Friday, December 24, 2010

No Need to Dream--White Christmas is Here!

It's a merry, snowy Christmas Eve in Bel Nor! I took all of these pictures a little before noon when Norm went out to scoop about an inch off the driveway. It's only about 30 degrees so as you can see the street is responding well to the ice melting chemicals the village provided. This photo is looking south from our front porch.


The view to the north from the front porch shows a neighbor's outdoor lights buried under a gathering blanket of snow on his evergreens. The glow at night will be awesome! We are planning to stay in tonight and have our traditional goulash supper, and listen to our Christmas music and maybe watch the Renaissance special on PBS. A spry little elf seems to have visited our Christmas tree, too. We'll have to see about that in the morning.

Out in the back yard, the birds are having a Christmas feast at two different feeders. It's amazing the quality of the zoom on my camera; this feeder is all the way at the back of the yard and I was on the back porch. We also have a bird bath heater so they have been dipping in and out of their "spa" today, too.

Norm plugged in the lights in the bushes along the driveway this morning, right before the snow started. It's kind of hard to see them right now. Our neighbor Barb and Ava have gone to be with her family in Illinois, so it's pretty quiet around here. Our neighbors on the other side have family visiting them, but for the most part, the village seems very quiet and almost deserted.

I've written before about dreaming of white Christmases as a child and not seeing one until I was 21. Our family in Oklahoma and Texas are having a rainy Christmas this year, but in some areas the rain may be welcome. Somewhere the sun is shining, surely. When it comes out here, I'll be sure to take a picture and post it! Meanwhile, stay warm and cherish the chance to be with your family and friends. Blessings to all, and a little bit later, to all a good night!

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Visitor # 8700

My sisters-in-law, cousin and best friend are this blog's most faithful readers, and you all check in on average once a day. Visitor #8700 Wednesday morning was s-i-l Carol Ann, down Irving TX way. On Facebook she was saying she had finished wrapping gifts and washing the crystal and was getting ready to go to the store for some items she would need for the family dinner on Christmas Eve. Gee, Carol, I wish I could channel some of that energy! And you had time to check Home Stories, too--not once, but twice! I wish I had a good prize for the #8700 milestone but in the meantime, please accept my thanks for reading--even when there is nothing new.

This is a wonderful time of year...busy...exciting...sometimes tiring. I have a lot of thoughts and I will try to find time to write and post some pictures soon. Meanwhile, I hope everyone is enjoying this season!

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Advent is here, and the Poinsettia is getting ready!

Advent begins today! When I was a kid, there was Thanks giving dinner, followed by the Thanks- giving parade and downtown decoration lighting on the Friday afterwards that brought Santa to town, and a month of singing Christmas Carols in church and browsing the Western Auto catalog and making out my Christmas list. I knew that out of my list of 6 to 10 wishes I would actually get three presents.... the ones that Santa had in his workshop and could fit in his sleigh. There was also the Christmas concert by the grade school choir (where I memorized all of the words to all of the verses of the carols we sang in church) and the school play, usually an adaptation of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens--I got to play Fanny, Tiny Tim's sister, one year. And a Christmas pageant at church in which I never got to play Mary--I was either a shepherd (we had a shortage of boys or else we were ahead of the times in bending gender roles) or one of the sheep. So when I first encountered Advent, during my college years, it was new to me. I was excited to learn about this tradition of preparing the heart and spirit for the coming of the Christ child.

In Denver in the 1970s Norm and I acquired an Advent wreath and a booklet with ideas for family reflection. We followed it for years, but then expanded with a bigger wreath and various Advent devotional books, including a series of them written for the three lectionary cycles by our friends the Dixons. For the past three years, our church and another Disciples church in St. Louis have jointly published a booklet of Advent devotions written by elders and other leaders of the respective congregations. (If you are interested, there are links to a PDF version and a Word version on the home page of Affton Christian Church's web site here. You are welcome to download and use them. And yes, Norm and I each wrote one of the meditations!)

So this morning our church observed Advent, and Norm and I were asked to light the first candle, the candle of Hope. How we all need to have hope in times that seem dark and threatening. One of the best signs of hope this morning was a group of eager children who gathered at the front of the sanctuary and helped set up a bare outline of a wooden stable. Then 9 of them, ranging in age from 10 years to 13 months, sat at our pastor's feet while she read them a story about the angel's visit to Mary. Three of the children had just joined the congregation as our student pastor's family had finally been able to move to St. Louis and join him at the seminary. Three were visiting their grandmother. Three were with their mom. Since our church has had a shortage of children in recent years, it was a very positive and hopeful moment in the service.

So what do geraniums and a poinsettia have to do with the first week of Advent? Well, they are in our house, in the sunny upstairs south windows after spending the summer on the porch. The two red geraniums came from the church last spring, when a whole bevy of them decorated the sanctuary on Mother's Day and then members were invited to adopt them. They are still blooming bravely in their new environment and every morning when I get up and walk into that room to do a few simple exercises and say my morning prayers, they greet me. Few things in life are more hopeful than flowers. And the poinsettia was a gift Last Christmas from our friends the Dixons. It was a lovely rich red and had decorated the church where Mike has been preaching. It spent a quiet summer on the porch and the leaves became green and lush. It has been in an upstairs closet window, and since mid-September it has been naturally getting the number of hours of darkness a poinsettia needs to start showing color. Never before have we had this happen, and so to me this, too, is a sign of hope. Maybe sometimes you can use a little darkness to bring forth something of beauty. I don't know how many leaves will turn red of if flower bracts will appear by Christmas, but even if they don't, this reddening blush brightens each day for me.

Of course, all this begs the question: but Judi, where is your Advent Wreath? Well, I am about to go get it out of the back closet and tomorrow I'll try to find some new candles. I may have to settle for semi-traditional blue if I can't find traditional purple and pink, but it will be out very soon. It has to be: the prayer shawl ministry group is meeting at our house this Thursday!

Friday, November 26, 2010

Thanksgiving Snow, Turkey and Blessings

As the cold front finally swept the rain and fog out of our part of the Mississsippi River valley on Thanks- giving afternoon, the rain changed quickly over to snow. We came home last night to about 1/2 inch on the ground, and this morning in the 10 a.m. sunshine it is still visible from our back door, looking over at Barb's yard.
Driving was not a problem on our way home from Edwardsville, where we were fortunate to join in the annual Myers family feast.

Gary and Karen have a wonderful view from their deck of their woodland garden and on into some common ground. I took this as we were waiting on the turkey, while the snow was beginning to fall and coat the ground.






One blessing was getting to see Lily, who is 18 months old and talking very plainly. One of her favorite words yesterday was "Pie!" And she put away quite a bit of pumpkin pie after an all-to -brief nap. Here she is with mom Michelle, grandma Karen and great-grandma Mary Ann in the kitchen while dinner was still roasting and bubbling on the stove.

Once the turkey was pronounced perfectly done, Gary prepared to carve the bird for the buffet. This was the best tasting, most moist and succulent yet.

Reflecting on this year's Thanksgiving, we were especially mindful of how much we enjoy "face time" with our friends, even though we are also grateful for the wonderful web of electronic connections we savor with cousins, nephews, nieces, their children, far-off friends, siblings, former students and everyone else who makes up our still-expanding extended family on Facebook. In this season when we celebrate abundance, it's timely to remember that even when we are worried about scarcity, we are blessed to have more than enough of love, memories, faith, and friendship.

Friday, November 19, 2010

Doris' Holiday Cactus Blooms Early

Our most venerable holiday cactus, started as a slip that Norm's Aunt Doris gave us many years ago, opened in a pink frenzy earlier this week. I didn't put it outdoors on the porch until September because the summer was so hot, and I thought maybe it would delay the blooming if it wasn't out all summer. Fat chance of that. But it has really brightened the dining room this week!


This week was less hectic than last, but still I was pushing to get some fabric cut to exchange at the Quilt Guild meeting tonight, and I have a lot to do tomorrow to get ready for the last Scrap Quilt Club meeting of the year. We will take December and January off, then start again. I hope I can take some photos of quilt blocks soon and post them. Also, I'm excited that the Linville Reunion Quilt is down to only 2-1/2 rows of blocks left. The goal of the Spanish Lake Quilters is to have it "out of the frame" before Christmas. I have enjoyed getting to know these ladies, even though we have different philosophies about some things. Quilting brings all sorts of people together.

Last night we had a steady, slow rain that amounted to only 10 or 20 points as Norm's mom would have said, but it was nice to get some moisture--October and also this month so far have been extraordinarily dry. Tomorrow is leaf raking day, and grocery day. Saturday is scrap quilts for me and book club for Norm. Sunday we will have a joint worship service with the Presbyterians in the neighborhood, followed by a carry in Thanksgiving dinner, so today I started looking at my recipe box to decide what I'm going to take. It is so hard to believe that Thanksgiving is only one week away, and we all know what comes after that. I don't think we ever quite finished putting away the Christmas decorations last winter, and here it is almost time to get them out and put them up again. Time does go faster the older you get.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Fall Colors III: At Last, The Maple

About a week ago, our sugar maple was getting close to its peak color, so I snapped a photo. On Friday, when you stood beneath it you were bathed in a golden glow because all of the interior leaves had turned as well. Yesterday, half of those leaves landed in the yard, and the ground glowed golden. Today was cloudy, windy and quite a bit colder, and the tree is beginning to show its branches. I imagine that by Tuesday, when the tree trimming guys arrive, only about 5% of the leaves will remain on the tree, making it an easier job for them. Of course, then it will be time to get the leaves raked! Norm has been sweeping the driveway and raking paths for Ava to use in the yard, but it still looks like the leaves are ankle deep. I wonder how much they all would weigh before they start to dry out?

Speaking of drying out, we are getting a tad dry in this neck of the woods. Several days last week it was windy and there was a Fire Danger warning posted. We were supposed to get a nice rain this weekend; then the forecast backed off to showers; last night they said we might get 1/10 of an inch, or "10 points" as Mom Linville used to say. I'm not sure we got anything except a damp spot on the driveway.

Today as I drove to and fro for our church Bazaar, it seemed to me that all of the late coloring trees were more intensely red, even almost purple, than I remember. Nature saved the best of the show for the last act, or maybe even the encore. At any rate, our Indian Summer seems to be over and it feels and looks like November now. Time to think about baking breads and looking for sweet potato casserole recipes, etc. At least I could find cans of pumpkin in the stores this year!

Thursday, November 11, 2010

House Plants Showing Off

Most people have Christmas Cactuses (Cacti?) although they might bloom around Thanks- giving, or maybe even close to Easter. But beginning with its second year with us, this graceful white tinged- with- orchid cactus insists on blooming within a couple of weeks after we bring it in from its summer sojourn outside. Or, as it did last year when we left it inside all summer, at Halloween. This year it is a Veterans Day Cactus. A gift from a friend many years ago, it keeps on giving.

Another friend's gift (dear DH) from 5 or 6 years ago, the rubber tree was almost as tall as I am by the time I lugged it downstairs and out to the porch in July. It threatened to outgrow the porch, so some serious trimming was in order. After I removed 4 sturdy stalks, a bevy of shorter stalks remained for a more compact plant. (Will post photos of it later.) I had read that you have to air-layer a rubber tree to get its cuttings to root since the stems are quite woody, but I didn't have the patience (or the time) to try that. And yet I couldn't throw such obviously healthy vegetation onto the compost heap. So I stuck the four stalks in some moist potting soil and waited to see what would happen. (Norm says I never met a plant I didn't want to propogate, or a cutting I didn't have to try to save.) Three of the stalks rooted, so they have become a new plant, about 2-1/2 feet tall. When I took this photo I thought I would have to use it in an advertisement: Well Behaved, Resilient Rubber Tree Needs a New Home. As much as I would LIKE having two rubber trees, there is room in the sunny upstairs window for only one. Then my plant-loving friend Lola the librarian heard about it, and today it went home with her. I hope it continues to prosper, but she has a small condo, so I also hope it doesn't completely take over her home.

Our church is having a bazaar on Saturday, and right now I'm in the process of deciding which projects I have no time to finish, so I can concentrate on the remaining ones that are doable. Watch tomorrow for some preview pictures of it. If you are in STL on Saturday, drop by Compton Heights Christian Church, 2149 S. Grand Blvd., between 10 and 4 for some great ornaments, knitted items, Gypsy bags, Fair Trade coffee, chocolate and handcrafts, plus delicious baked goods and snacks (spiced pecans, or champagne jelly, anyone?) Oh, and some fantastic chili for lunch--the day is supposed to be showery and in the low 50s, so that sounds really good!

After the bazaar: the Maple Tree. Seriously this time.

Monday, November 08, 2010

Tim's Talk: Guest Post: Trusting God

This post is by the wife of Tim Graves, a seminary student we have known for many years, since he and his siblings were in the youth group at Florissant Valley Christian Church that Norm and I sponsored back in the 1970s. Tim went to college, married Maggie, and they had two children and a dog named Susie that they allowed us to adopt from them. Maggie went to seminary and was ordained first. She has been serving First CC in Wheeling, WV while Tim has being going to Lexington Theological Seminary. In this article, Maggie discusses their amazing journey to a call to a new kind of ministry, and what it means for a couple in mid life, with children grown, to set out on a major journey trusting in God.

Tim's Talk: Guest Post: Trusting God: "by Rev. Magdalyn M. Sebastian Maggie is Tim's wife. This column appeared in the Wheeling Intelligencer on November 6, 2010. Trusting the D..."

Friday, November 05, 2010

End of the Growing Season

We have had several predictions of a freeze, but each one seemed to miss us, and the flowers have just kept on doing their thing. I think geraniums, especially, get more beautiful in the fall when the hottest weather is gone. This porch box contains plants that spent last winter in our basement. My plan is to move them inside and trim them back this weekend so they can rest in the basement windows again until next spring. Tonight it is supposed to be 28 degrees at the airport, which is close to us. The plants that are still outside are tucked away next to the house at the bottom of the basement stairs, out of frost's way. It is about 7 degrees warmer there than out in the yard.

This salmon beauty is about three years old. I have already brought it into the house since this photo was taken, and it is in one of the upstairs south windows. The coleus has been magnificent, but strong winds blew it over and shattered the pot after these pictures. I have some cuttings in a glass jar to see if they will root, but the plant itself is going to meet its fate either tonight, or soon.

Another multi-year geranium, this apple blossom will spend the winter downstairs. I have a cutting from it that rooted, and it is in one of the upstairs windows. I hope we will have many new plants to enjoy in spring 2011.

Of course, some summer plants in the yard don't seem to know that their days and hours are numbered, so they have been going merrily on. There is probably a lesson there someplace. This is a seedling coneflower from this summer that burst into bloom in the fall, while its parents were all sporting seed pods and feeding the local flock of goldfinches. For some reasons our coneflowers love this south facing wall by the driveway. A little butterfly found a late season snack on this one as well.

Petunias are so hardy, I think they might survive a nuclear fallout event, like cockroaches. Except they are much prettier. We grew these purple ones for their great petunia scent. Twice they were decimated and defoliated by little green caterpillars, and twice they have battled back. Usually they will survive a light freeze...these are under the euonymous bushes out back, where we moved their planter after they were attacked the second time. If they won't give up, why should I? Thoughts like that are helpful when the news is disturbing or discouraging, and I guess that is one reason I am so crazy about plants. They just do their thing and don't think about it too much.

After a summer of dis- appoint- ment in the tomato patch, our two vines finally started producing in October. These are on the cherry tomato vine we planted. We also have harvested a lot of medium Jet Stars from the other plant, and just tonight enjoyed a nice ripe one in our salad. Fresh tomatoes...in November...in the Midwest. Gotta love it.

Next up: Fall Colors III: At last, the Maple has turned!

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Fall Colors II: Mums Glow with Light from Within

Nothing says fall like asters and mums. For years I have looked at the gorgeous asters at our favorite garden center, and passed on getting them because, well, everyone knows they are hard to grow, they get the yellows, our soil is bad for them, etc. But this year I finally coughed up $5 on the first day of October and brought this specimen home.

Norm repotted it and placed it at the corner of the front wall in the midst of our luxuriant (and still growing, nearly 4 weeks later) sweet potato vine. Yes, that is one vine, and it's in a pot. It drinks like a sailor, though--we had to water it every day, sometimes twice a day, in the hot summer weather. One thing about a sweet potato vine, you don't have to guess when it's thirsty.

After two glorious weeks, the aster had bloomed itself out, so it is now retired and resting out back until we can find a spot to plant it. We rotated this bronze mum into its spot about a week ago and it is still going strong. So is the sweet potato vine. Our plan is to see what kind of tuber it has produced and if it looks healthy, we will keep it in the basement this winter and plant it again next spring. We did that a couple of years ago with another prolific vine. The mum will get planted in the flower bed in the wall, probably. Sometimes they survive the winter and sometimes they don't.

This is another bronze mum that has survived for about three years now. We planted it next to the front porch steps and I think this is its best year since we did that. I didn't pinch this one back this year because it stayed compact, and it also didn't set buds until sometime in August.I love these flowers because they seem to glow, even on a cloudy day!

Another hardy returning mum is this red one...I think it is an unusual red because most "reds" I see are really burgundy. this one occupies the far end of the wall next to Mr. Guy's property. For a while this spring I wasn't sure it had survived (this is its third year) but then some foliage poked through the mulch. This is such a vibrant color.

This white mum that looks like it is trying to pretend it's a Shasta daisy is actually one of two plants that we divided in their second year because they were overgrowing everything else planted on the wall. They bloom really early. They were keeping the aster company back at the end of September and early October. They are completely finished now, but they were our first harbinger of fall.

These pink mums hold the volunteer record...I think they have been out back under the lilac since at least 2006, maybe earlier. They spread out more every year; this is just one cluster of the entire sprawling group. Usually I pinch them back severely, but we were gone in June when I should have done it, and July was so hot they grew slowly. After the first fall wind, though, they really flopped over. This was a semi cloudy day with the sun wanly showing, and they still glowed. I can see them from the kitchen window and they are so cheery. They will persist until frost.

These sunny yellow flowers occupy the "welcome" spot beside our front porch steps and when they fade, they will get planted near the front door or in the wall as well. They were the third new plant I bought this fall.

Leaves are starting to fall from the oak, the maple, and all of the neighbors' trees as well, which makes it hard to keep the flowers visible, but we give it a try anyway. Soon enough the leaves will be raked, the plants will be heeled in to the ground for winter, the bird feeders will be up, and I'll be looking for where I packed my longjohns. Today it got to 75 degrees. Tonight we had thunder and the first rain in over a month...we got about an inch or more in less than an hour. Now there's a small stream flood advisory for North County. As my dad would have said, when it rains, it pours. But I'll take it.

Next up: Persistent Geraniums and other summer plants that don't know what season it is.

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Fall Colors I: Trees

Fall officially started a month ago, but trees in our neighborhood are just now showing color, and leaves (except for the cottonwood, which started shedding in August) are just now beginning to fall. Today it is almost 80 degrees, with showers forecast for later, and a breezy south wind that is ringing the wind chime on the front porch. The doors are open, and we haven't thought about replacing the screens with the storm windows yet. It seems like summer wants to linger longer, and we can't really object. One of the first colorful trees we can see from the house is our backyard neighbor Mark's sassafras tree. Behind our garage, it looms up with fiery glowing branches.

Across the street, our neighbor Karen has two hard maples in front of her house. This one is blazing gold right now while the one next to it is still green. We look out the front door and see this glowing golden mass of leaves that shines even on a partly cloudy day, like today.
This week has been a sickly one, with one of the season's famous "two weeks no matter what you take for it" colds that included fever for a while, and now a racking cough that sneaks up on me. So although it is a lovely day for a drive, my leaf peeking so far has been at home. If I had more ambition I would start cleaning up the house plants on the porch, since surely they will have to come inside some time. Yet our highs will be in the 80s through Monday and even at the end of next week, on Halloween, the low will be only in the 50s. So, not yet.

A couple of years ago I posted a new photo almost every day for a month as our backyard sugar maple turned colors. I won't do that this year, but will note that on this date, there is just a tad of orange showing on the tips of the outer branches, and most of the interior is still green. One exception is a group of branches high up, as in 30 to 40 feet, that are becoming yellow. This tree needs trimming and thinning every 5 years or so, and this is its year. Yesterday the company we have contracted with called to say they would be out next Tuesday. We said, not yet. It's better to trim it after the leaves have fallen, and Sugar Maple isn't going to let go of all of its ton or so of little oxygen factories for a couple of weeks, I'm betting.

Next up: Fall Color II: Mums both new and volunteer

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Confluence Casino Defeated--For Now

Last year just about this time, I blogged about the threat to wildlife and tranquility near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. That post can be found here. This week there is some good news. The North County Casino was one of 4 finalists being considered on Tuesday by the Gaming Commission for a license that came available this summer. The developers asked for an extension because they said they didn't have all the financing in place. The Comission said "no." So now there are three. One of them is also on the Mississippi, south of Interstate 270 at the Chain of Rocks, and it too is an environmental threat and of concern to the drinking water supply of the City of St. Louis. (The other two proposals are in Cape Girardeau, which will hold a plebiscite on Nov. 2, and near Kansas City.)

The chair of the commission has said they may not award any license this round, and that would leave the door open for the North County Casino partners to try again. The land has been rezoned, and many area cities and school districts are pressing for "jobs" and "revenue." But for now, the folks who are more interested in migratory birds, wetlands preservation and the historic significance of this Lewis and Clark exploration site are warily cautious that better times are ahead.

Friday, October 15, 2010

By the Waters We Lived, and Still Do

Hyco Creek, Deep Creek, Yadkin River, Belews Creek, Janes Creek, Lynn Branch, Turkey Creek, North Fork Red River, Lake of the Ozarks, Arkansas River, Little Spring Creek, Lake Taneycomo, White River, Turnback Creek, Lake Fort Gibson, Walnut Creek, Roaring River, Platte River, Current River, Mississippi and Missouri rivers. All of these “waters” have played a role in my family heritage, going back to 1785 when Laughlin McElyea got a land grant of 200 acres “on the waters of Hyco Creek” in Caswell County, North Carolina. Both my father’s and mother’s families, as well as Norm’s, lived or played alongside the waters I have named above—and many more that I can’t think of. Photo above: North fork of Deep Creek, Yadkin County, NC.

From an early age, I was forbidden to go out our back gate and into the creek, but it fascinated me. The boy next door would go fishing for crawdads in it. One day we found an empty beer can floating in it, and I was horrified that anyone would trash my precious creek, with its rock walls that went back to the WPA that now had tall saplings growing up out of them. Once the creek flooded and came far up into our yard, causing a lot of excitement in the neighborhood. A few years later, it was covered over and buried…turned into an enclosed storm water drainage system. Further from our block, it still remained open and free, and once I was old enough to venture out on my bicycle, I would still visit it regularly. I came to respect water and the creatures that depend on it as I explored Walnut Creek. Photo above: Linville River just above Linville Falls, Blue Ridge, North Carolina.


When I think about it, most of my family has lived near a creek or river at some time. I treasure a photo of my grandparents celebrating their engagement in a park alongside the North Fork of the Red River in Oklahoma. Before oil was discovered, before agricultural runoff became commonplace, before sewers were discharged into rivers instead of septic fields….our nation’s waters were a delight. As a Girl Scout camper in Oklahoma, I enjoyed wading through Little Spring Creek and canoeing on local lakes. Norm’s mother and her siblings appear in a photo taken when they were swimming in the Smoky Hill. Photo above: the Calusahatchee River estuary at Fort Myers, Florida, just before it joins the Gulf of Mexico.

Water is basic not only to our pleasure, but to our life itself. And yet our streams and lakes are often abused, used as a dumping ground for pretty foul stuff. I remember learning in high school chemistry that water is “the universal solvent” but we are pushing our luck today. In parts of the Western U.S., aquifers are depleted, making deeper wells necessary and the rivers above them are now always dry. Elsewhere in the world, waters that fill with snow melt are shrinking with climate change, and others are swelling as severe rains drench impoverished peoples in India, Pakistan and China. In the middle east and elsewhere, wars are fought over rights to fresh water since it is so scarce. Photo above: Lakes Park in Fort Myers, FL, nature reclaimed from a quarry.

One important local issue for me is a proposal to build a large casino and entertainment complex right next to a wildlife refuge on a wetland along the Mississippi River just past its historic confluence with the Missouri River. There are more kinds of pollution that just the icky stuff in the water, but it’s also true that this project is just upstream from the intake for the city of St. Louis’ drinking water supply. Photo above: Confluence of the Missouri (left) and Mississippi (upper right) rivers north of St. Louis. There's a proposal to build a casino complex just downstream from this historic site.

DoSomething.org < http://www.dosomething.org/tipsandtools/11-facts-about-pollution> quotes these facts about the effects of pollution in our waters:

· 40% of America’s rivers and 46% of America’s lakes are too polluted for fishing, swimming, or aquatic life.

· The Mississippi River – which drains the lands of nearly 40% of the continental United Sates – carries an estimated 1.5 million metric tons of nitrogen pollution into the Gulf of Mexico each year. The resulting dead zone in the Gulf each summer is about the size of Massachusetts.

· 1.2 trillion gallons of untreated sewage, storm water, and industrial waste are discharged into US waters annually.

· Polluted drinking waters are a problem for about half of the world’s population. Each year there are about 250 million cases of water-based diseases, resulting in roughly 5 to 10 million deaths. Photo above: the Missouri River at Confluence Conservation Area north of St. Louis, August, 2008.


Now that I have spent this week thinking about water, I’m going to look at that flowing, clean, safe, abundant stream of water coming from my kitchen faucet with renewed admiration and respect. What can we do, what are we doing, to help preserve our nation’s rivers, lakes and seacoasts, and to clean up waters that have become polluted? To help less fortunate folks get access to clean and plentiful water? I realize I’m not doing nearly enough, and I will look for ways to do more. Photo: Ice closes the Mississippi River to barge traffic in January north of St. Louis.

Today is Blog Action Day, and the theme is WATER. Here is a link to the National Resources Defense Council web site, where you can find more information about how to clean up our rivers and other waters.

One final thing you can do is join me in signing a petition supporting the United Nations’ effort to bring clean, safe water to millions of people. Just click on the badge at the top of the right rail on this blog, and the widget will take you there.
Photo at right: Mississippi River above flood stage at Cape Girardeau, MO.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Coming Tomorrow--Blog Action Day

It's a good thing I committed to writing a blog on Oct. 15 for Blog Action Day, since I've not been posting anything else lately. Sometimes I'm not sure what I've been doing...this afternoon I went up to my sewing room and the last time I had moved the daily quilt block calendar was Sept. 23. I guess that is the last day I worked on anything...and it showed. I dusted and decluttered and finished an Optional Block for Quilt Guild next week, even though I'll have to miss the meeting.

I have my draft of my Blog Action Day post started...need to find some photos. This year's theme is water, and I'm writing about bodies of water I have known and loved. So please come back tomorrow and feel free to share your own memories of a time when a local stream behind the house was clean enough to play in!

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Quilt Blocks and Sweet Charity

Week before last involved a lot of quilt block making and quilt handling. The final block of the month challenge of the year at the Flower Valley Quilt Guild (October through September is the block challenge year) was to make a block using 25 charm squares from one's stash of material. The winner of the drawing for all the squares now gets to create a unique quilt. I would have loved to win them, but I didn't. I'm most fond of the center square that depicts a spider web!

Another guild project was to make 12-inch blocks using 1930s fabric or reproductions. Since I still have scads of 1930s material left over from the Linville family quilt, I created these four Churn Dash blocks. They are entered in a national drawing and I'm eligible to win a set of 12 blocks made by other quilters...but not sure when I'll hear about that. I kind of hope I don't win since the object is to use up this material, not acquire MORE of it!

Guild members have been making quilts to donate to charity all year long, and we had a "show and tell" of the completed ones at our September meeting. Since I am on the committee, I volunteered to store the finished quilts until they can be given away. Here, the 35 finished quilts (so far) occupied our dining room table while I sorted them by type. We have 10 twin-sized quilts on the left, that will go to a private, church supported home for youth with mental health issues. The stack on the right is 21 baby quilts that will go to a shelter for teenage mothers that is run by a Catholic charity. The 5 quilts stacked in front will join some others that will be donated to Project Hero which provides housing, substance abuse treatment and job training for homeless veterans. It is one program out of many sponsored through St. Louis' very effective homeless services organization, St. Patrick's Center.

Then I spent last weekend quilting, too, at the scrap quilt club. It was a wonderful day and I made progress on two lovely projects that are not quite yet ready for prime time, but stay tuned!

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Summer Just Dropped into Fall

It seems like just last week I was putting up the last of the Illinois peaches... but now it is totally apple season. On Sept. 11, a group of us from our church went to Eckert's farm in Belleville to pick our own apples. It was a little early, but that meant we got to pick Jonathons! They make great applesauce and pies, but they are even better as a lunch box treat.


Our group of intrepid apple pickers included, Mary, Madeline, Marty, Norm, Kim, DebE, Darrell, and little Annabelle. That's over 100 pounds of apples in those sacks!

Our warm weather persisted through most of the month, and even last Sunday, it was a challenge to keep everyone in the church sanctuary cool enough without air conditioning. (Thieves stole the copper from two of the church's outdoor units...and we are still replacing them, or rather the improved fence to protect the new ones.) Today we were hoping everyone would be warm enough. It's supposed to get to 47 tonight and although I'm not worried about the houseplants on the porch freezing, I know I have to start getting them sprayed and washed and moved into the house.

More signs that summer is over and fall is really here:
  • Robins were flocking on the golf course this evening. Scores of them.
  • Hummingbirds are still coming through, but the combative males are gone, and the remaining ones often linger a while and tank up before moving on. This morning I realized a feeder in the dining room window was empty after a hummingbird sat there and stared inside the house at Norm and me while we ate our breakfast. (Yes, we filled the feeder.)
  • Buds on the chrysanthemums are showing lots of color.
  • The tree frogs have finally fallen silent. Only the crickets give a night concert now.
  • Spiders are starting to reappear around the house.
  • Moles are very active, as are squirrels building winter nests.
  • The furnace, which is set at 72 degrees, came on for the first time this afternoon.
  • I wore socks with my sandals today for the first time since sometime last May.
October is coming soon, and the challenge is going to be fitting everything in. Church board and elders, knitting group, Regional assembly, book club, quilt guild, morning water exercise, Tai Chi 24 form class, Prime Timers, farewell to Orchard Crest camp, Norm's college class 50th reunion in Kansas, twice a week hand quilting sessions--and that's just the stuff we know about, now. Hope we make time to make some mores, drive up river to watch bird migrations, write some family history, read, declutter, start to plan for the holiday celebrations, write more letters and blogs, and savor the crisp fall skies.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Been Reading Again

This month I'm guilty of reading more than writing. Reading other blogs. Reading e-mail. Reading the morning paper. Reading a fascinating draft of a forthcoming book. Reading the tea leaves. Reading FaceBook. When I'm not reading, I have been cooking, or piecing patchwork, or quilting, or knitting, or sitting on the porch staring at the hummingbirds who are still coming to the feeders as they migrate. But I will write again, I promise. And post pictures. They are right there in the camera, waiting to be uploaded. I just need to commit the time to writing, instead of reading, instead of day dreaming.

Monday, September 06, 2010

A Summer's Labor, Summed Up

On this day, the official end of Summer, here's a reflection on what our summer has brought. On this blog I have chronicled some of our travels, to Kansas and North Carolina. There will be more to be shared in coming months, especially about family history research. But for us the essence of summer here at home is defined in part by the view from our front porch. One afternoon the sunlight sparkled on the oak leaves in just such a way that reminded me of the huge oxygen factories that trees are. We owe our breath to them!

We still try to garden, although our main crops in our sun-starved back yard are limited these days to a few tomato plants, and the ever-expanding raspberry patch. This was not a good tomato year in St. Louis. This is the full sum of our crop so far, sitting on the kitchen window sill. Two Jet Stars and a cherry tomato. There were a couple of others, but between heavy rain and scorching heat, they rotted on the vine. The vines are still living, and with cooler nights have started setting fruit again. They might ripen before frost, or they might not. These tomatoes were, by the way, delicious. We would have loved more just like them.

Back in the spring, some 20 women in my quilting guild started a scrap quilt club that meets on the 4th Saturday. I've posted a couple of completed quilts from that group before. This block is my first completed one for a large quilt called Cathedral Stars that is a club project. It is supposed to be finished by the end of October. Right.The goal of the club is to use up the scraps and leftovers in our stash. So far, so good. I haven't had to buy anything new except some Christmas border fabric so far.



My quilt guild also has a monthly block challenge. We all receive the same pattern, with general instructions about type of fabric to use, etc. Then at the meeting the completed ones are displayed and one person is drawn from a hat to receive the whole bunch to make into a quilt. This is my block for August. I'm working on the September one, now. A year ago, I promised myself that I would do all 12 blocks...and it looks like I'm going to make it. The reward will be a quarter yard of new fabric...something I really need!

Another promise I made at the beginning of 2010 was to finish the family reunion quilt top. I did that in June, and in late July the Spanish Lake quilters put it on the frame and started quilting. I get to join them on Tuesdays, and I really enjoy hand quilting, especially on this project. Here are Christine, Judy and Fran at work last week in Judy's bright and cheery bonus room. At this point, I think there is the equivalent of 20 blocks done, 44 to go. Or something like that.

On this Labor Day, we shared a leisurely dinner with our dear friends the Dixons, with conversation going well into the evening, and raspberry sundaes enjoyed by all. After they left, Norm and I repaired to our front porch to enjoy a cool breeze and listen to the tree frogs and crickets singing in the dark. For once, no mosquitoes were biting. If we had screens on the porch, it would be perfect for sleeping. The evening chorus still says summer, but the cool nip in the air says....fall is coming.

So what about fall. What's on the schedule? Well, water exercise resumes on Tuesday. Norm and I are both trying to learn Tai Chi 24 long form, also on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. After a month of sabbatical from meetings, our church is making up for lost time. The knitting group will start up in October. I've got several projects to finish for the church bazaar, which will be on Nov. 13 this year. Norm and I plan to go to Kansas for his college class 50th reunion in October, and we also have a church regional assembly coming up that month, too. There's a manuscript I want to read. A couple of them, actually. I think I might just blink and wake up tomorrow and find out it is already Thanksgiving, or even Christmas. We really are living that cliche about not knowing how we ever found time to work!

Saturday, September 04, 2010

Crickets, Tree Frogs and Clematis

On the weather cast the other night, the meteorologist announced that summer is over--as far as the weather stats are concerned. The end of summer always stirs up a sadness in me. Just in time, a cool front arrived Friday morning, and it is supposed to get down into the 50s tonight, as if to rub it in. So I'm listening to the crickets outside...they always are more numerous in late summer and early fall. There is one lone tree frog a few houses South of here...back in July their chorus was loud and late into the night. The white frost of fall-flowering wild clematis is adorning fences, another sign of the changing season. School has been in session for two weeks now. Newly hatched caterpillars of some swallowtail species are finishing off my potted parsley. There are more signs of fall than I can shake a stick at. And I still haven't re-potted all of the houseplants! Labor Day Weekend is here and there's no denying that even though warm days are still to come, fall is in the air. Guess it's time to call the people who inspect the furnace.