Good morning,

November has been a gift in terms of the weather. Today will hit an unbelievable high of 64 degrees. It is a god-sent for many people but we sure know it can't last for long.  Then again winter only begins on December 21st. Still time before we kick into winter gear!

At the moment a chipmunk is chirping away like crazy on the carport.  I think he is vying for space on the carport with the red squirrel - both of whom should not be here.  That's what happens when someone thinks it is a good idea to have the wood stacked on the carport for the winter.  Oh well..........

Yesterday I was attending to my orchids that are temporarily housed in my bathroom and I started to think about some of the crazy things my mother and I did years ago. I love candied ginger or crystalized ginger. It is one of my favorite things to chew on.  But know it can be hot. Someone must have given us a gift from a place in Greenwich Village in NYC called The Aphrodisiac. I have no idea how we came across this place but certainly a place you don't frequent for long or hang around for long. Anyway, years ago when I lived downstate and an hours drive into the heart of Manhattan, I would say to my Mother lets make a ginger run.  So on the spur of the moment we'd get into the car and drive to the Village. This was a place you made sure you had your eyes open and constantly looked in your rear-view mirror at all times.  We'd pull up to the Aphrodisiac, Mom would hop out  and make a bee line into the store, and I'd drive around the block and if I timed it right, I'd pull back up to the front of the store just as she was coming out. Now I must tell you, in 1973 I treated myself to probably the only luxury car I ever had.  It was the long Thunderbird with the opera windows, and had the front end of a Lincoln Mark V. In truth it was a beauty.  So picture this; this long classy Thunderbird pulling up to this unmentionable shop, a grandmother type woman getting out and dashing into the store and me racing off so that I could get around the block as fast as possible and pulling up and pick up this woman with a paper bag in her hand. Then we'd make the hours drive home devouring the contents of the bag until our mouths were so hot we couldn't eat anymore. I think of this scene and I can only laugh.

I think it came to mind because as I was going through some of the holiday catalogues I came upon some specialty items.....yes, candied ginger. I then did a search and sure enough I found a little shop in Wiscasset, Maine called Treats that sells Australian crystalized ginger. They have some breads and cheeses that I kind of liked as well. So, I think that might be one of my holiday purchases for self!  A little gourmet shop has now replaced that laughable place in the Village.

Anyway, what little thing will you treat yourself to for the holidays?  Just for you!    Bittersweet

 

Good morning,

 

Today is Saturday and all is quiet. Sunny and I expect that it will hit 53 to 55 today. A gift in the weather department but I will admit that soon I'll be looking for a good winter storm. I love that feeling of isolation that comes from a storm and that feeling that I can close off the world. I call a good nor'easter.....wild and wooly! 

 

Steve commented on the angles and lines of the house that was in my photos.  After reading his comments about it looking like the old farmhouse he was raised in in Idaho, I thought I'd share a little about the house.  We are about 2 1/2 hours north of NYC and south east of Albany, not far from the Massachusetts border.  In short, the mid-Hudson Valley and the Taconic Mountains.  The area is essentially rural with the remnants of farming and dairy. The farms are now horses and cattle, and fields have been planted with oats, alphalfa and corn. Dairy is a by-gone area. And throw in a mix of apple orchids.  But we are seeing the investment of NYC dollars.

 

Back to the house.  It is a Greek Revival, old farm house built in 1856.  I consider it a big house and if you look closely, there is a dormer on top,, (which was added,) and was used by my mother as a loom room.  The house had no dining room or I should say, there was a walk through room that may have been a dinning room.  When I say walk through room I mean a room in the middle that you walk through. There are three archways and one door and the one door leads to the bathroom. The others lead to the kitchen, dinning room and living room.  We use the room for extra book shelving, it has one built in bookcase, a breakfront for some special china and a third wall has a bookcase as well. So, we added that room with all the windows, two walls are nothing but windows and that is the dinning room.  The room that you see with the chimney is the kitchen.  The chimney is for the wood burning stove that sits in the kitchen.  My little plot is 15 acres and I am surrounded with what was two dairy farms and one horse farm.  Now they are a horse farm, a cattle farm and field crops of oasts, corn etc.

 

The house is a fun house to live in; lots of little rooms and an enclosed front porch. The kitchen is the biggest room, 26 x 16 and is that whole wing you see in the back. The library is probably the next largest room and that sits in the front of the house. And of course we never use the library or the living room.  We live in the kitchen and dinning room!  We go into the library occasionally to look for a book and the living room is graced once a year with the Christmas tree.

 

The house has been a labor of love.  I bought it in 1980 and I'm still working on projects both in and out. And I expect that I will work on projects the next 20 years.  Country homes are endless pits of labor.  But I would have it any other way.

 

I look out the dinning room windows during a snow storm and have unobstructed vision for a third of a mile. There is nothing as beautiful as watching a snow storm come in from the hillside.  There is a mystical power that takes hold and it is just you and nature - untouched, unblemished. That is when you are alone with the world.

 

Do enjoy the gift of this day.  Peace from my hillside.   Bittersweet

 

 

A good morning to you all.  Thanksgiving dinner went well and I'm happy that I have a day or two of leftovers.  Although one of my brothers just stopped by and helped himself to turkey and dressing.  His sandwich must have been two inches thick and the better part of a turkey leg next to the sandwich.  It pained me to think that someone could eat so much sandwich!

After yesterdays rain that coursed its way up the east coast, today is sunny, cool but pleasant.  I spent part of the morning visiting peoples sites - some old friends and some new. I enjoy visiting people who post on friends sites.  Sometimes I think we travel in a very close circle and then I am always surprised by someone new.  This morning it was Steve from Alaska. His pictures are gorgeous; the glaziers and Cambell's Creek. Breathtaking. And of course my friend "S".  She's got some wonderful new pictures of cranes and a bald eagle. You'll find they left an entry on yesterdays blog.

I also came upon a quote from Lottiemae's site by Pearl S. Buck.  It very much talked to me since it is something I very much believe in.

 

" I love people.  I love my family, my children... but inside myself is a place  where I live all alone and that's where you renew your springs that never dry."

 

How beautiful and how true.

 

Todays entry will be short.  I hope to spent the weekend writing a poem that is overdue for my writing group.

 

Enjoy and be mindful of the gift of life.  Bittersweet on the hill.

 

 

 

 

Thanksgiving is upon us and I wish you all a peaceful and thankful day.  I am spending today preparing my last minute food list; what I'll add to the sweet potatoes, the stuffing, my fresh fruit cocktail, my vegetable concoction etc.  For starters, I usually add some finely diced jalapeno peppers to my stuffing after I've sauteed the onion and celery. And I'm still scrambling to find my Bell poultry seasoning.  There is nothing like Bell's poultry season added to the stuffing.  I think that is the seasoning I remember most from my childhood memories of Thanksgiving Dinner.  I make my sweet potatoes from scratch. I'll par-boil them a little before peeling them then quarter them up and lay them in a pyrux dish.  Lots of brown sugar, lime juice, butter, salt, allspice, a little nutmake and cinnamin and rum.  And this years vegetable will be from the Barefoot Contessa!  Sauteed onions and garlic, then layers of zuchinni, plum tomato and yellow squash slices, plus a little salt and pepper, baked for 45 minutes and then covered with gruyere cheese and baked for a few minutes until the cheese is melted. I love making the fresh fruit cocktail especially since I know I'll have several days of left-overs. An acquaintance, bakes pies since her retirement as a bank vice-president.  So I ordered a cherry and an apple pie since they are family favorites.  And of course extra turkey gravy.  Is there anything better than leftover hot turkey sandwishes with lots of gravy!  So I think I'm set.  And don't forget the mashed potatoes.

So now I'm checking table cloths, vanilla ice cream and the white wine.

I wish you all well. Be thankful for the gift of life, family and the promise winter peace.  Hugs......Bittersweet on the hill.

It has been so warm that the frogs are still out and about!  For several evenings after going to bed, I'd start hearing these noises outside. I couldn't figure it out and then when Pete came up from the barn after checking on some lighting, he said.....you know, there was a frog outside.  Ok.....I got it, a frog croaking inn the azalea bushes outside my window. I would say it was a dramatically bass croak, but yes, I could identify it as such.  Since we have a marshy wetland across the streeet, I should have been familiar with the croaking since they croak all summer long.

Our weather today is balmy!  The past two days have seen it in the mid 60's which for us is very atypical.  By mid-November we have flurries in the air and cold slicing winds that cross the open fields. Even the cattle and horses know which direction to stand on cold windy days. So when the winds are still warm and moist, we are out of character.

I've been visiting a few blog sites and holiday themes are beginning to creep in.  Well I'll be up front about it.  Thanksgiving is MY designated day to start playing Christmas and holiday music.  Now granted, I select the albums that I play first, such as Barogue Christmas music especially since you can hardly identify that there is a holiday theme and then I slowly work into Nutcracker Suite and within a week, I'm full swing into The Mormon Tabernacle Choir. So yes, I plan how fast and how far I can get into full swing.  Then of course I start working on the outdoor tree. That takes more coercing especially since my choice of trees have about 20 years of growth. I'm already lining up all my chits for trade-in value. In fact, since we have a stretch of warm weather ahead, I probably should work on this with due diligence.

And for my good friend Marie, I am working on taking some pictures of the jade plant.  The flowers are beginning but probably won't be in full bloom until mid-December. The jade plant only blooms when mature and for us that meant about 20 years. This was the first year we saw blooms on our jade tree.  I did a search on the internet as to how the bloom will look and must say it is very handsome.  It is white and starry. It really is a cluster of blooms, with three sets of five petals and stamins. five star like petals, then a five pointed start and five stamins. A very interesting flower and the plant is native to South Africa - which I didn't know.

Anyway, I shall spend a little time reading "Leaving Microsoft to Change the World," and then ponder my day.  Peace.....Bittersweet

Hello to all,

We're experiencing a really overcast November day.  If it were colder, I'd say it would snow. I've been playing with my orchids and that takes a little more time than I had envisioned.  I purchased 3 new ones, little paphiopedilums and they are so small that I'm sure I'll be looking at them for two years before they bloom. If they do that!  So my orchids now number 15. Three in bloom, three about to bloom and the others are dormant.  Maybe next year.  Which leads me to.....my jade plant has flowers on it!  I don't recall having ever seen a jade plant with blooms.  When the flowers open more fully, I will take pictures.  We have had this thing for years, and it is enormous. We just keep feeding it and watering it and believe me, it takes two grown men to get it outside for the summer.  It loves being outside under the trees for the summer taking in the summer rain and fresh air.  Maybe it is thank us for the luxury of being outdoors for 5 months.  In fact we didn't bring him in until the end of October.

In stead of doing some writing, I've been reading.  I finished "The Bookseller of Kabul," and "Kaffir Boy." Both were a nightmare in "living." They were so moving and devastating that I decided I wanted to write a review of both of them. (For Amazon Books.)  I have started two others, "A Human Being Died That Night," also about apartheid and "If I Live to be a Hundred," anecdotes from the lives of people who have lived to be a hundred. Not that I'm planning to be a hundred, but I think there is a quality that these people have that many of us don't have.  It kind of reminds me of Victor Frankel's book on being a holocaust survivor. The people who "lived" in their minds for the future were the ones who had the best chance of survival. Those who sat there and talked about the foods/dinner's they'd be making when this was all over, or saw themselves as surviving where those who did make it.  It is a fascinating book that I read years ago and there were such lessons in survival that I just might read it again. For those that might be interested, the title is "Man's Search for Meaning."

Well my friends, I hope your days are going well.  I just wanted to say hello.  Peace....Bittersweet on the hill.

Saturday morning and the world is quiet. At least my little space.  But how I wish the world were quiet.

 

I came upon these two quotes; one I got from reading Stephzen's space which directed me to the Zenrin Kushy quote. 

 

"Sitting quietly,

doing nothing,

Spring comes,

and the grass grows by itself."

 

The second is by Thich Nhat Hanh.

 

Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky.

Conscious breathing is my anchor."

 

I actually really like just the first line.

 

The morning was frosty. I think about 32 degrees outside with a layer of frost.  The bow hunters are out and I am distressed by it. The bow hunters can hunt for does and I'm fearful he may have gotten one of my two does.  There is so much thicket by the stream that you can't really see them hunting but the hunters know the deer are there. It is kind of sad. You watch the does with their faun enjoying the newly cut fields and then one day they disappear. You know the so-and-so's got them.

 

Anyway, it is sunny, very crisp but a beautiful fall day and I saw my first bittersweet for the season.  One of these days I'll take a picture and show you what they look like.  I usually try to decorate the dining room table for Thanksgiving with it.  Typical northeast fall flower for the holidays. 

 

Anyway, I hope all is well.  Bittersweet