Dallas, Texas does not get snow frequently and it is usually in the early months of the year rather than December. So - it was cause for celebration and picture taking when it snowed yesterday! Enjoy the slide show of the dusting of the white stuff!
My Christmases have always been full of family and food and gift exchanges. This year is no exception but the tenor of the holiday is different. After spending weeks where every spare moment was at a hospital - the family scurried to get gifts bought and wrapped in the few days between the release from the hospital and Christmas. It will be a low key celebration instead of the usual big dinners with the whole family. We are aiming for smaller groups and simpler foods. And we all don’t need to count to know that we have been truly blessed this year.
Merry Christmas to all!
After spending my recent nights sleeping on a hospital rollaway - seeing this sunrise on the 22nd after sleeping in a regular bed became a milestone on my transition back to ‘normal’. Somehow being able to walk outside to take the picture rather than seeing the sunrise through a hospital window as I had earlier in the month became an inflection point in my thinking. I could relax a little and savor the day.
The last of the tomatoes have been harvested from my parents’ garden near Dallas, Texas. Some of them will make it to ripeness laying out on a paper towel in the garden room of the house….little remnants of summer in December. There is a poinsettia on the table beside them.
Today I am celebrating tomatoes as part of our Christmas decorations!
Looking through a skylight provides a different perspective - a narrow vertical look upward. The boundlessness of the look straight up can be dizzying because there is nothing to grasp onto. Sometimes an overhanging tree provides a link to the horizontal view of the world that we take most of the time. Experiencing heavy rain or hail while standing under a skylight enables us to feel the power of weather while protected from its fury.
Today I am celebrating the look upward to the sky!
This is the third post in a series with thoughts about my recent experience having an elderly family member in the hospital - focusing on how life continues on with that disruption.
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It is wonderful when all the changes start turning in the positive direction ---- and how focused physical therapy improves mobility almost magically. Even after 7 days in intensive care, the improvements come quickly with the increased physical activity seemingly speeding other aspects of recovery as well. Of course, it helps to have a patient that is anxious to leave the hospital and is willing to follow directions!
On the home front - we are graduating from a sustaining focus on eating and sleeping enough to getting the house ready for a walker and more guests. It’s easy to see that the homecoming will be quite a celebration...between rest periods.
The rose by the driveway is blooming and will be one of the first things she’ll see when we bring her home. After illness, the beauties in life are all the more appreciated both by the patient and the rest of the family.
As I got out Christmas decorations this year, thoughts of how and when they became part of the collection contributed to the joy of unpacking the bins and boxes.
The oldest ornaments were acquired when I was in elementary school in Wichita Falls, Texas. The caroling girls candle holder (minus a candle) was a gift from a friend. The gold and red tree was part of a set purchased by my mother and then passed along to me about 20 years later; I remember the drug store as a place we got a special treat for me: ‘cherry limeade with plain water.’
The felt birds were among the first ornaments for our tree as we moved into our first house almost 35 years ago. It was a red and white themed tree for years - birds and apples and lights.
The dough ornament is part of a set made by my sister almost 25 years ago - before either of us had children.
The ‘old woman’ ornament was purchased by my mother-in-law over 20 years ago; there is an ‘old man’ too. They were just a small part of her contribution to the one Christmas she lived with us. She really enjoyed decorating for Christmas!
The ‘tomato’ is part of a set of vegetable ornaments that we got by saving labels from cans - my daughter enjoyed them as a baby and now - 23 years later - our cats sometimes take them off the tree.
I am celebrating the memories of the many Christmases these decorations remind me of today.
Rather than shopping on Black Friday, my family unpacks Christmas. We have plastic bins and aging boxes of decorations. Last year I did some cleaning out so this year my strategy was to get out everything - enjoy it or donate/trash it. The unpacking is taking several days. The traditional arrangements from years past are not adequate to display everything in the boxes! Here are some examples of items from the boxes used in new ways this year:
The collection of small boxes from jewelry purchases and gifts (I always save them thinking I will need them for something) and small pieces of wrapping paper became a ‘decoration’ - as they filled baskets and a sleigh used in the past for a floral arrangement (and still containing pine cones and chili pepper lights).
A collection of Christmas cookie cutters used 20 years ago for play dough was hung on the tree.
Several extra strands of lights were bundled up and put in large bowl to light up a coffee table.
Packages of glittery blue and green pipe cleaners purchased years ago at a $1 store were transformed into spirals to hang on the tree by wrapping them around a wooden spoon handle.
And the mantle is loaded up with garlands of 20 year old tinsel that has not been out of the boxes in 10 years. It fills in all the gaps between the snow globe, ceramic figures, and clown music box. I'll have to put the Christmas cards that arrive in the mail somewhere else this year.
Unpacking Christmas has been uite a creative experience this year!
Food and family are the essential elements of Thanksgiving for me. That does not mean that they are the same every year - far from it. Some years it has 10-20 people in my parents’ house. Other years only 2 or 3 were together and myriad telephone calls were part of the day.
From a food perspective, there have been some changes over the past 40 years as well.
|
Past |
Present |
|
Turkey or roast |
Roast |
|
Mashed potatoes |
Baked potato |
|
Candied sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top |
Baked butternut squash |
|
Cranberry sauce or jelly |
Fresh cranberry orange relish |
|
Orange jello salad with carrot and apple slivers |
----- |
|
Yeast rolls, plain or with raisin filling |
Spice muffins |
|
Green bean/mushroom soup/fried onions casserole |
Caesar salad |
|
Iced tea |
Iced tea |
|
Mincemeat or pecan pie |
Apple chunks baked with mincemeat |
|
Pumpkin pie |
Pumpkin custard |
|
Kolache and cinnamon rolls |
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Enjoy your Thanksgiving Day!
Back in mid-August I posted about finding things to celebrate each day. It’s an easy thing for me to do and getting into the habit of writing it down each day reminds me to be grateful for these and a myriad of other things in my life. Here are some ‘little celebrations’ I’ve noted this month:
NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) starting. I had my outline and spreadsheet of character notes ready to go; it was a relief to finally start writing on November 1. I celebrated at the end of the day because I had successfully reached my goal of 3000 words.
Hot chocolate on a cold day. I celebrated that there were packets of hot chocolate mix in the pantry left from last winter. It is a nice contrast to hot tea.
Raking finished in the back yard. I celebrated even though I knew that it was only ‘finished’ for the day. There were still too many leaves on the trees.
Forest near at hand. Even though I live in an area that is full of houses and businesses, there are forested areas too - along the rivers and creeks, around catchment basins, in the medians and along the sides of roads. The forest has the effect of hiding the population density - a cloak of beauty over whatever flaws our ‘civilization’ has made.
The election. However fractured we are politically - the US held an election that told us more about ourselves than the polls had been screaming for months in advance. That is something worth celebrating.
Brookside Gardens could be on my celebration list every month of the year. There is always something new to see. The ‘river of leaves’ under the gingko tree was one of my favorite images this month.
Perfect score on a weekly quiz. I took a Coursera course on Obesity Economics and finally - managed to get familiar enough with the jargon to do well on the 3rd of 4 weekly quizzes.
50,000 words mark on my NaNoWriMo novel. The NaNoWriMo goals if 50,000 words and I managed to write them in the first 12 days of the month - and discovered I still had a lot of my outline to go. It took me another 7 days and over 20,000 words to finish the outline. I have had mini-celebrations all along the way; there are so many personal firsts.
A family medical emergency that ended well. I had a family member than was rushed to the hospital - had surgery the next day - and went home two days after the surgery. It was an emotional roller coaster for a few days….but turned into a series of little celebrations.
Gift wrapping. I volunteered to gift wrap packages at a local Nature Center shop to advertise the Friends group for the Center. It’s a great way to start off the holiday season - and I learned how to make a pretty bows with paper ribbon.
Previous ‘little celebrations’ posts can be found here.
My office looks out over the roof of a covered deck and then trees - a maple on one side of the yard, pines on the other, and a tulip poplar at the fore of the forest that lies beyond. One morning this past week was cloudy and the color from the leaves had already faded. Suddenly there seemed to be a lot of birds. I managed to photograph some through the window. The window glass and the amount of magnification required makes them look like they were taken on a foggy day but it was simply cloudy. I saw
Doves in the maple,
A woodpecker on a neighbor’s roof,
A flicker looking around the base of a pine,
And blue jays - there seemed to be a flock of them - in the leaves.
I saw a cardinal and a chickadee - but they were too fast for me to catch with the camera.
The birds had distracted me from what I should have been doing - but I celebrated seeing them for the rest of the day.
When I was raking up the blanket of leaves in my backyard, I uncovered pine cones from our neighbors’ pines that had fallen into our yard. It was a welcome discovery…a serendipity find that will give the house a piney scent for the holiday! I kept tossing them into a pile in part of the yard I had already raked. Now they are indoors and piled in a sleigh shaped basket on the hearth awaiting some further decoration when we get out our boxes of Christmas ornaments sometime after Thanksgiving.
So - today I am celebrating the color and shape and smell of pine cones. Enjoy the slideshow!
In early October, I decided to participate in the National Novel Writing Month - which is November. I started reading items on the web site. I had never written 50,000 words on a single topic before - and certainly doing it in one month sounded daunting. To make it even more of a challenge, I had guests coming for the Thanksgiving week.
I decided that my goal should be 3000 words per day so that I could cross the 50,000 word mark before my guests arrived on the 19th. I created a mind map of chapters that I thought would be about 3000 words each and a spreadsheet of character definitions.
So - how has it worked out? I past the 50,000 work mark yesterday and I still have quite a bit of the story to tell. The green on the mind map to the right is the part that is done. Writing the rest of the story is probably another 20,000-30,000 words.
I’ve already learned a lot from the experience and am more aware of what I need to do better. Things like
Are all going to be the challenge of the next phase - editing. That is going to be as hard or harder than the writing sprint of November. The novel may never turn into something to publish. Learning experiences have value of their own.
I am celebrating my 50,000 words today - knowing that it is not the finish line but a significant milestone along the way.
How do you celebrate in November? Here are some ideas:
Going off Daylight Savings Time. Maybe this isn’t something everyone celebrates. I do because it means that the time difference between where my daughter is (in Arizona) and where I am (in Maryland) does from 3 hours to 2 hours….and communication gets a little easier.
Veterans Day. Celebrating everyone that has served in the military; more and more of us know someone that has served or is serving. Celebrating from a different perspective - it may be a three day weekend; surely one of them will be a sunny fall day to celebrate outdoors before winter weather comes.
Thanksgiving. A day full of family and food and football. That’s the tradition in my family. The food does not have to be the traditional turkey and cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. I tend to make something a little different every year although my family always wants at least one batch of pumpkin custard (nobody seems to miss the crust!)
Gift buying. There are lots of sales in November that work well for those of us that are planning ahead for December. I tend to avoid the Friday after Thanksgiving and do my shopping earlier in the month. When I find the perfect gift for someone....I celebrate….knowing that I’ll celebrate again with them when they open it during the December holidays.
Decorating for the holidays. Rather than shopping the day after Thanksgiving, I decorate my house. It’s an all day celebration of family history as we unload boxes of decorations accumulated over 40 years.
When I came into my office this morning (Wednesday) - the moon was shining through the window. That was a very good sign since we’ve been under heavy cloud cover since Sunday. Even though it was just a break in the clouds, it was more sky that we’d seen this week and it started my morning out on a positive track.
The next positive to the day is that we regained electrical service yesterday so I could turn on lights and fire up my computer this morning. Our power was out for 19 hours. Kudos to the people at the utility company; they prepared well for this one and then got to work as soon as the winds died down! We had planned for a longer outage after our experience with a 5 day outage last summer when a derecho came through our area so getting power back quickly was a very pleasant surprise.
Aside from length, this outage was different in other ways. First - the time of year meant that we were in darkness more. Even during the day the clouds were so thick that there was barely enough light to read. I was glad my Kindle was fully charged when the power went out. Second - it was cool rather than hot like it was in July. Our house got down to about 60 degrees - not bad with layers of clothes but not pleasant for showering. Third - we slept in the basement on Monday - not like in July because it was cooler - because the wind was howling outside and we figured if a tree blew over into the house, we would be safest in the basement.
When we got up Tuesday morning, more leaves had fallen and the dahlias had been blown over. The turtle sandbox that I have mint and parsley growing in had been scooted across the deck - stopped by the railing. Our oak tree had a few small limbs around it. We had lived through Hurricane Sandy! I cut the dahlias to brighten our indoor celebration while a light rain continued for the rest of the day.
What are your favorite smells of fall?
The smells I most strongly associate with fall are:
Leaf tea. The smell of wet leaves and pine needles on walks through the neighborhood or hikes through a forest are earthy and often very much like black tea and herbal teas. They remind me of how much I like hot tea as the weather turns colder.
Harvested herbs like basil and mint. I let them dry on a tray in the kitchen before storing them away for use all during the winter.
Pumpkin pie baking. The wafts of cinnamon, cloves, and ginger are so appealing whether they are the real thing or in candle form.
Roses. Roses tend to burst into bloom when the summer heat wanes. They have a wonderful last hurray in fall before the frost takes them.
What are your favorite smells of fall?
September begins tomorrow. What do you celebrate in September? Here are some items that are listed on my calendar.
Labor Day on 9/3. It makes a 3 day weekend for many in the US. Even though summer is not officially over until later in the month - Labor Day is typically the last hurrah of summer. Schools are starting and swimming pools are closing. Celebrate with end of summer foods like watermelon and corn on the cob.
Grandparents Day on 9/9 in the US. If you have grandparents living, this is a prompt to celebrate your relationship with them by sharing some aspect of your day with them. If your grandparents are deceased, acknowledge the legacy they left and their positive influence on your life.
First Day of Autumn on 9/22. In most parts of the US, the majority of leaves will still be green but this is a good time to get organized for cooler weather - deciding on additions/deletions for your fall wardrobe - and to plan a fall foliage excursion for the appropriate time in your area. Celebrate the change in seasons.
And - there are two Jewish holidays celebrated in September
Have you ever noticed how the something unexpected transforms an ordinary time or place into something extraordinary? It happened to me yesterday when I was pulling weeds and trimming bushes.
First I noticed a discarded cicada skin. The sun was shining on it like a spot light.
Then as I was taking the buckets of clippings back to the forest, I noticed a very large spider web suspended from the maple tree and anchored to the ground. Again - the sun was shining on it like a spot light. There were lots of flying insects around the web and the blank places in the web structure show that the spider had already been very successful with this particular web placement. By the time I came back with my camera the spider has disappeared (probably up into the tree) but the web was still magnificent. It was my little celebration for yesterday!
On a recent day at Longwood Gardens, I got to the conservatory early. Surprise! - There were no children in the Indoor Children’s Garden. Normally it is a very popular part of the conservatory and there is no easy way to photograph its features. The photographs in this post are the results of that little serendipity (and my most significant ‘celebration’ for the day!).
The garden was redesigned/upgraded several years ago. The conservatory had an area for children even 20 years ago that my daughter enjoyed; the things she liked the most have been doubled and redoubled in the new garden - lots of water for little hands, musical instruments, sculptures and mosaics…low ceilings and narrow stairways….all with a nature theme.
Celebrating the whole of life....
Thanks for visiting my blog! Enjoy the photo picks from 2023:
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