Life inside for winter time - a month of flowers

  Dawn on Winter Solstice...the furthest into my apartment that the sun would shine around 8 am. The growth of daylight hours each day past the solstice is very slow at first.

My new little friend, a Christmas Cactus graces my old sewing basket. It is now happily soaking up winter sunshine, but has lost all it's blooms, sigh.

While I meet with friends at the Dripolator Coffee Shop, the Harwood Funeral Home looks down on our simple fare reminding us of our mortality.

This orchid has at least two stems putting forth blooms for the season. So thrilled!

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Today's goddess:

Inanna, The Queen of the Night (Burney Relief) fired clay, Mesopotamia, Old Babylonian era, 1800-1750 BCE.

In the misty origins of ancient Sumer, the goddess Ishtar (originally known as Inanna) stands as a paradoxical figure of staggering complexity—a "Mother Goddess" who, interestingly, was rarely depicted as a literal mother or wife. Known as the Queen of Heaven, she personified the raw, untamed forces of both sexual desire and the violent chaos of war. To the ancients, she was the "Lady of the Morning and Evening Star" (the planet Venus), representing the dualities of life: the beauty of the sunrise and the looming mystery of the dusk. Her most famous myth, her descent into the Underworld, reveals her as a deity of profound transformation; by stripping away her royal garments and facing death itself at the hands of her sister Ereshkigal, she embodied the cyclical nature of the seasons and the fragile threshold between the world of the living and the realm of shadow

Source: The Secrets of the Ancients FB page

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Today's quote:

Love is to life what life is to death. And so we risk everything trying to touch the ineffable by touching each other. Over and over. Again and again… Patterned behavior alternates like shadow and light… We can change, evolve, and transform our own conditioning. We can choose to move like water rather than be molded like clay. Life spirals in and then spirals out on any given day. It does not have to be one way, one truth, one voice. Nor does love have to be all or nothing. 

Terry Tempest Williams

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A time when my shaky fingers posted this in error...namely on Dec. 8. But here it is, again!

Today's new header - I think I was trying portrait settings on the iPhone. It created that halo effect on the central blossom.

Joining Floral Friday Fotos (which is already open!)

Some of my gratitude today

 Thankful Thursday.

Boy do I have a lot to be thankful for this  week!

Medical care! Whew, what a lot of people worked to help me get better! Impressive!

Friends and relatives...oh yes, they have kept me going (including you, dear bloggers!)

From Facebook

Fly like an Eagle, clay puzzle wall art by Barbara Rogers, (c. 2015)

Tunnel Road, Asheville NC (my photo)

View of my front porch last year. This year I've given away some of those pots, and backed out of caring for so many plants.

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It’s that knife-edge of uncertainty where we come alive to our truest power.

JOANNA MACY

Cleaning up the balcony

  

An empty pot, made in 2009...don't know what I'll plant in it.

I swear these orchid blooms are just dead flowers sitting on that stem...they opened last winter, and I put them outside with all the other plants when it got warm enough!

Our balconies are really really tiny...so it's just a good place to put a few plants...if I remember to water them, since most are under an overhang.

Letting in the cool morning air (until 9 am)

All the rest of the landscape crew is missing for the last 2 weeks. Here one of the two white guys has dumped and spread the rest of the mulch. I wonder if the Hispanic guys are hiding from ICE. These times are scary.

Barry Bernstein, pottery, 1949

Bounty and Soul brings a lot of fresh produce and day old bread, and even eggs, to distribute to the senior residents here once a week. I only want bread at this point. I've enough veggies that I should be cooking them up. Anyway, I love this sourdough, which had expired a few days before I received it, and it went into the freezer.  

The sources of day old groceries may remain, but the grants for Bounty and Soul, and Mana Food Bank are expiring June 30. That pays for the guys who deliver, and the gas in their trucks. Many volunteers keep things working, but I don't know if they'll still be in existence after the end of this month. Elders are known as being food insecure. Just look at what I had for dinner the other night...no don't!

At our local grocery, I got 4 chocolate croissants that were only $2.98 rather than double that usually. And then I had coffee with friends and paid about $5 for one croissant there! It's helping the economy I figure. I get the chocolate, and a decaf Americano to drink with it!

I received this lovely bracelet last Christmas but lost the details about it. I think someone may have identified the black stones as lava rock (as they have a bit of rough finish, as well as are very light.) Good energy anyway. Seri said it is restful and energizing and absorbs negative energy.

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Another piece of art which I haven't found a good place to post.

Today's quote:

We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.

Paulo Coelho

Our political situation certainly is giving us many unexpected events. I'm not pleased, most of the time. I've always believed that people power is so much more reasonable than political powers. That's supposedly what the Congress does.

Let's try Wordless Wednesday on Tuesday

  "mmmph!!" 

Internet

Come see more at Image-in-ing: Wordless Wednesday

Discarding perfectly good pieces of pottery, flower pots.

This one was snatched by a neighbor who rides an electric wheelchair at high speed all over the apartment complex (and on the roads as well!) I have it's mate (the pot) still with live lavender, while this one was dead. We tossed it behind a tree (the dead lavender). She will give the pot to someone who does flowers. 

The other two were grabbed up by a p.j. wearing new neighbor who has many many plants. She wrote a nice thank you and asked if I were to throw any more away to give them to her. So later yesterday I brought her another batch.

Why? Well, I don't want to sterilize them...and am afraid they might still have the white fly fungus which killed so many plants a few years ago. And I'm cleaning up the balcony for an inspection by the landlords in a few weeks. SOme things are really trash. But I did hang up a couple of wind chimes, since people seem to have them out on their porches these days.

I had a doc appointment to re-check a couple of things. Memory problems are no worse, and I'm trying the Over the Counter, Prevagen, which of course is not through the doc. He's giving me something else for the shaky fingers...but when I drove past the pharmacy leaving his office, there were two police cars and a fire truck in the parking lot with lights blazing. So I went and bought some more flowers...two kalanchoes at the grocery. That's because the local nursery was closed still at 9:30 am, and Monday as well. Even my first choice bakery wasn't open. Small businesses in this town just take Monday off, and often Sunday as well!

Today's quote:

He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope. -Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet, critic, and philosopher (772-1834)

You've already seen enough of my pottery above.

Spring blossoms in Black Mountain

Looking east on  State St. in Black Mountain.

 

In downtown Black Mountain, I found another dogwood.

Outside my living room window are a couple of dogwood trees, barely visible on Friday April 4. It was in the 80s the day I took this photo.

Same view on Sunday, April 6, between rain. The  dogwoods show better on foggy days.

 A few days later, the temperature is forecast to be 31 at night. So all the little plants on the balcony and porch have been brought inside to have steady temperature and just a bit of sun and water (a friend has volunteered to come over once while I'm gone to visit my son and wife for about a week.)

Redbuds along the railroad tracks, which aren't being used since damage from the storms 6 months ago. I've read that trains are again rolling from TN to Asheville, but not from the center of the state to Asheville. Many tunnels and tracks were damaged with the infrastructure needing extensive repair through the Old Fort pass.

Today's quote:

When we stop worrying about unimportant matters, we can devote so much more of ourselves to what is truly important.

She said, "I've been sick"

 And neglected my little patch of plants on my front porch. Poor babies!

With 80 degree days and no rain, I am sorry to see what's left of these simple little guys.

This once bountiful geranium has spindly branches and lots of dead leaves. 

Kalanchoe not only has dead flowers, it has some white dusty fungus going on too!

Or maybe spider eggs..since some real webs were surrounding it.

The sad giant leaved coleus...still hanging it's huge leaves!

At least a few of the petunias are still blooming!

That's a hole in the coleus leaf. Someone had a big breakfast!

Sorry to show you sad plants. Maybe they'll come back as it gets cooler (and I remember to water daily). My care giving has been pretty limited to making sure I eat and drink lots of water...you know the old saying, put on your own oxygen mask first when the plane is going down!

And fortunately I'm able to take care of more than just my own breathing again. Another bout of bronchiectasis has been survived. Life is continuing for me and the little green plants.

Sharing with Floral Friday Fotos

and Garden Bloggers Bloom Day

and Thankful Thursday

Today's quote:

The seed of suffering in you may be strong, but don’t wait until you have no more suffering before allowing yourself to be happy.

THICH NHAT HANH

My plant jungle

 Moving  them all inside, for the pressure wash that will happen either tomorrow or the next day. So now I live in a little jungle of potted plants!

Yesterday I enjoyed having some friends over for a pot luck lunch. I got the cold cuts, bread, lettuce and lime slices for our water. These friends get a kick out of ordering water with lime when we eat out. So I tried to oblige. They brought several salads and the tomatoes to go on our sandwiches, as well as whipped cream for our "make your own banana split."

It didn't go as well as I hoped, since my friend who had the furthest to travel couldn't make it. So we scheduled going to her area and eating with her soon.

And another of my friends was undergoing some stomach issues so didn't want to eat anything at all. I kept offering her soup, toast etc. all the motherly gestures to help settle her stomach. She kept refusing. But she had brought the salads, so we definitely appreciated her contributions.

The banana splits didn't end up being of interest to the other two visitors, though one had a teaspoon full of ice cream with lots of whipped cream. We shared that the other two had held the can up and squeezed some into their mouths at one time or another, but I hadn't. I did say I'd had whipped cream sex once, and one of the other women (all over 60 mind  you!) said she had too. And that was all we were going to share on that subject.

Since I was coughing all night, as well as this morning, I've canceled my PT and lunch today. I hope it becomes manageable by tomorrow, when other friends have scheduled a day trip! I'll let you know. I may mask up when in the car and going in stores with them!

My cough of course is the recurring chronic one, but involves a really ugly sound getting stuff out, so I don't want people to think it's catching. (Hopefully not.) Anyway, I'm just doing plant re-place-ing today. 

It's nice and sunny out, so they will have the shock of indoor lights for 2 days. I think they can cope.

Today's quote:

One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

ANDRÉ GIDE