3.24.12

{the wisdom of trees - also good for the soul}

Emerging

“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle;

you can live as if everything is a miracle.”

~ Albert Einstein

I think I'll still keep choosing the "everything" option.

These tiny little emerging dianthus on our little quilt square of the planet are confirmation of the power that lies just below the surface of most things. They manifest energy that we can't see. They ask me to look a little deeper, listen a little closer and look beyond what seems so hard to believe.

Music In the Air

{a song floated down from the top of our walnut tree today}

Ash Wednesday

{i'm all about Lent. i'm weird like that. this was the altar display we used at church tonight. after receiving the ashes we each painted a cross on the altar cloth which we will use through the remainder of Lent. pure awesome.}

Please Use Your Imagination

{today is R.'s birthday. i made him a cake – white with white frosting, his request. i took him a pizza for dinner. i gave him a puzzle as a gift. i took pictures of him blowing out his candles while i sang. and then i left my camera at his apartment. gas it too expensive to drive all the way back out there again so i will be camera-less until thursday night. i will post the picture when i get my camera back. in the meantime, talk amongst yourselves. . .i will go hang my head in shame for being such a dunce.}

It's So Large!

{driving down main street today i was shocked to see a design i did on a billboard. i mean, i knew it was coming. i did the work on it about a month ago. but i was still shocked when i saw it so LARGE. never designed a billboard before!}

Two Kitties

{ali painted the guest bedroom today. the mirror was on the bed and izzy thought seeing another cat was kind of cool!}

Falling Slowly

{the ground in Findlay is saturated. this is the same park as the snowball softball team and then the water. now the trees seem to be slowly falling to the ground. the roots didn't come up. it just slowly leaned to it's death. i'm guessing this tree remembers the Civil War. makes me kind of sad.}

The Birdbath

{our next door neighbor's backyard. i love his style. the old woodstove stands in for a firepit on summer evenings. he filled the birdbath with herbs.}

Every time I look out my bathroom window into my neighbor's garden I think of my parents and how little events can be spun into legends that are remembered for a lifetime.

When I look out my window every morning I see a concrete birdbath. It's a massive old thing with a fluted top shaped like half of a clamshell. The three pedestals that hold it up are seahorses, standing on their tails with their heads holding up the bowl. As far back as I can remember one just like it stood in my mother's flower garden. No matter where we lived it was there. According to my father it was ghastly heavy, but my mother loved it.

When my father decided to quit his job, sell our house in Georgetown and move us out in the country the concrete birdbath was loaded into the moving truck with everything else. When my mother realized that there was not going to be a place at the new house to put up her beloved birdbath it was stored in the barn down by the pond.

This new house with the pond wasn't really all that great. It sat way up on a hill which made it very difficult to get to. It was small. We were poor. I was a teenager and only one of our little clan was happy living there – and it wasn't me. One day the pump in the well that supplied all of our water quit and we went weeks without water. My dad's solution was to haul water from the pond below the house by the bucketful so at least we could flush the toilet.

He had a small pump that he tried to submerge in the pond to make filling the buckets easier. The problem was that it wouldn't stay submerged.

So he took my mother's birdbath and sunk the whole kit and kaboodle in the pond.

It was summertime and the pond was low so it didn't seem like a big deal at the time.

Time passed. We hauled water. Eventually my father got the well pump fixed. The rainy time came and the pond rose. The birdbath disappeared. My mother mourned. She pestered, hounded, hassled and deviled my father about her birdbath. Over the next few years the birdbath appeared and disappeared with the whims of Mother Nature and her temperaments.

But my dad never made the great birdbath rescue.

When it came time for us to move out of that house and to the tundra of northwest Ohio the pond was high and the birdbath was nowhere to be seen. And my mother was not happy. She didn't want to move to Ohio and she certainly didn't want to go without her birdbath.

You know already know the rest of the story. We went. It didn't.

And that birdbath became a thing of legend. There were family jokes about it. There was goodnatured and not-so-goodnatured ribbing. But way down deep I've always believed that my mother was hurt. Something she valued was taken, used and left behind. How could she not have felt disrespected?

I wouldn't be so arrogant as to speak for her, but I will say that for me, that birdbath represents many of the ways my father made decisions for our family. He did what suited him at any particular time without a lot of input or regard for the implications for the rest of us.

But when I see one just like it every day out my bathroom window, that birdbath makes me smile. This morning when I saw it, I thought of my mother. I thought of all the things she has sacrificed over the years.

Just the sight of that hunk of concrete in my neighbor's garden reminds me that I can never put my own wants and needs above someone else's just to have my way.

And then I wonder if that birdbath is still in that pond near Sadieville, Kentucky. Or if my neighbor would like to sell me his.

Deja Vu

{it seems like i've taken this picture before. when i asked R. why he had march 8 circled in red on his calendar he grinned slyly. "because it's my birthday!" he said. "and why do you have march 15 marked?" i asked. "cause it's yours!" and he grinned for all he was worth. i couldn't believe he remembered. we talked about it all of once, about three weeks ago. . .he's such a sweetheart. . .}

What A Difference A Few Weeks Makes

Remember the Snowball Softball pictures from a few weeks ago? If not, go look.

Here's the same field today.

{overlooking the entire field}

{that center fence in this photo is the catcher's backstop. you can just see the peak of the dugout floating on the left side of the photo, in front of the telephone pole. if you click on the photo to enlarge it you will just barely see the top of the bleachers rising out of the water.}

{to take the flood photos today i was standing up high, between the left and center fielder in this photo}

What Next??

{on Friday we blizzard. on Monday we flood. can locusts be far behind??

taken from the end of Findlay Street. that's the Red Cross building on the far left, over the river}

6:36 Catch Up

{february 20, 2011 • little tiny signs of spring}

{february 21, 2011 • kinda hard to tell, but these are buttercups, the most diligent, hardest to kill things in our garden!}

{february 22, 2011 • oh what 24 hours can bring. . . loved the shapes in this picture}

{february 23, 2011 • tiny icicles, everywhere. . .}

{february 24, 2011 • if you can't have sun, make your own}

{february 25, 2011 • i don't know what "struck the colors" even means, but i loved the composition of this photo. taken at the warehouse where i clean.}

{february 26, 2011 • ali took this one. this hawk was in our tree, watching our birdfeeder for an easy lunch}

{february 27, 2011 • naptime!}

This Morning

{my favorite breakfast – cafe marie's westgate – full of cheese, potatoes and jalapeno peppers. this was before i liberally covered it in hot sauce. . .}

Almost Spring?

{what could be better? a friday afternoon. the sun shining. the garden appearing from its blanket of snow. warm enough to sit on the porch without a jacket. maybe a glass of wine now? that would just cap it off as perfection!}

Frills

{some kind of gorgeous greens in the produce section of the grocery. they look too pretty to actually eat! with all the frills, they looked dressed and ready to go somewhere fun!}

Late Winter Afternoon

Just Call Her "Crash"

{delilah – a.k.a. Kukla – got spayed last week. while she was at it, we had the doctor take off her back dewclaws because they were very floppy and loose and we were sure they were going to get ripped off in some kind of doggie wrestling match. her little dewclaw incisions kept bleeding so we put oly's cone on her. she was a train wreck in that thing! she ran into absolutely everything with it and it didn't seem to faze her one bit. tonight she came in from being in the backyard with oly looking like this. . . guess it's one way to get rid of that cone! just call her "crash!"}

The Loot

{my Valentine's Day loot – a most adorable little bear that is actually a baby rattle and a miniature box of candy. ali got me the bear. this guy gave me the box of candy – and it almost made me cry. all in all, it was a good day. after coming home from taking some food to R. in arlington, ali and i cooked dinner together which was the highlight of my day. we made veggie stir fry and brown rice. it was good. and i am thankful. happy valentine's day!}

Snowball Softball

{on first, we have "kids need hugs, not drugs"; the right fielder is visible in the distance; everyone had coins for eyes and a carrot nose!}

{the view from behind the catcher, notice the numbers with the catcher being #1 and the batter #10. there is also a home plate in the snow}

{the catcher, up close}

{batter, batter, batter. . .swing!}

{one of the pitcher's arms fell off!}

{someone or a group of very creative someones, obviously as eager for spring as i am, created an entire softball team at Rawson Park here in Findlay. how much fun is that??}