Thursday....winding down the week

   It's been yet another rainy day here on the Prairie.  All day long, a steady soft rain, as the Irish are wont to say.  The best part of it was listening to the birds outside my windows.  At one point my Labrador Retriever was going insane out there, and I stepped out to see what she was after, because she was racing around in a strange manner with her muzzle pointing at the sky.

  My first thought was "Squirrel"  but as I looked up at the top of the big dead tree in my front yard, what did I see but an immature eagle...big, but his head not quite white yet.  No idea how he wound up here, but there he sat, glaring down at the raucous dog.  It was a sight to behold, believe me.  Of course, this picture is NOT what was in my front yard, but it's a great picture and so there you go, lol.

  I sat out in the rocking chair on the front porch for awhile, and saw the first Baltimore Oriole of the year, gorgeous in his brilliant orange and black feathers.  As if this wasn't enough, there were Indigo Buntings, a small flock of about 5 of them, Eastern Bluebirds, Titmouse, Juncko, Robins, a Ladderback Woodpecker, several Red Bellied Woodpeckers, and a host of Finches and Sparrows.  I felt especially blessed to get to watch all this from my vantage point.

 (Here's a red bellied woodpecker on the porch rail)

  This silly chest cold has got me coughing like a fool. Other than the coughing, I feel fine.  And it is worse at night, only sporadic during the day. Bleechhh!

  I baked a lovely chocolate cake today and will bake the Italian Cream Cake tomorrow for the big whoop-te-doo tomorrow night. Decided I might need 2 cakes, because the guest of honor is one popular girl. lol  Hard to say how many people might show up...

  For supper I made a lovely Jamaican pork stew...full of whole garlic cloves, okra, sweet potatoes and succulent chunks of slow cooked pork loin. The key spices are cinnamon  and cumin, and the house smells heavenly as it cooks. It was just what the doctor ordered for a rainy cool day.

  Worked in the garden yesterday, planted squash, butternut and zucchini plants that I started indoors.  I got the Blue Lake Bush Beans planted and got the bed ready for the okra. I put tomato cages around the biggest of the tomatoes, and ran out of cages. I need to buy some new ones anyway, these old ones have just about seen their last growing season. I'm going to buy a different style this time too...these are hard to use after the first year or two. I think these are about 7-8 years old now.Things are looking great out there. I still have a few things to get planted, if the weather would just cooperate a little. I mowed the yards too, before the rains came again. Maybe I'll get out there and take some pictures...the rain is supposed to clear away tomorrow afternoon.

  About time for bed, got a busy day ahead tomorrow.  To sleep...perchance to dream...

Namaste.

 

 
 

January 4, 2010

Brilliant clear cold skies can only mean one thing around here...the eagles are back! From late December until May, the bald eagles come back this way to nest and raise young 'uns all along the Mississippi River. If you have never seen an eagles nest, it's a sight to behold. About the size of a Volkswagen, made with branches and limbs of trees. I could stand up in one and you'd barely see the top of my head. They average about 7 ft across too...it's a trip, I'm telling you. All day long you can watch them soaring and diving, hunting and just making beautiful choreographed poetry across the skies here. I could sit for hours and watch them.


Had a chiropractor appointment this morning. I don't know...I am really a fan of the trade, but I don't know if this is helping me or making me worse. I woke up feeling off kilter to begin with, and by the time he was finished, my head hurt and I was disoriented a little. Maybe disoriented is too strong a word...but I wasn't right. I thought it would pass, but it never did. I called my sponsor and canceled our lunch date, and went straight home and to bed with a heating pad, and I slept for about 3 hours. I have had a headache all day. Picked up the husbandman and we drove to my friends house to pick up their little car that they are so graciously giving me to use while they're gone. I won't have to get up at 5 am anymore to keep the car, at least not for the next few months. How blessed am I to have such friends?? Such generous spirits...it boggles the mind...


Chatted with both my sisters today. The local one wanting to take me to lunch for my birthday on Wednesday, the other recruiting me to help convince the entire family up here to go down south next October for a wedding, saying everyone could stay at her two houses (yes, that's what I said...2 houses) there and wouldn't it be nice for all of us to be there together? And it would mean so much to the bride to be to have all the family there...and of course I'm thinking 2 things: 1) That's a year from now and does anybody really make plans that far in advance? Anything could be happening by then...and 2) If it was meaning so much to her to have all the family there, she would be having it up here where all the family IS, instead of on an Island in Floridas waters...her parents are here, for crying out loud...and none of us are rich. But...I didn't say any of that. I just uh-huh 'd and hmmmm'd.


I am totally digging the Barbara Kingsolver book I bought myself as a reward for finishing Nano...Called The Lacuna. I'm about halfway through it now. I still need a copy of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. It's one I haven't read yet. Also a nonfiction she wrote called Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983. I have read a lot of the essays she has written that have been in the sustainability books we've used for classes too. Love love love her.


Okay...even with the 3 hour nap, I'm thinking of going to bed soon. Time to wrap this up and leave you with a sweet thought by Somerset Maugham:

"It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it."


Namaste.