Friday

I had to take a couple more shots of the tree mentioned yesterday. It may be a couple days past its flowering splendor, but you get the gist of it in these two shots anyway. This strays from the format of taking pictures of only things that are in my yard or in my home, but I just had to show you.
So it's 50 degrees and 7 PM on a Friday night. I'm already in my PJ's
happy to have the work week over.
Tonight I am indulging myself in a night of reading, probably my greatest passion- though not my only one.
Michael and I just returned from having dinner at a local Chinese restaurant, so I didn't have to cook tonight. Yeah! Why is it that Chinese restaurants make such stout drinks? I was only able to drink 1/2 of my planter's punch and stopped myself because I was already getting a buzz on. They have letters on their drink menu next to each of the drinks. I think it's L for light, M for medium, and H for heavy. I don't know how anyone could belt back more than one H in a night. I know Michael surrendered the keys right away when he ordered his second. But it's scary when you look in the lounge and there are all these people drinking one after another, and then driving home. Damn, glad we ate dinner early.
So anyway, hope you have a great weekend. 

Thursday

I have made it a habit to pack my camera with me when I drive to work in the morning. A lot of times I've thought about stopping to take a picture of one thing or another, a perfect example being this tree in the front yard of a house at the bottom of the hill. I think it might be a flowering cherry or a weeping something, doesn't matter, but it has these gracefully sweeping branches with delicate pink flowers, and then very unexpectedly, big glass Christmas balls hanging from them. The decorations have been hanging on this tree for two years now. I have stopped before and taken pictures of it,I'm not sure if I think it's pretty or ugly. The paint has worn off some of the ornaments so they have this aluminum shine to them, but some are still red or blue or green. These people are clearly saying, "this is my tree" - and no one's going to disagree with them. But I wonder if they get calls from people asking them to "take down their damn Christmas decorations", or if any one has been inspired to do something uniquely their own as well . I like the trees in my yard just how they are, I hope that doesn't make a statement that rubs anyone the wrong way. 

Wednesday

It was tough getting up this morning. Michael knew better than to attempt conversation and just tried to avoid me each time I bounced off a wall. Coffee helped a little, got me to the driveway and into the car.
I stayed up to watch the Fox 10 o'clock News last night. They recorded a houseconcert we were at a few weeks ago. Jimmy LaFave was playing that night. Michael and I were in a few scenes. Maple was watching it at her house and called to talk with me while it was on. We got kind of giggly.
The top photo I shot out in the woods behind the barn. It was kind of cool because not much of anything happens back there except beat up old trees and vines trying to choke each other out. I looked up and these flowers were blooming in the thick of it.
The bottom shot is Raven. She was out on the deck and heard something out in the woods. Her yellow eyes looked so cool, and I liked the angle because you usually look down on pets instead of up at them.
I actually took quite a few photos today. These were two of my favorites. 

Tuesday

Rex and Raven love following me around while I take these pictures. First the wind will blow, moving my perfect shot... and I wait patiently for it to die back down again. Then one cat or the other moves in for some attention...and so I wait again...and then the lighting changes because it's a cloudy day. And then... I see it, the shot I worked for.
I was thinking about this at work today, what to look for, and how hard it is to see something with new eyes again. When did we stop doing this?
I hate being inside for so many hours every day. Everything is concrete and sharp corners and sounds bang off walls, there is no breeze. Time hammers into me, spontaneity has no room here. 

Monday

Another rainy day in New England. But we're all wearing sunny smiles because we know we don't have to shovel this form of precipitation!As soon as I got home from work today I made a quick detour by the last, precious, perfectly baked, piece of strawberry rhubarb pie and grabbed my camera to try and catch some raindrops on my flowers before it started coming down in buckets again.(And then I ran back in and devoured that slice before anyone else could get to it! )
The only good thing about returning to work after a vacation is reminding myself that I'm putting my wages into a savings account. I remember when we were kids we used to have Christmas Club savings accounts at Marine Midland Bank. All year we'd save up and then, on one magic day, in the week before Christmas, we'd cash out our accounts and spend every penny of the $5 we had saved to buy Christmas gifts for one another. I always bought Deb a plastic tube filled with fragrant bubblebath that looked like the stuff they put in Pixi Stix. That bubble bath tube had to have a flower on top or I'd just leave it on the shelf and move on. Mom always got a book of Lifesavers from me. We usually did our shopping in Woolworths or Kresges, but sometimes we paid a visit to Danny's Discount. We knew how to stretch a dollar back in those days.
So anyway, I made fried chicken with mashed potatoes and brocolli for dinner tonight. And I already ate my dessert before dinner so that's out of the way, the dishes are done, the cats have been fed and all is right with the world, for now.

 

Today I will begin a journal that will display some of the beauty that is in my yard and in my home. Right now it is raining lightly and the temperature is a chillly 46 degrees. Michael is burning off a lot of the brush from trees that fell over the winter. It is a Sunday, so of course I have been napping. The last day of my Spring break is inevitably sliding away. All my daffodils are in bloom now and some of the tulips as well.
I tried to capture some rain drops on these daffodils - but failed!