Happy birthday shout outs to my Dad,  my nephew Jordan, my friend Roxanne, my old pal Chad, and to Judy.

I "friended" Judy on FaceBook ages ago, but it turns out the Judy I friended, while from Texas, is not the Judy I know, which I discovered when I went to her wall to post a happy birthday message to her. There was a picture of a woman I didn't recognize, and a little girl who might have been Judy as a child, but something was off. This woman appeared to be about my age, too old to have been Judy's mother when she was a little girl. Then I realized that the pictures of the little girl were recent instead of from the time period when Judy would have been a little girl. Then I looked at this Judy's other friends and did not recognize a-one of them. Not one. I realized that I have friended a Judy I do not know. Oh, well. Judy, wherever you are, Happy Birthday!

Channel 9 weather boy was going on and on about a winter blast that's headed our way. About the fifth time he went through his routine I thought, okay, enough. Let's see what Channel 4 has to say about it, and it was like they had co-authored their scripts. Supposed to be getting a wintery blast with precipitation about Thursday or so. They're predicting freezing rain (which makes ice wherever it lands) and then sleet and then maybe some snow. We are in the big fat geographic middle of the rather wide band that they think will get 6 to 12 inches plus drifts, after the sleet, after the freezing rain.  Yuck.

So I checked our propane levels and called our propane people. Nice folks out in Minco. The kind of business where you call 'em up and say your name and they know who you are. I like that. I said to her, "We're at about 33% and the weather boy is calling 'Blizzard! Blizzard!' this coming weekend," and she said to me, "I know, I'm gonna fire him!" I laughed and said, "Yeah, I didn't like what the first one said so I changed channels, see if I could get a different report, but they're all saying it!" So we're on the list for a fill up before Thursday. I'm also working on a contingency plan in case we get a power outage, which is a distinct possibility when we have an ice storm. 

The good news is that it should only be in the thirties and twenties for a few days once it arrives, instead of low teens and single digits. It may be difficult for some folks to see any distinction there, but there is a difference. Don't know if I've mentioned it, but I have lived to see the day that 20 degrees seems warm, comparatively speaking.

In other matters, Muffin the cat was camped out soakin' up some  rays on top of Mommy's notebooks.  Ordinarily I would not begrudge him a nap in a sunny window, but I need to work in here today. I said to the old darling that a nap in the sun is a great idea, and I know right where you can get all the sun in the world, and set him outside. What does he do? crouches under the steps IN THE SHADE and tries to run back inside every time anyone opens the door. I think it's not so much the wanting to lay in the sun as it is that he's feeling a little clingy lately. Looking out this window I see a great spot he could curl up and be quite toasty, but I guess he wants to nap in the sun AND be within arm's length of Mommy. I believe that if I got one of those baby carriers and packed him around all day he'd be happy as a clam. Sorry, pal, no can do.  Paperwork to do, errands to run, preparations to make! We got a blizzard a-comin', weather boy says so!

Speaking of which, I gotta sign off and make busy!  Thanks for reading.

V~

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, y'all!

Our exciting New Years Eve consisted of a quiet evening at home, including supper and a movie - The Godfather on DVD - to which we both fell asleep before the end. That's okay. We are Godfather Movie watchin' fools. I love some of the quotes, such as, "I have a special kind of practice. I only have one client," and "Leave the gun. Take the canolis," for example.

Daylight now, and January One of a new year, new decade, and look who got their first garden catalog of the season! Perusing it and possibly formulating an order are definitely on my List of Things to Do today.

Still snow on the ground here, but on the days it's been above freezing we see melt. The white stuff is receding, revealing the brown earth under it. Those relatively warm days are definitely Mud Season days (ick!). Still winter, though, and our chief concerns these days tend to run along lines of keeping a faucet drip going and making sure we have plenty of propane.

We have a pot of Black Eyed Peas cooking. I'll make cornbread later on, so we can start the year out right.

You know about that, right? Black eyed peas?

On January 1st, you eat black eyed peas. Some folks also recommend other items, like certain kinds of greens, or maybe a particular scrap of meat, but the central figure is black eyed peas. The first time I remember hearing about this was from Grandma Susie, who said that you eat black eyed peas on January first because it's humble fare and represents humble beginnings. Start the year out humble and things can only become more prosperous.

The last few years we were away from home on January 1, so wherever we might be on the 1st, we would make a point to find some black eyed peas to eat. It got pretty interesting some years - trolling a Safeway store in some strange town for a can or seeking out an open restaurant along the way. Got to have black eyed peas on January 1.

I am happy to report that we are home this January 1 and have a pot of BEP on the stove as I write. Humble fare to start out this 2010 year, and a gardening catalog for desert.

Happy New Year, y'all!

Snow Thank you

Looks like all those years of Oklahomans praying for a white Christmas finally paid off.  We ended up with over 14 inches, according to the Official Report, but it had to be real hard to count because the dadgum wind blew so hard that we really got everything from bare spots to six foot drifts. Not us personally, but throughout the state. The official count came from the airport, which is about eight miles east of us. Out here at the True Light Carrot Patch I'd say that between the bare spots and the drifts, we probably averaged two to four inches.

I know a snow like this is common enough in the upper regions, y'all, but it is an all time record breaker for Oklahoma. Hot potatoes!

BTW, WeatherBoy (or WeatherGirl) is the name I give, individually and collectively, to our television meteorologists because they always look young, fresh-scrubbed and  Sunday-best. Children grown tall, telling the weather.

We got the porch cleaned off, and the sunny part of the sidewalk at the barn. The shady parts are too icy to clear yet. I think it's supposed to get about 35 degrees today, so maybe....

We traditionally have a Big Family Doin' at my parents on Christmas Eve. This tradition within my family started when I was a child. My mother and aunt's families liked to meet on Christmas day as so many do, and Grandmother liked to have everyone together, so the sensible solution was to have a big dinner on Christmas Eve. We'd all eat and open presents. The grown-ups would always reserve a few for Christmas morning as well, and of course there's always a few packages from Santa Clause.

When Grandmother passed on my own mother picked up the Christmas Hostess baton, because she really likes to have everyone together, too. Unfortunately, this blizzard kept people in. I did not even go outside on the 24th.

We cleared the porch and sidewalk on Christmas Day, and just before dark decided to brave the elements to see if we could find anyplace open where we might sit down to hot food that someone else cooked. We ended up over at the Flying J truckstop restaurant and had whatever we wanted from their buffet. They had one, count 'em one, waitress, who had probably been there for a very long time, but she was still friendly and got us all fixed up. We got home without incident, although there are certainly a few patches of pretty scary road out there.

Steve gave me the gift today of taking our laundry in to wash today and found our local Mustang laundry closed. There was a sign on the door saying, "Closed Christmas Day," but this is the 26th now, so I hope she's okay. She comes over from El Reno (about ten miles west of us) to open the place up every day, and they had some pretty dramatic multi-car pileups out that way, so  I suspect she may be unable to get through. I hope she's okay. Having found the Mustang laundry closed, he ventured up into Yukon to our second choice in laundromats.

Grandmother always said, "If you're going to say anything, say something nice," so I'll have to think of something nice to say about that laundromat - oh, yeah, here's one - their washers and dryers were in good working order the last time I was there. Anyway, it took him over an hour to make a twelve minute drive because it's still pretty awful out there everywhere except right out on the Interstate highways. He got stuck in the slush somewhere along the way but a Good Samaritan helped get him unstuck.

This all reminds me that another thing to appreciate from our time in Cooperstown is  experiential reality in the Importance of Clearing Snow Accumulation. I catch myself thinking they'd have this cleared by now in Otsego County, and then I remind myself that I'm certainly free to go back there if I wish. I think I'll stay put, though. Hopefully this weather event will be enough to satisfy most of those Snow Pray-ers for a good long time!

A Beautiful Asset to the Community

Steve found the bell the other day and I hung it in the Sweetgum tree in front of the house. That bell is made of sheet metal, iron, I think. The clapper is a wooden disk, and the triangle you see hanging below is the handle of the clapper.  

   

A three-sided bell, the wind catches the clapper and makes it ring lovely sounds in three tones.

Steve picked it up at the Festival of the Arts way back in the seventies when tthat event was still held in front of what was then known as the Civic Center in Oklahoma City.

Steve said Sid and Michi would be excited to see and hear this bell because it hung in the back yard of the house of their youth. When we lived here before we hung it from a Pecan tree out where the barn now stands. It went to Cooperstown with us, where we hung it from a Maple tree behind that house, and now it's back here at the True Light Carrot Patch, hanging in the Sweetgum tree.

Perhaps interesting only to me, the Sweetgum from which the bell hangs came forth as a volunteer seedling. It was a skinny little four or five inch diameter tree the first time we moved here in 1995. The Maple tree from which it hung in Cooperstown I suspect also started out as a vounteer seedling and was also about four or five inches in diameter when we first moved there. When we left Cooperstown to return here that Maple had grown to twelve or thirteen inches in diameter and this Sweetgum, now a good fourteen inches in diameter.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

I went out to haul the trash dumpsters to the curb this morning, this being trash day at my address. Neither of them were quite full, so I spent about forty five minutes out at the edge of our woods pulling trash out of the sticks and leaves to fill the dumpsters. I swear, it looks like several successive families, rather than pack and move, simply hauled their stuff out to the woods and dumped it. Either that, or they abandoned their stuff and the people who came in after them hauled it to the woods. I am still just blown away that people would do such a thing.

There now stands a Mulberry tree out in the yard that, when we first moved here in 1995, was a volunteer in the fence row. We cleaned and cleared and cleared and cleaned, put in a garden and a garlic patch and a chicken house and cleaned and cleared some  more. We kept the field on this five acres mowed, along with the yard and the right of way along 59th street. Had the place looking pretty nice! Then we moved away...

When we returned after the seven years in Cooperstown, much of what we had cleared had been reclaimed by nature and overrun with human debris. We've been cleaning and clearing as we go, but our first priority is to get the house finished, and then we can focus even more on the landscaping. It already looks a hundred times better now than when when we first returned, and will only get better as we work on it.

Everyone raves about what we have done and are doing here! The week doesn't go by that someone doesn't stop by to admire our progress and express their gratitude that we're cleaning up, renovating, and making it better.

Everyone is most supportive and happy we're here except one particular city official from Mustang.  This is a surprise to me. I should think the City of Mustang would be as happy as our neighbors are to see what we are doing here in cleaning up, making improvements and restoring the property as a beautiful asset to the community. I would certainly think that the City of Mustang would be pleased to think that the owner of this land might be interested in developing a portion of it into another nice residential neighborhood here in Mustang. Unfortunately, in spite of all the kudos, encouragement and support we get from everyone else, the actions and attitudes of this one city official indicate to me that the City of Mustang is not interested in seeing this thirty-plus acre corner developed after all.

On the bright side, this particular city official seems to be fairly ambitious. Who knows, maybe we'll all get lucky and she'll get a better job somewhere else. Hopefully whoever gets her job after she's gone will easier to work with. In the meantime, this land is perfectly happy to keep on being the farmland it's been for as long as men have owned it, and that's okay with me, too.

Progress on the Barn

Here's our new barn. They got it from a stack of materials to this configuration in about a week or so, plus or minus. Today another crew is evening and smoothing the dirt inside in prep for the concrete pour, which should take place in the morning. That'll be good, to get the concrete poured before the rains come on Sunday (or Saturday night).

I knew the dimensions we were looking to cover, and I was all over the site after Steve staked it out, and when the dirt man came in and built the pad up for the building, but it wasn't really until they started getting the walls up until I could see how big this thing really is! "This thing is huge, baby," to quote Tiny Elvis. Or Billy Fucillo. It's a big mammer-jammer.

Anyway, today's crew is leveling and smoothing the ground, and adding sand - three truck loads so far - and, as I Said, we expect to pour cement tomorrow!

Our Morton man, Charles, was out here most of the morning, overseeing and fining up the details, and he asked me, "How would you feel about pouring tomorrow? Would that be okay?"

"Would that be okay? Oh, I don't know, let me check my appointment book - YEAH!"

Steve says, "Hey Now!"

So they're getting the ground ready.

Hot Potatoes!

Leaning Toward Vegetarianism?

I wouldn't go so far as to call my household Vegetarian, but I have been interested in studying that way since my dad turned me onto a book, The RAVE Diet. This stands for No Refined foods, No Animal products, No Vegetable oils, No Exceptions, basically recommending a fat-free vegan lifestyle. I was so impressed by what I saw that I ordered my own copy of the book (which is currently packed safely away in storage :\ ) and it came with the DVD featuring interviews and testimonials from former omnivores-now-fat-free-vegans telling about their health problems, and how those problems improved or resolved when they changed what they ate.

We've all heard that "meat contains complete protein." This book and its DVD say True, but the body, in processing what you feed it, actually has to break those proteins down and then reconstruct them according to its needs. You can save it the trouble (and improve your health) by taking your protein in the components available from plant sources. A combination of legumes and grains, such as the traditional beans and rice, or beans and corn, offers the protein building blocks the body needs to assemble the complete protein it needs, and as a bonus, includes plenty of fiber as well, something animal proteins cannot offer. Makes sense to me.

It has been and is a challenging path to follow, having been raised as an omnivore and living in a predominantly omnivorous culture.

Unfortunately, two of my beloved relatives have developed cases of gout whose excruciating gouty attacks are  precipitated by meaty meals - a heartbreaking circumstance for any meat lover, to be sure.

So I have taken the opportunity to lean a little more deeply into the fat-free-vegan/RAVE way, recommending meatless options and cooking meatless meals. As I say, I wouldn't go so far as to call our household vegetarian, but we are taking things one meal at a time.

If this has piqued your curiosity, if maybe you're interested in taking an anonymous stroll around the vegetarian block, check out the Fat Free Vegan website. I'm so impressed with it that I have a shortcut link to it right on my desktop. Very helpful in planning meatless dishes and meals. Check it out, and thanks for reading!

Monday, Rain, Fireflies, Junebugs and Roses

Is it still Monday?

We got some rain Saturday - mostly a Cooperstown kind of rain, gentle and straight down, as compared to the hard, sideways rain we so often get here in Oklahoma. We'd been out  somewhere and were back home, powering down for the night. I was getting reports ready and printing forms for the next day's meeting, when Steve called to me, "Hey, Vicki, you gotta come see this!"

I followed his voice to find him out on the deck under the awning.

"There, under the long trailer," he said, pointing. "Under the tarp."

It took a few seconds, but then I began to see flickering and blinking lights. They looked like tiny blinking LED lamps. I rubbed my eyes and cleaned my glasses, and the lights were still there. Fireflies had taken shelter from the rain under cover of an old-fashioned oiled-canvas tarp we had laid over the wood that was stored on Dad's long flat trailer. Sheltered under their own makeshift awning with plenty of Firefly business to conduct, there they were, blinking away. What a happy thing to see! I'm sorry I wasn't able to get a suitable picture of this to post, but hopefully you've already conjured one in your mind.

Makes me happy every time I see fireflies, and a little bit sad that there don't seem to be as many these summers as I remember having seen in my youth. I plan to study in the next season or so, how to attract, encourage, and support fireflies. I would sure rather have fireflies than June bugs!

When we moved here the first time, about fourteen or fifteen years ago, I moved a Queen Elizabeth Rose bush out here with us and planted it under the yard light. The Queen Elizabeth bears large, lush blossoms in a beautiful shade of medium-deep pink and have a wonderful fragrance. We always liked to say of that Queen Elizabeth Rose that she had petals the size of bed sheets and thorns the size of rhinoceros horns. A substantial and imposing rosebush, the Queen Elizabeth. I wanted to take her with us to Cooperstown when we moved up there, but I had no room to pack one more thing. I blessed her with love and left her behind.

On more than one return visit to Oklahoma I wanted like anything to come out here and dig up the Queen Elizabeth to take to Cooperstown with me, but that never worked out for one reason or another. One of the things I looked forward to on our return was seeing and nurturing the Queen Elizabeth Rose bush again.

I guess I must have also planted another rose bush under the light too. So in love with the Queen Elizabeth, I'm embarrassed to say I don't remember this other bush's name, but it produces smallish red and white variegated blooms. The coloring reminds me of peppermint candy. Unfortunately, the Queen Elizabeth is gone, and no trace of her to be found. I do have my eyes peeled for another one. 

This Peppermint Rose bush, though. She's about four feet tall now. She lives under the yard light, as I said, and this summer the ding-dang June bugs ate every leaf on that bush! Ate her right down to sticks!  I thought sure she was dead, and wonder if that must have been what happened to my Queen Elizabeth, only after she was gone down to dead, thorny sticks, someone pulled her out of the ground.  

I was sad to see what had happened to the Peppermint Rose, and vowed to plant roses again, somewhere away from the yard light. Then I noticed she was putting forth new growth! I love the way roses' new growth leaves are tinged in red. Soon she was completely reclothed in the red leaves of new growth, and as those leaves began to turn green, here came a couple dozen buds and she bloomed again! 

Part of my future plans for this place create a dedicated rose garden. I was surprised to hear someone say roses are "hard to grow." I have never had any difficulty keeping roses. They take some time and attention - the successful rose gardener becomes acquainted with their needs and sees to those needs - it is not that difficult. Or maybe I have a gift for roses. Maybe they like me.

Whatever.

Anyway, yes, I guess it is still Monday. Been a long, busy day. I'm going to don my jammies and settle in for the night. Thanks for reading.

Live Well and Be Happy,
Vicki in Mustang

Zone 7