Here she comes...the autumn magical fairy

If Jack Frost can make the pumpkins get ripe...he also may influence all the wonderful colors in Autumn. We've passed the equinox back on the 22nd. And I've been looking for colors. But I decided that credit should be due to a magical fairy who might fly about and touch trees with color.

Whoever is doing it, they are early in these parts.

Goldenrod is having a great year, everywhere I went.

Oh, you noticed this isn't goldenrod. I don't know its name however...

The bradford pear is starting to turn, and my car usually is parked a spot away from the one in this photo.

The north side of a kind of maple has these deep red leaves...or maybe I''m wrong about it being a maple.

Bank parking lot in downtown Black Mountain usually has some pretty colors, and one tree is ahead of the other!

I live on the north side of these trees, and I think the colors start on the south side - maybe.

A bit of sunshining through the trees, points out the presence of yellow leaves, which I don't see usually from my window.

The view from my balcony, or living room windows, now shows some mountain blue through the maple trees, which are loosing leaves pretty fast these days!

 

Going down a path means coming back up

We went to visit Graveyard Fields on the Blue Ridge Parkway last week.

The map at the entrance shows a loop with the first site to enjoy being some falls, at 0.2 miles downhill from where we start. The stairs lead down to a paved path, which also goes down at a steady pitch. It didn't take us very long to walk down a fifth of a mile, and before reaching the second and third sets of stairs, we heard the water gurgling over rocks. I wouldn't call it a falls, but a cascade, actually.

Of course going back up was quite a task, and I huffed and puffed and stopped to rest as much as I needed to. Helen was keeping pace with me, and she's (ahem) 3 years older than I am, and in better shape.

Some young boys were actually going into the water off down the river a ways. 

I did walk out on that spit of rock to do a small ritual, the one where you throw a rock into running water and give away anything that is no longer of use to yourself. It's similar to the Jewish cleansing gesture to give away sins. As a Pagan, I don't believe in sins, but certainly have a lot of things that I accumulate to carry around psychologically.

It was easy enough to get to my rock by crossing the bridge and going down those steps.

From the bridge, I loved seeing the water flow and the colors of rocks it had carved through many years. I have more photos of the water and rocks to share another post.

We both noticed the little white area of water through a hole in the rocks in the distance to the right.  There the water was perfectly still and white. But we didn't go any further along the path, which loops around behind the trees to the left.  Maybe next time...

A young woman volunteered to take our picture, so we posed...but it's a bit hard to see our smiles! I'm on the left, and Helen is on the right.

It was great to get back to the top and finally get to the car, and we wished we had brought water bottles. But we didn't, and thus just rode home along the parkway and managed to keep on talking. Remember we wore masks in the car as well as hiking!

Lunch on high

 Up on the Blue Ridge Parkway, that is...

While waiting to go to the dining room at the Pisgah Inn, we strolled on the viewing area where many rockers invite people to enjoy the view. There weren't that many people, but we never sat in rockers. We had a reservation and had noted (can't have anything but a request) that we'd like to be by the windows.

This is the very small Lodge with rooms for overnight visits. 

So we climbed the stairs up to the dining room a few minutes before our reservation came...and had time to browse a bit in the gift shop.

And we got a wonderful table looking out at the bluish tinted mountains in the distance.

Helen and I had worn our masks the whole way driving there, and didn't take them off until we started eating.  Unfortunately though the distance toward one direction to the next table was almost 5 feet, the one behind us was only 3 feet and apparently had a reservation for 3, with one person just a couple of feet from us. So we moved to the far side of our nice big round table, which provided enough room that we weren't breathing on anyone, nor were they. This was the first time I'd eaten in a restaurant "inside" as a COVID avoiding person, and I sure wanted my distance. So did Helen.

We enjoyed our salads, and our desert of French Silk Pie, and forgot to take photos of them. I fell off my diet with the pie, but avoided the dairy of a scoop of ice cream with it. That didn't used to get included. But Helen had hers.

The Pisgah Inn is located above 5000 feet, (as shown above in a photo from their site on line) and the mountain can be seen from many places in Asheville. There are also hiking trails, and a campground, which we weren't interested in.

TODAY'S QUOTE:

If we live in the moment, we are not in time. 

If you think, "I'm a retired person. I've retired from my role,"

 you are looking back at your life. It's retrospective; it's life in the rear-view mirror.

 If you're young, you might be thinking, "I have my whole life ahead of me. 

This is what I'll do later." That kind of thinking is called time-binding.

 It causes us to focus on the past or the future 

and to worry about what comes next.

Getting caught up in memories of the past or worrying about the future

 is a form of self-imposed suffering. Either retirement or youth 

can be seen as moving on, time for something different, something new.

 Aging is not a culmination. Youth isn't preparation for later.

 This isn't the end of the line or the beginning.

Now isn't a time to look back or plan ahead. 

It's time to just be present. The present is timeless. 

Being in the moment, just being here with what is,

 is ageless and eternal​.​ 

 Ram Dass

Lunch al fresca

 

Met with friends for lunch outside at Black Mountain Bistro. We all brought home some of the food we didn't finish. And we caught up on the doings of each other. It was fun, on a coolish fall day with little heater fires in small portable fire pits. Our fifth member of the group took this photo for us. Thanks, Judy!

And here's a shot of the left overs from my salad which I enjoyed the next day at home!

Two of my friends split a desert of coconut cake, but this amount went home as a left over as well...but not to my house!

Here's a cute video song about RBG...pretty good! (Blogger can't find the video as YouTube, but here is the link).

I am Ruth!

Happy birthday Bill Murray

 "It was in Paris that Murray studied the work of the Greco-Armenian Sufi mystic G.I. Gurdjieff, who describes a path to enlightenment called "the way of the sly man," one who makes maximum use of "the world, the self, and the self that is observing everything." This concept, according to the Wisecrack video, has become integral to Murray's distinctive way of not just acting, but being.

Gage Skidmore, via Wikimedia Commons

Here's the whole article in Open Culture the-life-work-philosophy-of-bill-murray... including 3 short video interviews.

But what caught my attention was the paragraph (as quoted above) where his philosophyis described as being like Gurdjieff . Somehow, when I studied Gurdjieff, and the books of his followers, I never laughed like I do watching Bill Murray. Must be why I dropped that way of thinking...though I do like how Mindfulness is kind of an offshoot of it. PAY ATTENTION!

So Happy birthday, last Monday actually, Bill Murray.

And since I'm publishing this on Sat, I'm going to have some Sepia Saturday stuff too. 

Isn't that Bill Murray over on the right in the photo below? 

He's totally missing the puckered lips of his multitasking date, who not only is ready for the kiss, but is holding both a cigarette and a drink. She must have been a bit disappointed in the eye/cheek/nose kiss. However, she does have another chance, since the guy behind her has his arm around her, and is smiling at the camera...or is that leering? 

Well, it was 1954, and somehow the British Army was "On the Rhine," and having a Christmas party. We all know how Christmas parties go. Actually this is the second time this photo has been a Sepia Saturday prompt. I can't find whatever it was, if I actually posted something from this prompt....and I looked at these blogs back to 2013. It must have been on one of my other blogs. And I don't choose to go down that rabbit hole.

Do come over to Sepia Saturday, to see what other people have discovered in their historic photos!

And I hope Bill Murray has many happy returns and that his 70th year is totally awesome.

And if you remember how I snuck into my last Sepia Saturday post, information from an article about plastics...well, here's more. We need to get on top of this!! (So here's the entire article from Treehugger.)

Plastic Reduction Targets Are Far Too Low, Study Says

Even if goals are met, a cargo ship's worth of plastic will enter oceans daily by 2030.

By 

Katherine Martinko

Updated September 22, 2020

You know all those promises that governments are making to curb single-use plastics and get a handle on plastic waste within the next five to 10 years? Unfortunately, they're not going to do much, even if they do take the shape of formal policies. They may be backed by good intentions, but the level of effort required to "fix" this problem is so extraordinary that current governmental reduction targets are completely off.

This disappointing news comes from a new study published in the journal Science. It is the result of a collaboration between researchers at the University of Toronto, University of Georgia, the Ocean Conservancy, and numerous other international institutions that have come together as the SESYNC (National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center) working group. The group assessed the environmental impact of three plastic management strategies – reduction, waste management, and environmental recovery – at different levels of effort to figure out plastic emissions for 173 countries by the year 2030.

What they found was that, even if current government targets for plastic reduction were met (and that's optimistic), there would be as much as 53 million metric tons of plastic entering the world's oceans annually. That is roughly equivalent to one ship's cargo getting dumped daily in the ocean – obviously far too much.

If annual ocean plastic waste were to be shrunk down to less than 8 million metric tons, which is the number that Dr. Jenna Jambeck discovered back in 2015 when this subject made global headlines (and that was considered unacceptably high at the time), extreme efforts would be required. The SESYNC working group determined that 

"plastic production and waste would need to be reduced by 25-40%; all countries would need to properly manage 60–99% of all their waste [including in low-income economies]; and society would need to recover 40% of the remaining plastics that do enter the environment."

To put that final number into perspective, the Ocean Conservancy hosts an annual International Coastal Cleanup that attracts volunteers from over 100 countries every September. To recover 40% of plastics that enter the environment would mean one billion people participating in the cleanup event – a 90,000% increase from 2019. In other words, wonderful-sounding, but unrealistic.

Dr. Chelsea Rochman, assistant professor at the University of Toronto and senior advisor to the Ocean Conservancy, said the study has shown we need to be doing far more and don't have a moment to lose:

"Even if we achieve our most ambitious plastics reduction and recycling targets, the amount of plastic waste entering aquatic ecosystems could double by 2030. If we fail and continue along a ‘business as usual’ path, it could quadruple. The study lays bare that current commitments are not enough to stem the tide of plastic entering our aquatic ecosystems."

Governments do not seem to grasp the level of ambition they need to fight this problem, and should be willing to go to more extreme measures to do so. It's something for individuals to realize as well, and to keep in mind when making shopping decisions that relate to plastic. This is a fight that matters a lot, that needs to be taken more seriously, and that requires action now. 

Graduation day

 Yesterday we had our final day in this 9 week program, of meeting twice each week for 4 hours.

I am really sad that this phase of my recovery is over. I've gotten to know the other 8 people pretty well, as we each have endeavored to work our muscles more, eat some plant based foods that we had never had before, shared our feelings with folks who were strangers 10 weeks ago, and practiced stress reduction/meditation techniques together for an hour each day. 

 As always happens with NEW BLOGGER (drat, darn and sassafrass) these photos below are in reverse order!

Some of the guys in our class "cohort" and I think I didn't take this one holding my phone camera still.

A couple of the gals in our cohort...as well as Jim, in red, who got to finish this his second time through the program (due to illness the first time.)

Staff members, Tamara, Michelle, Jay, Kelly and Chris, standing talking with us, as we had group photos taken.

Chris, Kelly, Jan and Michelle (with Tamara behind and above her) gathered with us to have photos taken.

Patrick, Jay, Jordan, Michelle and Tamara received their gifts from us, cups with their names on them and the Cardiac heart symbol.  

Chris on left, was the group counseling facilitator, and Tamara on right was our nurse program coordinator.

Michelle was our yoga (modified for heart patients) and meditation teacher.

Jay, the exercise physiologist, handed out our certificates of completion...and yes, the little boom-box played Pomp and Circumstance for us.

We will be continuing to have some gatherings intermittently in the weeks ahead, as alumni meetings. But we all know that this is the end of a life changing program. Whether we choose to continue living in this way is now up to each of us.  We laugh at some of the things we've given up, or maybe didn't. We were still allowed one glass of alcohol daily, but one of us really wanted to continue to eat avocados, which were not on our diet. Most of us gave them up, at least most of the time.

Now I'm starting another rehabilitation for my lung condition, bronchiectasis. The condition which causes me to cough frequently in order to get the mucous out of my lungs. This rehab will also have exercise and education, which I'm looking forward to. No more lunches though. Diet isn't part of this rehab. So even though it meets 3 times a week, the time will be shorter.

I'm really going to try to continue to live with these practices that I've learned over these 9 weeks. I'm much healthier than when I started!

Early fall

 

As you can tell looking at the building, I didn't move the camera. Maybe there was a bit of wind moving those leaves, but they were striking in the yellow tips on them.

If you live in Black Mountain you'll see this side of the Town Hall as you turn into their parking lot.

Today's Quote:

Life is so hard, how can we be anything but kind?

SYLVIA BOORSTEIN

Ornish eating in the time of covid,

  We arrived in the dining area to find our whole lunch had been served and was waiting for us.  We took off our masks (mine shows partly at the top right)

A sandwich of thin bread (which I prefer toasted) with lettuce and tomato and a tofu egg salad (no eggs). It was good, considering I've never eaten real egg salad! The soup was delicious white bean and carrot in a vegetable broth (lots of onions). The blueberry desert had had strawberries, which I don't eat. So I gave mine to another woman. A regular green salad with a nice vinaigrette dressing.  And that was all prepared for us which we ate while learning from the dietitian more about eating low fat vegetarian food.

Cooking at home, here's a plant-based burger...which was seasoned a bit more than I would have chosen, so I ate only half of it. I've learned any "fake meat" is usually not to my liking at all.

You'd think peas are just a vegetable, but I've learned they are a starchy vegetable, much like corn, potatoes and squash. I don't mind what kind they are, they are pretty good without any garnish.

Today's quote:

When we deepen our awareness of the simple truth that we are here through the creativity of the stars, we begin to feel fresh gratitude...what a stupendous mystery!

BRIAN SWIMME

Happy Mabon

 It's fall! It's autumn! Yay the equinox is today!

And in the northern hemisphere of our earth, this is the marker for fall beginning...though last week our cooler weather here in North Carolina, already told us that summer was just about over. It will have a last hurrah in a few weeks, with what we call "Indian Summer." 

What I love about it best is that the humidity tanked. Dry air! So very nice to not feel muggy at noon. As I am sharing, there were five of us eating lunch outside with little heaters between the tables last Saturday.

Just a few dozen orange tints are on the leaves outside my living room windows. Give them a month and they'll all have turned. Maples just love to shine in the fall!

It's my favorite season! 

Today's quote:

He said: "I don't quite understand about understanding poetry. I experience poems with pleasure: whether I understand them or not I'm not quite sure. I don't want to read something I already know or which is going to slide down easily: there has to be some crunch, a certain amount of resilience."

by poet John Ashbery 

Wandering in my neck of the woods

 I was surprised to see another gardenia on the bush, so I took its picture, then picked it, and have enjoyed the scent on my bedside table. Ahhh. (I'm feeling very blessed that my scent ability has returned.)

 I'm not sure what these puffy pink blossoms are. Whenever I see flowers, I snap their photo.

 An ornamental grass gives these lovely little purple spikes.

 Another strange flower blossoming on a plant I don't recognize.

 The base of the gazebo at the memorial garden at UUCSV (my church) has some great variety of shrubs.

 One day I walked up this hill, and discovered the picnic table...probably used by the residents of the apartment building nearby. (table looks like 2 horizontal bars in this photo)

 Another resident has some planters at the entrance to her walkway...which she shares with just one neighbor.

I like the pink geraniums, but always buy the red ones. I'll show you why soon.

Today's quote:

"Every walk to the woods is a religious rite, every bath in the stream is a saving ordinance. Communion service is at all hours, and the bread and wine are from the heart and marrow of Mother Earth.

To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter... to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring—these are some of the rewards of the simple life."
— John Burroughs, writer and naturalist