I DIDN'T FALL OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH

The ads in the paper may be few and far between these days but there's always something to do around the place. I'll regale you with tales of paint and sandpaper some other time but this picture was just too cute to keep to myself.

Bandit loves to play with a feathered cat toy. A bright, purple feathered cat toy. she also loves to "kill" the little braided area rug. It's just about the only thing she is allowed to "kill."

I watched her do it and I still don't know how she managed to get herself wrapped up in the rug. She not only did a fair imitation of a hot dog on a bun, she promptly fell asleep. She looked a little confused after she managed to unwrap herself. She had a "WTF, what happened" look on her face when she finally got loose. Of course she had to spend the next hour grooming to get all her fur back where it belonged. LOL

THE GREEN MIDWINTER

Nothing really profound tonight. I guess I’m still suffering from holiday let down. Anyway, the Christmas decorations are down for the year and the weeds; well the weeds are doing very nicely thank you. They’re alive and well thank you very much. So perky and green while the rest of us are singing “mud, mud, glorious mud” to whatever tune is running through our heads at the time.

Here it is January 6 and we’re just past mid winter. There’s still snow on the ground up and north and more predicted for tonight. And here? It was almost sixty degrees today and I spent almost an hour chasing weeds this morning.

Funny, all it takes is a little mild weather, a little sunshine and those little suckers grow like gangbusters. Mostly chickweed and baby dandelions. I suppose if I told them I was really happy to see them and had a use for them they’d pack their bags and head for the hills. Is it my imagination or do the plants you don’t want grow better than the ones you do want sometimes?

It’s easy to work right now; the ground is nice and damp and easy to work. Well, fairly easy. Have trowel, will dig. I found one viola blooming, a yellow primrose trying to set a bud, the winter heather is blooming, disposed a bunch of slugs and snails, and noticed that a lot of the bulbs are sending little green emissaries to check out the possibilities upstairs. Be careful guys, life does not come with a rewind button. And it is only January 6.

Anyway, the birds were singing their little feathered heads off. We have three kinds of chickadees, juncos, bushtits, and the odd finch of siskin making pretty regular stops at the feeders. It’s a kick to watch them. The juncos are mostly ground feeders, but they’ll use the hanging tray feeder. I guess it’s because they can stand in it pick through the seeds. The ones on the ground look like tiny chickens as they basically check out the north end of the yard. The squirrels are really messy, big news, when they do their standing their heads act at the critter seed feeder. So these little guys are basically the clean up crew.

We finally moved everything so it’s either hanging from the dogwood or between it and the white andromeda shrub. And the bushtits are a riot. They are so tiny. It’s hard to imagine how something so small manages during the winter weather. I think I’ve seen snowflakes almost as big as they are. Anyway, the little guys basically bounce between tree, shepherd’s crook, feeders and shrub. They’re right side up, upside down and sideways while they wait their turn at the suet stations.

This morning was a nice change from the free weights, the treadmill and the resumes. I’ll have to hang onto that for awhile. It’s supposed to start raining again tonight. The forecast is for rain, and a lot of it further north. Warm temperatures, rain and lots of snow are not a good mix. Here’s hoping it’s not as bad as they’re predicting. ‘Cause if it is, what was frozen will be floating out to sea.

CHRISTMAS EVE

Lucky for us this Christmas Eve that this is what the front yard looked like.........late last week. The southern Willamette Valley has been spared the snow and ice blessing the rest of the Pacific Northwest.


We had our Christmas dinner Sunday with my my football playing nephew. And he made it safely home to Portland Monday. His dad works for Sysco in Wilsonville. And luckily Sysco is close to I5. I honestly don't know if he was able to drive his car all the way home of if he parked his car and rode home with his dad in the family's big ass Ford. SUV's do have their place. The kids have between one to three FEET of snow at their place.


This is not normal for this part of the country, even for this time of year. IN this part of the country snow is usually measured in inches; not feet. Especially on the valley floor. We’ve lucked out because there are hills south of Salem and I think the coldest air just couldn’t make it this far south. You have my sympathy up there, but frankly I wouldn’t trade places.


Seattle has been especially bad because so many of the hills the city is built on are pretty steep and as of this morning Portland was chain up or else. And we really wish you'd just stay home and avoid the ruts in the ice on the roads. And I'm not telling Lisa anything she doesn't know. I do pray you guys don't pick up any more snow tonight.


Anyway, the unfortunate marriage of Pacific rain and extremely cold air leaking through the Great Northwest Wind Tunnel has made for one unholy mess north of Salem. The Eastern Oregon folks weren't planning to come down because of some health problems anyway and our possible plans to go East were tanked by the weather.

Now all the Portland contingent has to do is get Jon to PDX on Christmas Day so he can fly south to join the team for the Holiday Bowl. At least it'll be warm in San Diego.


So it's a nice, quiet Christmas Day at home for Mom, me and the cats. Thank heaven for telephones and instant messaging. At least the goodie box we sent east by UPS made it to Umatilla before I84 was closed over the weekend. When semi's can't make it; you know it's bad.
So, I hope everybody is safe and warm tonight. Hug everybody extra close even if you have to do it in your dreams.

THE EDIBLE SCHOOLYARD

School gardens aren’t a new idea. Upscale Montessori and Waldorf classrooms have incorporated hands on learning for decades. But, until recently, you didn’t find very many school gardens in big city schools.

The path to this edible schoolyard starts in Berkley’s Chez Panisse restaurant. Co-founder Alice Waters is one of the pioneers in the use of fresh, local, in season ingredients. The restaurant models its offerings around the small French eateries with menus that reflect what was available in the local markets that morning.

Add a local middle school principal less than happy about a story in the local paper that quoted Ms Winter’s remarks about the appearance of grounds around his school and you get……fresh veggies. In 1993 Martin Luther King Middle School had nearly one thousand students from widely divergent economic and ethnic backgrounds. The school cafeteria was closed; it was too small. Students could buy microwaved or package items at a location in the parking lot. The school was nearly surrounded by blacktop.

The principal wrote Alice a note. She asked him to lunch. When the idea for the school garden was broached “she was already at step ten.” It took nearly two years but part of the black top has been replaced by a one acre organic garden. The students incorporate what they learn in the garden with their science, math and language classes.

The cafeteria has been renovated and is also a class room. The kids learn how to prepare what they’ve grown, cook it and serve it. Approximately one third of the schools students prepare and share what they’ve grown each week. They sit down at tables with tablecloths and flowers and share what they’ve prepared.

Along the way the students learn where their food comes from. Their garden is a little oasis in the city. They learn there is a cycle from worm to soil to food to the kitchen and back again.The kids even build simple fences and arbor type structures with their teachers. Each ninety minute garden class is followed the next day with journal entries. Many of the class room lessons are ecology based and may include studying the effects of pesticides, composting, or growing earthworms.

Link to the Edible Schoolyard website. Includes information about the garden, lesson plans, and some recipes.

Cross posted in Women On.

A CALORIE IS A CALORIE, NO MATTER WHERE IT COMES FROM

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…..wait that’s another story; but it seems almost that long since I took chemistry in high school. That’s where I first learned all about calories. Not the calories in chocolate, but as a unit of measurement. A calorie is the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of one cubic centimeter of liquid, in the lab it’s usually water, one degree centigrade. That energy is stored in the fuel you’re using and a calorie is a calorie whether it’s stored in chocolate or oil.

If the calorie you’re interested in happens to come from a steak it may have taken up to fifty four fossil fuel calories to create the one calorie in the steak that you can actually benefit from. That fossil fuel was used to plant, harvest, process and ship the grain used as cattle feed, usually a feedlot. The fancy term is CAFO, or concentrated animal feeding operation. Then more fossil fuel was used to transport the critters to the feed lots, process them and ship them to market. Then we drove to the store and bought the beautifully shrink wrapped cuts of beef, but that fuel almost looks like a drop in the bucket.

One pound of conventionally raised feed lot beef may have used up to forty five thousand fossil fuel calories by the time it reaches your plate. At approximately thirty one thousand calories in a gallon of gasoline, do the math. And that’s just one pound of beef. According to one source on the internet Americans consumed more than twenty seven BILLION pounds of beef in 2005. While the calorie counts for beef may vary by the cut, that’s still a hell of a lot of fuel just to put a piece of prime rib on my dinner menu. And that’s just the beef. I haven’t added chicken, turkey or pork to the mix. And I love good beef. It's just that the steak looks awfully small next to all those barrels of oil.

Cattle, pigs, chickens and turkeys were designed to eat grass, bugs, weeds, acorns etc. I have this sinking feeling that switching everybody to the one hundred mile a gallon Chevy Volt (if it ever gets to production but that’s another story) won’t help much as long as we keep raising grain to feed to the critters that feed us.

Information obtained on the net and from Frances Lappe’s Hope’s Edge

WALKING WITH HOPE

Has it really been over four years since Lisa over at Coming to Terms and Women on encouraged me to become a citizen in the land of the Blog? Granted I haven’t been posting much lately. Work and then not work. I’m in good company; over a half million of us lost our jobs last month.

I spent the better part of a month fighting off some bug or another. Not enough to knock me out just enough to leave me feeling “bleah.” But, what I really had was a colossal case of writer’s block. I couldn’t figure out how to work what I was reading into either of my general journals. I toyed with the idea of starting another journal. Yah right, girl you can’t keep what you’ve got active, plus keeping up with Women On.

So, Cottage is getting a new name. Things are looking pretty hopeless right now, but I’ve been reading about people who are chipping away at that hopelessness one garden, one farmers’ market, one seed bank, and one micro loan at a time. So, I’m going to see if I can tell some of their ories. So, welcome to Walking With Hope.

Pandora wasn't supposed to open that damned box, but she did. And when she worked up the courage to peek inside again she found the one thing that hadn't escaped before she slammed down the lid the first time. She found Hope and she set it free.

I welcome anyone with similar stories to tell to join the Walk.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

We were invaded by Portland yesterday. I’m really having trouble getting used to being the second shortest person in the room when all the natives are visiting. The shortest member of that family is my sister……..and she’s five nine. It was fun. We all ate too much, of course. The standard turkey and the trimmings. We do make a very good pumpkin pie if I do say so.



Mom sent a healthy supply of the leftovers out the door with sis, including a pie or the foot ball playing nephew. He was on his way to another dinner with some friend. Then it’s on to Corvallis. The Civil War game between the U of O and OSU is tomorrow and frankly………I’m having trouble deciding who to root for. OSU is tied for first in the Pac 10 conference and if they win they go to the Rose Bowl. Oregon is number three in the conference and win or lose they’ll spend the holidays somewhere other than Eugene, just not in Pasadena. Who’d have thought I’d end up thinking “what the hell, I’ll root for both teams.”



It was fun watching dad and the older boys trying to teach their “little” brother how to play cribbage. Little? Number three will probably end up the tallest of the lot. Mom and dad used to play the game a lot, but bless me if I really understand how the game is scored. The kids brought a couple of movies down with them. We got a kick out of a film called WALL E. A futuristic story about a banged up recycling robot and a planetary probe with a definite shoot first and ask questions later attitude. A nice little film with some good laughs.



And a good time was had by all. Truly something to be thankful for in these uncertain times.

STAR NURSERY

A shot from the Hubble telescope of a star cluster called NGC 602. Located about 200,000 light years away the stunning gas clouds surround bright young stars just out of their birth clouds. The solar winds from the young stars are pushing the gas clouds into fantastic shapes. I'm not sure if it looks like a strange fringed flower or some fantastic space monster out to "eat" the stars.

This picture is almost restful. I love these pictures.

STAR FIRE

Shot from one of my favorite websites, Astronomy Picture of the Day.


This is a Hubble shot of the Lagoon Nebula from 1995. A fantastic shot of dust and gas lit by the young stars you can barely see through the dust. A shot of almost every colors of the palate. The nebula lies about 5,000 light years away in the constellation Sagitarius.

It's almost an impressionist painting. I could get lost in this for hours.

RESTING UP

Bandit resting up after surviving the Invincible Purple Feather Duster of Death.

Actually it's a feathery kitty toy that's seen better days. It's funny how each one reacts to it. Bandit attacks, Lucky tries to love it to death and Misty just watches. She watches it so closely that if you swirl it she tries to keep focussed on it. I'm not sure how she keeps from getting dizzy, because I get dizzy just watching her. LOL

BACK TO THE FEEDERS

Now that the weather is cooling down the birds are back at the feeders. Juncos are usually ground feeders but this little guy was checking out the supplies in the home made feeder. Good thing because the ones on the ground didn't show up as well as this little guy did. I mean I could see them in the picture but it wouldn't post very well.

Incidentally the feeder is plastic plant pot base. I used and awl to punch some holes in the bottom so water will drain out. Then s hooks and chains to hold it. Took maybe half an hour to make. The squirrels hand from the branch, use one paw to pull up a chain and use the other to grab the seeds. They are very, very good at it. If a little messy.

EXPERIMENT IN THE KITCHEN

They aren't the prettiest breadsticks I've ever seen. You won't find these at the Olive Garden. LOL But I did find a recipe for a soft breadstick. We aren't talking Artisan bread here. They've got milk, shorting and eggs in the dough. But, they're so good. It's a version of Challah dough. I've been trying to do something like this off and on since I worked at that little bakery in the mall. I haven't quite worked out how to make garlic sticks yet. As in garlic in the dough, not on the dough. And these are really good with cheddar cheese melted on top. Really, really good actually.

IS IT SPRING YET?

It’s funny how I start out heading one direction with an entry and it ends up someplace else, so someplace else.

It’s the between time of the year in the Southern Willamette valley. In a way it’s an odd time too. They grow a lot of grass seed and forage in the fields around down and up the little valleys. It’s been harvested, plowed and reseeded. If we get enough rain and sun this time of year some of the fields turn a glorious emerald green. It feels just a little schizo driving by the fields on the way home from work. One field will be bright green while the pasture next to it is still autumn brown.

Most of the trees haven’t started to turn yet, but they’re getting a cast to the color that says “it won’t be long.” Funny thing is, a few trees have made the change and are on their way to leafless. Our dogwood is half the way to leafless while the maples on the hill behind the house are still green.
The ornamental trees I drive by on the way home are flaming orange on their way to leafless and the poplar plantation out by the airport is still green. Go figure. And when we do finally get some really great color going, we get a herking rain and windstorm and all the leaves turn into mulch.

Goddess, I am so not ready for winter this year. I don’t know if the it’s the crappy economy or the endless political campaigning, I just want to skip winter and head straight into spring.

We had company this weekend and I didn't get my usual dose of dirt under my nails. Maybe what I need is a good session in the garden.

SHORT POLITICAL ENTRY

over in Women On.