Making bacon lettuce and tomato sandwiches? Have a couple of pieces of left over bacon?
Happen to be baking chocolate chip cookies at the same time?

well?    I made 2 bacon chocolate chip cookies. Ate one shared one with two neighbors. Declared delicious by all .. silly - but nom nom...... mmmmm. I am easy to entertain I guess.

Welcome home or welcome neighbor?

I see these chairs a time or two every day and I laugh as I see them. I wonder why they are there and wonder who put them there and decided to post them here for an innocent diversion for my readers :-)

The humming tree

Yesterday being the warmest day of the year I spent most of the afternoon out at my new property - Late in the afternoon the wind picked up as I was standing under a tall pine tree ( the tallest in the photo above) and I felt a humming vibration all around me and the tree. I realized it was coming from the top of the tree and it sounded almost but not quite like power lines in the wind. I put my left hand palm to the tree and felt nothing - so it must have been just sound (I know every tree has its own wind sound reaction depending on shape - yet had never heard this sound). I know it sounds woohoo and out of there -- but it was truly one of those life changing experiences.

I hope everyone has had at least one such experience. No brilliant wisdom or thoughts but the feel of connection to the earth and the energy of the universe - science or spirit or both.

Shakespeare's Snow

I'm very sorry to possibly offend purists. (maybe) but I love snow and Shakespeare (and cheese curds)

The snow underfoot doth squeak
I think - not to muffled sound
but doth mayhaps protests the pressure
snow slides along under
rubber shod toes and heels
grasping and letting go-
not the sound of extreme
cold crunch crunch
but a rolling squeak -
Have no fear have no fear -
It's but the squeak you
know from making cheese -
curds bite they surrender
and leave a parting comment -
"I'm ready to be pressed".
Lo how this snow doth follow.

(To our first real and heavy snow of the winter)

simple & responsible bliss

"When you walk across the field with your mind pure and holy, then from all the stones, and all growing things, and all the animals, the sparks of their souls come out and cling to you, and then they are purified and become a holy fire in you."

Baal Shem Tov's spiritual heir

quoted by Annie Dillard in "For the Time Being"

reminder for my sagging memory

"If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud."

Emile Zola

I had this pinned to my drawing board when I was a late teenager. I wonder if I am? It is related to Gandhi's "Be the change you want to see in the world" and St Francis preaching "Go out to the world and spread the Gospel and use words if you must" (paraphrase).

I feel vulnerable when I admit I that I use words as a sign post rather than as a 5 page memo for others to understand where I am. The reality of living out loud doesn't seem so romantic now from hindsight. But it is rich in presence.

dyeing and printing fabric with 'eco dyes' from a beginner

I recently read India Flint's book Eco Colour and wanted to try something before the great freeze. This is my first large trial - an old cotton dish towel rolled around a copper pipe and a steel engine part (?) I also soaked some leaves in water first since they were a bit dry. There are a few smooshed rose hips and a few thin pieces of steel And a small piece of bark with fungi/lichen on it . Rolled it up tight and tied some wool yarn around the bundle and simmered it in vinegar water. Then left it outside to freeze for a week.

I'm looking forward to spring now --- it's addicting I suspect! Doesn't it look like a spine & hip xray?