Sunday Stills....the Long and Winding Road

For more Sunday Stills.....

Persistent Cold Rain

.....Is at least not nine feet of snow. For which I am grateful. 

Did the bank changing thing I threatened yesterday. What a great feeling to go from being shut out of an account and refused a simple solution to logging back in, to click, hey, presto, logged in and associated with all the other accounts we use for various purposes before we even got back home. Online banking is a fine thing.

 We gave a local bank a test drive, but the big national chain we have always used...ever since it wasn't a national chain and was just the neighborhood bank where I opened my first bank account when I was maybe eight years old...seems to meet our needs much better.

Very glad to have taken the day and gotten it done. 

Not so glad to have shopped....

In stores.......no, no, please not stores.

Oh, it is good to have crackers in the house again.

And cheese. You MUST have cheese in your fridge. Plus other assorted sundries and foodstuffs. 

However, the crowds were awful. This person is giving gift cards or services, such as cleaning disaster area bedrooms and doing lots of laundry this holiday season.

Yep. Not much shopping involved. I hate shopping.

However, I have been given to understand that today is St. Nicholas Day. I sure liked that when we were kids. Our folks never mentioned the day in advance, so we were always astonished and delighted as we played on the living room floor and candy rained down on our heads.

We never looked up to check out who might be on the stairway throwing it either. I can still remember the butterscotch and peppermint and cinnamon candies. Thanks, Mom and Dad, for all the fun and memories.

And thanks for not throwing coal, even if we often deserved it. Yikes! That would have hurt.

If the Sun Went Down

As far north as the moon did this morning it would be the highest of high summer, rather than late fall trending into winter.

The landscape is always eerie under a large and fullish moon even in summer when the fireflies are blinking under its bright, pale blaze and a thousand insects and night birds are calling. I pause every night and morning, in every single season, on the stair landing, just to look.

However in this season as it falls, fat and full and orange, into a hazy horizon far away, it is more than passing strange. Like some other planet in some other solar system.....it seems so oddly foreign.

And then the sun pops up pale and silvery pink and the weird just fades away.

Whatever, Daisy thought it was just wonderful that I stuck my feet in sneakers and joined her out in the dark this morning. She does love her some company. 

There's Always Peggy

When the days get too gloomy.

It has been a week of warranty work on the Camaro that seemed to never end. Almost new car and the heater core went, suddenly. It is a huge, major job to fix it, and a big block of time was scheduled in advance and promises made about when it would be done.

Then the dealer suddenly went incommunicado. No info. Shortened calls. "It won't be ready in time."

No explanations. No answers. It was important that it be done in time as the guy who drives it must return to Washington DC for his work and there are no other vehicles around the place that would even begin to make the drive.

Fortunately his boss called and his job restarted a day late, so the car is back just in time for him to climb into it and drive away. Turns out the mechanics broke the air bag getting the dash off. Been nice if they had been willing to tell him.

Anyhow, in the interim he took the big, new tires off the Blue Bomber and put them on our car. What a beast it looks like now...not your average granny car. However, it was still picked out all those years ago by a granny....well not yet...but I am now...who was sick of getting stuck in that godawful driveway.

And that is the excitement around here.

Nuttin

 To say about nuttin. 



Sorry.

Days are short and gloomy. It snows. It melts. Same old birds. Same old same old.



The icicles were pretty though...

While they lasted......spring is coming...it says here in fine print.

Sunday Stills...the Rainbow Connection

Most of these are last summer's rainbows, as most of the ones around here migrate south for the winter.

However, a wild, free-range, rainbow roosted here in the kitchen sink all of one sunny November day. We were amazed to see it and fed it a little sugar water.

Hopefully it will find its way south before hard winter strikes and it starves.

For more Sunday Stills.....

.....

Twisted Trees

Some of them are nature's work, or the efforts of strangling riverbank grapes.

Others are the pattern left behind by an old lady with too much time on her hands and the desire to keep the little honey locust branches from reaching out and touching folks with their jagged little thorns. 

They are all kind of cool.

The Things you See

The backdrop, minus the birds

 With only two cows, a heifer and three calves, there was no reason to cling to a rigid schedule yesterday, so for the first time in forever....literally our whole lives together..... I suggested to the boss that he finish all his chores before he ate his dinner....which I didn't rush and race to cook, since there were only three of us here, and no need for a tight schedule atall.

And I boned out the bird before we had dinner, so after there were just the dishes and the packing away.



Thus it was still daylight when I sat down in my Sunday chair, done with the day's requirements.

I happened to look up. To get this you have to imagine that every single surface for miles around is coated with inches-thick snow. Weirdly the sticky stuff fell in the midweek storm and just clung to every branch and leaf....everything is starkly and utterly white.

The sky was darkening woolly grey....



Into this stark, but beautiful monochrome burst a murmuration of starlings...not a big one, just a few hundred birds.....

But a few hundred strong black birds, swirling and twisting and twining against a backdrop of sheer white was a thing of staggering beauty such as I had never imagined. Jaw dropping, heart stopping, awe inspiring wow.



The trees over in the eastern hedgerow were also covered with thousands more....enough to make them look as if they had sprouted a full crop of black leaves.

Of course before I could get shoes and camera they were gone, but I won't forget them.

A Toast

To all you sisters who are stuffing turkeys, eyes watering from the onions, sinuses tickled by too much sage, in overheated kitchens, even as I type. And to brothers who are hunting deers with visions of that stuffing dancing in their heads.

And to brothers making dinner and sisters sitting in deer stands and to all the farmers who grew the green beans for a million green bean casseroles. To everyone who cares for livestock every single holiday in every kind of weather.

And to all who serve and cannot be home on this day of traditional gratitude and camaraderie and overeating.

Happy Thanksgiving to you, one and all.

And peace to America and everyone who lives here.

And don't forget the good folks who print the paper that runs the Farm Side. Word is that they have been without power all night and are struggling to get that job done before going home to their families. Be safe and strong today.

Are You Ready

We think we are, but no doubt today and tomorrow will reveal to us all the things we have forgotten. Kids are all dining with inlaws or prospective inlaws, so it is just the three of us this year.

Which doesn't mean that I won't be cooking. I figure to be filling folks up with leftovers for at least a week.

Meanwhile, the kids had their six turkeys processed locally and were quite happy with the result. Weights ranged from a smaller hen at 15 pounds to big toms that were nearly 25.

They gave me one of the big ones, which I am saving for Christmas....really, if I had gotten it thawed we would be having it tomorrow....however, we do have a fresh one in the fridge. 

Anyhow, I hope you have fun cooking up a storm, while hopefully avoiding the predicted one. And be safe on those roads out there! It isn't bad enough that we are predicted to have a lot of snow....no, we all have to dodge thousands of people looking down at their phones. Texting while driving seems to have become the new national pastime.

While Alan was on his way home last night and driving through the Baltimore area he saw four accidents in quick succession. Three were obvious cases of distracted driving.

One involved the car directly in front of him and the one in front of it.

I guess we have to watch out for them, since they are certainly not watching out for us.

Have a great Thanksgiving anyhow.

Clear Today, Gone Tomorrow

A present from my husband, who knows that the way to a farm girl's heart is not flowers and chocolates

The past couple of days have been phenomenal for November and much appreciated. Yesterday was so warm we opened all the barn doors to let the heat in.

Today the wind is whipping and whining, but it is still warm enough to go out without a coat.

I was hanging up laundry in fact and happened to look up. A twin engine plane flew past with two wind tossed pigeons right below. The plane can certainly move a lot more cargo, but the pigeons were more graceful. 

Then a perfect storm of box elder samaras came swirling down. It was so cool! There were thousands of them, clouds of them, each whirling in its own path to earth.

 Of course this means that next spring there will be thousands of tiny box elders springing up wherever we don't want them. Seems as if by two hours after they sprout they have a whippy trunk that is hard to break and roots that go to Taiwan.  Acer Negundo is not my favorite tree!

It's the burdock of the maple world in my mind.

 In fact the other day when the trimmers from the power company interrupted my Bald Eagle photo shoot, they apologized nicely for taking out maybe a dozen young box elders. I assured them that if they cut every one on the farm my heart would not be broken.

And, as previously mentioned, there would be plenty more next spring. I wouldn't be surprised if you could count hundreds of them out in the hedgerows, around the buildings, in the flower beds, in inconvenient cracks in the foundation....everywhere.

This is NOT an acer negundo, but rather, I believe, an acer saccharum
a much more welcome tree
This piece is hollow and will have geraniums planted in the top next spring.
Meanwhile, NOBODY is going to plow over the garlic bed.

Anyhow, this sweet little interlude of wonderful weather will be interrupted tomorrow by a major winter storm or so the forecasters are saying. Weather wise this has been the nicest fall in decades. I am not ready for it to end. Be safe on the roads this week, please....

Gambit

Please join us in welcoming THS Timeless Nights In Satin (AKA Gambit) to NY. He came all the way from Ohio over the past couple of days. Peggy thinks Uncle Alan is the greatest and thanks him for making this possible.

I would also thank you all for good thoughts that he settle in all right and thrive here.

Thanks!

Sunday Stills....Light my Fire

This time of year at chilly Northview, a good fire in the wood stove is one of the most important things going on. Thanks, boss for keeping us warm!

For more Sunday Stills...

They were Probably Harmless

It's all about the turkeys

The boss doesn't sleep much.....or at least not at one time.

Thus last night at midnight he was struggling with his TV....set top box is old and worn out and he really should get it replaced....and wide awake in the living room.

It was Friday, and sometimes Fridays mean Alan coming home, although he is actually working through this weekend down in DC.

But still....we never really know....

Thus when he saw headlights coming up the driveway, at first he was happy rather than alarmed.

But then the beams from flashlights started sweeping across the living room ceiling and he knew something was wrong.

He went to the back door to discover complete strangers wandering around the yard with flashlights.....merrily snooping at will.....

He was not happy. We are quite some ways from the road, up a twisting, rough old driveway. We have signs at the bottom to repel uninvited boarders, of which we get more than our share. It is not an inviting place for midnight perambulation...yet there they were, right by our car and the kids' trucks.

Supposedly they were looking for dogs missing from down in town. Brindle dogs, so I am thinking pit bulls....

So they just trundled right up the driveway, past the two, yes two, sets of posted signs to start searching the yard.

They were treated to a taste of the boss mad, an event which, once experienced, is not something you want to repeat.

Myself, I would have called the police on them, dogs or no dogs. In fact I have the non emergency number for the sheriff memorized in case I need it. However, I never even woke up.

Maybe they were just trying to give that guinea hen from yesterday a run for her money in the fastest hamster wheel competition and really were looking for dogs. Maybe they had something else in mind.....whatever..... long before this I had taken to re-locking the doors when I get up before the rest of the world and after I walk our dog. And nagging about bringing in keys, and locking up cars, and putting tools away.

If there were dogs I hope they find them. If there were no dogs I am glad the boss was awake and vigilant. And either way I hope they never come back.


And btw, the guinea hen turned herself in to the poultry authorities early yesterday morning, and put herself right back in the coop. She is now safely down in the barn with the rest of the flock.

There's One in Every Flock

The boys of summer leave in the fall

Night before last what was probably a weasel killed the last white guinea keet. Well, really they aren't keets anymore, but not quite full grown either.

Now, how did I get up here...and how do I get down?

Thus Liz moved the rest of them to the big chicken coop and Laura and her rooster to the peacock coop.

Except for this one. If turkeys have the reputation for not being likely candidates for Mensa, it is guinea fowl which come right from the factory devoid of anybody home upstairs but a rapidly whirling hamster on crack.

Programmed to panic, so to speak.


This one shot out of the top of the little coop when Liz lifted the roof panel, like a bean out of a pea shooter shot by a tornado.

Oh, no, here comes the person who raised me from the egg and fed me every day
Flee, flee I tell you, flee!!!!

I was upstairs picking up laundry when it hit the window of the room I was in. And clung, frantic, to the crossbar before falling to the porch roof. Then it went up on the big roof.

They chased it, lured it, tried to trap it, all afternoon.

No soap. This is one of the same birds that came running in their little yard, whenever I went out, in case I might stop to feed them drop apples or fallen grapes....the little ingrate....or maybe ingrape. 

And this morning, having somehow evaded foxes and other varmints all night, it is still, not unlike the new mercury light bulbs, not quite bright enough to do its job. Such as roosting in a tree, for Pete's sake.

We have lots of trees.

Oh, well. 

Alas, the turkeys go today and I will miss them, but Thanksgiving dinner was always their fate. More next year I truly hope.

And incidentally, one of my very first blog friends has written a whole bunch of good ones lately. Rather than link to just one post, you could just go check out her whole blog.

  

Why, yes, that lump out in the snow on the back lawn is the stupidest of domestic fowl
Why do you ask?

Sunshine all Around

Counting our blessings.

The big storm missed us. I don't think we even got an inch. Lots of prayers for those poor souls who did get nailed..... just a couple hours from here it is really bad.

The barn water thawed so we could do chores in the normal manner this morning. You don't know whatchu got til it's gone.....We were looking at hauling enough for all the stock and to wash the pipeline, so not having to do so brought big smiles.

It is a lot warmer than recent days...see above. The best part is there are hardly any birds coming in. Although I like to see them, when there is a crowd, you know what comes next....a nasty storm.

The boy made it safely to DC...always a big worry for his mama. I was so happy to get that phone call last night that he was there okay.

And the little peanut above brightens the days more than a little, especially when she isn't teething up a storm of her own.

Christmas in November

Becky bought me a refurbished Nook and gave it to me early. Then B$N gave me five bucks for a free book. I found a lot of other free books too.....

See you next spring. 

Seriously, the thing is beyond cool. I spent yesterday evening figuring out how to use it and reading on that first free book. I chose The Last of the Breed, by Louis L'Amour. We used to have a paperback copy, but I guess we read it to death.....you get that sometimes....when you really like a good yarn. 

This particular book is the one Alan was thrown out of study hall for reading because it wasn't "approved". Guess how long it took me to go up to the school and straighten that out....

Anyhow, yesterday was cold, but interesting. We went up to see Mom and Dad and take Dad a slightly belated birthday gift. This morning it is also cold, middle of January, glassy ice, and frozen feet cold, and I don't like it much. Maybe I should curl up with a warm blanket and a nice, cozy Nook.......

First bird today, a large flock of indignant House Finches and a bunch of Gold Finches. Oh, my, they are loud.