Other worlds

Emirate wealth and piety

Solstice

Three days of steady snow, and now we see the sun again. 14 degrees out when I walked the dog her daily mile.
Yesterday was the winter solstice. This morning I took my annual sunrise at solstice shot -- that's the middle one and you may have to click on it to find the gleam of sunshine. I tried to line up the window edge with a tree because one of these years I'm going to map everything and figure the exact point on the compass where the sun rises on that day, and maybe that will help. Then I took the shot of the chimney, which faces North -- how often does it have a big patch of sun on it right at sunrise? Oh, and yes, that little patch of green at the bottom is my "green marble hearth" -- 5 marble tiles to extend the hearth. I'm very fond of them. They get all warm when the insert is going full blast.

Winter water

The pond does interesting things this time of year. It was barely hard enough to walk on around Thanksgiving, but I didn't go far as it seemed dicey. Then it thawed all of a sudden night, then froze, thawed, etc. Thursday night we had the heavy rainstorm that was an ice storm elsewhere (the top of the hills around us, for example) and then it was in the teens last night and now there's a perfect sheet of black ice.

My newly acquired overbite is bothersome. An orthodontist tells me if I let him knock a few molars out there would be room to re-align the upper teeth with the lower teeth -- the lower jaw is evidently shorter than it used to be. I'm going to get a second opinion before embarking on what he projects to be a 2 year project. Until we get a good treatment plan in place my broken teeth remain as is, so I can only chew in one small area. Every new appointment requires a 2 week wait. Things proceed slowly. The rehabilitation on my wrist is coming along, I'm probably at about 50-70% of where I used to be in terms of strength and flexibility.

If you look closely at this photo you'll find two bluebirds. We see them maybe once in the fall and once in the spring. They're very pretty. You can see the foliage is pretty now, too. The maple in front of the house shed its leaves early, perhaps due to a large crop of seeds to disperse.

The basement renovation is coming along bit by bit. The perimeter drain is done and exits out of the walls at either end so the water should run out by gravity. Better get some critter covers for the exits though! The electrician and plumber have been in and corrected various creative solutions of old that weren't to current code. The walls and ceilings are free of old and mildewed sheetrock and ceiling tiles, and the smell is giving way to that of new lumber as the bathroom gets rebuilt.

And I'm slowly healing from my fall (broken jaw and wrist), feeling a little more human as the days go by, a little less stunned. 3 weeks down, 3 to go, more or less. Then we'll see exactly how my teeth fared. I'm a bit tired of the liquid diet but tonight's mushroom soup puree was pretty good.

Lost Cat

Lia-Boy, aka White Paws, aka le Sultan, aka Cary Grant, disappeared on Tuesday (July 29th). Mostly likely prey to a coyote, which happens rather frequently around here. He was a great love of mine, and is sorely missed. He was 10 last April.

This is my last photo of him, from June 25th.

City-living has a sinister side; so does country-living.

hay time (July 8th)

More on spring flowers

OK, those are mustard, honeysuckle, choke cherry, and Golden Alexander. I was stuck on the later. Zizia Aurea, "leaves 2 to 3 times divided" was what clinched it. Not many plants have variable numbers of lobes/divisions. Didn't get a great shot, but you can see it to some degree.