I think nature’s gold is the very best and I offer you two examples of why I think so. This will be my last post for September as I’m on the way to southern California for another visit with our older daughter, husband, and grandchild-in-the-making. I’ll even be attending my first gender-reveal party but no, there will be no fireworks to start forest fires or anything happening that might kill someone or destroy property! Just family and friends and a cake that when cut, will have frosting colored to reveal boy or girl. Whatever happened to the element of surprise that we looked for? 🙂
In the second week, the smoke cleared, allowing us the usual views with the usual clarity. Although riding is for me one of the main draws, I also love the mountains and time to relax without house chores hanging over my head. Let’s face it. When you’re at home, if you take time off, you almost always could be doing something more “worthwhile.” But when I’m at the cabin, even though there are things to do, there’s still plenty of time to sit on the porch, reading, sipping tea, thinking, a/o just relaxing and looking. “Just looking” is well worth it, as you can see.
My husband had a red metal Coleman cooler before we met that’s still going strong. You’ve heard of some men being called “babe magnets?” That cooler is a hummingbird magnet, also functioning perfectly as the perfect place to set my mug of tea (although it’s impossible to grab a photo when a hummingbird is 8″ from your nose, something that’s happened to me more than once! It’s quite a noisy and cool experience.
Reminder to self: don’t forget to take the Nikon with telephoto outside and set it on the cooler table because you never know what sort of animals or birds might come into view. Out here, these little guys are cute; in my garden, when I had one in the Midwest, they fell into the category of pest! It’s hilarious to see them racing around the front “yard” on these logs that serve as basic fences to keep the horses out or to see several of the small squirrels in this area chasing each other at lightning speed on the same logs while chittering loudly.
Late every afternoon the horses are taken out to pasture to spend the night and if it’s Thursday, their day off, the entire day. But at some point they’re let out in and around the cabins. Eventually they tend to drift toward the area in front of our cabin. It can also be disconcerting during the night to wake to horse noise right on the other side of your cabin wall!
I arrived back home yesterday about noon after having a perfect time (with the exception of coming down with a bit of a cold the last couple of days.) I managed to avoid both the rain and Tulsa on the way back, the rain through none of my own doing and Tulsa because President Biden was visiting on Tuesday when I would have arrived to spend the night and when the President comes to town, major roads close down. So I made like an Okie from Muskogee (lyrics follow), heading there and then to Oklahoma City for the night without ever going near Tulsa. Worked like a charm. The next night Albuquerque and tonight home and I got to watch Stanley Cup hockey playoff games in the motels. 🙂 Tomorrow it’s back to the real work and blogs as well. Happy Friday.
Merle Haggard
We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee; We don’t take no trips on LSD We don’t burn no draft cards down on Main Street; We like livin’ right, and bein’ free.
We don’t make no party out of lovin’; We like holdin’ hands and pitchin’ wool; We don’t let our hair grow long and shaggy, Like the hippies out in San Francisco do.
And I’m proud to be an Okie from Muskogee, A place where even squares can have a ball. We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse, And white lightnin’s still the biggest thrill of all.
Leather boots are still in style for manly footwear; Beads and Roman sandals won’t be seen. Football’s still the roughest thing on campus, And the kids here still respect the college dean.
And I’m proud to be an Okie from Muskogee, A place where even squares can have a ball. We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse, And white lightnin’s still the biggest thrill of all. In Muskogee, Oklahoma, USA.
I had big plans to do a Monday walk post but time and friends got away with me and it’s now bedtime so not time for more. 🙂 I walked in “my” park right away on Friday morning, a delightful time with a bit of forest bathing in some sections. This is more (and of course different) trees than in many blocks surrounding our house in Arizona and nary a cactus in sight. So much beautiful variety in the world. Happy Monday!
Another day in San Diego and then back to Redondo Beach. Life is good. What will I have bought at the farmer’s market yesterday? Hope all’s well with all of you and thanks for visiting and commenting even while I’m gone.
One Christmas some years ago, I opened a card from our older daughter that said “Good for one week in Costa Rica.” I thought it was a joke. A year later, after one aborted attempt due to a cancelled flight, we spent five wonderful days near the Manuel Antonio rain forest. On the way back from a day-long cruise where we saw whales, ate and drank well, and went scuba diving, we were treated to this glorious sunset.
When I was in college, I had a ’75 bright yellow Super Beetle I nicknamed Sundance. Armed with only an AM radio for entertainment and a sunroof for airconditioning, Sundance and I ventured all over the United States, even to places usually only accessed by vehicles with 4-wheel drive. I figured if I ever got stuck, I could find four strong men to pick him up and put him back on the road. Fortunately, it never came to that, but we had some adventures. The Super Beetle actually had dashboard and still had the engine in the back which gave great traction. You would have been amazed at how much I could pack into that front trunk and backseat. Sundance is long gone (couldn’t really get a child seat in the back seat of a 2-door car very well), but his spirit lives on in this little model.
For Christmas in 2019, I thought of making a Buche de Noel, a traditional French Christmas cake shaped and decorated like a log. However, Naperville boasts an French bakery by the name of A La Folie (“like crazy” as in “I love you like crazy) that happened to have an open house not long before Christmas. In addition to macarons and some chocolate confections, they were offering two types of Buche de Noels, a traditional chocolate although without the log appearance, and a non-traditional fruit flavor. I opted for the fruit and all of us agreed it was one of the best things we’d ever eaten. Even the decorations were edible. SO good and not overly sweet, but just enough.
Since we’re on personal…I had an excellent time in Flagstaff yesterday. Lisa and I met at Late for the Train Coffee shop, drinking inside obviously on a chilly winter day. After coffee, we ate Thai food, something I hadn’t had since we left Illinois. SO good. Downtown Flagstaff has lots of little shops, so we did a lot of browsing. I managed to get some door photos, too. Suddenly it was 3 pm, time to head back home. But there will be another time. Lisa, thanks for being a wonderful hostess and a kindred spirit. It was great to be in the mountains again and have some winter, complete with a bit of snow.
These two delicious yellow images are for Jude’s Life in Colour: yellow, her February challenge.
I venture to say that very few have looked forward to a new year quite as much as everyone has looked forward to this one. Thanks for taking this journey with me and welcome to the next stage.
“Hope Smiles from the threshold of the year to come, Whispering ‘it will be happier’…” ― Alfred Lord Tennyson
“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language And next year’s words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning.”~T.S Eliot, Little Gidding
“Any new beginning is forged from the shards of the past, not from the abandonment of the past.” ― Craig D. Lounsbrough
“Each New Year, we have before us a brand new book containing 365 blank pages. Let us fill them with all the forgotten things from last year—the words we forgot to say, the love we forgot to show, and the charity we forgot to offer.” ― Peggy Toney Horton
“The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes.” ― G.K. Chesterton, A Chesterton calendar
We had the best Christmas possible under Covid, Zooming with family who would have been here and sharing time with family we haven’t spent Christmas with in years. Tonight we’ll be FaceTime-ing with friends from Illinois, then tomorrow is not only another day, but another year, something I know we’ve all been waiting for.
Our daughter had some time off and slipped out of California to visit us, although her husband had to stay home and work. So yesterday we drove to Queen Creek Olive Mill for some coffee and mother-daughter time before she headed back to the west coast.
The outdoor area is in an olive grove shaded by olive trees and where there are several Christmas tree-shaped trees guarded by two lions. The trees are decorated for Christmas, the lion thankfully not. But this lion doesn’t look too happy, probably because…
…with post-dawn temperatures in the upper 30’s it’s not exactly the African savanna and it’s a bit chilly sitting outside even with a hot mocha. These gas fires are very cheerful and look nice and warm, but we found that they really aren’t, so we sat on the covered patio which had standing heaters as well as heaters above us. It was so toasty we were able to take of our jackets and just enjoy our drinks. It was lovely.
Yes, the trees have olives, but don’t eat one off the tree. Until they’re cured and fermented, they’re very bitter as my husband discovered in Provence years ago when his sister gave him an olive right off the tree. Siblings!
Since meals and snacks are served here, there are crumbs and where there are crumbs, there are those who try to help clean them up, whether or not they’re being paid.
Relaxing in the sunshine (with additional heat as needed), enjoying time with my daughter while sipping a mocha topped with whipped cream, surrounded by cute little birds and stone lions, admiring the bougainvillea…life is good. Let’s pray that 2021 will be the same.
