Our Little Corner of the World

It's 10:00 a.m. and we are DONE! Well, done cleaning and raking around the house. Next will be buying a few annuals and setting them out and in pots. The table and chairs are back on the deck after spending the winter underneath it. Which means they need a good cleaning.....maybe this afternoon. It bothers me some that I used to be able to do all this myself. Now, it feels kinda good to have hubby dearest helping me. The hard part is done and I'm looking forward to the fun stuff.

Some bird pictures from yesterday - all taken through the window. House finch and goldfinch on thistle feeder.

A couple blackbirds fighting over some corn. What is it about their beady little eyes?

 Goldfinches patiently waiting for those pesky blackbirds to leave.

The cute, little chipping sparrows are back - the only sparrows I can say I *like*.

One of my beloved ringneck doves. They were both out there, but not close enough together to get in the same picture. I love the sunlight and shadows in this shot.

This is a picture I took two nights ago after the sun set. I liked the reflection of the trees and the pink contrail in the pond as well as the ripple effect.

The willows are greening, the wild plums are in blossom and the sun is creating a rainbow with the fountain.

All is right in our little corner of the world.

Back To Normal? & Other Miscellany

It is so good to no longer be suffering with allergies. No more itchy, swollen, tearing eyes. To be able to leave the house after two months, especially in the lovely weather we're having, is fantastic.

I was up early this morning, putting the feeders back out around the deck. I started bringing them in one evening shortly after dark when I saw movement on the deck and realized a raccoon was in the bird food.

99.9% of my sky pictures are of sunsets. We don't have a good view for sunrises, but I tried this morning anyway.

And as long as I was out there, I picked a bouquet of violets. They are one of my favorite flowers.
The color seems a little pale and the leaves were hardly long enough to pick. I'm thinking the freezes we've had might have something to do with both those deficiencies.

I even went back to the Y this morning for the first time in at least a month. I wasn't sure I'd be able to walk a mile, thought I might have to start off with less than that after basically doing nothing for so long. But I did my mile at the same speed as I was before.

This afternoon we went out and raked two bags of leaves off the flower beds. It was so nice out. Just hope I'm not too stiff and sore tomorrow!

As Bud reported on Facebook a couple days ago, it looks like we are going to have babies after all. I didn't want to get too close to Mama Goose. She was really watching me. She has made a nest in a flower bed next to the pond.

Here you can see her and the new nest in the foreground with what has always been her nesting site on the pond in the background.
The man who takes care of the nest and other pond duties just got back from wintering in Arizona. He pulled the nest to shore and said there were eggs in it and that the bottom hadn't rotted through as it did a couple years ago. The only reason anyone can think of for why she abandoned that nest is that the muskrats may have disturbed her.

Speaking of the muskrats, a licensed trapper has been trying to rid the pond of them. He wasn't having much luck, so now the aforementioned pond caretaker has taken over. Oh, the drama.

There has been an unusually large number of ducks on the pond this year. I've counted as many as twelve.
I don't know much about ducks, a Mallard?

I do know it's interesting (funny? cute?) to see just their bottoms sticking up out of the water.

Plans are to finish the raking tomorrow as well as get some of the deck furniture out and cleaned off.

That's if I'm not to sore/tired. If so, I'll probably do some more reading in this last book of one of my favorite authors. She died last year at 85 years of age. She wrote sixty books. Amazing to consider.


And amazing to be 'back to normal' after so many weeks.

Perfection Exists In The Moment

I was looking for some of my old poems in some journals this morning when I found this quote from August 25, '83: "Perfection exists in the moment."
I explained it as "The thought that came to me while photographing the windmill." Of course I had to go back and read what I had been doing and what windmill I was taking photos of.
Back then I was a much better keeper of the journal. I wrote my thoughts almost daily along with where I was and what I was doing. 

"Just discovered I'm sitting under a huge choke cherry tree and it is loaded." Ah, I remember that. I was on the west side of Lake Binder, almost to the north end. There was a wooden windmill just west of where I was parked. Wooden windmills in Iowa are rare. "I'm coming back here tomorrow with camera and bucket." (For the choke cherries.)

"This, then, is the way I would spend my time if it were possible. I walked back to look at the windmill,  intending to size up the possible camera angles, when I heard geese and realized there was a pond west of the well. At first I imagined the marsh to be too wet to get through but decided to try because of our extremely dry summer. Made it! Slipped up to the pond and over the bank - frightened and counted sixteen geese and goslings. Makes me miss Mac and Molly. Left them alone and walked to a clearing beneath the willows a distance away.

Such a short walk/time, but what I saw -- a hummingbird moth on some musk thistle flowers, a heron flying over the lake, a snake on the rocks near the water's edge, clams, frogs, broken clam shells in the shallows, turkey buzzards. A totally satisfying experience. No! Not satisfying, because it makes me want more! I want to bring a tent and sleeping bag and canoe and whatever to spend at least a night and day."
I never did at that location, but did enjoy many such camp out trips with my granddaughters years later at Lake Icaria, Viking Lake and Mormon Trail Lake. And I did go back the next day to take pictures of the windmill and pick choke cherries. (Maybe someday I will find those windmill photos. If so, I'll scan them and edit this blog to include them.)

The poem I was looking for was in another journal. Written 2/15/77, it has nothing to do with the above. --

            Missing You

Another glass of wine
     -- unnecessary --
Coming down from
         an evening
Of friends and music
      -- missing you.

I find it hard
     to believe
You are such a part
     of my life
      Already
    -- missing you.

Fifty-sixth street
       Exit
And late night phone
   Conversations
And the aroma of
   Revelation.

You're not supposed
       to mean
This much to me.
You're supposed to be
         Safe
Someone I couldn't love
       Too much.

So why am I
   Missing you?
Why is it harder than
   I thought to be?
Why do I keep
   Missing you?

Taking A Sunday Drive #23

"Almost Heaven, West Virginia
Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River
Life is old there, older than the trees
Younger than the mountains, growin' like a breeze."

Country roads take me home, to the place I belong ..... Always and forever one of my very favorite songs by John Denver.

West Virginia is one of our 'younger' states, #35 to join the Union, born out of that very desire - to join the Union during the Civil War. Until then, West Virginia was part of Virginia and Virginia had seceded.

We drove through Harpers Ferry on our way to Antietam National Battlefield in 2008.
During that same trip we also drove through the coal mining areas of southern West Virginia.

Last fall, after leaving Gettysburg and starting home, we overnighted in Morgantown. Lots of beautiful scenery in this area, but very few photos and none of them too good.

From Morgantown we drove North back into Pennsylvania's west edge and then back into West Virginia and across that funny little bit that sticks up between PA and Ohio. Once we crossed the Ohio River at Wheeling, we were really headed home.

"Take me home, country roads."

Weekend Trains

One of the questions we were often asked when we first moved into our retirement home was, "Don't the trains bother you?" Truthfully, we wondered if they would, but we knew from living in the airport flight path and on a bus route in West Des Moines, that after awhile you don't even notice the noise.
We both actually like hearing and seeing the trains go through which is a good thing since our house is so close to the tracks. (Less than 200 yards?) Creston is one of three Amtrak station locations in Iowa. I don't even have to see the passenger trains, I can differentiate them by sound. Eastbound Amtrak comes in around 7:00 a.m.; Westbound departs around 9:30 p.m.

Most of the trains coming through are coal trains. Going east, loaded; west, empty.
They show up in photos whether I plan it that way or not.

Our youngest grandchild, Devin, has changed a lot since this picture was taken six years ago. He will graduate high school next month.
He's always enjoyed fishing with grandpa Bud.

Even in a photo of a setting full moon being reflected in the surface of the pond, there is a train on the tracks.

I think it is because fewer coal trains are using the track that weekend train watching is more interesting. The trains then are shorter with more diverse cars.

There are freight cars, tanker cars, hopper cars, and flat cars. These weekend trains are always a mixture of cars.

Green Burlington Northern hopper car.

This faded red car makes me think of Madison County's covered bridges.

First time I've noticed a car like this one. The writing says "Thoroughbred Protect Temperature Car(?) Transport". I always wonder just what is being carried by these trains.

Mystery car.

A tank car of some sort. I think it is supposed to be black and white but the black ends have faded to gray. I see these and think, "panda".

It can be fun to try deciphering the 'tags' found on many of the cars.

The last car of this train. Tagged, like the one before it.
I miss cabooses. It doesn't seem right that the last car is just another car. The caboose always told you, "End of Train!"



Just as I wonder what is in the cars of a diversely made up train, I often wonder about the passengers on an Amtrak train - where they are going? Who will be there to meet them? Why they are traveling by train? What are their stories?

ANOTHER Blog About Poetry

I know I post a lot about poetry. Just for fun I plugged poetry into that box up there in the left corner. Even I was a bit surprised at how many posts came up. (I can think of at least one that didn't, though.*)

But what the heck, it is National Poetry Month. It is the birthday of William Wordsworth. He is the author of one of my favorite poems......

"I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze."

I cannot read that poem nor think of daffodils without remembering the first time I saw a host of golden daffodils. It was in the mid 1970's driving through eastern Virginia. In my memory it was much like this picture - a field of daffodils with an old building and some woods beyond.
Naturalization was a big thing at that time - the buzz word for throwing gobs of bulbs out and then planting them wherever they landed. It was something I was keen to try. Could the field of daffies I saw be such a successful naturalization? I was enchanted. (But I never did get around to trying it myself.)

So many favorite poems I have blogged about. Here is one not mentioned before:

"I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

You have been mine before,--
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow's soar
Your neck turn'd so,
Some veil did fall,-- I knew it all of yore.

Has this been thus before?
And shall not thus time's eddying flight
Still with our lives our love restore
In death's despite,
And day and night yield one delight once more?"

Sudden Light by Dante Gabriel Rossetti


(* Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman, October 24, 2010)

Metaphors and Similes

Full Title: Metaphors and Similes Or Why My Husband Is More Of A Poet Than I

Early this morning I looked out westerly/northwesterly and noticed a thin line of dark blue clouds.
A little later Bud came in, looked out and said, "Oh, my gosh, those dark clouds look like a lake out there. Did you see that?"
Yes, I saw the clouds. No, I didn't see a lake. I really had to adjust my way of seeing/thinking before I could see it. (I could never see the images hidden in those 3-D stereograms, either. Bud could see them immediately.) If I could see like Bud, I think I'd have a better chance of writing poetry.

Monday when he took the picture for the previous blog, he said I looked like I had raccoon eyes. See? He talks in similes.
But, on that subject, my eyes are slowly improving and I feel much better than I did, so the new meds must be working. I want to be able to go outside again.

To enjoy the spring weather (though it isn't so spring-like today) and to clean off the flower beds.

And discover what may be trying to come up underneath all that litter. At least the daffies were able to get through and bloom.

If I pay more attention to the different ways of looking at things and brush up on metaphors and similes, maybe I can come up with a poem before the end of the 20th anniversary of this National Poetry Month.