Looking for a Home

It feels like spring around here despite the bare trees.  The birds are singing and we have sunshine after a couple of gray rainy days.

Oh, and March Madness is upon us once again.  We had an early dinner last night in order to watch the complete tournament selection show.  And today my husband will buy several copies of USA Today because he like their brackets best.  And American citizens will eagerly await President Obama's brackets so they can criticize him for not taking their favorite team to the Final Four.


I do love college basketball but I'll probably spend more time watching the birds than the round ball.  We have lots of bird boxes in the trees near our house, a couple of them from our local potters intended to be more decorative than functional.  So imagine my surprise when I glanced up and saw a chickadee poking its head out of one of the houses.  The bird sat there for several minutes and at first I thought it might be stuck.

(You many need to click to enlarge.  Lighting was not optimum.)

Chickadee popping its head out of the box

 The bird hopped onto the perch.  It wasn't stuck, thank goodness.

It sat on the perch for quite a while, looking around as if to check the view

I don't think the chickadee will build a nest in this box, but who knows?  At least we can be assured that bigger birds or flying squirrels will not be able to enlarge the opening.  This is probably my favorite time of the year as we begin to see our migrating bird friends once again and our resident birds begin to nest.  And then my other favorite time when the birds bring their fledglings to our feeders.

Our forsythia is really budding now and they are blooming downtown.  Spring is wonderful.

We Love Lucy

LL Bean sent me an email that I had an unused credit that was soon to expire.  It wasn't a large one so I decided to use it to get a little something for Lucy.  I came across a blue bone pillow that seemed perfect for her.  After all she adores her bee pillow.  I'm happy to report that she loves the blue bone as well.

Lucy snuggles with her blue bone

 She nestles between the pillows as if she were in a little nest.

 But the bee pillow is still the preferred one for bird watching.

Or snoozing a bit if things get boring out there.

It's been quite a busy week for our Lucy.  We are having my husband's walk-in shower re-tiled so Lucy must watch over the workman.  Since she is not allowed in the master suite, she must follow him from the garage door to the bedroom door every time he comes and goes to get supplies.  That means many of her naps are interrupted.

It's warmer here but raining so the days are a bit dreary.  I've started a new knitting project, an afghan for my husband. I told him it might be finished by the time we are ready for a long-term care facility.  He did not laugh.

Today's quote is for our North Carolina US Senators, especially freshman Senator Thom Tillis.  And it's also for their 45 partners in an unprecedented act of spite.

It comes from Cicero, philosopher of old:
"A nation can survive its fools, even the ambitious.  But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly.  But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.  For the traitor appears not to be a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men.  He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist.  A murderer is less to fear.  The traitor is the plague."

So far our body politic is not so infected that we cannot resist.  We can indeed survive this Congress.  I hope that people will begin to see that the good of the Nation and its citizens are not the priority of some of our "leaders."  As the legendary Mrs. O'Davis said, "Lord help us and save us."

If we are to survive, we must raise our voices.  Please contact your own Senators and Representatives and let them know how you feel.  You can find their names and addresses along with all pending legislation here

HAVE A WONDERFUL WEEKEND, EVERYONE!

Breath of Fresh Air

I look forward to it every February.  Bright yellow blossoms and a wonderful fragrance in the air.  It's Arnold Promise, a witch hazel that fills the air with a wonderful scent.  This year Arnold was a bit late in blooming, perhaps because of the lower temperatures, but now it is is full bloom.

Arnold Promise is a hybrid (Hamamelis x intermedia) witch hazel that has many things going for it.  It has wonderful leaves in summer and fall and it blossoms in the dead of winter, its showy yellow blossoms sending a lovely fragrance in the air.   It gives me the promise of spring every year.

 One more important aspect of Arnold Promise is that the deer do not care for the taste of the shoots, leaves, or blossoms.  That is a real benefit around here as the deer have made a path from our creek up the property to the road.  Arnold Promise is very disease resistant as well.

It is often overlooked in the garden shops because the blooms have fallen and the plant has not leafed out by the time most nurseries open for the summer.  So it looks very bare and sparse.

Few things are as pleasing as the sight of the Arnold Promise bright yellow blossoms and the scent of the wonderful witch hazel.  It is indeed a breath of fresh air.

We Love Lucy

We have four large lakes in our community.  One of them is near our house and Lucy loves to play there along the water.  In winter there are few people around so we can let her run to her heart's content.  And run she does.

Smiling as she runs past the canoes

 Still smiling when we made her rest for a bit on the handicapped fishing pier

 Smiling as she runs along with her shadow

 And backlit by the lake

 A little trip to the lake fills Lucy's exercise needs and our own needs to embrace the beauty.

We return to the much dreaded Daylight Savings Time this weekend.  Seems such a short while since we moved our clocks back an hour.

 I try not to let the time change affect me so much and to follow John Muir's advice:

Our quote also comes from John Muir, a man who truly knew how to live:

"When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop,
Striped and dotted with continents and islands,
Flying through space with other stars all singing and shining together as one,
The whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty."

If only the people of the entire world could appreciate that we are all interconnected.  We share the same resources and what hurts one hurts us all.

HAVE A WONDERFUL WEEKEND, EVERYONE

BE A PART OF THE WHOLE GLOBE

 

Don't Try This

A couple of weeks ago we had some unusually cold weather.  How cold was it?  So cold that the waterfalls partially froze.  I think "partially" is the operative word here.  But that did not deter one ice climber intent on adding Looking Glass Falls to his list.

It seems like poor judgment to me.  Only a few feet to the climber's right, the water is running freely over the falls.

You may want to click to enlarge.

Photograph from the local newspaper, not credited

We did not go to visit the frozen falls this year, although we have been in the past.  As you can see below, the waterfall was not as frozen on our last visit as it appeared above a couple of weeks ago.  It was so cold and dark that everything has a blue tint to it.  There were no other souls around on our visit.

Today is balmy and feels wonderful.  What a treat to sit on the deck once again.  Tomorrow the temperatures will drop dramatically.  But this is March so we don't have too long to wait.

Internet Birthday

Yahoo!  was begun twenty years ago today.  Only a few would have dreamed how much that would change our daily lives.  Yahoo brought everyman to the Internet.

In addition to new ways of thinking, the Internet brought us new words and usage of other words.  It brought us the word "blog," near and dear to all our hearts.  It is the shortened form of the original word, "weblog."  Who would have thought that "friend" would be a verb and "like" would be a noun?  There have been "selfies" as long as there have been cameras, but the word was never used before the Internet and smartphones.  And while most of us grew up with Hi-Fi, few of us started out with Wi-Fi.  "Texting" and "Sexting" were words not used only 20 years ago.  And "tweets" were the sounds of birds chirping.

Yahoo is older than Facebook, even older than MySpace.  It's older than YouTube, Tumbler, and Instagram.

So a great big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Yahoo!  And to the changes that have evolved in those twenty years.

We Love Lucy

The meteorologists missed the forecast once again.  Only this time they underestimated the snow we would receive.  So it snowed six inches or so on Monday night.  And another eight on Wednesday night.  Fortunately, Thursday brought temperatures in the 40s and the snow dropped off in big chunks as it melted from the trees.  With the above-freezing temperatures the streets are fairly clear with only a few icy spots here and there.  Yet lots of snow remains on the ground.

Lucy came out to join my husband and me while we shoveled our driveway yet again.  She walked around in the snow.  Then she shoveled the snow with her nose.  And finally she ran in zoomie circles all over the place just like she did when she was a puppy.  Quite a difference from her usual response to snow.

Wow!  There is a lot of snow.

 I think something has been here before I came.

 Yippee!  Watch out, Mom.  Here I come.

 She seemed to really enjoy the snow every time we took her outside.  My husband had cleared a figure-eight path for her to use and she ran and ran around it before she remembered why she had come outside.

 The snow in the yard was beautiful.  And best of all, the roads are mostly clear today so we are not stuck on the mountain.

Don't think we will use these chairs for a while

This is the end of February which always gives me a lift.  Just thinking about March makes it feel like spring, although we know that March often brings wintry weather.

English poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge gives us the quote for this week:

"Advice is like snow---the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon and the longer it sinks into the mind."

HAVE A WONDERFUL WEEKEND, EVERYONE.