View from the Shore

Halloween Spider Spin

I watched this guy spin for a while on Halloween night. Our acreage has three or four of these "Orb Weaver" spiders in action at any given time, this time of year, between trees or fence posts or branches. This one is actually orange and black, but I changed the camera color setting for better clarity. The speed of the video is half the actual speed.

CREEPY. BUT COOL.

The Season of Silhouette Begins Today

The season of silhouette begins today.
Standing in my tired garden,
Skeleton branches of stark trees stand dark against the western orange sunset.
Orb Weaver spins circle webs, backlit by eastern rising moon,
His orange color darkened in relief.
Black on gray.
Black on blue.
Black on orange sky.
Silhouettes suffice,
Until the spring restores the details.

S. Zimmerman, Nov. 1, 2009

Enjoy your fall day!

See What I Mean?

This was the beginning to my rainy day today. The ending looked suspiciously similar, only in reverse. (kids out of cars in the rain:kids into the cars in the rain)

Hey! Don't laugh. That coat keeps me REALLY dry. At least I didn't have to put my radio in a baggie today. I envy Debbie's pink boots and Cathy's black and white boots!

I am also prepared with snow pants, should they become necessary, which they always do. Just basic black. Hopefully that snowy day will hold off a while.

Playing in the Rain

The Phillies and Yankees don't seem to notice that it's raining. Fans don't look too disturbed either.

Do y'all notice when it rains? I mean, beyond just, wow, it's raining. Again. Does it change your day? Set a while series of consequences in motion?

At work, since we can't let 550 children go play out in the rain, then expect them to come in and focus on stuff like reading or multiplication, we pay lots of attention to the weather. We play inside when it's raining. Or snowing. Or below freezing. So... in Oklahoma we play inside a lot.

What about when it's not actually raining, but the playground is covered with puddles? And the football/soccer field is wet. And the slide is sloppy? (Well, when the slide is sloppy we just let the first graders go down first.)

We have whole systems for signaling the game plan, including stop and go signs, recess supervisors, rules for taking your coat, (just have to take it out, don't have to wear it!), guidelines for what to play outside and what to play inside...

That's all so we can send the kids home in relatively the same state they showed up, except for maybe a little smarter.

Someday I'm gonna just open the doors and send them all screaming into the downpour to jump in every puddle and slide through the mud on the field and splash land on their bellies on the slide. And I'll be close behind.

When is a Rain Barrel Like a Bong?

A bunch of noisy girls and their friends made my weekend pretty nice! Cori and Alli are home for the weekend, and when you add Melissa and baby girl, and a couple of vivacious nieces, it makes life just about perfect as far as I'm concerned.

Sadly, (for me)the Colorado girls returned to snow country today.

It's not snowy here yet, but the temps dropped suddenly into the 40's last week. I dug up the remains of my basil and rosemary and some oregano and filled several containers with them. Maybe they'll last a while through the winter. Ugh. Winter. It's a bit sad when everything I've enjoyed planting and watching grow and bloom through the last months starts to die off.


OK, today's quiz question:

When is a rain barrel like a bong?

Answer? When you buy it in Colorado!

Apparently it's illegal to collect rain in Colorado. Yes, the rain that falls from the sky, pours off your roof, erodes your property, and floods your street.

I LOVE the way one writer put it when he said that,

The rain barrel is the bong of the Colorado garden. It’s legal to sell one. It’s legal to own one. It’s just not legal to use it for its intended purpose.

Rain is public property in Colorado, not collectible by individual property owners.

We are building lotsa windmills in Oklahoma currently. Well, T. Boone Pickens is anyway. The incredibly gigantic, power producing kind. It should be illegal to harvest wind in the extra windy western counties!

Gene harvested the power of the sun for years as a solar power plant operator. The expanses of ray-collecting mirrors filled hundreds of acres. They should outlaw that!

After all, the rain, the wind and the sun belong to us all, right?

Of course they do! Good grief Charlie Brown!

Gardening is all about the pleasure, amazement, and surprise of what happens to a few seeds when connected in my very own back yard with the power of water, wind and sun.

All for free! (Everywhere but CO, of course.) If I could manage the initial costs, I would love to install one of those huge underground tanks and harvest enough rain from the steep expanses of pointy roof on my house to water the garden through the dry months. I'd put up a windmill and connect to solar panels and depend only on the most reliable natural resources that Oklahoma offers.

The only thing missing would be chickens for perfect sustainability! Or a tank full of talapia, or goats, or cattle or ...

The Borders Cure

They must spray something soothing in the air at Borders book store. Or maybe it's the bright lights. Actually I'm not sure what it was, but I had been fighting the usual panic/flee-for-no-good-reason feelings all evening despite good company and yummy pizza. It's hard to carry on a good conversation over the noise in my head and the band around my chest sometimes.

So, Dad and I wandered off to Borders to grab a book I had lost and needed to replace. I wasn't 10 feet into the store and stopped to scan across the room when the whole strangle hold on my belly and breathing just fell off. Just dropped. Breathing freely. Quiet in my head. Amazing.

The "cure" is curious and never the same. Sometimes music. Or conversation. Or singing. Or a good book. Or prayer. Or scripture. Or poetry. Or sleep. Or walking across my dewy grassy field alone in the quiet morning.

This time, apparently, the cure was walking with anticipation into a room of lovely, inviting, friendly, forgiving, entertaining books.

Good grief! I'm such a dork!

Does this ring a bell with anyone else? I often wonder, sitting in a room full of people, if anyone else is having a wrestling match with their mind. It's like trying to keep a rowdy three year old from tugging at me and interrupting. Sheesh.