Thursday Thoughts #12

I learned and did so many new things this week that they will fill my Thursday Thoughts for a long time:

1) One of the most special times wishing someone good night after the traditional two stories, the prayers, the traditional made-up "monkey story" and the kiss good night, is when the little guy calls you back one last time and asks you to give him a dream :-)

2) I had forgotten how special it was to touch the back of a turtle and to let a monarch caterpillar tickle your hand and to let an inch worm tickle your arm.

3) Running and running and running is hard, but it is harder carrying back 30 pounds after all the running is done.

4) The muffled voices of grandpa and grandson as they make putty animals on the deck is like the sound of the ocean waves or the rush of the wind in the trees. Very soothing.

5) If you are going to the toy store to pick out a toy you have to be firm that the little one STAYS in the shopping cart. If you give in and let him free, all is lost.

6) Waking up to the sound of a little voice rather than an alarm clock is golden.

7) Bubble baths in the big tub are very wet even if you are not the one getting the bubble bath. And it is very wicked if your daughter puts some "squirty balls" in the overnight bag.

8) The biggest surprise of all this week was that he never got homesick. Sitting on the couch one evening, he asked my why I have my own house. And one other night he asked about his mommy and daddy. But not once did he fell sad or ask to go home. We are heading out late this afternoon to return to his home after a brief appointment and I will miss him soooooo much! I will miss him from the earth to the sun as he says.

9) I do know how to count my blessings.

Alarm Clocks

Sometimes the stars are aligned perfectly, the gods are satisfied with their place in the universe, Mother Earth is taking a little zenful rest, and the golden energies of karma are everywhere...That is the way things were this morning at 7:00 when my grandson awoke and then crawled into bed with my husband and I. His peaceful chatter about the hummingbird outside the window, the bird song in the trees, the plastic snake on the windowsill and various other miscellaneous bits of news were music...the music of temple bells dancing over the bed.

This lasted about ten minutes and then the kid grew 10 new elbows and at least a dozen more knees...ugh. Time for breakfast.

Passing the Time

Company (my kids) should be here in less than an hour. Hubby has harvested the last batch of crab and I am steaming them as I type this blog. I do not like the sound of scratching claws on the inside of the pot so have retreated upstairs to blog and pretend that I am not actually killing my lunch.

I can no longer view videos in either Firefox or Internet Explorer on my PC and decided to try to solve that new and irritating problem. I have upgraded Adobe Flash as suggested, cleaned up the tools section of both browsers and still I cannot view any videos. Popups are not blocked and I 'think' I have adjusted anything on my firewall that could prevent me from watching something on YouTUBE and still I cannot view videos. Ach! One of the disadvantages of retirement is that you loose that little group of geeky guys who would most generously stop by and fix my computer. I hate technology and how it wastes ones time.

By the way, the photo above was not a wind vane....

My Little Secret

This next week I will be taking care of my grandson, Xman, since his Montessori school has closed for 8 days. My daughter took off from work last week for three days to watch him and when she asked us to take him this week, we agreed. It will save her money and we love the child, so, are more than happy to get geared up for the challenge. He is inquisitive, emotional and self-centered. He is physically active and has no fear. He finds joy in most things but can get quite unhappy when he doesn't get his way. I am guessing that without Dad or Mom or the 'other grandmother' to run interference for him, he will be more amenable to hearing a 'no' now and then.

I have my reservations on his homesickness level as this will be the first time that this 3+ year-old will be away from both parents and his home for at least four nights and five days. I know that it will be a good growing experience, but that does not mean we won't have down times. I am going out to buy some games and videos this afternoon as tranquilizers if needed.

Xman then gets returned on Friday of next week by us. Then my son's girl friend has talked him into coming down on Sunday and spending the night through Labor Day to spend time with us. My Secret is that, guiltily, I did not invite my daughter for this three day weekend as well, because I would really like some adult only time with my son and his girl. Hubby wanted everyone here for that three-day weekend, but I would end up doing most of the cooking and much of the babysitting and wouldn't get a chance for adult exchange and told him that. My daughter and I can rarely complete sentences with each other when both little ones are underfoot! Hubby looked surprised...but then when we have company he is...well, let's just say he doesn't notice why things run pretty smoothly.

I don't really like family politics.

Time is Such a Moving Thing

I have not had much energy nor any ideas for blogging lately, but probably exhausted due to the following activities:

Celebrating my granddaughter's first birthday
Transferring and editing the video and slides I took of my granddaughter's first birthday
Putting in a 30 foot pyracantha hedge to hide the vegetable garden from the front window
Replanting the sod from area where we planted the hedge
Loading and distributing a wagon load of mulch, (free mulch is crap and we won't do that again)
Moving an entire palate of leftover brick to the back of the yard
Meeting with Comcast twice to resolve the issues we are having with the sporadic cable TV connection, the phone connection and the PC...Cause is probably one of the two cables to the house being able to push only 80% of the signal. They said it is because we live so far out in the country and they can't boost the signal anymore. I asked if I only had to pay 80% of my bill, but they ignored me.
I have also managed to squeeze in some housecleaning, laundry, and bill paying.
We are also meeting with a landscape company to put in the back patio under the deck and since they are talking over 10K it will have to go in in stages. They did agree to put in and level that strange fountain we bought a while back.
AND as a reward, I took a short day trip to a lovely east coast beach town and ate lunch in a charming little restaurant and watched the activities on main street.

My Blog List is gone

That's all I have to say. I went away for the weekend and the deer did not eat my roses, but blogger ate my blog list.

Just Asking

I am going away for the weekend. Can you keep these guys away from my rose bush---and everything else for that matter? (Don't you wonder what they were whispering about before I showed up?)

The City Mouse and The Country Mouse

The majority of my recent adult life I have lived in the suburbs and most recently I have lived in the city...or within walking distance of one of the city centers. I enjoyed the ability to be able to walk to a large movie theater and safely walk home after seeing the movie. I enjoyed being able to walk to restaurants, and even better, being able to visit a large Borders Book store and waste away a Sunday afternoon.

Then we started and finished that epic part of our lives where we built the cliche retirement home in the country. We are so far into the country that, if I have my bedroom windows open, I hear roosters crowing in the distance in the early morning. I hear strange noises in the night such as large limbs falling from trees in the ravine or screech owls as the dawn breaks. Yes, living in the woods is just as noisy as living in the city.

I love the country, but schizophrenic soul that I am, I also miss the city. I miss the restaurants and plays and museums and little stores for shopping. Last year we learned that our small town, which consisted primarily of a brand new post office, a corner gas station, a liquor store, and the elementary school, was going to build a new shopping center...actually two little centers within a quarter mile of each other. These were not malls, but traditional shopping centers: one anchored by a SuperGiant grocery. It has been exciting watching the one area go up with a doughnut shop, a cleaners, a pharmacy, a steak and ale house, a small exercise gym, a real estate office, a nic-nac shop and a second liquor store among others.

The second and slightly larger shopping area started with a Starbucks! This got me excited but in the year it has been open, I have driven by each time on my way to the post office and not stopped once. This second center, which is just down the road, added the Giant grocery, a Food Shoppers grocery, another cleaners, two pizza restaurants(!), another pharmacy, another liquor store, another doughnut shop--this one with an ice cream wing, two mexican restaurants, one Korean restaurant (totally awful food and terrible service), one Japanese/Chinese restaurant (serving even worse food in a clinical plastic table atmosphere), and a paint store. There are several finished buildings waiting to be leased, but I have long since given up any interest.

Is this a country thing? What economics planning went into this development? This is a rural community, although with a nearby military base and all the resulting contracting companies, a nearby atomic energy plant that is adding another reactor, and a growing community of city retirees---I don't view this as a typical rural community.

I drive by a large dirt filled area behind the new bank and hold my breath while wishing for a movie theater with a wine/beer/cheese bar attached and a little second hand bookstore on the side or a branch of the library which is 12 miles away. I also would love a non-chain restaurant that serves interesting and healthy food.

Yes, I know. If I want all this I should move back to the city.

Getting Ones Work Set Out for Them

My husband is off on a 'business' trip to Hawaii...something that is either winding down or winding up. Anyway, prior to his departure, he picked all of the above that are sitting in glasses of water on the kitchen counter. Various varieties of basil. He then encouraged me to begin the process of freezing this abundance for the winter months when their pungent goodness would be better appreciated. Licorice, cinnamon, lemon...whatevhah! So, tomorrow I head out to find ice cube trays, as I recently gave all of mine away. I also just added all of the pinion nuts to a dessert dish and those would have come in handy for a pesto. Planning is everything.

An Inventory of Reading

The Big Read motivates a personal inventory.

Bearnaked reminded me of this inventory. The books I have read...some many, many years ago and some as a college assignments...are in bold. Which books have you read? Post this list on your blog!

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkienn
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (Can't remember?)
11. Little Women - Louisa M. Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (80%??)
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkienn
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - L.M. Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On the Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - A.S. Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Web - E.B. White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Tabor's Holiday

View from inside the African American Museum

I have had two sets of company visiting and staying back to back last week. (I am really not the social animal that is painted by this blog. I do not attend a church, belong to any clubs (yet), or party hearty on weekends. While no one I know would describe me as an introvert I do seek out the quiet times more often than not. I am fortunate to know some nice people who drop by during the summer months. Actually my husband is the real social butterfly in this finely aged duo.)

Anyway, Mr. Butterfly invited two buddies down for a weekend of fishing after the above busy week and I was immediately motivated to conclude that Tabor needed an 'alone' holiday. I headed up to my daughter's house for the same weekend. She was going to be away with family, and I would have the whole place to myself. The tiny house is within walking distance of a metro's ride to the center of Washington D.C. and all of its free and wonderful museums...are you getting jealous?

The famous Smithsonian Castle

Entry to Moongate Garden

I took my camera along and found that I needed this alone time to adjust my viewpoint and to take time for some focused photography. Having seen these outside architectural pleasantries many times, I photographed with a new eye and new angles and then used Paintshop Pro to have fun tweaking away with styles, hues, etc. I personally think they look cool and refreshing in this way...little egocentric gal that I am. You can click on them for a larger view.

Moongate Garden

Pausing

To quote a quote..."Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans."

A friend who had been having shortness of breath called on Monday telling us that he was heading to the city hospital for recommended open heart surgery. Then he found out on Tuesday that the scar tissue from a prior surgery was going to prevent any new surgery on this old heart of his. He has said that he will just have to adjust to this new twist in his life and slow down. He is very active and very industrious and never appeared compromised if you did not know his health background. This will not be easy for him or for his wife. I can see the dark premonitions in her eyes. I sit out on my deck asking the powers that be to give them some inner peace on this journey ahead.

I pause thankful that I still have reasonably good health.
I pause knowing that there are no guarantees in this life preventing me from being in his shoes in the future.
I pause knowing that there are no guarantees that my husband will not face a similar fate.
I pause knowing how important each day is in this too short life.
I pause knowing that pausing to smell the air is very important for the soul.

Some Bad Karma--Life Story #15

Fear is a really useful but also dangerous energy in this life. (The most obvious recent example of the bad things fear can do is the 100's of thousand deaths of innocent people caused by this stupid war brought about in fear of a vague enemy.) I have not been truly afraid for a long, long time and so this recent fear came to me as a strong jolt, and in hindsight, I am not all that proud of how I reacted.

Hubby was working down at the dock getting the boat cleaned and I had finished some errands in the house and was heading down to ask him some question. We were going to take some friends out on the boat that afternoon, and since we are all getting older, one of my routines is to pick up all the newly fallen broken sticks and branches in the path to the boat so that no one accidentally falls on the hilly path.

When I reached the dock and hubby emerged from the small boat cabin, I asked how things were going. He looked at me and asked me,

"Didn't you see the dead copperhead on the path?"

I, who had so carefully scanned each and every inch of that path picking up snake-sized sticks did not see anything out of the ordinary, and I told him that. He looked at me in disbelief wondering how I could have missed it. He explained that he had almost stepped on it as a bucket in his hand had blocked the view of the path and he immediately knew he would dispatch it with a large log by smashing the head. (Killing snakes is not nice even if they are poisonous, but he had a grandson who ran willy nilly to the dock recently, and therefore, we would not be able to sleep at night letting this pit viper survive.)

Hubby followed me back up the path to show me the location of the snake with the smashed head. We got there and we peered every which way. There was no snake. Hubby was sure he had crushed the small skull, and therefore, wondered if in the short ten minute span an animal had taken it away to eat. I said it might have been alive enough to crawl under one of the logs lining the path. We poked around another minute or so and then decided it had snuck away to die a slow but peaceful death. I turned to head back up the hill and as I got closer to the top I saw the fat fellow just a foot away. It lay right in the middle of the black sand path as still as a curved stick and looked none the worse for wear. If you have never seen a copperhead, it is truly a beautiful animal. It almost looks as though some artist had painted the coppery and grayish tones of color across its back with a brush.

But, this close encounter caused me to almost swallow my tongue as I leaped back to my husband's side. It had appeared as if by magic out of nowhere. It was fat and healthy and not moving---thank goodness. If it had been scurrying, I would have probably swallowed both my tongue and heart in fear. Hubby quickly grabbed another large piece of wood and pinned its head against the sand once again. I told my husband not to move while I hurried up the path to the garage for the shovel. When I returned he severed the head quickly with the edge of the shovel and we threw the beautiful animal into the river.

I realize that copperheads are not as aggressive as people commonly believe and that the freezing in place was its defence mechanism and that we should have just tossed him by stick into the woods to go on his way or walked widely around him. But neither my husband or I could bring ourselves to be so fair. We were frightened for our grandchildren and that deep primitive urge to protect our own rushed forward bringing with it adrenaline and no immediate regret as we ended the life of this innocent animal.

I am sad that I did this, but I also am honest with myself and mother nature, in that I would certainly do the same again.

(Seems to be an unusual amount of references to snakes, rubber and real, in my blog these days!! What's that all about?)

The Big Weekend or A Precautionary Tale

This blog entry is a tale for those future grandmothers/grandfathers wondering if their young adults are ever going to get it on and present them with some grandchildren. Remember, it is said that you sometimes get what you wish for...

Recipe for potential disaster, mix the following carefully:
4 thirty-somethings--two males and two females
2 toddlers--11 months and 12 months
2 preschoolers--3 + years old
2 old farts

If your first-born grandson sleeps in your room because the baby sister is sick with a fever, you will not need an alarm clock. He will present you with a rubber snake before the sun is up.


Fortunately, he can pretty much dress himself. This is very useful as your eyes are not yet open, and, unlike him, you cannot form complete sentences. Thus, you are not much help.


Baby sister does not let a little flu bug hold her down. She may have gotten the household up three or four times crying with a stopped up nose and congested lungs, but she still takes her morning crawl right after a breakfast of blueberry pancakes. Note to new grandparents...you had better keep up! Mommy is barely functioning.




Once you pass the test to see if you can get to all the dangerous places in the house before the crawler and retrieve all the bugs you thought you had vacuumed, then it is time to go on the post-breakfast constitutional. This usually results in one or the other being carried on the way back as the morning gets hotter. Do not hold your breath as you will not be the one to be carried.


After lunch it is time for the mid-day swim. Remember to keep your camera dry because you will get wet even though you do not get into the tiny pool.

No one is safe from getting wet including the local wildlife.

The first day begins to wind down with a toe counting exercise. As luck would have it all of them have all of their toes!!

And, as usual, it is the male of the species that crashes just before dinner as the sun is receding behind the trees.

Footnotes:
1)The adult males were the only ones who had time to play several games of ping pong, fish from the dock and actually stay up late and watch a movie. How in the hell we let them get away with that I don't know, but we continue to let them think they are the stronger and smarter.

2) This visit 90% of the folks were excellent eaters and praised my meals until I got that warm glow of energy to do it all again the next day.

3) Tabor lost 1.5 pounds!! I have been putting in two miles on the elipitcal many mornings with out budging any fat cells. I just need more weekends like these where I never sit and rarely eat.

It is not even Halloween

While cleaning the storms broken branches and leaves from the driveway, we came across this black jelly-like fungus in the photo above that was curled in the rocks. It is cubist in form and was about fours inches in size. Any ideas anyone? What are the chances of a mycologist reading my blog? And, no, we didn't drop anything chemical in nature...that we can think of.

Glutton for Punishment?

Oh, yes, I guess that is what I am...a glutton for punishment. Sometimes it seems that things happen to me without any pro activeness on my part. Actually I do know that this coming weekend was not even a glimmer of an idea in my mind, because I have been sleeping so well these evenings. Certainly this was actually all my daughter's idea. I do NOT remember initiating this. I do not even remember talking about it at length with anyone...but then, one of the lovely attributes of getting older is that darn forgetting part. Just because you do not have it written on the calender, does not mean it was not scheduled. After all, it WAS on someone else's calendar.

Tabor's B&B is once again opening for weekend business. It seems that my daughter and her husband and her two toddlers are joining us ALONG with her friend and her friend's husband and THEIR TWO TODDLERS. Yes, I will be entertaining four very tired adult parents and four very active tots under the age of 3.5 that are pretty much as mobile and curious as un-housebroken puppy dogs. This may be just the breakthrough I need to lose those last 5...10...alright, 15(!) pounds.

I have planned a menu or two and am cleaning the house, although with four little rugrats being set loose, only God knows why! I have battened down the hatches, even though I have found that little fingers are really experts at hatches. I have stocked the 'larder' with applesauce, microwave mac & cheese, colored goldfish, and frozen juice bars. I will set up the small rubber swimming pool with grandmotherly sprightliness. I will take my vitamins. If I were the religious type, I would pray, but perhaps some of you can do that for me.

OH, this should be so much fun...right? Photos to follow...

The New Blogger

While leaping into the new blogger and using the easier editing features which add the ability to change fonts, background colors, and to some extent, drag and drop various page elements, I also found that adding links to a list such as the blog roll was much easier. To create the blog roll you just have to add the URL into a window menu and it will automatically add the blog name as well as organize it by title or by most recent blog entry! Saves me a lot of time not writing the html code for a bulleted list as I did in the old days. The template that I chose was not as flexible, but maybe I will fiddle with another template in the future and just make it part II while linking back to the old blog...!

Cha..Cha...Changes

Richard in Atwater has mentioned that I could 'stretch' my photo uploads for better viewing. I usually post in low-res for those who do not have great band-width, but thought 'stretching' the photos on the template might be nice.

Unfortunately, you must completely re-load your template and I mis-read thinking it was going to back up the old blog template...which it did not. Then to make my morning more challenging, it does not appear that the template I had chosen allows me to use the blog 'stretch' feature, because I cannot find that option anywhere.

And just to keep me on my toes, I have lost my blogroll in the process. I do have the blogs bookmarked so I will have to reconstruct that all again in the future. I must say, that I usually am the type to look before I leap, but when it comes to computers, I just plunge in!

Anyway, here is one of the looks I settled on after getting sick of changing fonts, colors, etc. I do not know if I can live with...will. see.

Tabor Dancing

The weather has been so hot and muggy that hubby and I decided we just had to head to the nearby mountains---nearby being a relative term as it was about a 5 hour drive, carbon footprints be damned. We had visited and even camped in this national park many times, and thus, it was like visiting another home. Some of my blog readers will be able to identify it, I am sure.

We stayed at one of the lodges but I am proud to say that the second day we put in a 10 mile hike. I have not done that type of hiking in years and am glad that I found I still had the stamina.

The initial trails are usually clear and well worn even though you can see the summer has been wet.

The initial signs are usually quite clear for the trails as well even though the Park Service is on tighter and tighter budgets.

As we got farther into the more isolated trails, we found the signs not only less clear but even more telling!

Coming across this on the path gave us pause and also helped us understand the previous sign.

Even though we were above 4,000 feet the mid-day temperatures were pretty warm and we frequently sought shelter under the shade of trees in the high meadows. We were careful when we left the trail, because as you can see from the photo above, the trail can soon disappear. I photo-shopped it with ladybugs to show how camouflaged it could get just a few yards off the beaten path.

This lovely spruce forest floor makes for very quiet walking and that is why I stepped on a 2.5 foot snake without he/she or I being aware in time to avoid each other politely. I had paused to catch my breath when hubby came up behind me and looking at my feet said calmly but sternly, "Keep moving. Keep moving." As I lifted my right foot I glanced down to see the coils and instantly danced to the other side of some rocks skinning my shins nicely. While my legs have some lovely scabs, the poor snake got the worst of it as he seemed to be somewhat lumpy as he scooted away. We had been returning from the day's long hike, and I was being rather heavy footed with fatigue. We, of course, tried to remember what mountain rattlesnakes and copperheads really looked like as we hustled more carefully on down the trail counting our blessings only to see a smooth green snake scoot in the grass ahead and also what we identified as a common water snake just ten minutes further down the trail. We were blessed, I guess. Upon reaching a visitors center we pulled one of the guidebooks and determined that I had stepped on a juvenile rat snake.

In spite of the adrenalin rush the rewards of the hike were many including fresh blueberries for munching and...

...a blanket of wild bee balm.

We stopped at the top of the ridge for a late lunch and had some of the best views above the woods. I don't know of any fancy restaurants that can provide this kind of atmosphere.

That's the Limit

While I was sleeping someone caught his limit and more! So hot and humid here that I think it is time for a two-day trip to the mountains tomorrow. I will let you know if we did it.

This Sunday Morning

Although I have been retired for some time, I do not seem to be falling into much of a regular pattern of daytime/nightime activity. Yesterday I slept until 7:30 (after being lightly wakened by hubby at 4:00 who was heading off for a fishing trip with buddies) and this morning I woke up abruptly, looked at the clock and saw that it was only 4:30. I tried to drift back to sleep, but after 40 minutes I admitted defeat and got up.

Sitting here on the stairwell balcony, where I blog, I can smell the coffee that is ready in the kitchen, hear the faint chirp of birds just waking and hear the deep and regular breathing of my husband in the bedroom below. Today, like most days, is a totally free day for me. I can do whatever I want. Yes, I have a project list, compulsive creature that I am, but I also know that 90% of the things on this list do not have emergency status.

I am not yet too full of free time, not yet satiated and ready for something scheduled that forces me to get up and get going. Perhaps this winter I will look for something to do that fulfills that need, but now I am still in wonder at this endless free time given to me each day. I sometimes think of my mother and father and the early years of their retirement. I wonder what thoughts they had about this time in their life with their children grown and involved with their own lives. My parents were busy and hardworking people and idle time did not come easily to their generation. I know that in their last years watching baseball on TV in the afternoons was my father's respite after clearing weeds and working in the garden. My mother would do her flower gardening and some canning in the summer and then look forward to an afternoon nap. Was this enough to fill their day and the all the rest of the days of their lives?

I do know that the nagging concern I had about having too much time with my husband and not enough alone time, which I so desperately need, has not been a reality. He is a self-starter most days and we spend about 50% of our time doing things together and 50% on our own separate projects. He does not need me to be his oxygen and that is a relief. He also continues to let me be the bossy one in structuring many activities and I am trying to be more compromising in that area. Now that I have so much unstructured time I do not feel the need to be so regimented.

Another good thing I have noticed is I am becoming less anxious about this thing called retirement. Eventually, I may more easily accept it as my new way of life!

It is starting

We are now one for one as hubby has retrieved a tomato from the garden and today I get to harvest my patio tomato.


These photos should go on my other blog about the wonderful planet earth...but I am so excited that I have this little bit to share. Everyone from Earth Home Garden to East and West at Every Turn has been posting delicious photos of their bloomers far outshowing my humble efforts. My beginning perennial garden has been a struggle this year. I read somewhere that it takes between 30 and 50 years to get a decent perennial garden established and I do not have that much time! So I will enjoy what I can while I can! The photo above is a healthy achillea (maybe vista?) that adds nice warm color to the end of a flower bed. (The orange flag shows where a soaker hose lies.)

Yes, I am cheating, by including some annual container plants below.

Here is a small chaste bush/tree that seems to be deer resistant. When left in a clear space in full sun they become big and lovely like the butterfly bush and the bees love them.

These lantana are in a container on my deck where I had a lovely crowded cover of yellow pansies. These are now suffering from summer heat and therefore lantana will replace that.

This lovely fellow bloomed last week and the rabbit ate the stem and left it on the ground with about three other potential blooms! The plant now sits behind a wire cage and is allowed to bloom once again.

Moss Rose are always perfect on the south facing heat of the back deck as are the lovely purple petunias and sage below.

The guara, below, I planted last year and although it is now in the wrong place blocking the path,(covered with bumble bees which is not good for the insect phobic relatives) it will be moved and do very well in a few other places I have planned.

My tempermental hybrid tea rose gave me a lovely first bloom in the early spring. Later I battled with thousands of Japanese beetles in early summer and lost a half dozen other blooms (but now seem to have won the war this year with a beetle trap on the back of the house) and now it is giving a lovely full bloom.

Well, it isn't much but it does warm the cockles of my heart these days.

The Tobacco Barn

On the side of the entrance to the county park just before the posted map of the trails, we saw this old tobacco barn. The last public tobacco auction for the county was held a few years ago and this part of American agriculture is now history. The countryside is dotted with these aging gray barns that are no longer used due to a buyout for tobacco farmers that was successful, and even though there is some small effort at preservation, these historic structures are not being preserved in most cases. If this barn had been used for drying tobacco I would have readily been able to see the rust colored leaves hanging down inside. Unfortunately, the structure and shape of these barns doesn't easily lend itself to reuse. There were varied shapes to the barns in parts of the South but this traditional barn shape is the most common for our area.

There was a sign on the outside of the structure saying KEEP OUT which of course motivated me immediately to walk through to the cooler inviting shade. It was being used for keeping straw bales dry. I aged this photo as homage to those farmers who built this country with honest sweat and determination. The tobacco industry may have been an unhealthy crop, but at the time the money it brought in to farmers was significant as it was a 'mainstay' crop for the area.

I could not smell the tobacco as some say you can inside these old buildings, but the daylight peaking through the slats was quite romantic. This, along with hinged openings, insured the tobacco would cure correctly. If you click on the photo above you will be able to see the saw marks left from the circular saw that was used to cut the wood at the saw mill. This circular saw was probably powered by a late 18th Century water powered saw. Do you remember Little House on the Prairie when Laura's dad worked at the water powered sawmill in town? The time when people did the work that had to be done to feed their families...not just for that big screen TV.

Stuck in the Craw

Breath in and breath out and then go for a long walk:

• While watching Wimbledon over the weekend someone looked at me and said, "Did anyone ever tell you that you look like Billie Jean King?"
• Someone cannot make it down for the holiday weekend event until the last day and then spends the better part of the day either sleeping or watching sports on television--fortunately this is NOT a blood relative.
• When asking a guest to make salad she takes out all the avocado and puts it in a separate bowl because she doesn't like avocado.
• After doing all the planning and shopping for the meal, marinating the hamburgers, slicing the hot dog buns, setting out all the condiments, slicing the vegetables, making homemade potato salad, making cucumber fennel salad, making dessert and then taking out everything to the deck all by myself, someone compliments hubby on the great BBQ since he did the grilling!
• While backing the car out between two nearby cars on the way to the fireworks the driver nearly has an accident trying to dodge a tiny moth inside the car and then yells at the spouse because driving and having a phobic reaction to tiny insects is not a big deal.

Oh well, there is always next year!

Happy Independence Day for America

It seems that my husband and I have spent our 4th of July by ourselves these past few years. So, I have asked Daughter and her family and her in-laws down for the weekend this year for a little celebration. This will be the first time Xman gets to stay up to see the fireworks.

Thus far I have made a pasta sauce, a fruit bowl, banana muffins, choco-chunk cookies, potato salad and lemonade. The rest has been food shopping, and more food shopping for the BBQ.

I also rewashed the front windows and got ride of several wasps nests around the house (after one nasty sting), finished putting in the underground drip system and mulch for the two flowers beds, and completely cleaned the house.

We have washed off the deck and scrubbed the outside grill. We also scrubbed down the fiberglass and chrome on the boat...which took about two days alone!

I now remember why I usually don't have company for the holidays. Hopefully I will feel like doing some real writing after the long weekend.

HAPPY 4th to those of you smart enough to sit back with a cool drink and watch the fireworks!

If the Shoe Fits

The luxury of both wild and domestic raspberries!

I have been retired almost two months now---58 days. But I still feel that the shoes don't really fit. It is like I bought a lovely pair of Manolo Blahniks on sale and have worn them for 58 days straight and am still conscious that they are on my feet and that they fit a little stiffly. They also are so luxurious and attention getting that I keep thinking I don't deserve them and they don't quite go with my personality or my pace.

Don't get me wrong. I have no regrets about quitting work. I do not feel lost when I get up in the morning and do not have to rush off to work. In contrast, I luxuriate in the opposite, pacing my morning with a slow cup of coffee and reading while the sun comes up.

I do not feel badly about being on a tighter budget and once again in my life looking at price per unit and looking at coupons when I shop. I am so lucky in having everything I want that a little frugality is a nice seasoning to my life. (Of course, if this administration continues to ignore the downward spiral of this economy, I may be wearing tennis shoes soon.)

But I have so much time to ponder my future. The work that I am doing now (gardening, cooking, decorating) does not require focused thought and so I have time to let my mind wander in other directions. To overwork garment analogies I guess I am waiting for the other shoe to drop!

Are There Blogs in Heaven?

Maya's Granny

Blogroll #4

I have been meaning to do this for some time, but since it requires a little research and more time at the PC and more time coding in Blogger I have put it off until now. But today is the day and some folks are going to get rolled since they visited my blog before I got to theirs. I got this idea from Hoss over a year ago when he profiled those bloggers that he read or that commented on his blog. If you want to read about other bloggers that I read or that visit my blogs (or used to, as bloggers come and go like good friends), go to my right sidebar and select the blogroll links near the bottom the green section! Now for some new bloggers.

BearNaked has a fetish with teddy bears and the photos alone that accompany each of her posts are charming and will bring a smile on your gloomiest days. She blogs from Canada and therefore knows more than most of us about bears. She found me rather than me finding her and that is most flattering.

Another blogger who has stopped by my place is Beverly who is a neonatal nurse of longstanding. Doesn't that sound like one of the most important jobs in the world? Such a profession lets you know she is a woman of great courage. She writes from Tennessee and leads a very traditional southern grandmotherly life...except for a few surprises---like she once kissed Elvis!

Ernestine is on a Journey to Mindfulness. She has had to say goodbye to a farm where she could garden prolifically and say hello to the city life where she at least is close to her children. She shares my love of plants and has learned about the love of dogs. She also is going through the same thoughtful pauses that I have in having more time on my hands. When you see how young she looks you would be surprised at the age of her grandchildren!

Grannie Annie visited me a while back (only grannies visit me these days!) and I noticed that she had started blogging back in 2005. Talk about cutting edge blog boomers. She is prolific in her writing and there is no way I can keep up with her posts, but I do stop by when I have time. I, like her, have re-instituted my exercise program. I don't run a chicken farm like she does, but if our covenants allowed my husband would have a dozen hens right now.

Mary Lou is retired from the Navy. Lordy, she started her blog entries in 2003! I didn't even know blogger was up and around then. "I'm not sure what type of blog I want here, just brain dumps, or a real log. Do I want to get into emotions and feelings for the world to see? Do I want to write this just for me, or with the thought that others will be reading it also.." Sounds familiar to some of us, doesn't it.

Richard who live in Atwater is also retired Navy and maybe came by way of Mary Lou above? While I worked for an organization that was full of former Navy folks, I really don't know anyone currently in the Navy. Anyway Richard loves birdwatching as I do and seems to be single-handedly feeding every bird in his state. He has some good construction skills, which we could certainly use around here, as he has actually built a shed. We bought ours from the Amish.

I am extremely flattered that "Vishwa" from India also visits my blog. He is young and lives so far away! He doesn't have lots of entries each month, but each entry is well-thought out and well written. This entry about why we write blogs (http://vishymn.blogspot.com/2005/12/where-minds-meet-
and-wisdom-arises.html) got me thinking once again about why I write a blog. Stop buy and take a "Walk in the Drizzle."

Please stop by these blogs if they interest you and please tell them that Tabor sent you!! (Now I won't be blogging for a while as I have lots of blog reading to catch up on.)

The Powers of Observation

If you think that your knees are clicking when you head upstairs, a little detective work my help you realize you are not all that old!

Thursday Thoughts #11

1. This morning Hubby and I had a crab omelette which we made with two of the crabs we recently caught beneath the dock. This is a luxury meal that is much easier to prepare in retirement as picking crabs requires a leisure morning.

2. I have trepidatiously planted one hybrid tea rose in a bed near the front of the house knowing full well that they are like creme brulee for deer. I was weeding around it this morning and I looked up to marvel at the dozen or so pink buds getting ready to open. Then, even before I sighed with pleasure, the plant said, "I'm too hot. I'm thirsty. My feet are getting too wet. There is some strange fungus in that mulch. That salvia is too close to me..."on and on the temperamental beauty ranted.


3. I just noticed that I have not worn my engagement ring in almost a week, a longer time than I have ever had it off. I took it off to work in the garden and to clean and move basement boxes and it seems that I am doing all of this constantly these days and the ring sits in a ceramic box near the sink.

4. I got an email from work yesterday asking me if I remembered my Safeboot password for the laptop I had turned in. I laughed so hard I almost wet my pants.

5. Daughter is coming down this weekend since both of our husbands are otherwise occupied with fishing and/or golfing making us weekend widows. Since my husband is taking my son along for all of the following week, I may get to see his new girlfriend as she drives him down. I am trying to get her to stay the night...it might be a fun girly weekend after all---although there are toddlers involved so we will have to be wise on the wine.

6. I have not had to plan exercising time much this past month. Moving tons of dirt, digging holes, laying out bags of top soil and peat moss and working it all into the mounds of clay-based soil, laying out bags of mulch, lifting small shrubs and trees in containers all seem to be helping me get plenty of weight lifting and aerobic exercise. Just to increase all this fun, I and hubby have put down quite a bit of landscape brick after putting down the bed sand. Below is just one of the beds we have been working on.


7. I finished reading the Namesake but found the Kite Runner more moving and poetic.

8. I live out in "NO-NPR" land and there is a religious radio station that sits right next to NPR on my dial and overpowers the signal. I have spent time trying to get an antenna to capture NPR but have had no luck. I can only really enjoy NPR very early in the morning or while I ride in my car and now the tuner button has broken on that as well!

9. Kafir lime leaves are quite pungent and certainly two different meals (salmon patties and beef with asparagus) using this flavor are enough to satisfy us for quite some time. My tiny Kafir lime tree is also pleased that I have stopped denuding it for a while.

10. I actually did a crossword puzzle yesterday. That may be common fare for some people, but for me it always was something for those who have idle time which I never had. Although I love words and their meanings, I am not very good at crosswords and actually somewhat intimidated by them. I also rarely have the patience to sit and complete one puzzle. I didn't finish this entirely...but I got close!

It Never Changes

Yes, I did do my 'chores' today. Cleaned out the basement and we (me---hubby won't part with anything!) threw away a ton of stuff so that my newly finished basement is more inviting.

But I also passed the afternoon watching Out of Africa. I cried and cried and cried. I cannot watch that movie without bawling my eyes out. (Out of Africa even makes hubby tear up.) It will always be one of my favorites as the beauty of the photography alone keeps me coming back again and again, and I rarely find a movie that I will watch over again.

The movie says so much about how we fall in love and become part of that something (Africa) or someone (Robert Redford's character) that we love so deeply. This just doesn't work, because we bring our own ideas which bring changes and those changes attempt to change what we love, to make it better. And what we love is ever-changing anyway. And eventually we must say goodbye to it all.

Now it is your turn. What movie makes you cry?

Just Askin'

Chancy (For some reason Blogger won't let me link) recently left a comment that got me thinking about my overly aggressive activities that are filling my retirement days. She got me pondering about this space in time I now have. Am I hurtling through this free space so fast because I am waiting to hit another dimension…some great new insight…a black hole…a sudden stop at the brick wall? Am I keeping so busy trying to finish my extra long list because I need to? Is it because I really want to? It certainly isn't because I have to. Is it just habit that all the responsible things on the list are first and all the fun stuff is near the end? Will I ever outgrow this bad habit? Am I afraid that I will not have something to add to the list as I get near the end? Am I afraid to really look at the list and find nothing important is on the list?

Am I afraid that if I have nothing to do, it means I am close to death? That is certainly a morbid thought and I am pretty sure I can’t find this thought in the forefront of my mind anywhere. But then, at this time in my life I misplace almost everything at least once! I do know that I actually feel guilty sometimes that my dear kids have to work so hard and wish I could share my free days with them.

I remember a training course I took where one of the exercises was to write your own obituary. Maybe I need to do that over again.

Am I afraid that if I get some empty space, I mean days here not hours, I will realize my life has become more meaningless and less important? Now that is a heavy thought. If we are not saving the world or running people’s lives are we all that important anymore?

Well, after re-reading the above, I think the reason I am keeping busy is that I am a very depressing old fart.