Around home

 

The clean half of the kitchen.

As my friend Martha said, it's a working kitchen. Still lots to do on this half of the kitchen!

Another view of my apartment. Whenever the sun is shining in my bedroom, I usually find an excuse to lie down and enjoy the vitamin D and warmth. Here I was checking some facebook news out on my mini-iPad.

That's the wonderful south facing window in my bedroom. 

Today's quote:

We need to re-orient our lives to be in constant resonance with

The Silence.  We have to rediscover lost realms, and at the same time, clear away our deeply engrained desire to live by what others have said, rather than discover inner truths for ourselves.

Robert Sardello
From: Silence: The Mystery of Wholeness

Survivors

 

There's even a new lavender blooming at the top of this shot. The tint of red behind the spiky rosemary is a last gasp of the geranium.

While nightly there has been frost on all the cars and rooftops, these little plants on my balcony have continued to thrive and stay blooming.

It's a mystery.  

At 32 degrees F this morning for about 3 hours, I didn't want to even open the door to capture these hardy souls...so this is through the glass shortly after dawn. Later on I did do my walk, and dug out a wool hat to wear too! It really helped, though it admittedly was in the high 40s by then. I admit I love cold weather when it's a dry humidity level. If it's wet at all though, I don't enjoy it as much. (I wrote this on Nov 24)

I'm adding this shot of the flowers hung above the balcony last week for Thanksgiving and the day following. Then frost was again forecast, so it went back on the floor!

I took this photo as the cloud/fog was finally dried up by the morning sun. You can just see the clouds over the valley, and what I was most trying to capture, the drops of dew on the branches of the trees with sun hitting them. I guess having 3 aims in one photo is asking a bit much!

Maybe this one is better for the water droplets in the sunshine...and that one lonely leaf!

The sunny snowy creek again

A big stone may hold heat or cold...here it has a last smattering of snow before the sun gets much higher.

 There's actually a ford that this road leads to, a rocky crossing that's shallow where the utility trucks cross Flat Creek. I'm not sure what the little building holds..perhaps electrical equipment.

 The new railing is still fresh enough to look like green lumber. That will change with the weather of course.

A place of beauty

We'd had a dusting of snow the day before, followed by a morning of fog and chill.
But before going to church I decided to see how the creek was doing, if there might be any snow left along it.
And as I drove over there, the sun came out! Yay!

 New rails on the bridge may not be as picturesque as the old ones, but they are certainly more reliable!

The sweet Rhododendron leaves are always green, but covered with frosting of snow. They'll survive just fine however.

Clouds happening

The rain has passed (over 12 hours of it seemed quite long enough, left 2 inches here!) Clouds on left are the trailing edge of the past storms, as new weather approaches from the southwest over the ridgeline.

And there are some cute little remaining fluffs in the lowest part of the valley along the Swannanoa River...while a bank of maybe one more rain cloud waits coming over the mountains to the south.

But the sun is shining so nicely on the west view of these clouds, they aren't going to stand much chance to rain again.

I feel so much better when the sun comes back (but I'm grateful for the rain too!

Winter shadows

Morning sun in January looks like a late day sun in the summertime, but there's only Rhododendrons and conifers to give green at this time.

 Long shadows across the fallen leaves.

Flat Creek hadn't any ice to speak of...I'll go back later and look for some.

Morning has broken - though shade keeps the frost alive

So spring is officially here.  Lovely morning for it.  There's frost on the roof of the building downhill from me again.

Some trees are casting shade and the sun doesn't seem to be doing the melting line like it did a few days ago. (Here.)

Oh there it is, where the higher roof shades the lower one, and the frost melts back as the sun hits it.

Isn't it nice with all the word's trauma and news that I can focus on how the sun melts frost on a neighbor's roof?

Sun and shadows

What's that happening on my pillows on my bed? The blinds have made streaks of shadows from an unusual thing, I think it's called sunshine.
That was yesterday, for about 10 minutes.

But today, ah, there was bright warm sun flowing through the window most of the day.  When I didn't check on it, I was outside on a rock by my favorite creek, taking photos into the sun.  That was fun.
They'll be over on the "Living in Black Mountain" blog in a day or so.

I'm still dealing with cough, and my brain seems to be about half here.  I sleep forever. And then I have these horrible nightmares.  I keep forgetting simple routines, and I don't know that I'm taking all the meds I'm supposed to take.  There are so many silly rituals...perhaps I should add some meditation and prayer to them, so they have more meaning to me.  Nebulize twice a day...seems prayerful to me.  And take certain pills and an inhaler mornings, and other pills and inhaler evenings.  I really need to add my yoga stretching back in there too.  The head-cold last week meant I just would lie down without a pillow and roll from side to side...a great exercise for who-knows-what.

Sun has returned

The lavender plant came inside a few weeks ago, and it seems it's rained almost daily since.  Today rain is forecast, but this morning around 9 am, there was that shot of sunlight hitting the windowsill...which of course the camera didn't capture quite with its brilliance.  The green glass of my windows sure does show though on the curtain!

I admit to being a sunshine girl.  I even used that as my signature on my art for a few years...Sunshine, with a little picture of the sun with rays as it set (or rose) over a horizon.  I stopped doing it when I officially changed my name following my divorce, returning to my maiden name, Rogers.

It's a bit more complicated than that, but I won't go into it here.

I see a hummingbird in the branches of the maple, so I best make some more nectar for them.  And feed the tropical fish (guppies).  Thus a householder's tasks are never done.

The sun has come out!

One of my favorite stained glass windows.  But I forgot where it is, and who made it.  If you know, please comment!

Cool nights mean I open my windows, but hot days (with high humidity) mean I close them and turn on that AC.  This shot doesn't show the sun much, and the ridge tops are still in clouds.

I've had a busy week and it's only hump day.  Going to get more active in the arts...signing up to be on a waiting list for a show out of town.  If there's a cancellation, I might be in.  Big IF.  And I'm going to get active in the Swannanoa Fine Arts League again.  See, today things look much more promising.  Why? I think I am able to keep up with the plans each day again.   Recovering from Pneumonia usually takes about a month...and I'm in my 4th week now.

Yesterday I threw on the wheel for the first time in a week.  What with the studio closed for flooding (just a bit causing a wet floor for a couple of days)... and some days my coughing really puts me into low energy...well, I've been lucky to get to lunch at the Council on Aging site here...and maybe do a bit of volunteer work.  I was at the Swannanoa History Museum 2 afternoons this month...and it's an easy sitting welcoming kind of job.

Today's big adventure was having my management do an inspection of my apartment...to make sure there are no leaks, or other damages.  I did mention to the manager that the outside wall in my kitchen is so damp that a wood cutting board leaning up against the refrigerator grew some mold.  I cleaned it with vinegar (the cutting board) but I think I'll swab it with bleach before cutting any food on it.  I also got my batteries in the smoke detectors changed while the maintenance man was checking that they were working. He was happy to use my step stool, and that meant I didn't have to.

I'm about to go to lunch, which is only $1.50 donation for the meal.  Today's one of my favorites, buttermilk fried chicken strips.  I have to watch that I don't eat too much of the mashed potatoes, and I usually skip eating the buns.  But the green veggies are usually good, as well as some kind of sweet desert.

I hope a friend of mine who just turned 60 will start coming to the lunch program.  There are lots of different kinds of people.  On Tuesdays we have a Spanish Conversation table...where we each take 2 vocabulary words and bring them back in sentences the next week.  It's great when a hispanic person also joins us, and can correct our pronunciation...if she can bare it!

Dawn's early light

I don't have dogs...I don't wake and go for walks at dawn.  I have cats who insist I get out of bed and open the can and put it in their bowls.  If they had thumbs they wouldn't need me at all.

So today I did something rather irregular for me.  I fed them and made my first cup of coffee at 7:30.  A. M. that is.  Before the sun came into the windows.  The sky was pearly grey, no colors, so probably no clouds.

Now, at 8:12, the sun is just coming over the treetops, and guess where it hits first, at this post autumnal equinox season?  My computer screen!

It is tilted till I can't read the screen with my wonderful new glasses.  I finally give up and use the laptop screen, which I can at least position lots of different directions as I play tag with sunbeams.  What a lovely problem to have.  I'm delighted, though slightly blind from the shine off of various surfaces.

Thanks for sunshine.  The light by which we all live.