Enjoy The Christmas Cactus Putting On A Show

I love the shape of the flowers.

Pay no attention to that dustbuster on the floor.  Focus on the flowers.

They're such beautiful flowers.

Thank you for your attention.

Beard!

I know I am lucky to be at home during the day to see the birds in my yard.  Goldfinch groups crowd my feeders in their less than yellow costumes. Robins visit.  Blue jays and cardinals visit.  Woodpeckers of all  Minnesota varieties visit.  Even turkeys come by to scratch the lawn below the bird feeders.  One turkey stands out from the rest.  One turkey has the bluest and most naked head with a big old beard hanging from it's chest.  This beard is almost long enough to step on.  What possible evolutionary reason is there for this beard?  Isn't it a tripping hazard?  Or is it display of manliness?  Of the 15 turkeys visiting my yard, this turkey has the biggest beard. I have to confess - I've always been a fan of beards and other facial hair. Grizzly Adams? Grrr!  Full moustaches?  Grrr!  Sam Elliot?  Grrr! Tom Selleck?  Grrr! I don't lust after this turkey but I have to respect his manly beard!

Deportation

Offspring #2 helped me deport one of 3, possibly four roosters.  Sha had the idea to use an old cardboard box which was way better than my ideas because I was pretty sure the rooster would make a mess in that box.  There is a smile on that Amazon box but I'm pretty sure the rooster inside is not smiling.

He doesn't seem happy to leave this overcrowded run and tiny coop.  But he rides quietly to Oak Grove.

Don't despair Mr. Rooster.  My name for him was Donald Trump in part because of the blonde overcomb and in part because I liked the idea of deporting Donald Trump.  But I don't know the political alliances of the new owner so I didn't tell her that.  This is Anoka County after all.  Democrats are scarce. She is an experienced poultry farmer.  She has chickens and in the past she had turkeys and emu's.  Emu's?!?  Wow.  She has also had Polish chicks before so she immediately named this rooster Phil Diller.  Here is Phil Diller in his new spacious coop that he will inhabit with 10 other females of the Americauna, Buff Oprington, and she couldn't remember the other species.  He will be the only rooster.  What an upgrade!  He has a large coop with a light, a very efficient food delivery system and a watering can with nipples ensuring waste free water.  He should thank me for bringing him here to Oak Grove.

Phil Diller, the great comic of the chicken coop, he does thank me.  I don't notice until I get home that I have a big pile of fresh rooster manure on my shoe.

What Are We Grateful For in 2016?

I ask my Thanksgiving guests to fill out a form and we read the list before our meal.  This year we are grateful for Alex, AJ, Abby, Babies, Beanna, Catey, Calvin, Dad, David, Evengeline, Food, Family, Gary, Grandpa, health care, ibuprofen, Janet, Joan, Jeremy, Jenny, Kathleen, Ken, Laura, Lilly, Lucas, Mark, Michelle Matt, movie theater, no shave Nobember, Oxygen, officer, paychecks, quinoa, Ryan, Sam Sean, Scott, Teresa, Tyler, tacos, Unicorns, underwear, violin, work, x-rays, youtube, and Zach.

Thanksgiving Mannequin Challenge

Most Astonishing Results from 2016 Thanksgiving Art Contest

Entrant #1 adds a title asking, "Why did the turkey cross the river? Because it was dared."  That totally refers to me taking off my shoes in October at the Mississippi headwaters.  This artist wins points with the hostess of Thanksgiving but not all of the art critic voters.

This artist has a darker side.  The title says "Happy Thanksgiving" but two of the turkey chicks hold weapons and notice one chick doesn't look like them.

I don't know what medium this artist used but the shiny brown substance looked a lot like gravy.

This artist is using a Despicable Me theme.

This artist makes good use of the color purple. Notice the 3 chicks all look different.  One has a pink mohawk.

I love the color saturation of this contest entry but you can't hope to win at a dinner where only a very small percentage are vegetarians, most of us come from a farming background and you make comments about soylent corn.

This entry is mine.  The chicks are made out of sunflower seeds.  The larger turkey is made out of wild rice, coffee grounds, and oatmeal.  Somebody had too much time on her hands recuperating from a hip replacement, sitting in the sun at the kitchen table, possibly or possibly not imbibing in oxycontin, and using tweezers and glue remembering past trips to the corn palace in Mitchell, South Dakota.

This is one of the 3 entries that the artist took home with him or her.  I'm lucky to get any pictures.  I see rainbows.

This artist also took his or hers home.  There are tiny people in this artwork who are in danger of being gobbled up by the turkeys.  Creative thought process going on here.

I can't read all the words on this one because this artist also took it away but the top line reads "Yes, my children."  Now I would really like to know what else is written.

And the winner is (drum roll please) . . . .

Me! I won the 2016 Thanksgiving Art Contest.  I would like to thank the academy and my parents and my children and my family and opiates which I'm pretty sure played a role in my art this year! Also, thanks to my sister who bought me a box of new coloring pencils along with a Sibley bird coloring book. Thanks to my neighbor who brought me a bag of dried nettle.  I wasn't sure what to do with it so I glued it to the bottom of my art entry. Wow!  Thank you! 

 

Big Day Tomorrow!

Busy Birds This Morning

This morning the birds were very busy fluttering to and fro.  Hairy, downy and red bellied woodpeckers went from the suet to the peanut feeder.  A flock of 11 turkeys tromped through the woods. Chickadees and nuthatches flew from feeder to feeder.  Robins and cedar waxwings gleaned the last crab apples from the floppy ends of each branch.  This year has not been a good year as far as the productivity of crab apples, apples, black walnuts nor acorns.  With so little nutrition from the trees surely the birds, squirrels, chipmunks and other creatures will suffer.   For today I hope the birds got enough to eat because they sure put on a good show for me.

Stepping On The Cracks

I had to miss my book club meeting last week.  I  just wasn't safe to drive there.  I enjoyed the heck out of the book Stepping On The Cracks by Mary Downing Hahn.  This is a young adult fiction.  From the first sentence the book takes off at a run and never slows down.  The heroes of the story are two young girls who are the younger sisters of boys away in service in World War II.  "Step on the crack.  Break Hitler's back,"  is a common sidewalk poem.  The two girls are the heroines of this story.  One girl is brave.  The girl who appears to be not as brave is even braver.  This was a great story of two girlfriends and I wish I had been able to attend the discussion of this book.

On The Road Again!

The road to recovery from hip replacement that is! Unless, of course, Willie Nelson runs for president in which case I would totally put up a yard sign that said, "On the Road Again!"  No, I'm talking about my car and driving my car. My last drive was on Nov. 11th from home to the hospital.  I missed the ability to drive.  I have been able to cut back on the pain meds enough to drive safely.  So, last night, as I'm walking around the block getting my exercise in, I smell wood smoke coming from a neighbor's shed.  A light bulb goes on above my head.  The light bulb is incandescent and yellow.  I have my car.  I could go to the gym tomorrow!  That light bulb, that very thought of progress, keeps me warm and happy and in less pain than any oxyschmotsky ever could. I think I will just go to the gym to take a sauna.  My gym has a sauna where both men and women warm up and relax with their clothes on.   My thought of just going to the gym for a sauna is a lot like a ride on my motorcycle where I'm just going to Elk River to buy gas.  I never stop just at Elk River to buy gas.  I always go further.  And I did more than a sauna at the gym today. I drove safely to the gym.  Offspring #2 has the station stuck on a hip hop channel.  I tire of that before I can say "hip hop" and turn it to MPR where I listen to a doctor speak about resiliency.  She wrote a book about happiness for the Mayo Clinic.  She talks about adjusting your focus on issues that bring you stress.  If you feel stressed, dial back on the focus to a longer view. When she was a medical student she stressed about her score on her anatomy exam.  To this day, not a single patient has asked what score she got on her anatomy exam.  Before an anatomy exam dialing back the focus on the long view is a good step in resiliency.  This is just what I need to hear today.  I park at the gym. I got on the exercise bike and peddled for ten minutes.  I felt so good getting my heart rate up to the 130 mark.  Expand those lungs!  Make that heart beat faster.  It's like making love to my own cardiovascular system. I sweated.  Sweating felt great too.  On my walk from the bike to the sauna I meandered past the lateral pull down machine.  It was empty.  I heard the machine call my name.  I put down my cane and made myself comfortable.  Was it coincidence or karma that the seat was set at my favorite spot?  I took it easy.  Normally I would do 3 sets of 15 at 70 pounds.  I did 3 sets of 12 at 50 pounds. I stretched my arms high and pulled down feeling my muscle juices tricking down my back.  What is in these muscle juices that I feel tricking down over my ribs?  Fitness tea? Endorphins?  This wonderful feeling is why I return to the gym.  My back feels thirty years younger. I don't want to overdo things here.  I wipe my germs off the machine, pick up my cane, and move toward the sauna. I leave my cane outside and find  a dry spot of wood to rest my weary skeleton and warm up. Oh, I feel so good after going to the gym.  I'm back on the road.  The road is where I belong. 

  

The Good Father

I think it's ironic that half the cover of The Good Father by Noah Hawley is black and the other half is white.  Black and white is not how it is in this story about the father/son relationship between Paul Allen and his son, David Allen (aka Carter Allen Cash.)  Paul is a doctor and he prides himself on his logical thinking but he can not comprehend that his son would assassinate a presidential candidate.  Paul hasn't been the best parent of David but who, really, is the best parent of any one child?  We all have room for improvement.  I liked the story and I didn't like the story.  I didn't like the misogyny and the racism.  I did like the story because I believe, it goes to show, that any one of us could be the next parent of an assassin.  I believe The Good Father is a story of America, a story of our culture, a story of our social structure, and a very sad story of our lost youth.

The Seasons

I love that effect when an object in the foreground is clear and the background is blurry.  Nailed it!

Add caption

The seasons change

And so do

I!  (Who can resist that crunchy ice on the side of a driveway? Not me!)

My Feelings About Paul Bunyan Have Changed

On Wednesday night a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful friend of mine picked me up and took my to a chapter meeting of my master naturalist group.  I was so ready to get out of the house and to talk to other people and to get my mind off my body for a change.  On this night Dave Crawford, former park naturalist at Interstate State Park spoke about the harvesting of all the white pine in the Saint Croix river valley.  Perhaps the word all is an exaggeration.  The lumber companies left a couple white pines because they grew on such a slope harvesting was not worth the effort.  Otherwise the lumber companies took them all.  At the end of the talk our speaker asks if anyone spoke up for the environment at that time.  Hmmm, interesting question as an oil company plans to lay a pipeline under the Missouri River in North Dakota.  Perhaps the residents of North Dakota would be more accepting if someone would write a folk lore about an amazing pipeline worker with super human body size and super human abilities; like Paul Bunyan but a pipeliner instead of a lumberjack. Just a thought. I saw a photo of a single board that was 3 feet wide, 2 inches thick and 20 feet long without a single knot in it.  Where is that board now? How much would a board like that be worth in today's economy?  I don't know the answer but I imagine it would be worth a lot of money.  Both horses and ox were used to haul the trees from the forest down to the river.  Oxen are stronger than horses and less emotional than horses but because of their cloven hooves, twice as difficult to keep shoes on. I have a granddaughter living in Sicily.  I think I should make sure she has a book about Paul Bunyan in her growing library. But wait, yes, Paul is tall, dark and handsome and as Minnesotan as wild rice, but what the lumber companies did to the Saint Croix river valley screams corporate greed and short-term thinking.  So now I don't know what to do.

Around The Block

I walked around the block a couple of times yesterday.  Walking is good exercise for me.  As I walked I realized I've been walking around this particular block for 25 years.  The block to the south of me has two houses on it.  Both houses are on the north side of the road.  One house has an odd house number and one house has an even house number.  Blew. My. Mind.  I thought one side of the street had even numbers and the other had odd numbers.  When I drive to new places, I always use that assumption to find the place I'm looking for.    I don't know exactly how many times I've walked this block but it's quite a few.  In the 1990's I usually had something in my hand as I walked.  If it wasn't a baby stroller or a rusty red wagon I had a dog leash.  I walked both Ruby and Blunder around this block many, many, times.  Also in the 1990's I would use one dog leash for the dog and the other dog leash to put around my waist.  If the road was covered in snow I would pull the kids in the sled behind me while walking the dog.  I've walked this block in the mornings, in the afternoons, in the evenings, and even in the night time.  There was a short time before the turn of the century where I would get up at 5 a.m. and walked these blocks for exercise  I saw stars and shooting stars.  I saw northern lights so vivid and energetic it was positively scary to see.  I've seen birds and bunnies, deer and fox, dogs and cats and neighbors.  On this particular walk yesterday I saw my lovely neighbor V.  V was wearing her usual purple glittery cowgirl hat and she was riding her 3 wheeled bicycle.   Both of her rescued miniature pinchers trotted along side her shivering.  We stopped to talk.  V is an inspiration to me and to all my neighbors who see her exercising her puppies come rain or snow or sleet or hail. 

Honored & Humbled To Have These Delivered To My Door

Flowers and balloon from my coworkers. They rock!

Up With The Good Down With The Bad

"Up with the good and down with the bad" is such a simple motto that it is easy to remember and can apply to many areas of my life.  This week that motto comes into my head every time I face a step or a set of stairs.  My hip replacement seems to have slowed down my mental processing speed.  Maybe my brain needs to be defragged or maybe I have too many programs opening when I wake up in the morning but I hesitate at stairs repeating, "Up with the good. Down with the bad."  First I think good and bad are pejorative terms.  I paid good money for the comfort in my left leg and isn't that a good thing?  Wasn't that a good decision?  Second I think what was good in 2014 is now bad and what was bad is now good.  Third I think right is now good.  Fourth I think, "Which one is right?"  Fifth, well by the fifth by body has tired waiting for my brain to process all this.  My body gave up on my mental dexterity and I've already stepped up and 70% of the time I have stepped up on the incorrect leg.  I have already progressed to alternating my steps on stairs unless I am carrying something so it doesn't really matter that much anyway.  "Up with the good, down with the bad," is a simple motto unless you are me, processing at the top or bottom of a step.

Healthy and Nutritious!

Here is a photo of a bowl of healthy soup in my lap.  I'd give you the recipe but I didn't make it.  I know it's called broccoli cheese soup but I also know there are other ingredients such as squash, garbanzo beans, onion, garlic and turmeric.  I also know that sitting in my recliner eating a bowl of delicious and healthy and brightly colored soup made for an absolutely great lunch yesterday.  I could actually feel the healthy ingredients disperse within me!

I Take Man Pills

When my body undergoes something traumatic, say, for example, a hip replacement, one response it always falls back to is that the bladder goes on strike.  My body will still collect the liquid trash and store the liquid trash, but it will not allow the trash to be emptied.  Why is the bladder on strike? What does the bladder want? Better wages?  Medical insurance benefits? Safer working conditions?  I don't know the answer because the bladder won't come to the table to negotiate.  I have come to expect the bladder to go on strike. I've been through this before. I tell the professionals to expect the bladder strike and I ask for my man pills.  Does the bladder care when the whites of my eyes are turning yellow?  No, bladders on strike don't care.  Does the bladder care that it is storing a day's worth of liquid trash and is about to burst?  No, bladders on strike don't care.  Does the bladder care when a substitute trash collector (catheter) is repeatedly knocking on the bladder's door?  No, bladders on strike don't care.  Besides five days of rest the only thing the bladder on strike will cooperate with is Flomax.  Designed to relax the muscles of the prostate gland (of which I have none), I call Flomax my "man pill."  If I take a Flomax my bladder will end the strike, at least temporarily with two hours.  New born babies can urinate freely so I am not used to feeling grateful for the ability to empty my bladder until times such as I have experienced this week.  I am grateful for my man pills and the effect they have on me.  Whew!  Relief is great!

Home to Observe

I had some time to sit by the window and look outside today.  This is a terrible photo of my resident chipmunk on the wall by the pond.  Since the stripe on his back runs vertically, it actually looks like he has his head up his you know what.  I guess I didn't catch him at his most photogenic moment.

Here is another horrible, highly cropped photo. This one is, I'm pretty sure, a fox sparrow.  This is a new bird for me in this yard.  I also watched deer drink from the pond.  After a drink they took the central stalk from a black walnut leaflet and chewed on the end of them much like a human chews on a toothpick.  I guess deer can get stuff stuck between their teeth too.

Past The Hard Part

Hip replacement part two is now over.  Everything went well.  I consider myself very lucky to get the regional anesthesia instead of general.  I had the surgery Friday at 7:30 a.m. and was released from the hospital at 6 p.m. on Saturday.  I could have walked out of there using only a cane but they make you use this transfer chair instead.  Oddly enough the hospital pharmacy closes at noon on Saturday.  Most other pharmacies close at 6 on Saturday so it took us a while to find an open pharmacy but we found one and were happy.  Offspring #2 put me to bed at 8:30 p.m.  She tucked me in and I laid down with an ice pack on my incision.  I woke up once.  A strange noise woke me up.  Realizing it was my own intestinal gas that woke me up I laughed out loud and went back to sleep.  And I slept without moving for 11.5 hours.  Never have I slept a better night's sleep.

Today Was A tough Day!

Today was a tough day for me personally.  A tough day for me on several levels. Politically, Anoka county is a lonely place for a liberal feminist.  When I saw a red Trump sign posted within visibility of my kitchen my heart sunk.  I went to bed early. When I saw Dopnald's face on my MSN feed when I got to work, my heart sunk again. A tough day. On the other hand, I know who will and who will not console my political heart.  And I go to them and they come to me for solace.  Also, my hip heart like heck.  Actually, when you're faced with a hip replacement at the end of the week, do you want your hip to feel peachy? No, you do not.  Hip pain is welcome at this stage of my life.  So, yay!  My hip hurts!  It locks up when I get out of my car.  I grimace when I get out of my office chair. And this is good? Yes, this is good.  Otherwise you might wonder, do I really need a hip replacement again?  I do. I need one.  Instead I want to focus on the future.  Wouldn't it be great to say you once hiked the Superior Hiking Trail?  You hiked 271 miles from Duluth to Canada?  Well, I think that would be awesome. I don't want to complete it in one single journey.  I don't mind going back to a soft mattress at the end of e every hiking day.  For today, I want to focus my mind on future adventures.  I might see a moose.  I might see a grouse.  I might see a Lapland Longspur.  I might, if I'm lucky, ond day be able to say, "I hiked the entire Superior Hiking Trail!"

Clever Roosters

Two of the Polish chickens are males and two are females.  It's not that easy to tell them apart.  Two have necks and heads that are more silver and two have bodies that are more black than silver.  One of the roosters has am amazingly beautiful breast of black feather with silver diamonds. These clever roosters won't crow when I can get a good look at them.  If they see me, they become silent.  They don't want to crow in my presence.  I think they know the plan.  But when I am in the house and even before the sun comes up in the morning, do they crow?  Yes!  They crow and crow and crow.  I go outside and they shut right up.  In fact, the sneaky devils, they twirl their flight feathers behind their backs and murmur quietly, "Oh, do I feel an ovulation coming on?"  They're not fooling me!  Actually, they ARE fooling me.  But I will figure this out and DEPORT the roosters.  One will go to a good farm in Andover and the other to Zimmerman; possibly a livestock auction; but they will be deported.  No eggs?  No staying here in this yard!

The Blue Between Sky and Water

I like it when a book can take me away to a different place.  In writing The Blue Between Sky and Water, Susan Abulhawa took me to Palestine.  Simply writing about births and deaths, conversations and children, jobs and food, the refugee camps in Gaza story is told in a gripping fashion.  The main characters are the women who hold the family together.  One male character is Khaled and his story is gripping.  I can't say that now I totally understand the whole Middle Eastern conflict but I do have a better grip on the situation after reading this book.

Moving Chickens to Winter Headquarters

I had a plan.. I had a good plan. I would move the chickens out of the house and into the run and shut the door so I could give the coop a thorough cleaning.  That went well.  Next part of the plan was to move the chickens out of the run and into the coop so I could move each part separately to the winter headquarters.  That mostly went well but I forgot to latch the coop door.  My elder stateswoman, Chickenson Caruso opened the door and left.  A female Polish followed her.  I noticed and shut that door quick before all 9 chickens got out. Two escaped chickens I could handle.The Polish chick was easy to catch.  With her feathery topknot she can't see me coming.  I caught her right away.  The other one wouldn't be so easy to catch.  Perhaps she needed a break and a stroll around the yard.  She knows her way around this yard.  She must be smart because she is the last survivor of the Buff Orpingtons.  So I moved the coop and the run without her.  In the photo above you can see her looking into the run from the outside. I hate to move them to the winter headquarters so early but it is November even though the weather feels like September.  With 9 chickens in the run they can turn a piece of fresh grass into a manure mat in a mere 5 days.  But it is time to do this.

Chicken Caruso came home to roost as the sun settled down on the horizon.  Isn't she a beauty?

Chickenson Caruso been a good mother to the young chickens.  She has beautiful eyes and a pretty face.  She looks good!

My Admiration

When I come home from work and make that left hand turn in my car toward the garage, I see  a flash of lime green.  Ten solid days after all the other basswood leaves have detached and fallen to the ground, two basswood leaves hang on.  These two basswood leaves?  They give me hope. They don't fall to the ground like most basswood leaves.  They're different!  Like a candle in the wind, like a dandelion growing in a crack in a sidewalk, like a liberal feminist living in Anoka County, these two basswood leaves hang on. They don't want to admit deer hunting season is around the corner.  I admire these two basswood leaves.

A Nice Compliment!

I work with this guy.  He's handsome in a Ben Affleck kind of way.  He's so nice. I've worked with him for a dozen years or so.  I think he was 18 years old when I first met him.  If I was 35 years younger and if he wasn't married, I would be interested.  Today he asked me about my latest cop class.  I told him about how I had to cover my eyes for the photos of the crime scene investigations and how I was glad, that on this Wednesday night, I would be home, in my recliner, relaxing early for a change.  He said he wished he had the kind of life I lead.  Now this guy, he's tall, he's dark, he's handsome.  He's happily married.  He's athletic. He is on several organized sport teams and a trivia league in Andover.  He leads a busy life. He wishes he had my life? He explains, "I like how you take these cop classes, how you listen for frogs and birds, and how you canoe down the rivers."  I am amazed.  I ask, "Would you like to take my place for a hip replacement next week?"  Yes, I am having a hip replacement next week and suffering anxiety over the ordeal ahead. I am planning for it.  I am making meals ahead and freezing them.  I am organizing my house and finding supplies.  I am making arrangements for people to take my responsibilities at work.  The dang left hip is all I think about. Except now.  His compliment takes my mind off my hip.  He quickly clarifies, "No, I don't want your life.  I just want some of the experiences you have."  Wow! What a nice compliment.  Seriously.  Just wow.  I am humbled.  He's such a nice guy.  Wow.  Today I had a moment I want to remember.

Olive Kitteridge

This Pulitzer Prize winning novel is about a woman named Olive.  She is married with one son.  She lives in Crosby, Maine and she teaches middle school math.  The book is written like a series of short stories.  Most of the chapters include Olive but a couple don't.  Sometimes Olive is the main character of the chapter and sometimes she is a peripheral character.  Olive and I have a lot in common.  Blunt?  Yeah, I have been known to be blunt. Outspoken?  Guilty of that.  Moody?  I have my moments but I believe I am more laid back than Olive.  Olive can be grumpy and irritable.  Some times she is down right rude and passive aggressive.  But sometimes, without knowing it and not trying to, she can be a life saver.  She can bring joy and understanding into a hurting person's life. Olive is a fascinating woman.  Now that I have read and enjoyed the book, I look forward to seeing the television version too.