Tuesday Tails: for the Earth, who is the Mother of Us All

Notable Quote:

"Imagine if every foot of coastline around the world was stacked with five plastic grocery bags stuffed with plastic trash. That’s the amount of plastic waste that ends up in our oceans each year. This visual is staggering."

Isn't it incredible to imagine?

National Geographic Took this on:



Let's do our best.  Each person, always.  Let's get this under control.

Together, we can all do it.  But it will take....The Sum of Us....

Tuesday Tails: Flamingo in San Diego (video) and the infamous Cherry Tree Rebellion.

Article about possibly Native Flamingos in Florida 

And, the Cherry Tree Rebellion, in Washington DC...  From HERE

Early Tuesday Tails... Sunday Stills at NatGeo UPDATED with a warning.

Just in case you missed this sort of Viral photo......

I'm not happy with this LINK TO SOURCE PAGE AT NATGEO 
and when you get there, you'll understand why. Adware.. sheesh

I'm a Wannabe....

I could rage against the NRA today, but I won't.  What a sad mess.

Can I do this Raging Granny thing from the comfy chair that keeps my back from collapsing?

There is no group, that I can find, in my city.  Of course there isn't.  It might spoil the little red dot on the map.  I'm seeking something I can do to support their work.  Wish me luck.

Tuesday Tails: Big Money VS the Cunning and Deadly Wolves, AS IF!... Knitting, Wolfie, and Tort report and a Skywatcher Post

The big money boys are rolling out their Big Moolah against the few remaining wolves, AGAIN.    Maybe it's because now that it's illegal, hunters still have a great market for all lupin pelts but hate to be classed as criminals?  Could that be it?

Anyway, the Earth absolutely needs the wolves to keep the Elk herds healthy and the Mule deer in check, something that hunters aren't really saying is THEIR first priority for killing either of those two ungulates.

Here's the Gauntlet- I'm throwing it down!  If you don't eat it or it's not eating humans, don't kill it just for the fun.

My Grandfather would hate what's going on now, and he was a hunter.  He never hunted from an airplane.  He did it the old fashioned way and for the old fashioned reason, to get meat to eat during the winter, and rabbits for the pot during the rest of the year.  He fished to eat, like most fishermen, but they are a different sort of folk.

Bring it, Mz. Sarah!  This is my rant but I'll let you have a run at it, too.

Lovers of  Where the Wild things Are!  Please join in?
  Wolves Under Attack -- Tell Obama to Use His Veto


Knitting report:
I got past the first row of patterns on the sleeves, but had to rip back because I just can't knit them both together on one circ without everything going all caddywompus, pear-shaped, or escew.  I'll stick to straights for these little sleeves.  A picture within the week of the progress.

Tort Report:  With temps returning to below 95°F again, the babies have been able to stay outside.  It was 91 two days ago but it's climbing back up so they came in again yesterday and probably today if the forcast is right.
These two little buddies are getting almost big enough to hibernate but it will take a couple more years of keeping them up all year to make certain they can survive it.  I hope the tomato plants that hang down don't kill the adults but I'm not as happy go lucky as Mr. Z about it.  Churchy's almost as old as I am!  I don't want him to die!

Wolfie report:  The little guy is slowing down.  He sleeps more.

Loves Cuddling:

And, he still enjoys his walks, and he loves, LOVES, going for rides:

He loves his food and  treats!

Annnd, he would enjoy going to the beach and probably will get to do that now that sanity has returned within the municipal code, and the crowds are gone.

Dogs can now be on the beach if they are on a leash, in some places.  He LOVES the beach and plays like a puppy when he gets to go there.  One of the other rules is that you must pick up after your dog. We always pick up after him.  I have a purse full of tiny plastic bags. We're good.

Skywatcher:

Ice Clouds two Sundays ago

Gotta Skeedaddle!

Thankful Thursday: Stop BLM's Plan to Double Off-road Traffic in West Mojave; Also Obama's attack on the Endangered Species Act.

I am thankful for the small army of activists and the Organizations that keep their eyes on issues and don't let anyone build smoke screens about important Environmental problems...


Stop BLM's Plan to Double Off-road Traffic in West Mojave

Want more?  Obama, for whatever reason, has been busily weakening the Endangered Species Act.

Read more about this from a PDF from the Center for Biological Diversity:

PDF called Cutting the Safety Net

To all the people willing to fight off road vehicles to save habitat for the endangered California Desert Tortoise, you have my heartfelt thanks.

Never think someone out here doesn't care that you give so much of your time and talents to this good fight.

Shame on you Mr. Obama.

Thankful Thursday- Honor Killings a Human Rights Violation of the worst kind; Trash Backwards Site; knitting blah blah, new David Austin rose

I'm VERY thankful not to be subject to Honor Killings, those terrible aberrations that are not only despicable, they are becoming more wide spread.  I watched a documentary, Link HERE, about groups who are trying to stop this Byzantine behavior amongst humans.  Actually, It goes back to before the Romans who also practiced it!  But I digress.

These women featured risk their lives to help others.  So, if any of you who work against this despicable Human Rights Abuse should see this, I am thankful for you to have been born and for the work you are doing!  This hurts women and their children and I feel that it has nothing to do with religion.  After all, why did the Romans do this, too?

May God Bless you and all who you help.  May the ones who do this see that it is not supposed to be this way.  May you remember the Fatima, how her father defended her:

"'The Holy Prophet said: 'Whoever injures (bodily or otherwise) Fatima, he injures me; and whoever injures me injures Allah; and whoever injures Allah practices unbelief. O Fatima! If your wrath is incurred, it incurs the wrath of Allah; and if you are pleased, it makes Allah pleased, too.' "

Ok, now for something completely different:

I'm thankful for Recycling bloggers!  This one is called "Trash Backwards" and you can see it HERE.   Originally I was looking for what to do with the mylar that CLIF Builder's Bars are wrapped in.  I did find some creative things to do with mylar, including chip bags - cleaned and reversed for wrapping up stuff to gift. Mylar does not make very good snowflakes.  *sigh*

I am thankful for the internet, but this has already been said like THREE- Yawwwwwn- times.  So, some actual web sites will be  tucked in, and maybe a few will migrate to the side bar in my long list of favorite haunts.  For fun things as well as other "Wake up we need you to know this is going on!" sorts of things, I am thankful for the INTERNET!!

Isn't that nifty? HERE'S the link to this part.

Within that last link is another link to the hilarious facebook page about Sun Chip bags that were so noisy that no one could hear conversations over them while noshing.  It's called, "SORRY I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER THIS SUN CHIP BAG!"  If you are on Facebook you will be able to log in and see it.

Anyway, keep on the sunny side of life!  It's where the best stuff is, though we do learn lessons from everything both our own trials and tribulations as well as those of others, it's a darn sight more happy when those are over!  Let's change things and THEN relax a  bit!



This music video is a little bit muzzy but all of the Carter Gals, and the Cash family are in it.  Lovely...

Wonky Woman report:  This is a new week, with some good news from the MRI, my ears are, indeed, in straight.  But I get to visit with some quite benign Physiotherapists, and other more SCARY doctors - neurologists- to get the all clear.  We, the Audiologist and I, think it's good news though, on the whole.  I'd be glad to be rid of balance problems and the wicked, sick headaches.

Knitted hat report:  Earlier last night I cast on yet again, fellow knitters, I'm going back at it on the hat.  I made every single mistake a knitter could make on the first attempt.  I had to cast on three (THREE!) separate times, then got the pattern dead wrong in trying to make TWELVE stitch wide cables instead of the called for SIX stitch ones... please don't laugh...

and that was that, said the woman to the hat.  As to spaced out knitting, maybe I'm distracted or maybe I'm past it, but I'm willing to set my troubled little paws back onto the needles because I LOVE THIS HAT too much to give up on it.

And today, the Knit Picks catalog came, so I'm off to drool over it!  And there is a new Sunset Magazine, and there is a new rose from David Austen.  It's called, "The Lady Gardener" ; it's an apricot colored rose with a gorgeous scent.  I am going to do my best to lay hands on it!  It sounds like just the right medicine for me!

My own lovely Apricot Nectar,

Overblown and....
desperately trying for a David Austen photo Op.
heehee

And the Torts, 

will have a new BBF!

As a new  Best Food Forever

The new superstar......

The Lady Gardener Rose: Picture from HERE

Knitting, and gardening, and reading Jane Austen Novels on the Kindle is a very peaceful life for which I thank God.  I wish that every woman in the world could have this sort of Peace.

Well, to be honest, I wish this for the guys, too, but they'd probably rather work on Motorbikes, cars, boats, or wooden things, or maybe plant fruit trees or build decks, and I'm sure they'd rather read Woodworker's Magazine or maybe Sports Illustrated.  Ok, I wish them THAT sort of Peace.  ;-)

Migratory Birds may just get a break, and saving water around the house for use on plants.

With such a dry year, or actually a series of drought years, migratory birds are having a bad time on the Pacific Flyway.  But with a deal brought about by Nature Conservancy, with a lot of help from Audubon and other partners, and of course the farmers, disaster for the birds may be averted.

Read about it HERE

Farmers have also been partnering to try to save habitat for the quickly declining  Tri Colored Blackbird, a sub species of Red Winged Blackbird.  The Tricolored is crashing, with numbers down 40% since 2011.

This is very exciting because all of a sudden there is some hope in the mix of other news.  I think this will work if everything goes according to plan.  Of course, as long as the drought is running, the field flooding may have to continue.  There are an unbelievable number of farm fields laying fallow along the Central Coast.
When we drove up there last month we did see huge new acreages of wine grapes but there are problems ahead for those as well.  Please read about water problems ahead for the vineyards HERE

Nearly all the lands the vines now occupy were formerly ranch lands.  The ranch lands formed good forage for small animals on which Redtailed Hawks, Merlins and other raptors, coyotes and the occasional Bobcat made livings.  Mice, cottontail Rabbits, etc, sharpened their skills of survival while dodging death from the air or from the land.  But that's a different story.   Despite the fact that these vineyards are another form of desert for all species of wildlife, winged or quadrupedal, there has been very little amelioration made for the habitats destroyed, and this is so even with all the additional stresses and problems made worse by drought.

THIS LINK goes to  the United States Drought Monitor site  for a good look at what's happening and why it is so VERY important to save bath, shower and dish washing water for watering plantings.  HERE is a list called Wise Water Use PDF, and save gray water.  You can water your potted plants with it.  I have a lot of pots and that is how I'm doing it.

Good night, and good luck!  Let's keep water out for the birds, too.  I get a TON of species by just providing cover and cool water, with a bit of forage.  They check out the roses and citrus every single day.

Tuesday, wherein I both whine and crow. A bit of Earth Tribal News, and Torts, too!

Poko and her baby, Dusty, share a meal of roses.

Churchy's little tail

Thrilling "Tribal News" from yesterweek:

Friday the Thirteenth came on a Tuesday this month!

You will remember that I picked prickly pears on Friday last week.

I did some of this canning stuff wrong, apparently, by flipping the jars upside down but no worries.  I snapped at DH and paid for it PDQ when I burnt my thumb on the boiling water bath.  But!

But if it all JELLS,  I will be so very happy indeed!   I'll be dancing in the kitchen! Will this serve for the 13th day of August Happiness Challenge?  My happiness was challenged!

Saturday we cleaned the pears of most of the thorns.   I also peeled, cut up, and ground up these fierce fruits, and put that goop into the Fridge with a lid on it so it could not get out in the night and reek havoc about the place! 

Sunday,  and I added stuff, cooked, cooled, and stored the goop until Monday, satisfied that it was good and DEAD!

This is a mishmash of pictures over many days, some were on the phone cam.  sheesh

Four of these, full of those (below).

Each of those 50 some little "tunas" (Actually, I think of them more as PUMAS.  Dear God they are fierce !) got pealed and chopped.
I spent the evening on Friday picking little thorns out of my finger with a pair of tweezers,
while wearing an Optivisor, to find the tiny beasts.
  I cannot stress enough, WEAR STEEL TIPPED LEATHER GLOVES FOR THE PICKING AND PEALING PARTS!

Sunday,  I think, I added a whole tray of frozen lime juice from our trees, plus four cups of sugar, and boiled all this for 12 minutes.
After letting it cool down, it went into the fridge for the night, absolutely, completely DEAD!

Monday, I boiled it again, for another 10 minutes, just for fun, no really I had to get the pectin into it.  I added 3 and a half tablespoons of pectin.  This !@#!*$&# stuff had better JELL!

I filled the jars and sealed them, then flipped them over just like about half the people in the world do- those in Europe who went through two world wars and the great famine and that should count for something, right?  They should know what they are doing?  Yes?
Then I got exceedingly worried.  The other half of "canning world" nixed this as a proper seal, plus some of them said flipping the jars bottom up could "break the Gel"  Yikes! 
Anyway,  I fell back onto my mother's tomato canning methods, sure, by now, that I had "Broken the Gel",  Mon Dieu!  Sad really. 
After ALL The work and the ANGST!  It's not like I had never canned before, I had, I've done a lot of it!  I blame the web, and that wicked Opuntia!

In the jars went to be boiled yet again! 
Not having a proper water bath canning outfit I had to rely on Luck and the Virgin Mary (no I really mean that) to keep the jars from blowing up as, I HAD NO RACK! 
The online sites said to use a rack to keep the jars from blowing up!
I sat in the other room, but close enough to hear anything happening, and waited for the sound of disaster.   After 10 more minutes in an amazingly HOT, rolling boil (that in itself made me feel like a wizard but the fairly massive stove burner deserves the credit) the jars all came through just fine.

This time I was satisfied that there was no microbe Known to Science, NONE, that could have lived through what I'd put those pears through.
I am firmly in the water bath school, or TRIBE, which ever the case may be.

There really is something so very "Tribal" about canning your own Stuff!   All the jars sealed, and I could hear the pings all the way in here from the kitchen with the fan blowing in my ear.   Did I mention that my hearing has returned? 

The reason that there are fewer jars than you might expect from all those prickly pears is that you can't use ALL of a fruit unless you use the "Blowtorch tribal methods" described HERE.  I may have put that link up already but it really is a pretty blog post, not so unruly as is mine.  If you read this far, I congratulate you on your stamina!

With a blowtorch, you get off nearly all the thorns, and the skin comes off very thinly, and therefore, much more of the flesh of the pear  stays With it.  And, as an added bonus, the men of the family think it's a very cool tribal method, indeed.  If memory serves, you just try getting so much as a finger on that blowtorch yourself! 

Also, there is another reason:  since it was in the afternoon, I was in my "blind as a bat" state.  This meant that I couldn't tell there was actually a LID on a storage container that was set before me.  Half a big jar of juice went all over the counter top, down the cabinets and onto the floor.  This almost caused me to flip out and decide to go cut that  @$#%^& Opuntia down with the pruning saw, and just BE DONE WITH IT FOREVER!

If my jam doesn't jell, it will make one heck of a Tequila Sunrise, eh?  I'm not cooking it again.  I'll just freeze it and eat it like popsicles.

Tally ho, EarthTribe!  Have a very good time this week!

Sunday: Day 11 of Challenge: Getting ready to make Prickly Pear Jelly

Happy - well mostly Happy, Adventures in Cooking.  That's my Tenth Day Happiness.

Two days ago, Friday, I picked all the prickly pears off our Opuntia cactus.   It was loaded with them! 











Yesterday I used THIS method to prepare the fruit.  DH helped me (a lot!), and we got some spines in our fingers because we didn't use the suggested leather gloves - which we didn't have; so, we just used stencil brushes (these worked great by the way) and canning tongs.   I suggest that you use the gloves, too, though.   Our hands feel like pincushions! 

Alas, the link does not go to a page that tells you how to make these.  I thought it did. Somehow they are made with THIS tool Clover makes which I remember making out of cardboard.  I'll be looking for another link to the way they are made because we all can hear Christmas hauling around yon CORNER at lightning speed, yes?!  Want more pincushions?  Go HERE  Chirpy Mouse has some lovely tutorials and I'm sure one of them will help with the pattern for these.  And here is TipNut's Blog, filled with 50 free patterns for pincushions.   

Aren't they cute! 

But, I digress... Back to the cactus adventures:

  
The tiny thorns never bothered me before but I've never done this many prickly pears at one time, either.    For some reason, these fruits are also called Tunas.  I've never heard them called that before in a whole long life of picking and eating prickly pears.  Go figure....

Last night, Saturday, I made the juice which will then be made into jelly after I strain it and cook it today.   I'll share pictures of the process on Monday.

Waste not want not!  Boy, I think I'd better get to bed!  Nighty Night!

Want to Join a Boycott of Companies Fighting Prop 37, the one about making manufactuerer's tell the truth?

Let's make them tell the truth about what is in our foods.

The list is long, and chances are that there are things on it that you eat and love.  But the reason they need to get the heat turned up on them is because they are trying to defeat Prop 37 that will tell you, in California at least, what is in your food -from additives to GMO crops.  If you know, you might keep eating  those foods anyway, but at least it will be a CONSCIOUS  CHOICE , your right as an American, and something that the manufacturers on this list do not want you to be able to make.

Boycott Companies Fighting Prop 37! | The Alliance for Natural Health USA

Seriously, we do have a right to know what we are eating and feeding the kids, and just what's in it besides the pretty strawberries, honey and the delicious looking Oats waving in the field.  You know, all that stuff in the pictures on the front of the cereal boxes!  That's what we need to know.  That amounts to the Whole Truth, in other words.

What the Borg are up to! Trans-Pacific Partnership meeting. Sierra Club Alert.

Sierra Club sent this out to its members this evening.  I figured that the rest of us deserve to know, too:

"Dear Sierra Club members,

The largest free trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will happen right here in San Diego  June 30 to July 8.  This secret trade agreement between 11 Pacific Rim nations, with the help of over 600 corporate representatives, has almost zero public oversight!

Powerful corporate interests have official access and have been pushing for the TPP to:
·  Offshore good-paying jobs to low-wage nations and undercut working conditions globally
·  Create new tools for attacking environmental and consumer safety standards
·  Expand the deregulation of banks, hedge funds and insurance companies
·  Further concentrate control of global food supplies, displacing family farmers and peasants and subjecting consumers to wild price fluctuations and un-labeled genetically-modified food
·  Undermine public health policies that reduce tobacco consumption and increase access to medicine
·  Give multinational corporations and private investors the right to sue nations in private tribunals.  These tribunals have the power to overturn environmental,  labor, or any other laws that limit profit, and award the corporations taxpayer-funded damages.
·  Encourage privatization of lands and natural resources in areas where indigenous people live

The agreement will impact just about every issue we care about: jobs, environmental protection, public health and safety, financial regulation, access to medicines, Internet neutrality, and most importantly, our democratic sovereignty. Please join us next week to say Stop TPP!

There will be two rallies, a major march with pots and pans, an educational conference, and more. Please join us for these three events:

·        Monday, July 2nd on your lunch hour: Noon - Press conference and kick-off rally, at the Hilton Bayfront and Convention Center (where the negotiation conference is taking place).  The event will include a featured speaker from the Sierra Club and sponsored by the San Diego/Imperial County Labor Council of the AFL-CIO.

·        Saturday, July 7th:  March and rally. Gather at 10:30 at the Civic Center (aka Freedom Plaza at the corner of B and 3rd Street downtown); March leaves at 11:00 and heads to the Hilton Bayfront for a rally at noon (coinciding with trade negotiators' lunch hour).

·        July 2,  3,  5,  6,  7 -- "People's Conference: A Better World is Possible" Evening discussions with international,  national and local grassroots organizers and experts.

For more information and details go to http://www.stoptpp.org/.

To get involved - contact us!

Thank You"

Food For Thought

I couldn't sleep because of all the angst in my soul about the sorry state of just about anything environmental in this world.

This is an excerpt from the book that I'm now reading:

" 'The minute you begin to view the public as something that doesn't operate rationally, your job as a publicist or journalist changes,"  Stewart Ewen observes.  'The Pivotal moment was when those who provided the public with it's intelligence no longer believed the public had any intelligence.'   It is disturbing to see how frequently this ideology, which corrodes the democratic values in an acid bath of cynicism, surfaces today among the political insiders who claim to govern in the name of democracy and popular sovereignty.   On issue after issue, the public is belittled as self indulgent and misinformed, incapable of grasping the larger complexities known to the policy makers and the circles of experts surrounding them,' observed author William Greider in, Who Will Tell the People, his 1992 study of the Washington political establishment.' "


It really is time for us all to start talking to each other, mending fences and getting some of the people who are ruining our dreams out of that lobby at the white house.   We need to start thinking about the horrible future they have planned for "commoners", which is what they think of us as being.  If we stay isolated from each other, we can't do very much.  That's why things have gotten into the state they are in.  We have been divided against each other with labels slapped on us by corporate media for decades now.    But United, we can do this!  We can have more responsive representatives in our government, ones who aren't continually out of touch with our realities and our wishes.  We pay their salaries and they treat us as if we are imbeciles who need talked down to?


As to becoming re-united with one another, if we were to start right at the local level and take back our own Agriculture,  planning what our families are going to be eating around what can be grown locally, we start supporting local farmers who need our markets.  Both we and the farmers will find ourselves with more power to do other things that will benefit every region of this country.

The Slow Foods movement started back in the 50's, at least.  It's been working to keep food unprocessed, fresh and local throughout the consolidation of Agriculture into Agribusiness, which, incidentally,  is not a consolidation that is good  for the Earth, nor is it good for people.   There is a documentary entitled, "Ingredients", that shows how our food distribution system can be changed for the better.

Let's start with the small things close to home.  We don't have to become isolated regionally but we can learn how to keep the small farmers on their land!  And we can stop the huge and  wasteful corporate multi-nationals from sucking the life out of our little cities, and giving us absolute crap to eat and feed to our children.

It's obviously not going to be easy.  We have to talk to each other and work together to do it.  But, this is America!  It's ours!  We can do this thing! I believe in you, and your "smarts".  Don't let them tell you that you can't understand anything you set out to understand.  Go for it! 


Now for something beautiful for you to look at.  Local flowers at local farmers markets.  And some other little local plants.

Cosmos at Santa Cruz Farmer's Market

Tiny succulent "wall" at the Succulent Nursery in Elk-horn Slough area.. make it BIG!

Amazing Blue Poppy in the San Francisco Arboretum

May you walk with Beauty all around you!  I love you all!

What some of the Grrrreen Kids are up to...

They are marching.

The iMatterMarch site

Check out all the flags for worldwide events.

And, Here's the WEB SITE for the iMatterMarch Blog so that any of you interested can catch up with them.

And Sierra Club is one of the sponsors. I'm just blogging this along in case you know kids who would like to participate.

And for one small person I know, here's a picture of a small equipment HandiTool.

Dig it?

I had to chase this puppy down a few weeks ago.  When the driver had to stop for some map reading I was able to catch up with him!  For LBL!

Amnesty's Write-a-Thon starts tomorrow.

Amnesty International's Write for Rights campaign starts tomorrow.  It's Nine days of writing a letter a day for people like Bu Dongwei.  I'm sharing the letter that he sent to amnesty upon gaining his freedom:


Bu Dongwei's letter:

"In the evening of May 19, 2006, six to seven police suddenly broke into my home. They searched everywhere. But all they found were several books - words on paper.

These books were used as "evidence" against my activities as a practitioner of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which is banned in China.

Possession of these books led to my torture and persecution inside a Chinese labor camp for two and a half years.

The Chinese government tried to use these words on paper to imprison me, but it was your words on paper that helped set me free.

Your letters will stay in my heart forever.

My personal case is a witness - your letters make a difference.

I felt the attitude of the guards change toward me for the better when your letters came in. I knew that I was not alone. The guards knew that Amnesty International and its supporters stood behind me.

From my experience, I understand that the attention and pressure from the international society can help improve the conditions of jailed people.

Write for Rights is a great idea. Only through the joined efforts of upright and kind people, like you, can we stop this injustice.

When you write for human rights, no one has to experience the pain of human rights abuse alone.

Thank You,

Bu Dongwei
Former prisoner of conscience
Write for Rights case, December 2007"

Also, here is the page Amnesty has set up with Case Sheets and Sample Letters, as well as other resources:

Amnesty's Resource Page for the Write-a-Thon 

I'm sharing all this  because I really believe that it works to save lives and to free people imprisoned for things that American take for granted- our Inalienable freedoms as human beings, as Thomas Jefferson put it.   I know he's not the greatest example, but, there you are.... ;o)  The words themselves are strong and beautiful truths, eh?  Right!

Where the World Music Concerts are held in Kensington, there are two walk way seating walls of these saying created by the children at the school adjacent to the park.  This one really moved my heart.  I think they are all charming but this is the special one for myself.

May the tiny drop of ocean that moves through your heart connect you to the rhythm of the ocean and it's tides and currents.  May you feel like an Earthling again, Connected, and less like a God lost in Space;  may you thereby be cured of sadness, feel whole, and be joyful, like a little child is.

Good night friends.  Peace and Love.

New yarn for triangle scarves

I am too bloddy tired to be doing this but here it goes:

Yes, I'm going to make two of these Drops Scarves and just make a pair of Raggedy-Ann-sort-of-looking-left-over-bit socks out of the original yarn choice. I originally saw these socks in Reverly, in one of the many sock groups there, the thrifty sockers comes to mind, and they shared a lot of pictures of amazing looking sox made from bits and pieces.

This yarn is Garn Studios (Drops) and is called "Delight". It's a sock weight, and the usual blend for that. As you can see, it's Pink and purples blend and Purples and greens. It's a soft yarn, but not overly so, and the colors are truly beautiful, as you can see, even with flashy flashy overload.

We had a very quiet Halloween, hardly two dozen kidlets. I think that, on the whole, it is better for children to have so many options, like carnivals at schools and church, and even shopping centers but it's still fun to see the few who do come around to trick or treat. They are happy and very adorable in their costumes. We will decorate a little more next year, and maybe put jack o lanterns in the windows of the house as well as the RV, and lots of spider webs! Not just the real ones either!



I'm still reading Amelia Peabody Mysteries. I can't say enough positive things about these mysteries. Ramses is Amelia's and Emerson's son, Nefret is their ward. The entire cast of characters periodically are living on a large boat on the Nile, near Luxor. Nasir is the steward.

EDIT:  Unfortunately I tripped over my tongue and put in a spoiler, but I hope you didn't see it!  I've removed it.



Here's an quote to show the wit that is in these books:

"When Ramses returned to the saloon, Nasir was setting the table for dinner. He was less clumsy than he had been, but he had found a new excuse to linger by folding the napkins into intricate shapes. His ambition exceeded his skill; tonight's effort was probably meant to be a flying bird, though it more resembled a decapitated duck. Ramses dismissed him with a few brusque words and went to stand by Nefret, who was curled up on the divan.

'You hurt his feeling,' she said reproachfully.
'Stop him doing that, then. It takes forever to untie the knots.'"

At some point I'll have to read the stack of formidable non fiction I've been accruing, but-- it --can --wait. The damage to the economy is long done, stretching back to policies set in motion in the 80's by a moron listening to the most greedy bastards that lived at that time, and all we are trying to do now is get the damn ship to stop swaying and listing.

We'll see who has enough common sense and respect for the country to work hard to let the present Commander and Chief run the country and solve this, or whether the Ship of State will keep swaying and listing into oblivion, with the Commander and Chief aiding and abetting.  FDR would have removed more than a few people's nether parts by now, Supreme court rulings or not.

"We, the people" seem to have come out of the worm hole of space they fell into when The Jobs all were outsourced, the military machine got all the education money, and the Constitution - with all those tricky and expedient civil rights - was being trashed. Now with fingers pointing in all the wrong directions, they are all grabbing at the helm like crazed and drunken sailors who have seen the port side guns fall into the sea. We, who are left to report it all, have to see what will become of our voyage to a better world.

Ah well, another tale for another day.

EDIT: I've come back to correct a lot of mistakes that last night's fatigue caused to be strewn all the way through this little diatribe.  Sorry.  There should be a lock on my computer after 9 pm.   Gee, I hope I got them all!

Save your hair and the dog's fur...

And the horse's, and the long haired cat's fur!

This place can use it! Pass this along if you like..The more the better..thanks to my sharp eyed DH..

Tree Frogs

The tiny Pacific tree frogs are singing tonight. When we first moved here ages ago, I caught one of them climbing up the wall of the house one night. They are very tiny and completely adorable.

As far as IDing them I did look at their feet but not at their nether parts.

Read about them HERE

It's so lovely to hear them at night. They are making a comeback in the garden over time, since we have used no pesticides ever since we moved here in the early 70's.

Listening to them is so peaceful.

ALZOOO, My DD sent me this site called Derailing for Dummies. It's just the thing for setting yourself up as an undisputed expert on ANY subject under the sun, but particularly for friendly discussions of social issues where you want to impress the opposite sex with your brilliance.