it's a "we" and "us" kinda deal.  It tells us what fun we had in highschool and how it was the core of our teenage (yes she used that word) years.  Good to know that.  Most of the kids went because if you didnt graduate you didnt go to college.  No one I knew was really happy, but I suppose after 50 years a soft pink mist camouflages most of it, and we remember what it should have been, rather than what it really was.


My dad always said, if the sons of bitches can't come and see me when I'm alive,  they don't need to look at me when I'm dead. Closed coffin, please.

I'm pretty much the same way with reunions. Rarely, in fifty years, have I recieved a personal letter from any of them, nor wanted to send one. The kids who stayed in town took jobs here, and I'd run into one of them now and then. Some are neighbors.   Not sure why I should get all fired up to revisit old classmates most of whom didnt like me much then, nor did I them.  Best to stay home and let them have at it in their own way.
I doubt if we'll be missed, except in hindsight, lol.  Closed coffin, please.

food rant

There is no such thing as enough bacon
no such thing as too much cheesecake
or battered shrimp or popcorn with enough butter
or white chocolate Lindt truffles
but possibly you can have too much ice cream
(especially if you have the truffles first)

in case anyone is keeping track

30 pounds of tomatoes will make 14 half pints, and 7 pints of tomato paste.  only took 16 hours.

Autumn colors

Serendipity

Why or how it happens, I have no idea, but I salute it when it drops in.  More than once I've been hearing a song in my  head, over and over, turn on the radio, and there it is, right at the part I'm thinking about.  More than once (in the days of TV you could watch without paying for it) some part of the brain was playing out a more memorable clip of something from MASH or "Frasier" and I'd turn on the TV--and there would be a rerun playing,  of just that episode, and just that place in the episode that had been running in my head.

You encounter a really unusual word or phrase,  and for the next week or so it seems to be everywhere.

Someone says, idly, "whatever happened to..." and names an old friend who has somehow dropped out of sight.  The next day Old Friend appears, walking toward you. Or you see them at a party a week later, they tell you they just came back to town for a few days...

Easy enough to write all of this off as coincidence, but I don't think it is.  It's being where you need to be to have something 'familiar' happen and having the good grace to recognize it for what it is.  I often wonder at all the times that were missed because we turned right instead of left, or decided that day to take one street to work instead of another. 

The mind is a strange and wondrous place, some days it's like looking through a keyhole, getting only glimpses of what's going on in there. Some days the view widens a bit.

progress of a sort

With cats, you have to take them as they are, no matter what baggage they bring with them. We  have had Toby and Sam for five months.  In that time they have progressed from huddled cringing terror (omg here she comes, shes gonna pat me,I just know it, ohhhh make her stop) full throttle escapes whenever a human came within view, from any distance, to resigned acceptance that yeah, the humans are still here;  we don't have to like it, but they do feed us...now and then if I am already In The Room they will hurry through and I pretend I don't see them. 

They have finally reached the stage of trusting cardboard carton "caves" and Toby will play a skillful game of solitaire soccer with almost anything that makes rolly noises on the floor. Sam watches encouragingly.   They recognize, at last, that I am the one who throws stuff for them to play with,  and I am also the one who feeds them. 

The other two cats have accepted them, and share rooms, food bowls, and sleeping cushions although not necessarily at the same time.  And this, after all, is why I keep them.  They needed a safe place, and the other two needed companions.  So this is progress, too. Someday they may let me in and that will be cool.  But for now...

and the hawks

Too far overhead to identify, but definitely hawks and not vultures;  a neighbor called and said, get out there and tell me what these look like to you. The magic of hawks migrating is, when you see a cluster like this they seem to be just milling about in big lazy circles;  no raucous noises, no announcements.  And even as you watch them, they disappear,  in only a minute or two. 

Migrations

This morning when I stepped out to see just how cold it was last night (and thank you to the full moon last weekend) I heard the first geese of the season (at least up here) overhead.  From a distance it always sounds at first like dogs barking, maybe terriers.  Then you realize if it's dogs it's flying, and the brain kicks in and you think, oh, yeah.  always have to look up when they go by, a kind of wistful, silent homage to that journey and the inner need that tells them when to go.
We were late getting the fields mowed and it was a bonus to the Monarchs;  all last week we watched as two and three or sometimes as many as a dozen would feed on the goldenrod before they left.  I always keep a nice sized stand of it by the garden, since it seems this is one of the few things out there blooming in any quantity this time of  year, and they head right for it.  They feed, always moving steadily down the fields, and then follow the driveway and away.
We missed the frost this time (fingers crossed), but I will go out later and pull off all the ripe tomatoes, they should be just about due now.  Serves me right for planting so late, I guess.

Decisions and Choices

Years ago I saw part of a YouTube video involving a kid who's father had pulled the plug  on his Worlds of Warcraft account, without his knowledge and obviously without his consent.  Come home from school, turn on the computer, and the game is wiped.  Where is it?  Where did it go?   I could only watch about a minute of the video,  it was painful to see.  Obviously he was out of control, and perhaps that's why the father did this, he was probably so hooked on the game it was, at least in his dad's mind, the only way to 'teach him' something.

But the video bothered me.  I kept thinking then, and still do, even without knowing the circumstances, surely, surely, there was a better way to have handled this.  Two hours after school, maybe, as a stock boy at the supermarket, anything. Let him earn the money to pay for his own game, Give him back the choice.

And that's what it comes down to.  Choices. When something or someone you love is removed from your life, without mutual consent,  knowledge,  or input from you,  you no longer own that event or the choice. It now belongs to the person who did the removing. And what that kid was reacting to was not the loss of the game, but the loss  of his autonomy;  and his pride, ego, whatever you want to call it, took a heck of a beating.
I do also wonder who turned the video camera on, and why.  And then posted it on YouTube.

Stoves

There are new stoves, and then there are old stoves in new places.  We decided last spring that the stove in the dining room  was getting to the 'must be watched carefully" stage, since the door latches had become worn over time and tended to glide open at odd moments, and the stove itself was just plain wearing out due to old age and steady use. 
Its well over a hundred years old, and has been used for all of that time.  But even the best stove ages.  We are replacing it with a stove we used to use upstairs, and the key in that sentence is "upstairs'...The hard part  was getting it down the stairs without making a sudden new door at the bottom.  The rest is all threshholds and placement.  So far no tempers have been lost, no fingers mashed, no cats terrorized.  A few more days and it should be set up and ready to go.  Hooray for us.

Today I clean the chimney and the stove we're moving out,  still not sure what to do with it.  I'd like to see it go to a good home, but it's been in the family for over a hundred years, and it may just have to become an end table.  *s*

I sincerely hope this is the last major stove move we have to make. We're not gettin any younger, here.

Humming

August always presages fall, and toward the end of the month we are visited with hot clear days and chilly (er) nights.  The July humidity blanket lifts.   Now we see preying mantises, grownup crickets, and bees that also sense the changes, and cannot be dislodged from the flowers they're on, even when you cart them both to the compost bin.  The very earth seems to hum with cicadas, crickets,  and bees.

Insane chipmunks and psychotic red squirrels attempt daily suicide in their mad scrambles to the center line of the road and back, while you slow, swerve, and hope the thing doesnt panic at the last minute and run under your back wheels...the summer birds are gone--quietly this year, not with that raucous gathering and fussing as in previous summers.

Fall's coming. Too soon.