Tag Archives: trees

Dear Quarantine Diary – Week #41

14 Thursday Oct 2021

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Dear Diary – It’s Day 6 of turkey leftovers, and while I’m enjoying being lazy pulling out a nightly leftover buffet and telling the guys to “heat what you want”, I’m pretty sure their enthusiasm for turkey is waning. I’m sure they’ll perk up when I tell them there’s more…in the freezer!

This year only Little Guy and I made the trip to my folks, but I shopped ahead to leave a turkey and all the trimmings for Hubby to cook on the weekend. I even baked him a spice cake. From a mix and a can. This “Martha Stewart” needed to save her energy for the holiday traffic, and we encountered some.

But like every good baker, I had to taste-test it. Now Little Guy thinks it’s amusing to move or hide my food when I’m not looking. It’s frustrating because I can’t always remember if I finished what I was eating, or I dropped it, and I’m worried that I’m going to find perfectly good chocolate melted into the couch. I worry more about the chocolate than our burlap sack couch.

Thursday night, he made a serious error in judgement. He left his piece of cake on the coffee table and wandered into the kitchen. I grabbed his plate and tried shoving the whole thing under the coffee table, but the cake was too tall. Don’t worry…I cleaned the icing with my sock. So I tucked the plate on the shelf underneath the coffee table, and crossed my feet in front of it.

Little Guy came back, paused, looked around a bit, and finally reached for Hubby’s plate. Without moving my eyes from the tv, I said, “ that’s dad’s cake”. So he returns to the kitchen and I hear intermittent movement and pausing before he strolls back to the living room, looks at table, and goes back to the kitchen. I’m trying so hard to pretend I’m watching tv and not smirk. I hear more movement and pauses, cupboard doors, even drawers, opening and closing, followed by the fridge door opening and closing, twice!! Hubby was struggling not to giggle but a snicker leaked out and that tipped him off. It was probably the best 5 minutes of the year!

The next night, we split town as soon as school was over. Traffic was heavy but moving. I took a rest stop and filled up with gas before waiting in the drive-thu for 30 minutes for 2 boxes of french fries. The fast food restaurant was severly understaffed, and the wait inside would have been longer.

While most of the birds who frequented my parents’ diner have flown the coop, Hoover the chipmunk is still around and still living up to his name. Not only is he covering every square inch for every crumb, but his tail stands straight up like the handle of upright vacuum (except in every photo I took), and, like a water divining stick, it never ceases twitching.

He’s putting on a little pre-winter, post-covid weight

Dad mowed the lawn Saturday afternoon, and very carefully mowed around giant mushrooms growing in the yard so I could take some pics. I went out the next morning, but the grass clippings had dried on the white tops. These things seriously looked like flattened coconuts!

This kind won’t take you to Wonderland!

We had our turkey dinner Saturday evening. I don’t know if it was a boy or a girl; apparently we sacrifice both. Dessert, of course, included 2 kinds of pie for dessert: pumpkin and green tomato. A slice of each, please; I must follow tradition!

I was still blissfully snoozing in bed Sunday morning when my dad brought me my phone. He said it was chiming. It turns out it wasn’t my phone but an alarm on my iPad. Which the settings said was turned off. I had set it for Saturday morning so I could go grocery shopping (yes, on my holiday), but it had failed to go off. That was my fault – I set it for 9 p.m.

It was a good weekend, filled with good food, a few games, and a lot of doing nothing! But all good things must come to an end, and we hit the road again Monday morning. We were only 20 minutes into our two and a half hour journey when traffic started to slow. By 40 minutes, we were parked and not thinking happy thoughts, when a fire truck screamed by us on the shoulder. We had just passed an exit, which was lined up all the way to the highway. Now we knew why. We crawled along patiently for another thirty minutes, trying not to think about peeing, and seeing no sign of an accident or an exit. Normally, we would have passed the next exit in 5 minutes. Then, as if someone flipped a switch, we were cruising over 100 km/hr again. It slowed in places again but never that bad. I had a guy in a truck pulling a trailer cut me off, twice. Just so I didn’t feel bad, I saw him cut other people off too. He never shoulder-checked!

Hubby is on vacation this week, which makes little difference to me. He occupies the same space whether he’s at work or not! We got a text last night from his brother saying that his father would be at our house around noon. He had asked Hubby to go with him to a neighbouring city to pick up a tool and I hope the 6 hour drive is worth it! While they’re out, I’m going to sneak in some video games. I hope it’s worth it!

We missed Big Guy, who was serving in his church on Sunday. I’m proud of him, but also warning him. He needs to book off Christmas! He’s promised to visit soon.

Big Guy recently sent me some photos from his work site… Most people laugh when I say he climbs trees for a living, but his kind of work makes me both proud of him and terrified for him.

It’s not just the height…it’s the hydro lines. And the sharp power tools. I’ve watched CSI. I know what a chainsaw can do! At times, it’s the height, the tools AND the hydro lines during a heat wave, a tornado, or an ice storm. He may be a grown, skilled worker, but he’s also my baby…with ADD, hanging from a rotting tree branch. I love him.

“Ok, now just pull back and let’s see if I can slingshot over to catch that Ol’ Roadrunner”

Wilderness Wednesday: Apple Blossoms

19 Wednesday May 2021

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I love better to count time from spring to spring; it seems to me far more cheerful to reckon the year by blossoms than by blight.

Donald G. Mitchell

The artist is the confidant of nature, flowers carry on dialogues with him through the graceful bending of their stems and the harmoniously tinted nuances of their blossoms. Every flower has a cordial word which nature directs towards him.

Auguste Rodin

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

Anais Nin

Happy Wednesday!

Wilderness Wednesday: First Snow

25 Wednesday Nov 2020

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Sunday’s snow wasn’t the first of the season, but it felt like it…because we actually had to shovel and it has lasted for days!

One tenacious new branch in the lilac tree refuses to give up summer, proudly displaying unyielding green leaves, while every other tree in our back yard is completely bare.

Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.

Mahatma Gandhi

CFFC: Sense of Touch

29 Wednesday Apr 2020

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Nature invites us to experience it with all of our senses, including our sense of touch. Silky and smooth, hard and rough, hot or cold, fluffy, furry or fuzzy. Well, maybe not everything should be touched – poison ivy and bumblebees, for example. Even isolated at home, there are wonders in nature to be savoured, if you take the time to look for them.

snow

No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn. – Hal Borland

moss

Moss is popular for her unusual beauty, but what distinguishes her is that she is accessible and down to earth. – Rita Clifton

bark

Green moss shines there with ice encased; The long grass bends its spear-like form; And lovely is the silvery scene When faint the sun-beams smile.    –Robert Southey

This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, stand like druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Happy Wednesday!

This is my post for Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Sense of Touch