the bones of winter

Blogger has given me 503 notices for over a week when I try to send photos to post.
I haven't a clue how to fix that, but I remembered that I could email photos to the site, and it worked! However, it looks a bit messy, and I haven't been able to space or add captions between the photos.

It's been a cold, overcast, windy, nasty string of days, and I haven't been outdoors as much as I like to be. We've been busy with freeze broken pipes and babysitting for the grandson, too.
But we had a temperature reprieve Saturday, and I was able to walk to my far fence and gaze over the pastures to the north. Fog obscured the long view and gave it all a mysterious appearance, but the bare bones of the trees made a nice contrast with the overcast sky.

Hordes of cedar waxwings wheezed and cajoled as they skipped from tree to tree devouring all the mistletoe, yaupon and privet berries that they can hunt up. (the 3rd photo)

This morning, a yellow smile from the border of my garden, visible from my dining room window, the first daffodils!

Pete Seeger, folk music icon gone

Sang this song so many times ....

http://youtu.be/TXqTf8DU6a0

a sunny Christmas Eve

The colors clash, but sun and flowers

make it joyous.

something is rotten

While replanting pansies that the armadillo had dug up I kept wrinkling my nose at the fetid scent that was wafting my way.

I found the culprit, a stinkhorn or carrion fungus. 

The fungus uses the foul odor to attract insects that will carry its spores to new locations.

hickories last to turn

 

 

Usually the hickory trees are the last to change color before the leaves fall. They are even later this year, and the big freeze pushed the color to brown faster than most autumns. The golden glow was still there even on the cloudy day when I took these photos.

memory tree

from my parents' tree

a bauble from my dad's birthday cake, his birthday was on Christmas Eve
date, 1958

from my older son

from my younger son

first ornament made by one of my sons


A few memories from our tree--- baubles from grandparents, parents, friends, students, and whimsy from various Christmases.

Joy and sadness each time we decorate the tree and remember those no longer with us and make new memories.

The deaths of my brother, aunt, and father-in-law this year make it even more poignant.

My younger son lives in California now and will not be here, but on the happy side I have a new grandson to celebrate.

veggie feast

cauliflower

Brussels sprouts

parsley and cilantro

 salad greens

salsa, pico de gallo

Finally a break in the temperature yesterday, and I was able to visit the garden and assess  cold damage. Apparently, the long spell of cold has not damaged the vegetable garden, and I was able to gather a few things for dinner.
There's a row of turnips that I forgot to photograph.  They are so beautiful with the crisp purple, white and green.

The cilantro became part of pico de gallo, a salsa we ate with corn chips.

something bright

 one of my holiday cacti

The weather here in Louisiana continues cold, wet, and windy. The flowering plants have been freeze burned, and it's too cold for me to do take a walk so I don't have many new photos to blog about.

I brought my Christmas cacti into the house, and they perch on the end of my dining room table near the window where I can admire them all day long.
 

a Texas sunset

Here in Louisiana it has been a dreary, cold, rainy bunch of days. So to console myself I am posting a photo of a Texas sunset I took recently. This was before the cold front that has brought them ice storms and frigid temperatures, too.

A little color to warm the heart...

back to the lake

A possible Iceland gull--
Local birders have been abuzz about this gull which has been sighted at the lakefront. He's very obliging and has remained through the long holiday weekend.

So I returned for a quick photo and a "tick" for the life list. He is certainly a long way from home in Louisiana.

freeze

 

 

“Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth, that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens.”

—	Ralph Waldo Emerson | from the Great River.

Two nights of  temperatures of 22 degrees reduced my blooming plants to these sad, saggy, brown messes. In earlier years, they would have been long gone, but a warm fall gave me lagniappe and lulled me into the expectancy that they would go on forever.

They will return in proper time, and in the meanwhile my winter hummer will have to drink from the bottles of nectar that hang from the eaves of the house.

lake's edge

 

 

 

 

 

Lake Pontchartrain has always been a part of my life. In my youth, I lived on it's south shore. My family fished, swam, boated and usually wound up there just to gaze and watch boats on leisurely afternoons.

Now I live on the north shore of the lake, actually far north in the pine hills. But I still gravitate toward it for soul restoration.

 A quick trip there with my camera found boats, colorful marshes, a willet, coots, and a rail.

Across 25 miles of water, the city of New Orleans floats into silvery view.

cloud atlas

 

 

 

 

 

 

It seems I'm always watching the sky--birding, astronomy, weather.

I guess my head is in the clouds.

I don't have a dslr camera. My photos all come from "point and shoots"-- many of them now from my phone.

There have been some spectacular phenomena over our heads in recent months, lots of sun dogs and ice rings around the sun and moon---- fiery and peachy sunsets and sun rises.

Wondrous sights to behold!

pumpkin pies

 

 

It's time to process the raw pumpkin for the Thanksgiving pies. Every year we declare this is the last time!---Canned pumpkin next year.


But we wrestle another pumpkin into pulp, store it in bags, and make our pies from scratch.
I even played some Christmas music while I did it--I've never done that before. 

  

50 years ago--JFK--Nov. 22

So many things have been said about this day. I still cannot remember the events without a heavy feeling in my heart and a sense of great loss.

Young and idealistic we thought we could change the world for the better:



The New Frontier

"Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things. Not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” 

the peace corps

civil rights

Camelot...

 

 Some say that if John Kennedy had lived he would have lost the luster, but we will never know.