Welcome!
Introducing Marmaduke
20191002 001045 10 minutes Turning Points, Memories, Marmaduke, They’ve vanished. I can’t find them anywhere. I know I had them this morning. I put them in a safe place, where I would be sure to find them. Fatal mistake. Anything I put in a safe place inevitably turns out to be in a black hole and is never seen or heard from again. Or at least until Haley’s Comet returns, 75 years later. Actually, what happens to it is that Marmaduke hides it. He is the gremlin who precedes me wherever I go. He’s been with me since my teens, [...]
A Pocket Full of Starlight
20191002 001044 3 minutes Musings, Seasons, Hopeful, Optimism That song has been on my mind all week . Today it’s trying hard to rain, or maybe it’s just low cloud. Driving North on 9W from the Bear Mountain Bridge, the colors are gorgeous. The leaves are turning a couple of weeks’ early, but right now the countryside is ablaze with color. The first leaves to turn haven’t fallen yet and the later ones are still green, so there is a very full mosaic of colors to feast the eye. Passing one of the houses the smell of pickling spices assault [...]
The First Day of Fall in the Mountains
20191001 001041 2-1/2 minutes. Fall, Changing Seasons, Hibernation, It was the most perfect day. Sunshine but cool. Incredibly blue cloudless sky. All the leaves, well almost all, a gorgeous bright green and still on the trees. When walking through the woods with the dogs I stopped in a pool of sunshine and luxuriated in the warmth seeping into my bones. It felt wonderful. It wasn’t official yet, but it felt like fall as we wish it would always be. A day for doing all those projects that have to be completed before the weather broke. A day for enjoying the [...]
What Matters?
20190926 00140 5 minutes Political, Musings, Golden Rule Indeed, what does matter? Recently I confirmed what I had suspected for a very long time: Nothing matters, or at least, not much. As human beings, we are anxious to believe that we matter, and that those things we believe in also are important. But I have difficulty proving it. All those things that are so “necessary” to our little lives are just adult-style toys. And, like children’s toys, they are not at all necessary to life, just useful to make life more fun and easier. If it is considered that our [...]
Homesteading: Apartment Life: The Dreaded Pressure Canner!
20190926 00139 8 minutes Homesteading, pressure canning, pressure cooker, apartment life, country life, veggies, canning, Now, some years’ later, much water has passed under that mythical bridge. No more cabin in the woods, with four freezers in varying stages of overflow. No more “Poor Man’s Root Cellar,” a fort made of 50 bales of hay to keep Jack Frost’s fingers away from the veggies and the jars full of fruit, chutneys and jams. It’s apartment living for me, now. But that’s no excuse for changing my eating habits. It just makes it that much greater a challenge! With only one [...]