Creative Abundance

When it Snows you Can Choose to Shovel it or Make Snow Angels

We did neither.  

I think this may have been the first snow for Cassidy, Lucy, and Peachy.  The poodle girls did not like it one bit.  It is likely that there will not be any pictures of them in the snow because they run out, stop five feet from the garage, potty and run back immediately.  At first the potty part was not working. I had to remove some snow so that they could see grass.

This morning Joy modified the process, she decided it would be a better idea to finish the potty process inside the garage.  No one had any accidents inside the house but they were attempting to wait until things melted...

I have one picture of Peachy in the snow at 8AM Saturday morning.  It had started snowing at 3AM.  She definitely doesn’t look like she is having a good time - she didn’t even look for any squirrels.

 

I had hoped to knit a lot.  I found I had too much nervous energy and spent the time cleaning.  I was really worried that we would lose power for days.  And we probably would have if we had gotten the amount of snow they were predicting as well as the 40MPH gusts.

 
   

I have no plans to go out until it melts - and I think the poodle girls have similar plans - they are only venturing out to the little patch of grass.

Today was an special day for us.  A year ago I drove to southern North Carolina to bring Peachy home.  I have wonderful memories of the members of the Friends for Life, Robeson County Humane Society. 

To celebrate, I made dog cookies from the Cooking the Three Dog Bakery Way cookbook. They were more like people biscuits, and the girls loved them.  We tried to exercise some restraint, there’s some left for tomorrow. 

 

Grateful Thursdays/Fridays: Snowflakes are kisses from heaven (?)

Thursday’s temperatures were in the high fifties.

Today was cold and we are expecting a “historic” snow fall to begin just after midnight. I am trying not to complain about the weather- Kin Hubbard said “don't knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn't start a conversation if it didn't change once in a while."

But honestly I have been fretting about all the plants in bloom or about to bloom.  I did cover the ferns with tarps but I really couldn’t find a way to wrap the camellias.  So I cut them and brought them inside to enjoy.

 I’ve really had to search to find something positive about this storm.  Of course, I am very, very grateful to be with my family in a warm, comfortable home. 

This area only experiences a major snow storm once every seven years.  So I guess it’s time. 

Tomorrow there will be many children in the area who will be thrilled to be able to build a snow person. And I am sure that tomorrow’s adventures in the snow will be very memorable for many families with small children.  

I am trying to embrace the snow forecast and think of snow flakes as kisses (very cold ones) from heaven.  Oh, that is a very big stretch for me.   But I am remaining positive, and all paws are crossed here in hopes that we do not lose power.

Whiplash

We are experiencing Whiplash Weather.

On Sunday it was in the sixties.  Monday morning brought a severe storm.  We are back to seasonable temperatures in the forties but tomorrow is expected to be in the high fifties, and snow is expected on Friday or Saturday.

Monday brought quite a storm.  We have one tree that is on its way down. 

It is in area that the dogs do not have access to, so it isn’t an emergency. 

Things continue to be saturated.  Two days after the storm, a neighbor’s front yard looks like this

One good result of the storm is this.  Our chime is now working.  After the Nor’easter, the clapper was wrapped around a branch. The chime is a memorial for our magnificent companion, Sophie.  When she passed away I created a quilt in her honor as a fund raiser for the rescue that nursed her back to health. But the chime was our very personal reminder of how she touched our life, and I am so happy to be able to hear it again.  

 

And while the furry companions napped through the storm (they waited patiently for their delayed outing and breakfast), I started the back on the Drops 103-1 jacket.  

I am about half way through with the back and the fronts are finished.  That snow storm this weekend may give me a chance to get a great deal done on the sleeves.  

 

Prior to the expected snow storm, I am plotting how I can wrap up the camellias so that they can gracefully weather this Rambo introduction to spring...

 

Thankful Thursdays/Fridays: "Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush. " ~Doug Larson

Fall camellias are still producing blooms like this Shi Shi Gashira...

Although it is likely to get very cold again, many spring blooming plants are strutting their stuff.  Like these camellias.

Or these

 
The ferns are even looking great - I have never seen them look this good at this time in the year.

It’s grey and very wet.  The flash on the camera was needed because it is so overcast. However, the camellias and the ferns are telling me to start pruning the roses because Spring is right around the corner.  

Thankful Thursdays

Several years ago, and totally out of the blue, my husband decided he wanted a vanity license plate for his car. It wasn’t anything witty or funny, just his initials.  He then suggested I get one as well.  I told him that I wanted mine to say, SHELTIE.  He told me he would take care of it, and he was true to his word.  

Because SHELTIE was taken as well as numerous approximations, he came up with SH_L_T  .   

He was impressed with his creativity and resourcefulness.  I was appalled that at ten feet away it appeared to spell something else entirely.  

Today when I was doing some errands I noticed a license plate that said “EVIL LIZ.”  I must admit that when I was parallel to this car that I glanced over to see what EVIL LIZ looked like. 

Who Would Have Thought?

While driving a few weeks ago, I was listening to All Things Considered (Eric calls it All Liberal Things Considered).  The report that was on the air was so engaging, I sat in the car and listened to it for its duration even though I had reached my destination.  

The report was a “biography” of a particular drug, Fosamax.  If you haven’t heard it, I strongly recommend it.  At the end of the report they challenged the listener to go home and look at the contents of our medicine cabinet, and they concluded that you are likely to find many of the drugs with a very disturbing biography, just like Fosamax.

That appalling report certainly got my attention, and I began to do some reading about vitamins.  We subscribe to reports from Consumerlab.com, a company who does independent testing to identify the best quality health and nutritional products. Yesterday I discovered that they had done testing with Pet Tabs, a multivitamin, that we give our dogs.  

They found that Pet Tabs "was contaminated with 6.45 mcg of lead per tablet. This is several times higher than the amount of lead (1.41 mcg) ConsumerLab.com found to be in this same product in 2007. Contamination limits for dogs are not well defined, but, as reference, the FDA notes that children should not be exposed to more than 6 mcg of lead per day and, as noted above, California requires warning labels on supplements for human use that contain over 0.5 mcg of lead per day.”

Our furry companions have been taking Pet Tabs because I cook their meals - rice, vegetables and ground chicken - and I wanted to ensure that they were getting all the necessary minerals and vitamins. (I am picky about the ground chicken - it is organic...I buy it in bulk when it is 50% off...and yes, I am very painfully aware that our companions eat better than many people.)   I have been cooking their food for many years. The melamine contamination of pet foods a couple of years ago reinforced my belief that I did not trust a commercial company with our companions' nutrition.

Luckily I did not give them Pet Tabs every day - just on those days that I was a little short on vegetables.  It took a year for me to use a bottle of Pet Tabs.  And just the other day, I bought another - and luckily I haven’t opened it.

 

I did do a google search on “Pet Tabs Lead” and did find many articles including a rebuttal by the manufacturer.  However, I was not totally convinced by their rebuttal.  I am not at all comfortable giving them a supplement that has any amount of lead in it - and the manufacturer does not dispute the fact that it does have lead. I would rather do a little more research to identify the vitamins and minerals that are currently deficient in their diet, and then add different foods to resolve the deficiency.  That approach is important to me because two of our companions weigh five pounds.  The manufacturer may indeed be right that the levels of lead in the supplements are safe. But is there sufficient research with dogs as small as five pounds?  I simply do not want to have to worry about it if they are wrong. The whole issue regarding safe levels is incredibly complex, and I think that it is important for every individual to review the information that is available and make their own decision.

One product that I have found especially helpful is FortiFlora.  It is a probiotic for dogs.  

Ms. Peachy was on a powerful antibiotic for four months - doxycyline - to treat the tick borne disease, and it was given while she was undergoing heart worm treatment. 

I gave her Fortiflora every day to ensure that the “good” microflora in her intestine wasn’t killed by the doxycyline.  

It is also helpful with Amazing Maizy. Even though I “pick up” in the yard, she does some really "bad snacking” every chance she gets.  Skipping a meal and a packet of Fortiflora will quickly remedy diarrhea. Who would have thought?

(FortiFlora with the almost completed left and right front panels of the Drops A Line Jacket that everyone in the world has already knitted (except me))

(Edited on January 21 to elaborate on information regarding Pet Tabs.)  

The Blue Robins have arrived!

We’ve had a few lovely days here - Yesterday was in the 60’s.  But today was cooler.  

 
We had play time in the yard but also did accomplish some “work.”  I have a huge amount to do before spring, and I haven’t even started cleaning leaves from the flower beds.   I still am dealing with leaves - now it is the finer leaves from the water oak that are dropping.  

 

Before the sun set I grabbed the camera and got a shot of daffodils coming up...

 

And two days ago Eric saw two BLUE BIRDS.   Early settlers called blue birds the blue robin because they frequently announced spring.  One bluebird was sitting on one of our bluebird houses.  This one...

Oh, and next to the bluebird house is my Drops jacket - the right front, Drops Alaska yarn, and the color way is pretty close to bluebird blue!  

I looked inside the blue bird house and there was no evidence that they had selected our house.  Here’s a picture inside.  They might have been scouts.

This house is about six months old.  When I was taking the picture I did not see the yucky stuff on the ceiling.  I will need to take a better look tomorrow.  There actually is a plexiglass  panel on the side - so that we can open the side door to monitor the babies, and the babies won’t be able to escape from the nest.  The house is mounted on a pole with a raccoon baffle beneath it which will keep out raccoons as well as other predators, including snakes.  (But I will probably need to prune back the camellia that is next to the house as I am concerned that some of its limbs could be used by a predator to gain access to the house.)

Did you know that bluebirds are gentle native birds that have been in a crisis for a number of years?  Sparrows and the starlings were imported from Europe and have threatened the bluebirds.  

I know about this first hand.  We had a very sad experience with our first bluebird pair.  I happened to notice that there was a bird that was diving into the grass right under the blue bird house.  The bluebird house was far away from our house and it took me a couple of minutes to run to the location.  The bird diving into the ground was a starling, and it was attacking the female bluebird lying beneath the birdhouse. I saw the male bluebird fly away - it was being pursued by the starling.  I immediately took the mama to the closest vet, and she was seen immediately. Unfortunately she could not be saved.  I returned and watched for the male.  In the absence of the female he would have fed the babies in the bird house.  I waited and watched and there was no sign of the male.  The babies were a week or so old. When it became clear that the male had not returned, I took them to a licensed wild life rehabilitator who raised them until they were ready to fledge.  She then returned them to us and they stayed on our screened porch for a day or two.  I kept the door open (with plenty of meal worms about) and they fledged when they were ready.  (In exchange for the rehabilitator’s kindness, we cleaned out her raccoon cages on a number of Saturdays. (And yes, raccoon cages are really, really yucky.) We also provided thousands of meal worms for her birds and raccoons.)  

A number of organizations are working to save the threatened bluebird - I found this to be a very good source .  Every year we have thoroughly enjoyed the bluebirds who have selected our house for their home.  And the chain store, Wild Birds Unlimited, has a map in their store where you can place pins to identify the location of bluebirds who are nesting.  Its fun to see how many and where other birds are nesting.  I guess it doesn’t take much to peg my fun meter.

And finally, I did take some pictures of the moss project.  It is going very well.  I apologize for the dark pictures but it is supposed to rain tomorrow, with a number of overcast days to follow.

  

 

 

Grateful Thursdays/Fridays

I have found it to be very difficult to write a post after the tragedy in Haiti. I am grateful for the positive and service oriented actions that the knitting community has taken in the past seventy two hours in response to  the earth quake in Haiti.

The Lazy, Stupid, and Godless group on Ravelry (the knitting community) has already raised $10.076. The Yarn Harlot requested support for Haiti via contributions to Doctor’s Without Borders, and knitters responded by donating $46,000. The Completely Pointless and Arbitrary Swap group on Ravelry has raised $2,655.  Many shop owners on www.etsy.com (the place for original handmade items) are donating profits to Haiti - information about this can be found here, Haitian Humanitarian Aid, another Ravelry link. And on Ravelry, a group has been formed to offer prayers, Pray for Haiti While Knitting.

I am grateful that the community where I live has offered help to Haiti not just within the last few hours after the earth quake, but have been helping for decades.  Such organizations include Union Mission, Holy Spirit Catholic Church, Lynnhaven United Methodist, Catholic Church of St. Mark,  and Physicians for Peace. 

I am also grateful to have stumbled upon this, a very interesting and thoughtful discussion of Haiti’s history.

   

"Happiness is perfume you can't pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.” Emerson

(Peachy and Cassidy)

Peachy appears to be very contented and happy.  Having her in our life has brought us incredible amounts of happiness.

We adopted Peachy on January 25, 2009.  As of today we arrived to a place where her health is no longer a major concern.  It was a road that was sometimes filled with uncertainties, but it was always a very happy journey.  I would do it again in a heart beat.

 

Today was the first day of life with no restrictions.  The strict exercise restirctions imposed by her heart worm treatment are now a thing of the past.  This was the first time that she went outside without a leash, without being carried.  After two months, this is the first time that she trotted and ran, that she stayed outside as long as she liked.

She did the normal things that her buddies do...

And she patrolled the yard...

   
 

After her play time, I think she was anxious to get back to a nap...

 

Tomorrow’s weather looks like it will be delightful for a walk.  For me, I am not sure life could be any better.

 

Grateful Thursdays: "Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” - Camus

I know that autumn has passed.  However, this post is more about autumn in the future...  First with some background information.

I was familiar with Hanami - the Japanese tradition of viewing flowers in spring, in particular, cherry blossoms.  It is more than just viewing the cherry blossoms, it is also spending meditative time and “connecting” with the spirit of the cherry blossom. During Hanami fetes are held under cherry trees - even at night with Japanese lanterns providing light and sake enhancing the experience.

One of my favorite designers, Melanie Gibbons, designed a wrap called Hanami.  It is one of my favorites and was designed to celebrate the essence of Hanami - the beauty of nature as well as friendship. She incorporated the quilted, basket weave design of Sashiko with the organic element of falling cherry petals. The wrap also incorporates beads - transparent beads look like tiny drops of water...  The wrap can be knitted in a number of different ways, half of the basket weave design and half falling petals, or the wrap can be made entirely with the falling petal design. I would love to knit one.  I am positive that I will.

Until recently I did not know that the autumn season is celebrated in a way similar to Hanami.  It is called Koyo.  I’ve read that it is more reflective and meditative than Hanami. But like Hanami, it is a based upon a deep appreciation for the beauty of the season.  And I love the idea expressed by Albert Camus, Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.  

Last spring Eric’s Dad passed away.  Eric’s co-workers wanted Eric to have a living memorial.  We are very grateful for their generosity and thoughtfulness.  

After a bit of research, and becoming acquainted with Koyo, it became clear that a Japanese maple tree would be the perfect choice and metaphor for a living memorial.   

We knew that it would be best to delay the planting until the fall.  Because of the our very wet fall, the planting of the tree was further delayed.  But certainly we can still enjoy the tree during the winter season with this in mind:

"Here is the dark tree
Denuded now
Of leafage...
But a million stars"
-   Shiki

Those million stars are reminders of Eric’s Dad: strength of character, integrity, dependability, and mettle. We look forward to seeing the tree this spring, with camellias and azaleas in the background.

And we know that some autumn day it will look like this: 

 We are very grateful.