Few Signs but Welcome Ones

Among the many pleasures of living in North Carolina is the gradual unfolding of spring.  In Wisconsin, spring was rather like "The Wonderful One Hoss Shay," described by Oliver Wendell Holmes.  Spring arrived:

 All at once, and nothing first, —
Just as bubbles do when they burst.

One day the trees were bare and it seemed the bleak mid-winter.  Within a week, not only were the spring flowers blooming, the grass was green and the trees were leafed out.  It's different here, with spring arriving in bits and pieces, each one as valued as the other.  In the lower elevations the crocus and daffodil are blooming in profusion.  Our community is about a week or two "behind" the weather downtown.  But even so, we have our own signs of spring.

This camellia seems unaware that another cold spell is certain.

And all those lovely buds will brown and fall off.

But she puts out a few flowers nonetheless.

And we appreciate it.

 Right on time the Lenten Rose (hellebore) is blooming as well.

 Arnold Promise (our witch hazel) has fewer blooms than usual

But they are still lovely and the fragrance fills the air.

 Dependable pieris japonica blooms right on time.

 And one flower never stops blooming no matter the season or weather.

It's a cut glass flower made and welded by a WI neighbor as a farewell gift.

So we watch as spring approaches.  And we drive to different elevations where we can find a lot more spring and dead of winter all in one day.  Life is definitely better in the mountains.

We Love Lucy

Once again the weather has been front and center here.  No severe storms like we had last week, but unpredicted rain, welcome sunshine, and unpredicted and a most unwelcome snow storm.  The snow started to fall yesterday afternoon and fell in huge flakes, quickly covering the trees and the ground.  Bummer.  But typical for almost-spring in the mountains, this morning dawned bright and sunny with rapidly warming temperatures.  The snow fell off the trees in big clumps and by noon there was no evidence of any snow at all.  And that's a good thing.

Since Ellie died, Lucy follows my husband around like...well...like a puppy.  No matter where he is in the house she is either by his side or waiting outside the door.  Often she will stand at the head of the stairs to determine whether or not he is going to stay downstairs or come right back up.  Usually she takes her cue from whether or not he takes his water mug, Big Bubba (here) along with him.  She especially loves to sit with him on the porch or the deck.  There are so many wonderful sights, sounds, and scents.  We have a patio heater on both the deck and the porch so they can sit even in chilly weather.  She's always a little disappointed if he is going on the deck only to come right back inside.

Are you going to stay out here?  Or are we going back inside already?

 Much as she loves her beds and pillows, Lucy often lies on the rug or even on the hardwood floor.  This time she is using my husband's shoes for a pillow while she snoozes.

I have a personal request.  That you buy as many Girl Scout cookies this year as you can.  Buy more than you can eat and give them to your local food pantry.  The great evangelist Billy Graham's son Franklin says he won't be buying any this year.  Why?  Because those Girl Scouts welcome and embrace all lifestyles, even (gasp) lesbians.  So a person loudly proclaiming his "Christianity" is boycotting little girls for being inclusive.  So buy the cookies.  Someone should tell Franklin that when Jesus himself was feeding the five thousand, he did not have the disciples ask for lifestyle preferences.  He welcomed ALL to the table.  Just sayin'.

[Late entry:  A valued reader pointed out her problem with Girl Scout cookies because of the use of African palm oil, the gathering of which threatens animal habitats and the animals themselves.  I admit that I thought the palm oil issue had been resolved after a couple of very courageous girls made the public aware of this problem several years ago.  I thought the use had been totally discontinued but I was wrong.  Apparently while they are using "sustainable" palm oil they are still using palm oil in the cookies.  So I suggest you do some research on the issue and make up your mind.  If you decided not to purchase cookies, then make a donation to the local troop.]

Today's quote comes from Albert Scweitzer and is a favorite of mine:


Seek always to do some good, somewhere.
Every man has to seek in his own way to realize his true worth.
You must give some time to your fellow man.
Even if it's a little thing; do something for those who have need of help,
Something for which you get no pay but privilege of doing it.
For remember, you don't live in a world all your own.
Your brothers live here too.

HAVE A MOST WONDERFUL WEEKEND

AND A GREAT WEEK AHEAD

Seek always to do some good, somewhere. Every man has to seek in his own way to realize his true worth. You must give some time to your fellow man. For remember, you don't live in a world all your own. Your brothers are here too. Albert Schweitzer
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/fellow_man.html

Taking Down the Seed Feeders

We finally gave up and took in all the seed feeders that we have hanging over our deck.  Now we have suet feeders and the water but no seeds of any kind.  Fortunately, most of our backyard birds can eat the suet.  I grabbed the camera to take a few shots.  Unfortunately, after only a few pictures a Cooper's Hawk decided to look for a meal.  That always ends the bird watching and photographing for a while.

The Red-bellied Woodpecker is well suited for picking out the suet

 The White-breasted Nuthatch, also a member of the woodpecker family has no problem either.

 Some of the birds we are missing and will miss until we hang the seeds once more are the Northern Cardinals and the American Goldfinches.  Neither of them have the right bills and not the right feet to cling and eat from our suet feeders.  The Eastern Towhees cannot eat from the suet feeders either but they don't come to the seed feeders very often anyway.  And we will still have the Pileated Woodpeckers, the Wrens, the Tufted Titmice, the Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers, the Carolina and Black-capped Chickadees.

So what, you may ask, prompted us to remove all the seed feeders?  Two words.  Pine Siskins.  We have suffered an irruption of Pine Siskins for several weeks now.  They have given no indication they are planning to leave.  They are noisy and scatter far more seeds than they actually eat.  They push the other birds aside and take over the feeders, pushing and shoving each other as well.  In short, they are not fun to watch and they keep us from enjoying our resident birds.

 Fewer in number, they still drop by for water.

We will leave the feeders down for at least a week until we can assume the dreaded Siskins have moved to better feeding grounds.  The cardinals and the goldfinches will return since they live here.  And all will be much more peaceful, at least in the bird world outside.

I wish all of you could be enjoying the same weather we have enjoyed for the past three days.  You can tell from the first two photographs taken in the trees that the sky is truly Carolina Blue today.  Gives me hope that Spring is indeed just around the corner.  Yes, we are headed for more bad weather but there will be less of it and it will not last as long.  I can manage that.

We Love Lucy

What a week this has been.  We had a very large very severe storm system rage through bringing us the gamut of unpleasant weather.  High winds, rain, hail, and even bits of snow.  Lots of folks are still without power as downed trees have interrupted the lines.  But today it is sunny and calm with warmer temperatures.

Fortunately our Lucy does not pay much attention to outside weather.  She hates the rain when she has to be out in it, but she loves to watch the rain through the windows.  She was fascinated by the sight of the hail "popping" on the deck.  She does not mind thunder at all, thank goodness.  She especially loves to be outside on windy days.  She stands and turns her head in all directions with her nose uplifted to catch the scents.  She especially loves it when we are out in the yard and she can be off leash.

I'm not sure exactly what has caught her eye, but it's clearly not me and the camera.

Not ten minutes after being carefully groomed she looks so unkempt.

So once again we mourn the loss of lives and the injuries from yet another shooting in our country.  While not all of these despicable acts are preventable, we must take more measures to keep our citizens safe from shooters with rapid-fire guns.  Don't tell me (as my brother often does) about the Second Amendment and the rights of hunters.  NO private citizen needs to own an automatic weapon designed for the battlefield.

Tomorrow the Democrats in neighboring South Carolina will hold their primary and hopefully the political rhetoric will slow down for a while.  Bernie has already ruined one of my favorite Simon and Garfunkel songs.  I must admit that I loved what SC Republican Senator Lindsay Graham had to say about the Republican debate and presidential race.  (Graham was among the many originally running for President this year).  He laughingly said his party had gone bat-sh*t crazy.  He followed that with the fact that he would vote for the GOP candidate no matter who it might be.  Said he felt almost as if he had bought a ticket on the Titanic and that was even after he saw the movie.

The best way to get your audience larger and more consistent is to be more divisive and more radical and criticize those who cater to or kowtow to other forces. Norman Ornstein
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/divisive.html

 Journalist Norman Ornstein gives us our quote which indicative of this election year gatherings:
  "The best way to get your audience larger and more consistent is to be more divisive and more radical and criticize those who cater or kowtow to other forces."

he best way to get your audience larger and more consistent is to be more divisive and more radical and criticize those who cater to or kowtow to other forces. Norman Ornstein
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/divisive.html

Too bad we can't follow the advice of Euripides, author of ancient Greek tragedies:
 “In case of dissension, never dare to judge till you've heard the other side.”

I'm far too often like this:

HAVE A WONDERFUL WEEKEND, EVERYONE

STAY SAFE AND HELP YOUR NEIGHBOR

Seven Random Facts

I usually don't pay much attention to memes and awards.  But this one was from Ginnie (here) and I love Ginnie so here goes...

Instructions are to 1)  link to the blogger (done); 2) List seven random facts about yourself (coming right up); and 3)  Nominate seven other bloggers (Nope, but grab the award and join in if you wish. All my readers are beautiful bloggers).

Here Goes:
1.  As a young Registered Nurse, I was the Head Nurse of the Dickson Heart Unit of Charlotte Memorial Hospital.  I loved this high-intensity atmosphere and left only because I married and moved away.
The following photographs will demonstrate:  1.) how long it's been since I worked there; or 2.) how very fast health care facilities have grown; or 3.) both.

A postal card of Charlotte Memorial Hospital circa the time I worked there

An aerial view of the hospital now as part of Carolinas Medical Center Charlotte

(If you look closely, you can see the original hospital directly above the very center of the photograph, about half the distance from the center to the top)

2.  I love to drive.  I loved driving when I got my first driver's license and I love it just as much now.  Last year my husband nagged and nagged me to get a new car.  (I figured that just because my car was ten years old didn't mean it wasn't still the perfect car for me.)  Eventually I gave in to his logic.  I got a bright red BMW with all the bells and whistles.  Had to wait for it but it was well worth the wait.  The interior is black leather with bright red stitching. Classy indeed.  But more importantly, the engine has three turbo speeds in addition to the regular "comfort" setting.  The turbo speeds should be called fast, faster, and watch out.  I thought my old car loved the mountain roads, but this one hugs these mountain curves like a lover.  It's the first BMW I've owned and I'll drive it until I can no longer drive.  Who would have thought a heated steering wheel would be so great?  Special thanks to my husband for being persistent.  I'm totally in love with this car.  But I still won't let it parallel park itself.  Too many disclaimers in the owner's manual about ending up on the sidewalk or hitting pedestrians.

3.  I do a lot of knitting but I did not learn how until 2009 when I joined a neighborhood knitting group called the "knitwits."  I was told it didn't matter if I didn't knit, that I should come just for the company.  I decided that if I were going to join a knitting group then I would learn to knit.  So I taught myself to knit with the help of a book and our local yarn store.  My mother did not knit, crochet, or sew and did little cooking.  Martha Stewart she was not.  So I learned those skills on my own.

Red alpaca shawl
The first tricky thing I made.

4.  I listen to music pretty much all the time.  I have three iPods and use each one every day.  I still have the first generation iPod like the one pictured below.  It no longer holds a charge and I don't even have the iTunes library that programmed it.  (That was about four laptops ago.)  It came with a disc for installing and does not connect to WiFi.  The music is digital, but it is cumbersome to navigate except for the playlists.  It still works just fine and has great music and playlists on it. I keep it on the Bose dock and the beautiful sound fills the air, softly in the background when we have guests and booming when I'm here alone.  It was my first iPod and I got a bit carried away with making playlists for all occasions and activities.  You should hear my playlist for housecleaning.  It will keep you moving for certain.

My second iPod is a much more recent version of the iPod Touch which is rather like an iPhone except that it has no camera or phone.  My car has a dandy USB port in the center console, so I keep this one tucked in there and play it through my car sound system.  The third is the latest generation iPod Touch which does have a camera and takes a fairly good photograph or video.  I listen to podcasts, music, and audible books and exchange messages with friends.  (We don't get cellular phone service here at the house.)

5.  I am a voracious reader and have at least three books in process at any given time.  Right now I am reading "M Train" by Patti Smith, Diane Rehm's new memoir "On My Own," Stephen King's "Finders Keepers," a sequel to "Mr. Mercedes," and for book club Timothy Egan's "The Worst Hard Time" about the Dust Bowl.  I recently finished Elizabeth Strout's "My Name is Lucy Barton" and was terribly disappointed.  I loved her other books so perhaps my expectations were a bit too high.  But  after all, she is a Pulitzer Prize winner for "Olive Kitteridge" and this one didn't seem to have been written by the same person.  By the way:  one of the books was a Christmas gift and I bought the others from our local bookstore.  None are on a Kindle.

6.  I really love books.  I love holding them in my hands and flipping the pages back and forth.  But I also love electronics, so it should come as no surprise that I have three Kindles and use all three.  I use the really old one for reading in the den.  I like it because you can click to "turn" pages forward or backward from either side.  It is so old it does not connect with the Amazon Cloud but the books load directly on the Kindle itself.  I use a Paperwhite for reading upstairs and outdoors.  And I use the Kindle Fire to watch movies or play games.  Despite having three e-readers as well as the Kindle App on two of my iPods, I read far more "real" books than e books.  My Kindles are loaded with poetry collections, short stories, anthologies, etc. as well as some books that would be huge and heavy in print.  (Think "Don Quixote,"  "Autobiography of Mark Twain," Ken Follet tomes, complete works of Shakespeare, etc.)

7.  While I love electronics,  I'm not so easily impressed by new gadgets or apps anymore.  Seems as if there is an app for almost anything.  But I must admit that even after all this time, Siri continues to amaze me.  She can find me answers to almost anything although I don't like it when she gives me sports scores and tells me my team got "clobbered."  She could be a bit more diplomatic.  One of the best things about Siri is her ability to recognize music.  On several occasions, I have been watching a recorded show (we rarely watch anything live anymore) and heard a song I liked in the background.  So I can ask Siri to tell me the name of the song.  Immediately she says in a rather joyful voice, "Oh, I know that one."  Then she not only gives me the name of the song and artist, she flashes the album cover on my iPod and tells me to click on the icon to listen to the entire song and learn more about the album.  If I want to buy the song or album I can click and make a purchase.  In seconds the song (I rarely purchase the entire album) is there for me to listen to for 99 cents.  And the next time I sync my iPod, it is loaded in my iTunes library and I can download it to my car iPod or the Kindle Fire.  Now, how cool is that?  I think Siri will give me a lot of comfort when I am old and senile.  I can envision my elderly self sitting there and talking with Siri.  Or perhaps she will be incorporated into a little companion robot.  Who knows?  But with audible books and Siri, I'm sure I will be happy.

So there you have seven fairly innocuous things you might not know about me.  If you're so inclined, grab the award and use it to tell us more about yourself.

We Love our Lucy

Another week of whirlwind weather, finally ending with bright sunshine and warmer temperatures.  We have sun more often than not here in the NC mountains.  Very unlike the gray days that dominated the winter weather in WI.  And we do take advantage of those sunny days.  Our house is oriented so that the most frequently used living spaces face the south and east.  And oh, how I love the morning sun.

Lucy is a sun lover as well.  She finds the sun and follows it along during the day.  She would prefer to lie on the hardwood floor in a sunbeam to lying on a comfortable bed in shadows.

This was taken on a sunny day when everything was golden.

The ground cover, the sunshine, and (of course) the dog.

The SC GOP primary is tomorrow so the constant Republican political ads will slow down after being ramped up to warp speed the past week.  Strange things are happening today.  The Chicago Circuit Court has agree to hear arguments regarding the status of Ted Cruz's eligibility to be President based on his birth in Canada to only one American citizen.  Hillary Clinton was kept waiting at a rally by her Secret Service because of a suspicious drone overhead.  DJT has actually dissed Pope Francis.  Jeb Bush has his 90-year-old mother campaigning with him.  And Marco Rubio has received some really important endorsements although many are saying they are so late in coming they were forced by GOP party leaders.  What a ride.  And thank goodness at least the GOP primary will be over and the analysis of the results will eventually end.  Hopefully we will hear more about the Democratic caucuses in Nevada tomorrow than the SC upcoming primary next Saturday.  But locally that won't likely be the case.  So that means more time for movies and reading.

I hope you are enjoying some sunshine this February wherever you are.  Today's quote is from William Cullen Bryant, poet, journalist, and once editor of the New York Evening Post.

"The February sunshine steeps your boughs and tints the buds and swells the leaves within."

It's only a bit more than three weeks until SPRING!

HAVE A MOST WONDERFUL WEEKEND, EVERYONE

Forty Years of Fun

Today is our son's birthday.  He is forty years old today.  And those forty years have been filled with joy.  Well, most of the time.

He was born three years after his sister who had been without doubt the easiest infant and toddler you can imagine.  She was so adaptable and good-natured.  And never once had a temper tantrum.  She seemed to have come into the world, looked around, and thought, "Now what do I need to do to adapt?"

Our son seemed to have come into the world, looked around, and thought, "Now what do these people need to do to adjust to me?"  Even as an infant he was determined his make own schedule. We learned quite early about toddler tantrums.

He continually surprised us.  We were visiting in another state when he was barely 18 months old.  The people there gave him a little truck to play with.  He amazed everyone in the room by spelling out "T-E-X-A-C-O," and then said, "Texaco."  We had no idea he could recognize individual letters much less sound them out and read words.

He was very difficult to discipline because he seemed to make all of it fun.  He was such an active child, we tried to make the discipline include things that made him sit still for a while.  He quickly memorized anything we gave him---Presidents, Preamble to the Constitution, Rudyard Kipling and Longfellow poems, etc.  He could amuse himself forever if sent to his room.  If he was made to sit in a chair for a time out, his imagination took him far away from reflecting on what he had done.  His father assigned him to read Robinson Crusoe when he was six.  (Yes, he could read that well.)  So his escape was to read in the den and then run to find me to question every single word he did not understand. So he was reading for a few minutes and then jumping up to run to find me. That ended that.  We finally discovered that he hated the simplest of yard work.  So discipline revolved around picking up sticks, raking, weeding, etc.  Active as he was, he still hated forced physical activity.

His quick wit earned him lots of praise from certain of his teachers, and lots of scorn from others.  One teacher at conference would tell me "what a delight he is.  So clever and bright."  The next teacher would tell me, "that boy has an attitude and a smart mouth and needs to be kept in line."  Seriously?  They were both talking about the same child?  In the same grade?

When he was three he had a very favorite tee shirt.  He wore it almost every single day, much to the chagrin of his grandmother.  ("You shouldn't let him get away with telling you what he will wear."  To which I would reply, "What possible difference does it make as long as the shirt is washed and clean?"  And if we were going somewhere he would change. But he put that shirt back on the minute we got home.  I kept the shirt all these years, and sent it to him with his other gifts for his 40th birthday today.  He remembered it of course, and was so surprised that it was in such good condition considering how often he wore it.

He's just about outgrown the shirt.

But he was still proud of it.

His Senior picture.

The clean-cut preppy look disappeared in college, never to return.

His curly hair was never again so tamed by a short haircut.

Our son has grown into a wonderful man as well as a terrific son.  A person I would love meeting and talking with even if he were not my son.  He is a compassionate husband and a dutiful son-in-law.  He is tolerant of all sorts of different lifestyles and religious beliefs.  He is a loyal friend.  He is a gourmet cook who now cooks delicious meals for us when he visits, and sends me recipes to try.  He loves to entertain and cook for his friends.  He is a marathon runner who is willing to slow down to partner and pace with a friend who is a novice runner.

He is one fine human being and we are proud to call him our son.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR SON