In like a Lion… Out Like a Pride

Hello, Dear Readers out there.

I assure every one that the tornadoes did not sweep me away. The storms that swept the South and put a tree through the house of a Dear Friend of mine managed to bring down a twig in my yard. Yep, that was it, a twig, oh, and we lost power for three hours. The March Lion started out as tentative grey showers and as April moved in the Lion turned into a very hungry Pride. We are still waiting for the Lamb.

I commend everyone, especially my Lovely Red Headed Girl-friend, who have donated time and goods to the tornado victims across the Plains and the South here. And I give a true compassionate thank you to Fire, Police, Rescue, the Red Cross, and the Salvation Army for being the first on scene and still there now.

Right now the frogs are croaking for all they are worth, a vibrant chorus in the dark. This makes the weeds and brambles and discarded branches of the way-back an ecosystem instead of weeds, brambles, and discarded branches. We have even seen several Mr Hoppy Toads in our front garden beds there has been so much rain. They could be Lady Toads quite frankly but I am not picking them up to check.

I am very happy to say that the God Baby’s pumpkin from last Fall has seeded in the garden. Scattered pumpkin seeds have sprouted like a little green hat of leafs over the dessicated pumpkin shell.

I would also like to officially say that chervil and lovage are difficult to grow from scattered seed. If I can get one plant from a whole packet of seeds I will be ecstatic. Now the fennel is popping up with the dill but everything else is pretty much laughing at me.

Thumbing our noses at convention we were radical and alternative and had an egg hunt on Mother’s Day. (The invited children had been sick on Easter but I prefer the radical image myself.) The day was perfect and lovely. My Greatly Beloved and I had fun trying to find unique places to hide the eggs. There were even tea cakes made from altered cake mix that went over swimmingly I must say. The two girls even ate them when they found out the “squishy things” were raisins.

My kitchen was 3/4 covered in crystal rocks from a recent trip to Diamond Hill but it all got scrubbed and put away in time for the cups of egg dye to be set up. There were several instances of pale lavender druzy and wonderfully weird specimens of crystal growth. There are small chunks the size of two or three thumbs that had quartz covered by a blanket of black manganese oxide then clear crystals grew over the Mg. I also have a similar sample now in iron oxide rust brown. They may be small but so amazing in the chance creation and beauty.

Everybody has favorite sites they go to for information and answers or just to read and relax. I would like to commend this blog and web site to you folks. The Lady who started this started with the SCA, who are by and far just good people, and then morphed this into a a real bonafide web site and blog. This takes dedication, talent and lots of guts and fortitude.

http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/index.shtml

My thanks to you Lady for giving us another quality research tool and a friendly voice to read over the internet.

To all, may you feel the Spring wash through you like a pulse of sunlight carried on the whispering breeze.
Be Well

Starting Back Again and With Pictures!

I would like to start this new entry by saying that cowardice takes all forms. And as embarrassing as it is I was struck by a wave of cowardice a mile long right around Christmas. I had almost convinced myself that there was no reason to blog and that my paltry efforts were wasting away into the world of cyber nothingness. A month or three weeks ago I suddenly realized that I have many nifty web sites book marked just in case I decided to blog again. This and my darlingest spouse convinced me to try this blogging thing for another go around.

So…. I am sitting here in the kitchen-hallway-dining-room typing to you while the rain streams down making the flowering trees match the grey white clouds in the sky.  Funny how the birds still talk under the dripping branches and the squirrels hunker into their nests and make their squeaky tech-tech noises.

Spring has come early to NC even if the wind is still chill the Spring is here.  The snow and storms of February that I felt hit Asheville and the Tennesse border.  I just finished putting some late spring seeds into peat pots and thought “Gee I wonder who else does this”. With the huge emphasis on reusing items I am surprised at how many people do not reuse their two liter plastic bottles for plants. With plants that require a germination dome or plastic cover, take a clean two liter and either cut the bottom off or cut it across the middle. Voila, instant germination dome and free ta’ boot. I also use plastic two litter bottles when having to grow seeds that require LOTS of root space and a year or more in the sun room.

There was a request for pictures of my rocks. Old pictures but this is what I have so far.

And I would like to Add that Diamond Hill is on FB and will notify when there is an open dig. Honestly I am pretty much a sycophant to Diamond Hill as it was the first place I ever dug and is easier than spit. If you can’t find a crystal at DH there is not enough help for you.

Now is the time of year that people want puppies and cats and the SPCA has more litters than they can shake a stick at. Please donate to the local SPCA or shelter if you must give to a charity. And if you are flush with the spirit of giving and the cash too then may I suggest Full Moon Farms.

http://fullmoonfarm.org/cms/

This lady is a real honest to God charity and is incredible. She cares for, rehabilitates. and sometimes helps with the adoption of Wolf Hybrid dogs. Wow!

It is getting colder and after 4:00 in the early evening and still raining. I can hear that owl in the neighbor hood and really must try and find where it barfs its pellets. Soon it will be my turn to make dinner and now I must get up and close the door, my feet are chilly. Hmm, there’s the owl again.

To all who have tried and then tried again,
Be Well

Indian Summer And All That Is Fall

Hello, Dearest Readers, those who know I have not vanished from the face of the planet. My last three blogs were written at least three times apiece because of unintentional erasing. I am convinced that in the back of my mind I didn’t want to suffer through that ‘oops where did it go’ for a fourth time. Well, to quote friend who is quite a character: Time to pull up the big girl panties and go on.

This has been a delectable Indian Summer. I remember them from my childhood in Indiana as a Siren song from True Summer that made you forget the heat and sun burns, remembering only warm days of filtered sunlight and running through the last of the long grass. Here in the South the leaves are turning crisp colors in browns and golds with faded orange and wistful spots of yellow. The storms that I thought would be from Hurricanes have come and gone across the state and were indeed powerful storms but just not Hurricanes. Such is the precarious nature of long range forecasting. Luckily my area here in the Piedmont has been mostly spared from devastation and flooding. When the rain has come it has been days put together of rapid drizzle mingling with drenching downpours.

The God-baby is now wearing adorable coats and sweaters in varying shades of pink, looking like a fairy princess of cuteness. My mother always said that we grew fast but that statement is rather hard to understand unless you have watched a baby grow. It is as though one day she is barely toddling across the floor and then the next she is racing with the dog around the island in the kitchen. My Dear Friend is doing wonderfully at her scientific job and is an amazing combination of scientist-lady and wonder-mommy.

I missed another trip to Diamond Hill and felt a part of my rock hound heart cry. My migrains are back to three days every two weeks and there is almost nothing more miserable than laying in your tent on the hard ground, cold and racked with pain, knowing that to go to the “cedar house” means getting out of your sleeping bag and crossing a camp in the dark with 38 degrees of cold outside. Yes I have done this and find little to recommend it. I dearly hope that all my MAGMA friends found wonderful crystals and sang several songs around the campfire for me. The owner of Diamond Hill, Chet, is a great guy, whose wife is a dear, and runs a top notch little operation. If anyone wants to get into rock hounding in North or South Carolina look up Diamond Hill in South Carolina and talk to Chet. If his place doesn’t hook you I don’t know what will.

I have shared my frustration with you about furthering my studies into gemology so let me tell you of some almost nearly really great news. First off I have been volunteering with geology department at my Science Museum. I have been helping to start a catalogue of wave graphs from an IR machine with an ATR attachment. In the cold hard truth of the matter I sit in a grey room and click on the computer mouse every three minutes or so and then carefully change out another mineral and start the clicking over again. The exciting part is watching the graphs of each gem or mineral appear and discovering the unique patterns and subtle differences that form. This somehow just thrills me and I cannot wait to go through the next tray of specimens.
The Second piece of almost nearly great news is the discovery of a fully on line gemology school that is actually respected in the community of gemologists, which can be rather prejudicial and opinionated. The school is The International School of Gemology. The ISG is apparently a combination of my beloved Gem-A London and the prestigious GIA here in America. It looks as thought the answer to my year, yes a year or more, of depression and fretting may have appeared. The best part is I wasn’t even looking for schools in gemology when I did the Google search: Thank you Oh Great Google Searcher in The Sky.

Besides the wondrous blog site http://curiousexpeditions.org/ , which I highly recommend for all kinds of scientifically bizarre and fantastical reading, I would like to guide people to a web site called The Three Graces. Yes this is a retail site that is far above my budget but if anyone wants to shower me with gifty-ness I like Baroque and Edwardian emeralds and Art Neuvo moonstone. Just to gaze at the items offered in a computerized form of window-shopping is to feast your eyes on rare displays of art that just happen to be jewelry. http://www.georgianjewelry.com/ (Of course I assume they are trustworthy and noble retailers, and because as I stated they are almost beyond my imagination in price I can not personally vouch for them.)

I trust that the passing of the Vernal Equinox, All Hallows Eve and the days for The Dead and The Saints went smoothly for all my readers. Fall can be such a mighty transition for some of us that it can be hard to stay balanced. Some feel the falling away of Summer with an almost saddened yet piercing pain while others can become overwhelmed by the rushing song of Fall. We have already had sporadic frost across North Carolina but Winter will not arrive until December or perhaps a week into the month. I expect there to be sleet or freezing rain before there is significant snow.

Split the firewood, ready the bird feeders, and get those recipes started for baked bread and all things yummy. This late Summer I found yet another wonderful second hand consignment store in my town and came across a bunch of The Workbasket, which are adorably old and reminiscent of middle class gentility from the 60s. They not only have cutely-quaint instructions for knitting baby hats and crocheting elegant doilies but there is a recipe section in each one that is a treasured peak into bygone delights for the stomach: Homemade fondants and Easter cakes or summer salads and Spicy Pecan Pudding Cake. I encourage anyone who enjoys the thrill of discovering forgotten recipes and amassing an eclectic treasury to delve into the corners of thrift stores and to leaf through seemingly outdated ladies magazines.

The hour is late now, Dear Reader, and because I have still not become used to the end of Daylight Savings Time, the time seams even later. I must still post this to the blog and hope it does not disappear on me after I have just yelled “No, wrong button. Wrong button!”
Be Well.

Autumnal Greetings

Hello Gentle Readers,

I had a new post for a new Season typed and ready to go with brilliant words and astounding insight.  Then I clicked on publish and the computer laughed at me and dispersed my brilliance to the digital nether world.  Obviously God didn’t think I was so startlingly witty and wise.

So once again I greet you with “Happy Fall Gentle Reader”.  This Fall season will prove to be very dry this year.  Past Seasons have been spent listening to rain pitter pattering over yellow and orange leafs as puddles form on grey sidewalks.  This Fall will have sparse warm winds gently rustling through dried brown leafs on the ground.  For some reason the trees look grey and black in my mind’s eye. The Winter is a toss-up of unknowns but I think that frost will come from sheer, dry,  cold and any Winter blankets will be ice in December.

Our neighbor broke out his chain saw and managed to get one fourth of one tree cut up.  So if there is any severe cold snap we will be set assuming the rest of the fallen trees get cut.  My Darling went to help and taking into acount the massive amount of bug bites and sore muscles that he had, our neighbor may take his sweet time finnishing as he is pleasntly daddy-like in his physique.

My rock hound friends in MAGMA should be digging in Marion, Kentucky for Fluorite this weekend and I wish them all great success and the motherload of crystals for my dearest friends.  The host for part of this trip is the Ben E Clement Museum.  If anyone is ever on that side of the Appalachians and wants to see an increadible display of native stones go to this Museum and enjoy some time with the knowledgeable and devoted staff.

I hope everyone enjoyed the Harvest Moon or Dying Grass Moon last night.  The darkness was so soft and subtle with a clear and crisp star light flooding the ground.  One can nearly hear the trees bending and shifting in the warm fall night as they begin to reach into the soil with their roots.  Listen carefully for the bark moving across the branches and for a sighing song in the air as the shadows lengthen against the light.

There is so much to do in the Fall:  Bake sales sprout up beside church barbecues with rummage sales appearing on the weekends.  Apple festivals and fairs celebrating local produce are arriving and huanted everything  comes around the corner.  There is mulching with garden care to do and a house to clean.  Soups and stews go on the burner and bread recipes are rolled out to begin rising in warm corners of the kitchen.

My hat is off to parents right now.  There is an infant in the house and I am woefully sleep deprived at this point.  Make no mistake, Baby Girl is as cute as a button and smart and all toddley but I am not used to babies.  Wanting one with all my heart did not prepare me for having to help care for one.  Babie’s Mother is actually very good and here for a great new job oportunity so my resposibility is rather light but I stand in my living room in a daze wondering why there is a fine grit of cheerios across the floor. The dog is the only one who is having no problems adjusting.  After she realized that the human-puppy was staying the Fluffy Princess now parks herself beside the high chair and helps herself to the above mentioned cheerios as they rain down like crunchy mana from heaven.

I am slowly recovering from a very bad bought with Fibromyalgia and hope to be more active in collecting rocks and having my adventures along the friendly byways of books and sewing.  I hope to be more allert for alusive Web Sites of the Wondrous and regail you with discovered nuances of the weather.

Untill the next leaf falls to the ground,

Be Well

Yea For AC and Book Sale Desires

Greetings Readers, Celebration is in the air like far away music drifting through a hot southern night carried on the edge of an air conditioning unit. The magic workers came three days ago and installed a brand new unit in the house. Our old heat pump was too small for the size of the house and suddenly it is unnerving to hear something like a small jet roar whenever the AC kicks on. While it is amazing to have a house at 78 degrees instead of 88, the bug parts and strange dirt pieces kicked up out of the vents is rather unwholesome. I sound rather ungrateful I fear, no I truly am thankful that we have cooling in the house and come winter the warm air will do more than seep from the air registers.

I was looking on line today for information about my local county book sale. It is almost impossible to easily find county or city book sales on line; between counties and cities and the friends of the counties and cities there is a morass of links and Google searches. I am positively addicted to books and the wonders of the hunt. If we were back in the stone ages I would be the gatherer wandering of exploring cliff faces or strange ocean caves to bring back rare clay pigments and bizarre stones. I love the hunt and finding of what I think are treasures from forgotten piles and unwanted boxes. When it is a book I get even more excited. At my favorite thrift store I found this cook book that is also a small mystic feel-good story called The Secrets of Pistoulet. At a county book sale I found a first edition copy of The Silmarillion and a first edition of Trader Vic’s Pacific Island Cookbook. Yes, three very different books but all equally nifty. Even if a book is not a first edition it can be an unusual treasure. To help me in my quest for cheap and different literary experiences I found http://www.booksalefinder.com I want to share this because it seriously cuts down on a lot of the Google morass in finding library book sales.

Hurricane Earl is spinning his way to the coast of NC and with any luck the cool weather will be pulled in behind him. So far NOAA is calling for a glancing kiss off of the coast and that is all. Sure I would love to have a great storm and the subsequent shell and bone washed up on shore but the destruction to homes and roads is something else all together. I will be content with the deep ocean being stirred up and deposited on the sand. It is embarrassing but so far my predictions for hurricanes has been pretty flat. I saw several storms
and we have had those storms with severe down drafts and rocking thunder but they have not come from hurricanes. My dearest Beloved tells me to be patient because hurricane season is not over. So I will have to be patient.

For now I wish you a good Night or Morning as it may be,
Be Well

For The Love Of AC and General Musings

Greetings, to my one, possibly three readers. You are all possessing of unique brilliance and sophistication or you have nothing better to do than read what I have to say; lets just go for the former.

I am looking foreword to the coming of Fall as Nature recovers from the death and heat of Summer and begins to relax and spread out its roots. At least that is for my side of the hemisphere. Australia should be heading into Spring soon if I have been told correctly. Were I to become unbearably wealthy and fly around the world could I keep myself in constant Fall and Winter? Well, that and gargoyles on my downspouts will have to wait, although my neighborhood could benefit from gargoyles on the downspouts.

I have had requests for pictures of the rocks I find and am terribly flattered! I promise I have not forgotten you. I just need some time to take pictures of them where they do not look like grey lumps.

Our AC did no even survive the day that I last posted but ended up dying that night: Dying a “They do not make those 27 year old parts any more” death. For several days after that we were camped out in the bedroom around a lone window unit like refuges around a Red Cross tent. Our black fuzz ball of a dog has been stationed under it as she looks worse in 97 degree heat than my husband and I do. Luckily last week we had 80 degree heat with lower humidity and we opened up the windows and cranked up every fan we could lay our hands on.   Alas it is back to high humidity and 100 degree heat and we are draping ourselves over the three window units we no use. I liberally doused the two loaners in Lysol and can now breath in my own home plus my Beloved says the main room no longer smells like old socks.

I recently got FBed by my folks’ exchange student from Russia. He lives in Cheboksary but travels to Moscow frequently and it is as hot as the news says it is. It is hard to imagine but try to think of weather so hot and dry that spontaneous peat bog fires start up. Moscow was originally built on wet, boggy, ground and it is almost surreal to see pictures of the Kremlin and St Basils enshrouded by smoke. On a positive note our exchange student now has two boys aged 8 and 3 and he and his beautiful wife are very happy. The good things in life could not happen to a better person.

I ran across a great and wondrous web site the other day when searching for info on bioluminescence. I highly recommend it for one of those rainy days where you want to dance through the rain drops or a late night when you can hear a train running in the distance and lightening flashes in the far away begging you to flee all adult responsibility. For all of us intellectual arm chair travelers and midnight-history revelers I bring to you D and M of http://curiousexpeditions.org/?page_id=2
These two are people to befriend if Cthulhu rises from the depths of R’lyeh or the swollen rivers of history begin to twist and disgorge themselves up on our shore.

I am planning food for an up coming baby shower in which we plan on bombarding a dear friend with food and presents till she is buried. My boss who is a real honest to God human being helped pick the perfect day for it all this fall and all we have to do is plan now. Curses and thrashings to the creators of Cooking Light magazine: Your delicious recipes are perfect for pregnant woman and all of us who are wonderfully Rubenesque so I am positively drooling by lunch time as I pour over your recipes during the morning shift.

My project for the summer was a beaded choker and even with the best of intentions I am bogged down with small problems the directions did not mention. Luckily I have tons of blue Moon beads and patience. My getting stuck does not release any of us from the Summer project vow, it just allows us to carry it into the Fall. Thank goodness for getting bogged down because this project I picked is not for a novice pattern maker and will not be done by the end of Summer. Oh well, at least I can take it to work instead of relying on staying awake late into the night.

I must bid Good Night to All and wish for you mellow sun and cool breezes,
Be Well

SAD Sadness and Quarry Hunts

Well, I’ll be! There is more than one reader for this blog of mine. At this point I can safely say that miracles never cease. Thank you my dedicated readers.

It has been almost a month since I last posted but not quite a month. Our AC is making strange sounds, my education is a joke, there are more weeds than mint in the garden, and Summer is in full swing. Please forgive me now but my mood is more sour than optimistic and I refuse to lie to you or lie in what is still a journal of sorts for myself.

I read recently that 80% of woman who have Seasonnal Affective Disorder (SAD) have it in the Summer and live in the Atlantic sea board. I read that and said “Hey! That’s me!” As much as Summer is a season of watermelon and bare feet it just brings me into the dumps. Two of the funniest things (in a sarcastic way) are that my hobby and life’s blood is collecting rocks, best done in the Summer, and one of my dear friends who is a tombstone hugging, Halloween loving Goth, always take’s her lunch outside in the Summer sun to lift her spirits.

The neighbor’s teenage kid while polite and quiet has taken up knife throwing. I can ignore the constant thump thump and truly do not worry about him having a knife. Heck when I was in high school that would have put him on my “cool” list. The problem is when he keeps missing the board and hits our fence. Our fence is not very fancy and is fairly bedraggled but we need as many boards to stay up as possible. I must say so far he has good strength behind the throw, as four of our fence slats can attest. This morning I asked him to throw on a bigger board and can now hear the thunk thunk against his Daddy’s fence and can only hope he keeps up the strength in his arm.

Recently while at work I ran across a huge book with maps included on places to collect rocks in NC. I dutifully copied many of these down between customers to the exhibit. I later looked at the publishing date and saw that it was more than twenty years out of date. Not daunted I went to Google Earth and started to hunt down these old quarries, iron mills, and crossings between state roads. While several places are now housing developments or malls I had the oddest of fun times finding Old Iron Mine Road or Quarry Drive. The quarry may now be a square shaped pond or the slag from the iron mine being shown in a small historic museum but somehow history keeps going. I felt like I could be a great archeological investigator like the ones in Britain who discover great Roman and Celtic artifacts because of place names on a road side or the nickname to a farmer’s field. I will let you know how the quarry search goes when I decide to hit the road and collect.

I am having to give up the great Rock Hound Round-Up with MAGMA again this Summer and encourage all mineral or stone enthusiasts to Attend the whole week of comradery and fun. I hope every one attending has the best of times and finds the perfect specimens.

I came across this FANTASTIC clothing store on-line that has absolutely lovely made clothing. The designs are made for woman who are not all anorexic and saddlebag deficient. The designs are creative and medievalish some with a bit of Goth and some with a bit of Asian flare. A lady at my museum told me about the site because she was just dressed great and I asked her where she got the outfit. I promptly forgot about the site for several months until I saw an add on FB and thought “wait, that’s the site the lady told me about.” Thank you well-dressed-stranger lady!

http://www.holyclothing.com/store/index.php

The sun is finally starting to lower sufficiently in the sky and I am going to pray the AC sticks it out for one more season. To all of the Dear Readers,
Be Well