Monday, May 12, 2014

Iris and Bubbles and Weenies, Oh My



We're going that-a-way across the Upland Prairie, across the iris field and into the woods--aka forests of Oregon. 

An Upland Prairie will be claimed by the forest--or blackberries, if not kept open as my son-in-law has done by keeping it mowed.


A Trunk Sprout. This Madrone tree was caught in the forest fire last year, and look, it is making a baby.



When son-in-law builds a weenie-roasting fire, he goes all out. 



Too hot to handle. 
Roasting a weenie from beneath a space blanket.





Blowing Snake Bubbles
This is so cool. Cut the bottom off a water bottle, cover with a sock, duck tape it securely, dip sock in a solution of 2 parts water 1 part #Dial Dishwashing Soap, blow into drinking spout of bottle. Viola' bubbles, strong enduring bubbles. Be sure to blow, not inhale.



Catching the fire updraft.





Bubbles flying high


And bubbles on the ground.



Doggie gets a weenie too.


This was my most relaxing mother's day ever. I hope your's was glorious.
Joyce

Friday, May 2, 2014

The Great and Small of it All



Yes, I know I placed a picture of eggs on my blog earlier on, but they were not my chicken’s eggs, these are.

When I broke those two orange yolks into a bowl and added one #organic store-bought egg and saw the contrast, I had to take a picture. 

Gertrude and Victoria are not free-range hens as I would like, but their house is open to the ground, and I added a tiny dog kennel yard so they can get sunshine. The lower story opens to the ground, and I keep moving the house so they have grass. They get vegetable scraps, and their grain is non-GMO. My first-born daughter said that all kitchens ought to have chickens attached. You know what she meant.

After I turned the hens out into our little back yard, I watched them run, flapping their wings in exuberance, and thought of the big forest where we used to live. There I would free my two horses from their paddock and they would frolic in happiness, as the chickens were doing. My mare, Velvet, would jump off the retaining wall in a Lipizzaner leap, that is kicking out her heels while airborne. They had learned since babies to stay around the house, but they needed watched, or company, to make sure. Same with the hens.

As I changed the chicken’s bedding, I placed an egg on the grass, and Gertrude came up to it, and gently rolled it beneath her chest.  There I was stealing her egg and she was taking it back.

Animals freed take such joy in it—well, Peaches our poodle, doesn’t care, except for a walk that she does love, she’s happy sleeping on the bed.

This is my little world down here. I freaked myself out the other day when I contemplated the immensity of space, and now I am hearing of universes, not just one universe, but many.  It boggles my mind.

One day long ago, I took the elevator up the #Empire State Building, and had the same trepidation.  I had been in that elevator before with my family, but this time I was alone.  Normally I am not afraid of elevators since learning with my children that elevators have another parallel shaft beside them filled with a counter-balance.  (Is this like parallel universes?)

That day in the Empire State Building I lost rationality, and saw myself in a box hanging in a deep shaft that extended down 100 stories, a bottomless pit so it seemed.

Don’t do that.

And there in my yard, I thought of the immensity of space.  I felt the camera of my mind bringing its focus down to my yard, and to my chickens. The film went deeper still to see the bugs, and deeper to the molecules and atoms, and into the atom where the electron orbits the nucleus, as we orbit the sun. And there inside that atom exist sub-atomic particles that scientists are finding so many of, someone joked saying they should give a noble prize to someone who didn’t find one. Now they are finding the many universes of space…


I’m glad to be grounded here in the midst of it all. Of course I am left wondering if beyond the grave there is an expansion as well.  But then, that contemplation is for another day. The sun is shining—so glad for the sun. I guess the other planets have one as well, oh,oh, Joyce, don’t go there…yet.





Vladimer Kush


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