Come Along With Me On A Fall Drive.. Without A Camera

We went to eat at our favorite restaurant yesterday.I didn't think that I would see anything to photograph...so I left the camera home. It was such a pretty day in between rain showers. I am going to try to describe the drive without benefit of my trusty camera. We headed out down the country road past the forest preserve. Piles of leaves were being burned and the gray smoke lifted slowly into the cloud laden sky. The nuclear power plant towers were puffing so much white steam into the already cloudy sky that was a mixture of gray and white puffy clouds.. moving fast.We noticed land that had been cleared of debris and a new fence had been erected all along the left side of the road....leaving us to wonder.. what will this be...more forest preserve? The Rock River was on my side of the car.When I first moved here, I loved the drive along the river...it is so beautiful in every season. We do live in God's country here in No. Illinois. It looked cold today,without the sun shining. A flock of ducks was swimming in a circle.The leader was off on his own.. with his head in the water. He pulled it up as the car passed and the other ducks joined him. I wondered to myself...is this the same flock of little ducklings that we watched earlier in the year...do they know the weather that is coming? Do they realise that they will be sitting all huddled together, to keep warm, on top of the frozen river?I noticed that the grasses along the way, in the ditch, were the color of raw sienna. Darker plants of burnt umber rose up out of the grasses with prickly burrs on them. We approached the old farm across the road from the place where we buy our vegetables in the summer. A red crumbling barn on the right side of the road. Broken windows and a sagging door a run down windmill...one of my favorite things to paint.The homemade sign advertising veggies had been taken in for the winter. The corn field with crispy, golden, dry stalks...hadn't been harvested yet. Nearing the State Park, was a sign welcoming hunters.Deer season opened on the 17th and the park and restaurants are catering to them this year. As we entered the park, campers were already gathering for the weekend. We only saw men today...they were there with their campers and just the basics. In the summer, families gather with their motor homes and campers. Volleyball, baseball, and badmitten games with kids roasting marshmallows at every site. Today little campfires were starting with wispy smoke trailing upward. Men in duck clothing and orange hats wandered about...coffee mugs steaming in their hands. The road winds upward to the Statue of Blackhawk through trees ..mostly bare. The understory is another matter. Wispy small trees were all through the forest...bright green and yellow leaves. It looked like frost had forgotten them and the colors were like sunlight in the shadows. I always imagine hundreds of eyes watching us as we stand there. I very seldom see an animal, but I know they are in there. Looking out across the river, houses lined the road with smoke trailing upward from the chimneys. Just last week we were across the river, sitting at our friend's kitchen table, watching a flock of turkeys that had come into the yard. The sun came out just then, and the scenery changed. Everything lit up like someone plugged in the lights of the world.Coming down the hill toward the entrance I saw mushrooms made out of tree stumps.... Made with a chain saw. Smokey the Bear said the fire alert was low today on a nearby sign. Turning right, we started down the hill with such beauty on both sides. It was like driving through the mountains. Fall colors on the floor of the forest. A blanket of leaves covered everything. On the left, an old school painted white. I can imagine the teacher standing at the doorway...ringing an old hand held bell...and boys chasing girls with pigtails. All of them with rosy cheeks...laughing and having fun ..lunch buckets in their hands. As we approached town, the dam on the right with tons of water gushing over it caught my eye. Tree stumps and branches littered the top of the dam in places. I remember Spring, when the water level was high and the water swirled so fast...it looked treacherous. Today it was just pouring over at a normal rate. We had arrived at our destination...did you enjoy the ride?
Balisha

The Gingerbread House and the Mice

Thanksgiving is approaching and soon after Christmas. I was getting some Christmas boxes moved around in the basement...to be ready for Joe to carry upstairs. Last year my daughter sent us a gingerbread house. It was so cute. I put a picture of it on my blog. I made a gingerbread house years ago and when Christmas was over we put it on the birdbath. We watched the birds and squirrels nibbling on it for a couple of weeks. This was really a work of art and I loved it so much, so I thought that I would try to save it. I wrapped it in plastic and put it in a cardboard box and put it with Christmas things downstairs. Well, I opened it up yesterday and the plastic was chewed up and the gingerbread was almost gone. The walls were chewed, frosting roof.. gone, little doorway.. gone, decorative candies ...gone. We caught a couple of mice down there a couple of weeks ago and now I know what they were up to. I just finished talking to my daughter on her birthday and told her about what I found. We were both laughing so hard...just imagining the party that went on down there. Tiny mice on sugar highs, giving each other high fives, a tiny mouse celebration. She said, "They were probably living in the little house eating away all year." I guess it wasn't such a good idea to try to save it. I put on rubber gloves and put it in the garbage. We never quite know what is going on in our basements. These tiny things must have been there watching me as I painted and did crafts this past year. Well, I learned my lesson and won't be doing that again. Sorry mice...as the song says....the party's over.

Balisha

November 18, 1958

My Daughter's Birthday

It was a cold night in November.. in the air a hint of snow..

Our little girl was born so many years ago.

"This baby is so perfect, her skin is pink not red,

Her mouth is like a rosebud".. is what the doctor said.

They put her in my waiting arms, the tears were coming free..

She looked at me with loving eyes that said, " Take care of me."

Her childhood days were full of fun.. her favorite doll could talk,

Tiny kitchen furniture.. in her room before she walked.

A pogo stick I worried.. that she would bump her head..

At night we found her sleeping with her pogo stick in bed.

A frilly dress was not.. her favorite thing to wear..

Cowboy boots with dresses and a ribbon in her hair.

She always found a puddle with her little foot would stamp..

Her outfit was all dirty...what a little scamp!

I miss those days of yesterday, when she was very small..

I remember everything, when I look at pictures on the wall.

So happy birthday Peanut..is what I'm going to say..

I hope you have some fun and a very lovely day.

Happy Birthday...Love you,

Mom

Thoughts on a Dreary November Day

Now what's he doing here? He's not one of my "girls."

Tap, tap, tap...sounds I heard last night. Sitting in the living room under the skylights, it sounded like sleet. Maybe for just a minute...we had a touch of winter. Just now, while getting our coffee, a flake flew by the window. It is a rather blustery day, as Winnie the Pooh would say. And tut tut it looks like rain. My youngest son loved those stories and anything Winnie the Pooh. Well, on to the post...There isn't much to do when we are staying in the house due to the weather.Nothing to do except think.Some of us might think about cleaning closets, basements and attics, rearranging shelves of canned goods, writing long overdue letters, getting the Christmas decorations started. Often,I think about how lucky I am to have a house that is warm, enough food, a cozy bathrobe and lots of cooking shows to watch on television.
While counting my blessings, I think of the pleasure of the TV that we have. A big entertainment center with a hundred or so things to watch. I snuggle in a comfortable chair in a warm house and watch Martha do Thanksgiving, and Rachel Ray and my girl Paula. I always get inspired to cook, when I watch these "girls." We do have more variety in our meals and I make more trips to the grocery...since the shows came on the air. Then I become inspired: I'll cook a roast tonight. The aroma of a roasting beef can always dispel gloom. And I savor that yummy roast with veggies cooked around. I'm so lucky I think, as I drool. Paula just put a pound of butter in that bowl. Oh Lord! Let's change the subject.

With television news on such dreary days, we see more and learn more about Iraq, the deaths, the disgrace, the unending violence.I feel sad. It's too painful. The remote allows me to move from sad and uncomfortable to bliss ... just press a button and there's a show with Julia the French Chef. Facing the real world and its tragedies often makes me want to lock the door and throw away the key, abandon the outside for the inside, where we are safe. These are the thoughts I've had as the wind blows and life goes on. What have you been thinking today? What are you thankful for?

Balisha

An Inspiration for Women As We Age.

Ruth Bancroft...100 years old and still gardening.

Staying close to nature can help women to age more slowly. Keeping our minds and bodies more active and in good working condition. I'm all for that...I think that I will try to remember this.Aging can be slowed by positive mental and physical exercise in all situations. Hobbies like gardening and wildlife watching reap healthy and sometimes surprising rewards for older people.Gardening makes an ideal hobby for people of all fitness levels and living situations. Whether landscaping a yard, caring for a small vegetable plot or tending container gardens on the patio, the possibilities are endless.It is the ideal form of exercise because it improves strength, endurance and most of all....flexibility. Gardening helps people use those muscles that we haven't used in a long time. Connecting with nature can reduce stress, improve concentration, relieve depression, lower blood pressure. Don't you remember going out to garden and having all your problems leave your mind except the job at hand? While the positive physical effects of gardening are well known,less known is the fact that the emotional rewards of the nurturing of living things happens when we get a regular dose of nature. I think that many of us have a "feel" for our plants...maybe even talking to them as we give them tender care. Not only does working with plants feed the need to connect with the natural world, but planning a garden is great mental stimulation as well. It allows for creative expression, requires learning about plants and techniques and encourages conversation with friends, family, bloggers and other gardeners about our gardens.

Here is part of an article that I just read .....one that inspires to to go on with my gardening well into my later years.

One recent morning, Ruth Bancroft, who turned 100 on Tuesday, was working at her desk, pouring over plant catalogs and making a list of bearded iris bulbs to order: Above the Clouds, Wine and Roses, Busy Being Blue, Crater Lake Blue. She picked 25 varieties in all.
“I thought I’d get a few,” she said that day in August, “though they won’t bloom for a year.”
She made the rough list in pencil on an envelope, then carefully transcribed it onto a piece of lined notebook paper, also recording the page in the catalog on which she found the bulbs, their prices, their colors and their heights when mature.
Mrs. Bancroft has several gardens on her 11-acre property about 25 miles east of San Francisco, including a large herb garden, a rose garden, an award-winning iris collection and a world-renowned three-acre succulent oasis, the Ruth Bancroft Garden, which is open to the public and protected by the Garden Conservancy.
For each of the gardens, as well as for smaller beds around her 1922 farmhouse, she has maintained meticulous records in spiral notebooks for the 50 years she has lived here. Rows of these colorful garden logs line the desk in her library, and floor-to-ceiling bookcases overflow with gardening and horticulture books, her companions and teachers in her lifelong fascination with plants.
“I just learned about gardening from reading and experimenting and seeing what worked,” she said. “I think Aril irises from the Middle East are very beautiful, but they are fussy about water. They would bloom here for one or two seasons, then die. I had better luck with Aril-bred, the hybrid varieties. I still have some of those from the 1960s.”
In beige pants and a striped beige-and-white shirt, her glasses hanging from her neck, she had a slightly impatient, no-nonsense air about her as she sat on her enclosed patio by the herb garden and lily pond. A cane leaned against her chair. Her short white hair was brushed back from her face; her expression suggested that she didn’t understand all the fuss over her 100th birthday. She lives independently in her house. A housekeeper comes every two weeks to clean, and her daughter, who lives next door, brings her dinner. She makes her own breakfast and lunch.
“I’m not sure how I arrived at 100,” she said, “but now I get tired too easily, and I’m no good at walking.” Still, she has little trouble climbing the stairs to her second-floor bedroom.

Balisha

80% Of The World Farmers Are Women

I was just putting some groceries away and was thinking about where our food comes from. It's Thanksgiving time and women in our country are busy making menus, shopping, and planning for a nice day.Our tables will be loaded with food.We just come home from the store and empty the car...carrying bags of groceries in the house and put them in our cupboards...seldom giving thought to the farmers who grew this food. I ran across this writing while doing some research on my computer. I never knew!

Consider the daily life of the world’s typical small farmer," said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. "She lives in a rural village in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, or Latin America."
That's right: women grow more than half of the world's food and the lion's share (as much as 80 percent) of the food in developing countries.Despite their majority contribution, however, women only own 2 percent of the world's land. Around the world, women are deprived of legal rights to the land they toil over day after day.
Zainab Salbi, founder and CEO of Women for Women International said that this is a bigger problem than simple unfairness. "We cannot address environmental issues, sustainable farming issues, industrial agriculture issues, food crisis, if we are going to ignore [the fact that women are over 80 percent of the world's farmers and they own about 2 percent of land in the world," she said. "How can you have a policy that ignores the people that are doing the work on a daily basis?"
That's why they are launching a new Global Center for Women's Land Rights, The center will research and advocate for policies that will help women gain legal access to their land.
“Women feed the world. Providing women with secure land and property rights is essential to addressing poverty, food security and violence against women," said Renée Giovarelli, founding director of the Center.
Hillary Clinton said that women would be at the heart of the international agricultural priorities of the Obama administration. At the G-8 Summit in July, Obama pledged a minimum of $3.5 billion over the next three year as a contribution to the $20 billion pledged by all the G-8 nations toward strengthening global agricultural systems.
"We have seen again and again . . . that women are entrepreneurial, accountable, and practical," said Clinton. "So women are a wise investment. And since the majority of the world’s farmers are women, it’s critical that our investments in agriculture leverage their ambition and perseverance."

I just thought it interesting...maybe the next time we go to the store to shop....we will think about this and thank our sisters in the fields all over the world... for all their hard work.

Balisha

The Painting....The Gleaners

When The Gleaners was first exhibited in 1857 it met with mixed reviews within the art world. Some commentators attacked its depiction of the rural poor, which on the one hand served as an unwelcome reminder of the marginalized poor (who were taken to be a threat to society), and on the other hand were consider the kind of grotesques who had no place within the artistic realm. Part of the shock value of Millet’s painting was undoubtedly due to the fact that in the past gleaning had usually been represented in art through the Old Testament tale of Ruth the gleaner, in which Ruth is characterised as a modest and virtuous example of the way to God, and not – as it was now – a statement on rural poverty.

D-Day

Hello,

Well today is D-Day...Doctor's appointment early this morning. Joe and I go at the same time for our yearly physical. I get nervous before I get there, but once I'm in the office the butterflies go away. After all...there are many things to think about when you get there. That dreaded scale is first. After 50, some people (who have been able to eat anything all their lives) start to put on weight..a lb. at a time. Maybe we aren't so active later in live...you think? Anyway, I don't take off my shoes, like somebody I know. I approach the scale...not watching her add the weights. I don't usually look to see what she writes down...she says it out loud, so everyone in the waiting room can hear."150" she says..."Can that be right?" She says that I am tall and can easily carry that weight. Let's not do it over, I think to myself. We each go into our examining rooms and the nurse tells me to sit down. I fumble with the sack of pill bottles that we were supposed to bring....hands sweaty now. "Let's take that BP," is the next thing she says. "Oh, a little high this morning...white coat syndrome...we'll check it again later." She asks how I've been since the last time she saw me....let me think...hmmmm. "Well, I had brain surgery...that's why I'm bald." We go through her third degree and she says, "Take off everything but your socks," and she hands me a paper wrapper to put on. I do this and climb up on the exam table and there I sit...a bald woman, in a paper wrapper, swinging my legs with socks on. Sweating and humming to myself. Humdy dum.. I look around the room and read all the things on the wall...making sure this doctor is qualified to examine me. Is that my chart on the desk ? I hop off the table and tip toe to the desk. I look around, always fearful of that hidden camera that I have seen on TV shows ...Candid Camera, and America's Funniest Home Video. Should I take a peek or not...it's my chart after all. I go back to the exam table and sit down. Humdy dum...where is he? I hop off the table and go to the desk to take a peak....no, I shouldn't... back to the exam table. Finally after waiting for 25 min. I go for it....hop off the table and go to the desk, paper wrapper open in the back which is to the door.. and flip open the chart...In walks the doctor. Aha, he says...caught ya! Now is the time to stop writing this post. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

Balisha

Now you didn't think that I would post my real weight did you? I know that after the appointment, naughty old people that we are, you will find us at our favorite restaurant having a big breakfast. Now don't scold!

PS:... Back home and pooped. The doctor visit was a piece of cake. Everything was good...I had lost weight, and BP was nice and low. We got a phone call a minute ago and the lab results were in ....already! The only thing wrong is my triglycerides are a little elevated...he told me to increase the fish oil and drink more water. I can do that. Wow about 3 months ago I was getting ready for brain surgery and today got a clean bill of health. Yes!!Can you see me doing my victory dance???