Sometimes

Sometimes

Sometimes the world comes to me in shapes and colors

I do not understand,

moving me in circles inside my heart

until I am left feeling lost and separated from the gift of love

bathed in pure sadness.
It is then I run into the forest to rest,

shed my weariness, and

listen to the "song of my breath."
Each spec of nature comes to me

bringing lost pieces of my soul

until at last;

wings are formed around the last hint of darkness inside of me

and it is carried away.
Her song has blended with my being

and our spirits roll in peace.

~Author Unknown

Sunday

Here is the rock cliff/cornice that I hucked off and actually landed it!

caveat is: I had no idea it was there or I never would have skied over it!

When I was in the air, I was thinking, "Uh-OH!"

After I landed it, I was exilerated and proud!

The rest of the gang, I couldn't get the self-timer to work, so I didn't get in the foto.

Ken, Mike, Jim, Bill on the summit of Mt. Vernon.

Mike climbing.
We went skiing at Mt Vernon in our neighborhood.

Wandering

Once things has melted and it was almost sunny and pretty warm, I went wandering around the neighborhood. I wanted to see how high the Creek had risen and generally check out the status of other budding things. This is Porcupine Creek just upstream of one little, rotten foot bridge where I walk nearly daily.
This is the path just after you cross said foot bridge going up into the woods. This is a low spot where the snow is the last to leave and the leaves are very rotty and the ground is smooshy.

As the day progressed....

The snow quickly melted, nourishing the hardy little plants who have braved poking their heads through the soil! Delighting me with a patch or two of color here and there after all that white.
See "Curly", "Moe" and "Larry" enjoying the "warmer" waters of their pond! (It was iced over all winter with snow on top!)

Daffy #1 almost ready to open....I am sure the snow disuaded her a wee bit!

Melting snow cradled in the leaves of a lupine.

And the gorgeous red sprouts of my biggest peony, which has glorious deep red/hotpink flowers.

April Showers....

Friday Morning
Picnic, anyone?

This is what I awakened to this bright Friday morning in April!

Not the kind of April showers I was thinking of!

Milk

Once a week I get fresh milk from a "neighbor" farm.

It is delicious!

I get the small bottle of cream skimmed from the top of the gallon,

I fill my 1/2 gallon milk bottle and the rest becomes yorgurt.

It is a sweet deal.

Sometimes we eat the cream on berries or peaches (from the freezer or home canned)

sometimes I make it into butter.

It is all so homey and satifying!

Makes a nice foto too!

Fire, the bigger picture

Can you see that little patch of snow in the background?

The old apple trees.

Oooo, Ooooo Fire!

A true sign of spring...the matches come out and the yard is on fire! I held off as long as I could, Mike usually gives me crap about burning the lawn, but I think it makes it more vibrant!

This year I didn't burn the lawn as the snow melted really slowly and each day I raked the newly melted areas and the yard looks great. But the meadow was screaming for some fire; it was full of pine needles, more than I remember in the past and they made the flames dance that welcome spring dance, it was glorious!

Pine cone on fire!

Another Orbit Beginning....

Yep! Mike had a Birthday! We celebrated by both of us taking the day off work. I made him this chocolate/chocolate cake, his request this year. He had several friends stop in throughout the day and Zeek stayed for a fine dinner of ahi tuna steaks and then to top off the day, we had a Rod & Gun club meeting, the first of the year. Not what either of us really wanted to do, but, Oh Well!

Mike went out with the "boys" after the meeting.....I went home.

cuppa

I was making my morning cup and left the room, on my way back into the room, this scene was pretty to me so I took a foto of the steam rising in the kitchen window sunlight....note the sink is even empty! Perhaps that is why this was so pretty to me!

Easter

Here is the bread bag I made last night. When I first started making bread, I was storing it in a plastic bag, OK, Mike was storing it in a plastic bag and it kept molding! Ugh! So I tried a few different things and ended up wrapping the bread in a tea towel which works handily. Then I read on the internet about keeping fresh baked bread and what did they suggest? A tea towel! How about that?! (In the bread box, which I do not have, nor do I have room for on my counters) I cut the tea towel and sewed it into a bread bag and I had this embroidery I was messing with that I didn't know what to do with, so I sewed that on there too! I haven't mastered the buttonhole yet so I couldn't figure out how to do a draw string without it fraying, so I added ties and they work quite nicely! Mike gave me a bit of grief about having an "artistic" bread bag....oh well! (I actually made two and the other one is also embellished!)

Goodwill Treasure!

I just have to share this fabulous Goodwill find! I got this at the Lewiston, Idaho Goodwill store.

I know it is weird and funny, but I simply could not resist! It just cracks me up!

Mike and I listened to side one over a beer last night. It wasn't as bad as it seems it would be!

AND the lyrics are in German and listed on the back so we can sing along! WhooooHOOO!

It says "all the gusto and fun of a German beer hall in your own home!" "Sing, Dance and drink!"
See?! How was I to resist that?!

Trip to Idaho

Friday afternoon Mike and I left for Moscow, Idaho for my sister, Annie's masters thesis defense. This is an Idaho Vandal fire hydrant. I couldn't resist the photo!

Here is a photo of Annie and her panel of thesis judges.

It is finished!

Here are the "girls", My sister Deborah, Annie, Mom, Vickie Lynne (Don's daughter and Annies hallf sister from Texas) and moi.

good-bye winter

"For, lo, the winter is over and past,the rain is over and gone;

The flowers appear on the earth;

the time of the singing of birds is come,

and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land..."

The Song of Solomon, 2: 11-12

For lo, the rain is not over and gone! In fact, it hasn't even started yet, but we know it will!

In the meantime, we revel in each sunny day and wear ourselves out in the fresh air;

prematurely doing all we can in the yard as an excuse to be outside!

And the birds will still sing even when it is raining and the rain will wash away the last of our snow.

Tell me, have any of you heard the voice of the turtle? Just wondering.

Moon time

PLANTING MOON

As is the garden such is the gardener,

A man's nature runs either to herbs or to weeds.

- Francis Bacon

I was doing dishes and watching the moon rise over the hill and couldn't help it, I had to try to take a photo, knowing good and well that they rarely turn out well....I like some of these and they do capture the mood for me. Note the subtleties, the brush and tree limbs in the foreground

and such....

Dreamin'

“If a little dreaming is dangerous,

the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.”
Marcel Proust

Molly Moves to Maine

I am sad. I can't help it, I am really happy for Molly and a new adventure....but Maine?!
C'mon, you can't get further away than that and still be in the US!
We will visit and I am excited to visit Maine, but still sad that she will be so far away!
Here is the truck and they are now on their way across the US, they should be in the most beautiful part of Highway 2 as we speak....going through Glacier Park......how could you trade that for Maine?! I know Maine is gorgeous too...can't wait to see for myself!

Spring in our yard

Courage is not the towering oak that sees storms come and go; it is the fragile blossom that opens in the snow.

Alice M. Swain

We still have quite a bit of snow, but three days of sunshine has made a remarkable dent in the snowpack. Yesterday I was out raking the exposed yard and picking up limbs and encouraging the thin patches of snow to melt quicker by raking them.

It was nice to get to hang the laundry in the sunshine! I stripped and washed our bed and hung all the pillows and comforter out in the sun, everything is crisp and smells fresh! I opened all the windows in the house in an effort to bring sprintime inside.

I raked piles of larch needles and gathered wheel barrows full of broken limbs and hauled it to the burn pile, now I have the urge to have a fire and roast some food on a stick!

The good thing about a slow melt off is that each day I can rake the newly exposed ground, rather than having the huge job of raking the entire yard at once. It just seems more manageable and there is a stopping point!

something about sunshine after a long winter is both invigorating and exhausting!

Jubliation!

Birdsong

Intro to Spring!Some kind of moss or fungus on the bark of the cottonwood trees.
I know this isn't the greatest shot, but I couldn't resist.
The wings of these geese were shining bright in the sun
and the geese were honking up a storm and making all manner of racket!
It was stunning.


I love the sky reflected in the water!



The Kootenai River running through the wildlife refuge.

My camera wasn't warmed up yet or something but I just love how this photo turned out.

I have needed a a purge and a shot of spring, so after filling the car with the glass recycling, I headed to Bonners Ferry to dispose of it, I left in a snowstorm and ended up walking 6 miles in the refuge in the sunshine in the afternoon.

It was a delightful shot of spring.

Nothing can awaken spring in your heart like the song of thousands of redwing blackbirds!!

The refuge is full of all sorts of birds right now, I saw eagles, swans, an assortment of different ducks, at least two types of geese flickers, woodpeckers, and songbirds galore.

For the landscape being so dun and gray still, there was a remarkable amount of subtle color everywhere. Spring is springing up quickly everywhere I look!

Spring Cleaning

Mike has been working on the basement for months now and he has gotten to the point where he is hanging sheetrock. Yay! The transformation is great! Everything is scooted to the middle of the basement floor so that he can have access to the walls.

We try to recycle and it often turns into collecting before we trek out to dispose of it.

Here is nearly a winters worth of glass packed into my car.

It looks like we are bar owners! But really there is other glass in the mix aside from beer and wine bottles AND we do often take other peoples glass sometimes as we hate to see it just get tossed.