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New Year's Eve Greetings! Not quite the post I had in mind but it's hard to concentrate with sneezing, coughing, fever and all that stuff. Norm and I hope everyone is having a great evening and we wish you a very Happy New Year in 2009, which isn't far from now in the Central Time Zone. I hope to write more tomorrow.
In the meantime, my resolutions for 2009 boil down to one thing, expressed in these three statements:
- Use the good silver.
- Eat dessert first.
- Get on the plane.
More later. Happy New Year,
Saturday was a wild day: tornado warnings, 70 degrees, two inches of rain running off frozen ground into flooding creeks and rivers... the whole drama. Through it all, our trusty greens and bows clung to their posts and stood ready to welcome anyone who came by.
On Sunday we attended church in the morning and our neighbor's open house at night. Not much happening in these last few days of the year as we attempt to focus on sorting out the details of 2008 in preparation for 2009. We will keep the 12 days of Christmas and not take decorations down or put treasures away until Epiphany, January 6. Or thereabouts.
The post-Christmas cold is one tradition I had hoped to leave behind this year. No luck there.
Somehow I missed posting on the second day of Christmas ...so much for end of the year resolutions! We were busy getting ready to have company, as the Dixons came over for dinner and we amused ourselves playing Apples to Apples, a game that Norm got for Christmas!
This year I was determined to get as many decorations as possible out, after being a minimalist for several years prior. Some of my Santas decided to join the display of trains, house and buses that my Dad made by hand during his long love affair with model making.
Daddy's trains top the piano all year long, and this fall I brought out the little house and the Greyhound buses he made. Then they became a Christmas train with the addition of Rudolph and some deer and trees and Santas from my collection.
This 27th of December sees both of us flirting with colds (this is like a re-run of a bad movie; last year I came down with a cold on the 26th. Ugh.) It also has us under tornado watch until noon. The temperature was 67 degrees at 8 a.m. Unseasonable. By late this afternoon we will be back in the 30s, average for this time of year. If we don't blow away, that is.
Greetings and Blessings to all on this bright Christmas morning in Missouri! Norm and I wish you joy, peace and above all, hope in what has been for many of us a stressful and trying season. The Love that came down at Christmas is with us always, if we will only take time to open our hearts and receive it.
On Christmas Eve we went to the candlelight service at our church, and while some braved the cold to go caroling, Norm and I spent a pleasant hour at the Kreuger's, visiting with Larry's 95-year-old mom Ruth and Dwayne, their son, helping a bit with getting out the goodies to come. The carolers arrived and we all enjoyed hot chocolate and an assortment of calories that would make any holiday host or hostess envious. We drove home on dry streets and then watched a broadcast of the midnight mass from Rome, topped off with the Christmas program of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Deciding we couldn't out wait St. Nick, we tumbled into bed around 2 a.m.
We are having our traditional Christmas pancake breakfast this morning, after which we'll open a present or two that Santa seems to have left, despite the fact that our chimney is sealed up. Later we'll have dinner and if it warms up enough (it's 21F now) we will walk around the block. Tonight we'll drive through neighborhoods admiring everyone's Christmas light displays. Oh, and this afternoon, we'll work on our Christmas/New Year's letter to go to family and friends.
In short, we give thanks for our health, for our loving family and dear friends, for the electronic miracle that brings greetings on this little laptop machine from far and near. As Tiny Tim says at the conclusion of Dickens' venerable A Christmas Carol, may God bless us, every one!
Somewhere I have a booklet about Advent Celebrations and it says that in Sweden, I think, there's a custom of celebrating Dec. 23 as Little Christmas Eve. On that night the children who "just can't wait" get to open one present, and a special meal is served. We celebrated Little Christmas Eve watching ice turn to rain, about three-quarters of an inch worth, and escaping the gloom of a cloudy day (we even had thunder around noon) by vacuuming the upstairs (Norm) and baking Christmas cookies (me.) The activity put us in better spirits. Tomorrow night we will attend the Christmas Eve Candlelight service at our church; it's supposed to be in the upper 30s and dry for a change!
Part of our welcome display on the porch at this season involves these obviously silk poinsettias (real ones could not have survived the 5-degree night we had on Monday!) and some artificial pine roping and the cream can that Norm dug up on the old Williams homestead in Western Kansas some 20 years or longer ago, on one of those memorable drives across the prairie we took with Norm's dad. It has a couple of holes in it that Leslie said came from Norm's uncle Morrison using it for target practice. Anyway, it frequently holds a seasonal bouquet and adds a little interest to the front porch.
Today Norm and I went to book club (a photo of the group is on the Compton Cares blog) and then came home and decorated some more. These are the decorations Norm put up outside a week or so ago, when the weather was milder. I finally got a photo about mid day today, before the cold front hit. All evening the temperature has dropped and the wind is howling and rattling. Tomorrow the wind chill will stay below zero, and the "real" temperature will get only to 15 or 16. Happy First Day of Winter, everyone!
We are thrilled to hear that Walt is getting pain relief and hope it continues indefinitely. We are also getting all kinds of Christmas cards from family and friends, and yes, this year we will publish and mail the annual Christmas/New Year Holiday letter. Look for it around the end of the month. If you prefer to get an electronic version with all color photos, drop me a line or leave a comment and we'll send yours thataway.
Maybe it's the cold, or the dreary cloudy days, or the continual threat of ice, but it's hard for me to focus on getting ready for Christmas, and it's less than a week away. Today I did finish the inside tree and the Star is on top, thanks to Norm's longer arms. The Santas are on the mantel although some of them elected to join Daddy's train. I'll have photos this weekend. I'm still trying to clear some book case tops for the nativities, though. Still have 8 of them to place--somewhere. This photo is of our little Alberta Spruce in the back yard. I took it last Sunday while it was unseasonably warm, late in the afternoon.
Tomorrow we have book club, and with luck I'll also get some baking done. I've held off doing Christmas cookies until this weekend, so we wouldn't consume them all before we could share them at open houses and parties. I planned to make fudge, too, but first I have to see if cleaning the microwave will stop the annoying arcing that it began doing this evening while I cooked supper. Overnight last night, our freezing rain changed to rain and then to thunderstorms around 2 a.m. By 6 a.m. this morning the next cold front arrived with strong, gusty winds that blew down some of the red bows, the wind chime, etc. We had two brief power outages--annoying because then I just had to reset all of the clocks again. For a while the refrigerator worried me, but I shut it off completely for half an hour and then turned it on, and the compressor kicked right in. Whew! Of course, if it did conk out, we have a freezer in the basement and it's cold enough outside to preserve almost anything until spring.
Today I added a new link to the "Blogs I Read" list on the right sidebar. It's Adventures in Life, a blog by a young missionary couple in Haiti. They are serving on behalf of Global Missions of the United Church of Christ and the Christian Church Disciples of Christ. Norm and I met them in September before they started their 4-year assignment. The musings of Patrick, who is teaching English and preparing to lecture to seminary students, and of Kim, a physician who is trying to survey the needs of the health system, are well-written and compelling. They are still struggling to learn Creole, but they are already deep in ministry in less than three months.
I realize the list is getting long, but the most recently updated rise to the top of the list. Four of these blogs are written by former students. Two are by family members. One is by a friend I last saw when we were both youth attending the same church in Tulsa, 50 or more years ago. And three of them I just found randomly on other people's blogs. All of them are interesting voices and usually well written. If you are so inclined, I think you might enjoy reading some of them from time to time.
This linking among bloggers is one of the phenomena of this form of publishing. Today Home Stories has been visited by about half a dozen people who followed a link in my signature when I left a comment on averyfineline.com. You just never know.
This picture was taken on Sunday afternoon, while it was still in the balmy 50s. Later that night the bottom fell out of the thermometer and we had freezing rain and sleet on Monday morning. Late Monday night we had a dusting of snow on top of the ice glaze, and this afternoon we had freezing drizzle. So I haven't been back outside to take more photos of our outside decorations.
Norm has been out, to the drugstore yesterday and to the bank today. We have been waiting for our extended warranty to pay the Chrysler service department so we can go pick up Gracie, who needed a new power steering pump. That was the source of the whining/growling noise. Hopefully we can retrieve our van tomorrow while it is forecast to be "dry" before rain comes in on Thursday.
Tonight we put most of the ornaments on our Christmas tree. There is still more decorating to do before the end of the week. But soon there will be even more pictures! We love to see that loyal family and friends are checking this blog daily. You know who you are. Thank you and may all of your holiday preparations and pre-Christmas events be merry.
Just as this photo of clematis seeds evolving from the white flowers of autumn, tonight we are evolving from early to mid winter. The wind is howling from the south, bringing a warm up to the 50s that will crash, forecasters say, tomorrow night and set us up for a dandy ice storm. We hope it won't be as serious as the storm of Nov. 30-Dec. 1, 2006 or the current one in New England.
We managed to do everything on our busy week to-do list but one, and we also added a few more. Tonight we decided not to fight the traffic for 15 miles or so to go to the chorale concert. We hope we'll catch them another time, closer to home. Ava is staying with us overnight while Barb is in Kansas City. She'll be home tomorrow sometime, ahead of the storm.
On Thursday morning I participated in a focus group discussion about prescription drugs for a marketing research firm. It was the first time I have done that, although I've heard of focus groups my whole adult life. Eleven people sat around a conference table for two hours answering questions about generic medications, their pharmacy plans, cost, concerns about safety, etc. A consensus emerged that seemed to mystify our leader (although he could have been pretending.) All of us said we trusted our doctors more than pharmacists, insurance companies or employers (in that order) to give us straight talk about effectiveness and also costs. I know I have anecdotal evidence about this: our internist told me at my last visit that I could probably get my generic prescriptions filled at a number of local chains for less than my pharmacy benefit company was charging me for a co-pay. He was right. I took my two generic prescriptions to one of them and paid only $25 for the 90-day supply for both, instead of the $53 my insurance would have charged me. It is a really wacky world out there. The experience was interesting because everyone was well informed and came from many situations. A self-employed family with three children at home. A man who had lost his job and whose individual risk pool policy had such a high deductible he couldn't afford drug benefits. A guy in a body brace who said he took 8 medications and only 4 of them had generic equivalents. A retired teacher whose two adult children, two grandchildren and an aunt had moved in with him and his wife because of the economy. In some ways it was like being on a jury, but it paid better. I left with a check for $90 for two hours of "work." And the research company, Focus Pointe Global, has already e-mailed me asking if I'd be interested in another upcoming group. Maybe I've found my retirement job?
Today we took Gracie the minivan to the shop because it has been making a mysterious growling whining noise for a couple of weeks. Sort of like a transmission whine but not quite. Of course, it failed to make the noise this morning. But the service writer suspected the power steering pump because his mother's 2005 Caravan had done the same thing. We left Gracie for a technician to check, and for an oil change. Later we got a call that the pump was indeed at fault. It will be Monday before they can get the part, get our extended warranty to confirm coverage, and fix it. That's OK. I think it will be covered, and that's a relief.
Tonight our church held an Advent Event that started with a chicken and dumpling supper, progressed into a story hour that included a Nativity Story book illustrated by an Australian artist, and had its grand finale in construction of "gingerbread" houses from graham crackers. Norm and I are clearly novices at this craft, but we were proud that our little house was still standing at the end of the evening and actually made it all the way home tonight. Now, if we can only keep Ava from sampling it this weekend! More gingerbread houses can be seen on the Compton Cares blog.
Why, you ask, is a picture of an African Violet the featured photo for today? Well, it's blooming now on the window sill above the sink, and it's a miniature violet, not more than three inches across, and I like it. Also, I didn't get outside to take pictures of the decorations Norm put up on our porch and railings Saturday, but I will do that this week. Meanwhile, the amaryllis I featured yesterday has put up stalk #5. I just noticed it this morning!
This afternoon we picked up Barb at the airport and she and Ava were reunited. We already miss Ava's patter and insistence on playing with the blue ball and the purple squeaky thingy. But we will surely have other chances.
I looked at the calendar and we have something to do every day and night this week! It seems like everyone wants to cram activities into the second week of December to avoid being "too close" to Christmas. At least we are going to be well fed:
- Monday: Tai Chi for me, water exercise for both of us, and an evening church budget meeting for me.
- Tuesday: Church-related meetings in the evening for each of us, going in different directions: Disciples Women circle for me, Soul Care for Norm. Oh, and it's supposed to be nasty, rain changing to snow. We'll have to stay tuned on that one.
- Wednesday: The UMSL retirees luncheon, water exercise for both of us, and a holiday party at a local restaurant with the water exercise bunch.
- Thursday: Norm volunteers at Isaiah 58 in the morning , Tai Chi for me, and the Advent Event at church in the evening features chicken and dumplings, followed by story telling, singing and gingerbread house building.
- Friday: lunch out with a friend from water exercise, and potluck dinner with the area Ministers and Significant Others group at a home in Wildwood.
- Saturday: a concert by the St. Louis Chamber Chorale at a church that is halfway to Tulsa from here (well, as far west in West County as you can go, anyway) --but we have heard their CDs and know one of the singers and we are looking forward to it.
Undoubtedly I have forgotten something. But if I don't blog very often, at least you'll know what we are up to! (Another answer to the question: what do retired people do all day? That headline is the most frequent search item that brings total strangers to this blog. I guess it's a question for a lot of people, but in Australia, England and Turkey? Who knew?)
Barb is on a business trip and Ava has been keeping us company for a few days. Since the last time she slept over, she has calmed down a little bit but she still wants a good solid play time in the evening. Most of the day she is contented to follow us around, or sleep, or accompany Norm on a walk over to the bicycle path in the park and back. She has figured out it's OK to go to bed when Norm does instead of waiting for me, and also that it's going to be Norm, not me, who throws on some clothes and lets her out of a morning. Early morning, almost before light. (Sunrise is at 7:10 at our longitude/latitude right now.) This dog apparently has an embedded microchip that goes off like an alarm clock at 6:50 a.m. CST every day. At least that's when she starts to wake us up. So in addition to being a pretty good playmate, couch throw and foot blanket, she's a reliable wake up call as well.
Our gaggle of amarylli continue to provide us with joy. These are additions to the lone stalk I pictured earlier. It amazes me to think about how persistent and long-lived some plants can be. These bulbs are descendants of one Mom Linville gave me more than 20 years ago. She had the ancestors of these flowers who knows how long? Norm remembers an amaryllis this color blooming in the south window [Norm says it wasn't the kitchen, so I stand corrected] on the farm when he was little, more than 60 years ago. It bears a strong resemblance to a plant I found blooming in the Climatron at Missouri Botanical Garden, a native of Brazil whose botanical name I can't find now that I'm looking for it. Many family members have these flowers, including Kay and Don, whose sun room is perfect for them.
We woke up this morning to a light dusting of snow decorating yards and trees. This was the scene on the Normandie Golf Course as we headed for church about 9 a.m. Those are not shadows under the trees, but places where the snow had already melted. Flurries continued throughout the day, but roads were just wet and the powdered sugar coating was gone by noon. In fact, the central part of the city didn't get snow at all, just drizzle. Nevertheless it was hard not to remember that on this date two years ago, Nov. 30, 2006, we had a major ice storm that left parts of the region without power for a week or more. We were only out about 50 hours. (Click on link for my blog entry about it.) It's an experience we don't want to go through again any time soon!
On Friday, our friends the Dixons came by and brought with them their son, John, who was on a rare trip home from Chicago. Since we have known John since he was around 11 or 12, we have missed the pleasure of his company in recent years. He showed us his new Nikon camera and some photos he had taken this fall in Colorado. He has become a convert to Apple nation and has a MacBook pro exactly like mine. John is an executive with a bicycle company and travels a lot internationally, so he gets to take a lot of pictures! He is leaving for 10 days in Taiwan next week. John also loves old houses and wanted to take the grand tour of our 1922 Arts & Crafts- meets- Prairie- style home. He says he likes it! Maybe he'll come back soon.
On Thanks- giving we drove across the river and through some woods to our friends the Myers in Illinois. As usual, Karen had laid a festive table (three tables, actually) and there were plenty of hands to help get everything ready.
Gary, our host, roasted the turkey in his barbecue on the deck. He and his sister- in-law carved it when everything else (potatoes, green bean casserole, rolls, dressing, etc.) was ready. I was mashing a huge pot of potatoes while they were doing this.
Norm, who was helping me hold down the potato pot while stirring, was the recipient of a test piece of turkey. He pronounced it done to perfection.
We had a most enjoyable afternoon with our friends and their families--about 20 were there and it was quite a scene, with the high school age nephew getting to drive Gary's convertible (with Gary as co-pilot) and a cousin making beaded angels and the little girls doing whatever little girls do when they are at Aunt Karen's house.
Happy Thanksgiving! While the pie cools and the sweet potatoes (no photo, sorry) bake in the oven, I thought I'd post the photos of the blooming amarylli, downstairs and up.
This one is growing in a pot with four bulbs that I started from small bulblets a few years ago. There are two more stalks coming up that should bloom before Christmas, but for now, this is our Thanksgiving Amaryllis.
First to open this year in the sunny upstairs sewing room window was this one, a single bulb I transplanted right before moving the plants inside this year. It has several brothers and sisters in various spots around, and at least one of them is producing a bud that might bloom around Christmas. Of course, the upstairs windows are crowded with cuttings from various plants, as well as the geraniums that I saved at the last minute because I couldn't let them freeze to death, after all.
Today we count many blessings. Flowers. Sunshine. Warmth in the house. Food to prepare and share with good friends this afternoon. Health. Friends. Family members all far away but in touch through the miracles of cell phones and cyberspace. Freedom. Time to do what we want, when we have the energy to do it. Visits from a warm puppy now and then. Love. And above all, the never ending grace of God. May all of you have a wonderful day, a feast of taste and fullness, a toast to health and well-being, rejoicing in the warmth of friendship, basking in the light of hope. Have a blessed Thanksgiving, everyone!
Visitor #1900 checked in about 5:42 a.m. from Garden City. Only one person we know fits that early bird profile: brother Don. Finally you'll have something new to look at. I appreciate seeing all the family checking in during the week and apologize for not having anything new for a while.
One tip: sometimes I use Twitter to post really small updates that aren't worth a whole blog post. The Twitter updates are on the right side of the blog page, below the "Blogs I read" listings. For example, I put a Twitter up on Friday about getting a pneumonia shot (it still hurts, too) and one on Saturday about what I was cooking for the church dinner. If regular Home Stories readers haven't discovered these, sometimes you can find an update on us if the blog posts are still the "old news." You don't have to join Twitter or do anything else but read them on the blog.
On Wednesday, Nov. 19, we took a field trip to the St. Louis suburb of Valley Park to look at samples of retaining wall "block." This is the style our contractor suggested but we had to pick the color. Our choices were pewter, pecan and hickory. Pewter is visible at the left of the sample wall. Pecan was on another sample; it looks like yellow sandstone. The hickory has a slight reddish cast. We picked hickory. Today (Nov. 24) we signed the proposal and sent in our deposit. We get a 5% discount for work done December-February. The project is one of the most expensive we have had since moving here in 2001. But the old railroad tie wall is at least 50% disintegrated and becoming a hazard. We decided to get it replaced with something more durable before the village cites us in the annual spring exterior inspection.
Today after church it was clear that the maple is rapidly thinning, but still a presence on the block. Almost all the rest of the trees are nearly bare. But many branches, with the sun filtered through them, still glow with the molten fire that endears this tree to neighbors, to passers by, and to us.
After we got home from Columbia Bottoms and lunch on Friday, I took the daily photo of the maple. It has thinned out quite a bit since yesterday, partly due to about half an inch of rain that fell overnight and Friday morning.
The maple is at the height of its color and glory today, but it is losing leaves fast. Today two men came to rake the leaves in our yard. The maple kept raining leaves on them as they raked! After they finished with our front and back yards and also our neighbor's. there were 35 paper bags full of leaves. In the next two weeks, the maple will probably let loose of almost that many more!
Regular readers may have noted the big jump in readership numbers on the counter at right between Monday and Tuesday. All of a sudden the Visitor Map is populated with dots from all over the globe. I was totally surprised by this when I looked at the blog yesterday, and I've been poking around on SiteMeter to figure out where all these hits came from and why. I now know the answer to where, but I have only a theory about why.
Between 9:09 and 9:51 p.m. on Monday, Home Stories received 92 hits from around the world. (Normally Home Stories gets 8-10 hits a day.) The referring URL for all of them was from within Blogger, on the Nav Bar. All I can assume is that Home Stories became the "Next Blog" that people who were simply browsing hit and saw in that hour. The previous post, "Blooms Abound Indoors" went up exactly an hour earlier, at 8:09. Apparently one of those three words is key to getting noticed!
Most of the 92 hits were for 0 seconds, which means the browsers just clicked and went on. Among those who stayed to look at more than one page in Home Stories were viewers in Indonesia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Ontario, Tokyo (working for IBM, browsing on the job!), Argentina, Honduras, Singapore and Costa Rica, as well as Utah and Indiana. The first hit in this virtual meteor shower came from a viewer in Benton,Ill. and the last one from Singapore. (And somewhere in the middle of all this frenzy, Debbie B in Hutch managed to get a look, irrespective of the other hits. Amazing.)
The prize for the longest look goes to a viewer using Spanish in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. He or she stayed on for almost 25 minutes looking at two pages. Perhaps practicing translation skills?
Anyway, it is fascinating to get a glimpse of the huge international reach of the "blogosphere" as Doug likes to call it. People in Canada, Brazil, Australia, India, the UK, and multiple US States also took a look, even if they didn't linger. It's also amazing how many people out clicked on the photo of the maple tree. Guess I'd better go take today's update photo now that the sun has come out!
Last night was our first really sub-freezing night, and the low was 28 or 26, depending on which weather service one consulted. I was surprised to see so many leaves still on the maple, but when the overcast brightened briefly in mid morning, I dashed out to snap these photos.
The view from the kitchen sink is pretty much what is visible in this picture. We know the show won't last much longer, but we are enjoying it.
Sunday: it was cold enough to snow this morning, and we actually saw a few minuscule frozen pellets as we set out for church. The overcast day isn't good for picture taking, but up close and in person, the maple is breathtakingly red. It's also shedding a lot of leaves now.
The view from beneath the same tree is quite different. All glows golden yellow, even on a cloudy day. This tree always seems, once its leaves turn, to be lit from within, reminding me of author Annie Dillard's Tree with the Lights in It from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. 
The leaves continue to glow even on the ground, but it's an ethereal quality hard to capture in 3 megapixels on a cloudy day. Certainly we are getting a good pile of leaves and we are grateful that Raymond, a friend of ours from church, is coming next Saturday to do some serious raking!
New Year's Eve Greetings! Not quite the post I had in mind but it's hard to concentrate with sneezing, coughing, fever and all that stuff. Norm and I hope everyone is having a great evening and we wish you a very Happy New Year in 2009, which isn't far from now in the Central Time Zone. I hope to write more tomorrow.
Saturday was a wild day: tornado warnings, 70 degrees, two inches of rain running off frozen ground into flooding creeks and rivers... the whole drama. Through it all, our trusty greens and bows clung to their posts and stood ready to welcome anyone who came by.
Somehow I missed posting on the second day of Christmas ...so much for end of the year resolutions! We were busy getting ready to have company, as the Dixons came over for dinner and we amused ourselves playing Apples to Apples, a game that Norm got for Christmas!
Greetings and Blessings to all on this bright Christmas morning in Missouri! Norm and I wish you joy, peace and above all, hope in what has been for many of us a stressful and trying season. The Love that came down at Christmas is with us always, if we will only take time to open our hearts and receive it.
Somewhere I have a booklet about Advent Celebrations and it says that in Sweden, I think, there's a custom of celebrating Dec. 23 as Little Christmas Eve. On that night the children who "just can't wait" get to open one present, and a special meal is served. We celebrated Little Christmas Eve watching ice turn to rain, about three-quarters of an inch worth, and escaping the gloom of a cloudy day (we even had thunder around noon) by vacuuming the upstairs (Norm) and baking Christmas cookies (me.) The activity put us in better spirits. Tomorrow night we will attend the Christmas Eve Candlelight service at our church; it's supposed to be in the upper 30s and dry for a change!
Today Norm and I went to book club (a photo of the group is on the Compton Cares blog) and then came home and decorated some more. These are the decorations Norm put up outside a week or so ago, when the weather was milder. I finally got a photo about mid day today, before the cold front hit. All evening the temperature has dropped and the wind is howling and rattling. Tomorrow the wind chill will stay below zero, and the "real" temperature will get only to 15 or 16. Happy First Day of Winter, everyone!
Maybe it's the cold, or the dreary cloudy days, or the continual threat of ice, but it's hard for me to focus on getting ready for Christmas, and it's less than a week away. Today I did finish the inside tree and the Star is on top, thanks to Norm's longer arms. The Santas are on the mantel although some of them elected to join Daddy's train. I'll have photos this weekend. I'm still trying to clear some book case tops for the nativities, though. Still have 8 of them to place--somewhere. This photo is of our little Alberta Spruce in the back yard. I took it last Sunday while it was unseasonably warm, late in the afternoon.
This picture was taken on Sunday afternoon, while it was still in the balmy 50s. Later that night the bottom fell out of the thermometer and we had freezing rain and sleet on Monday morning. Late Monday night we had a dusting of snow on top of the ice glaze, and this afternoon we had freezing drizzle. So I haven't been back outside to take more photos of our outside decorations.
Just as this photo of clematis seeds evolving from the white flowers of autumn, tonight we are evolving from early to mid winter. The wind is howling from the south, bringing a warm up to the 50s that will crash, forecasters say, tomorrow night and set us up for a dandy ice storm. We hope it won't be as serious as the storm of Nov. 30-Dec. 1, 2006 or the current one in New England.
Tonight our church held an Advent Event that started with a chicken and dumpling supper, progressed into a story hour that included a Nativity Story book illustrated by an Australian artist, and had its grand finale in construction of "gingerbread" houses from graham crackers. Norm and I are clearly novices at this craft, but we were proud that our little house was still standing at the end of the evening and actually made it all the way home tonight. Now, if we can only keep Ava from sampling it this weekend! More gingerbread houses can be seen on the Compton Cares blog.
Why, you ask, is a picture of an African Violet the featured photo for today? Well, it's blooming now on the window sill above the sink, and it's a miniature violet, not more than three inches across, and I like it. Also, I didn't get outside to take pictures of the decorations Norm put up on our porch and railings Saturday, but I will do that this week. Meanwhile, the amaryllis I featured yesterday has put up stalk #5. I just noticed it this morning!
Barb is on a business trip and Ava has been keeping us company for a few days. Since the last time she slept over, she has calmed down a little bit but she still wants a good solid play time in the evening. Most of the day she is contented to follow us around, or sleep, or accompany Norm on a walk over to the bicycle path in the park and back. She has figured out it's OK to go to bed when Norm does instead of waiting for me, and also that it's going to be Norm, not me, who throws on some clothes and lets her out of a morning. Early morning, almost before light. (Sunrise is at 7:10 at our longitude/latitude right now.) This dog apparently has an embedded microchip that goes off like an alarm clock at 6:50 a.m. CST every day. At least that's when she starts to wake us up. So in addition to being a pretty good playmate, couch throw and foot blanket, she's a reliable wake up call as well.
Our gaggle of amarylli continue to provide us with joy. These are additions to the lone stalk I pictured earlier. It amazes me to think about how persistent and long-lived some plants can be. These bulbs are descendants of one Mom Linville gave me more than 20 years ago. She had the ancestors of these flowers who knows how long? Norm remembers an amaryllis this color blooming in the south window [Norm says it wasn't the kitchen, so I stand corrected] on the farm when he was little, more than 60 years ago. It bears a strong resemblance to a plant I found blooming in the Climatron at Missouri Botanical Garden, a native of Brazil whose botanical name I can't find now that I'm looking for it. Many family members have these flowers, including Kay and Don, whose sun room is perfect for them.
While the sun was shining and the temperature climbed to 42 degrees, Norm got busy hanging bird feeders and relocating the bird bath near the garage electrical outlet so we can plug in the heater (after we find it.) Here, he checks out the oil sunflower feeder at the back of the yard, with his own patented system of baffles to keep squirrels out of the seed.
This afternoon I ran errands and shopped for groceries (what every St. Louisan does when even a dusting of snow is forecast.) When I got home, Norm had the holiday lights and red bows decorating the euonymous bushes out back and the little Alberta Spruce that Doug and Matt gave us a few years back. Finally, it's big enough to be decorated for Christmas!
We woke up this morning to a light dusting of snow decorating yards and trees. This was the scene on the Normandie Golf Course as we headed for church about 9 a.m. Those are not shadows under the trees, but places where the snow had already melted. Flurries continued throughout the day, but roads were just wet and the powdered sugar coating was gone by noon. In fact, the central part of the city didn't get snow at all, just drizzle. Nevertheless it was hard not to remember that on this date two years ago, Nov. 30, 2006, we had a major ice storm that left parts of the region without power for a week or more. We were only out about 50 hours. (Click on link for my blog entry about it.) It's an experience we don't want to go through again any time soon!
On Friday, our friends the Dixons came by and brought with them their son, John, who was on a rare trip home from Chicago. Since we have known John since he was around 11 or 12, we have missed the pleasure of his company in recent years. He showed us his new Nikon camera and some photos he had taken this fall in Colorado. He has become a convert to Apple nation and has a MacBook pro exactly like mine. John is an executive with a bicycle company and travels a lot internationally, so he gets to take a lot of pictures! He is leaving for 10 days in Taiwan next week. John also loves old houses and wanted to take the grand tour of our 1922 Arts & Crafts- meets- Prairie- style home. He says he likes it! Maybe he'll come back soon.
On Thanks- giving we drove across the river and through some woods to our friends the Myers in Illinois. As usual, Karen had laid a festive table (three tables, actually) and there were plenty of hands to help get everything ready.
Gary, our host, roasted the turkey in his barbecue on the deck. He and his sister- in-law carved it when everything else (potatoes, green bean casserole, rolls, dressing, etc.) was ready. I was mashing a huge pot of potatoes while they were doing this.
Happy Thanksgiving! While the pie cools and the sweet potatoes (no photo, sorry) bake in the oven, I thought I'd post the photos of the blooming amarylli, downstairs and up.
First to open this year in the sunny upstairs sewing room window was this one, a single bulb I transplanted right before moving the plants inside this year. It has several brothers and sisters in various spots around, and at least one of them is producing a bud that might bloom around Christmas. Of course, the upstairs windows are crowded with cuttings from various plants, as well as the geraniums that I saved at the last minute because I couldn't let them freeze to death, after all.
On Wednesday, Nov. 19, we took a field trip to the St. Louis suburb of Valley Park to look at samples of retaining wall "block." This is the style our contractor suggested but we had to pick the color. Our choices were pewter, pecan and hickory. Pewter is visible at the left of the sample wall. Pecan was on another sample; it looks like yellow sandstone. The hickory has a slight reddish cast. We picked hickory. Today (Nov. 24) we signed the proposal and sent in our deposit. We get a 5% discount for work done December-February. The project is one of the most expensive we have had since moving here in 2001. But the old railroad tie wall is at least 50% disintegrated and becoming a hazard. We decided to get it replaced with something more durable before the village cites us in the annual spring exterior inspection.
In the week since I have last posted, our maple has gone from thinning (left, on Tuesday, Nov. 18) to bald.
The branches visible from the kitchen dropped a regular rain of bright leaves all week. This was taken on the 18th.
Today after church it was clear that the maple is rapidly thinning, but still a presence on the block. Almost all the rest of the trees are nearly bare. But many branches, with the sun filtered through them, still glow with the molten fire that endears this tree to neighbors, to passers by, and to us.
Two weeks of Maple Watch and there is still a lot of color, although the cloudy day makes the tree less vibrant in photos than it appears in person, especially when one stands under it.
As the photo above clearly shows, the leaves are falling rapidly and leaving the tree about half bare. Small still life compositions like the one at left show up on the steps.
After we got home from Columbia Bottoms and lunch on Friday, I took the daily photo of the maple. It has thinned out quite a bit since yesterday, partly due to about half an inch of rain that fell overnight and Friday morning.
Friday morning we went for a drive with the Dixons to see what fall at the Columbia Bottoms Conservation area looks like. This dramatic view of the ripe grass is toward the east.
We stopped first at the visitor center and purchased Natural Events calendars for next year. This year's entry for Nov. 14 is blank, but Nov. 15 says: Most leaves have fallen; forest floor blanketed. Yep, that's right. The calendars and other items can be ordered online here.
The Columbia Bottoms Area is one of two spots to clearly see the confluence of the Missouri (near side) and Mississippi (far side) rivers. The point in the center of the photo marks where they meet, and the trees are part of a Missouri State Park that offers a chance to stand right at the confluence. The water in both rivers was much lower than when we visited this spot in August. Click here to see the photo of the same spot on August 3.
Looking down river from the observation area, we can see an old eagle's nest in the distance. Its a tiny black spot in the trees on the bank in the center of the photo. If you click to enlarge the picture, you might be able to make out the nest. (Dear Santa, I need a camera with longer than a 3x zoom if I'm going to keep taking pictures like this. )Also, note the many sand bars and small dams that were not visible in the spring or summer when water was high.
The maple is at the height of its color and glory today, but it is losing leaves fast. Today two men came to rake the leaves in our yard. The maple kept raining leaves on them as they raked! After they finished with our front and back yards and also our neighbor's. there were 35 paper bags full of leaves. In the next two weeks, the maple will probably let loose of almost that many more!
When we brought the house plants in from their summer home on the front porch, we noticed that both of the Christmas cactus plants were setting buds. Our "white" (or pale orchid) cactus has bloomed before around Thanksgiving, but it has also bloomed after Christmas and near Easter. When the plant is outdoors for the summer, it tends to set more buds than when I leave it inside all year. The first bud opened about a week ago and now it is a profusion of bloom.
A close up of the blossom resembles an orchid, and a double one at that.
Last night was our first really sub-freezing night, and the low was 28 or 26, depending on which weather service one consulted. I was surprised to see so many leaves still on the maple, but when the overcast brightened briefly in mid morning, I dashed out to snap these photos.
Sunday: it was cold enough to snow this morning, and we actually saw a few minuscule frozen pellets as we set out for church. The overcast day isn't good for picture taking, but up close and in person, the maple is breathtakingly red. It's also shedding a lot of leaves now.
The view from beneath the same tree is quite different. All glows golden yellow, even on a cloudy day. This tree always seems, once its leaves turn, to be lit from within, reminding me of author Annie Dillard's Tree with the Lights in It from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. 
