Fixing It Up

Another beautiful sunny spring day. I couldn't ask for more.

I took my mom to her radiation oncologist appointment, then dropped by work for a bit to orient a new employee, and after that I went for a long walk. On that walk I found another redbud. Maybe this redbud is better shaped than the one a couple of days ago. I dunno. I fixed it up a little.

"If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in he spring and stay that way later in the fall. "

- Nadine Stair

Look

Not a lot to say here. To me, the flower in this photo is to be visually digested, not lost in a bunch of words.

"When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment."

- Georgia O'Keeffe

Cercis canadensis

You can't tell by this photo, but I thought this redbud tree was beautifully shaped. You also can't tell, but the wind was blowing like a big dog today, as well. I didn't mind because it was supposed to rain. I'd take wind and sunshine over rain and clouds almost anytime. (Especially since I played hooky from work. I pretended I was going to work, but I played all day.) The following quote really explains how the weather was today.

"It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold:  when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade."

- Charles Dickens

Front Yard Sight

This afternoon, while running up the steps to my front door, I noticed some tiny flowers growing (the bottom picture) in the front yard. How the heck did they get there? In years past, I never noticed them. Maybe I was too busy running in and out to even notice.

"Who would have thought it possible that a tiny little flower could preoccupy a person so completely that there simply was not room for any other thought..."

- Sophie Scholl

Hot Air Balloons

As I was walking today, I thought that it would be fun to just go take a hot air balloon ride...

"The best way of travel, however , if you aren't in any hurry at all, if you don't care where you are going, if you don't like to use your legs, if you don't want to be annoyed at all by any choice of directions, is in a balloon. In a balloon, you can decide only when to start, and usually when to stop. The rest is left entirely to nature."

- William Pene du Bois, 'The Twenty-one Balloons.'

Spring is Around the Corner

Today I dropped the dog off at the groomers and decided to go for a walk. I decided not to listen to my nano this morning and opted for the sounds of the great outdoors. It was quite distractingly wonderful. My first lap took me almost 30 minutes to walk - a path that usually takes me around 15 minutes when I'm on a mission. All of the birds were singing - cardinals, robins, blue jays, and a few that I couldn't identify. I was going to snap a photo of a beautiful red cardinal singing in a tree, but I realized he was too far away and would have looked like a red dot on a beautiful blue sky.

Click, click, click...I could hear the clicking in my left knee as I hoofed it up and down the trail. Occasionally I could hear a train in the distance. Squirrels and chipmunks could be heard rustling through the leaves on the ground, left over from fall. 

All of my deer friends were out. I snapped a few pics, but will spare you them since I have already posted in the past. But they might show up again another day.

I did run into a few people on the path this morning. Annoyingly enough, I passed a couple walking toward me who were together, but looked annoyed with each other. The man walking several paces ahead with a camera in hand. His wife walking behind, dressed in her matching nylon sweat suit, make up on, and enough perfume to last until nightfall. And this was baaaad perfume. I could smell it trailing behind her as I passed by, ruining the smell of the woods with spring emerging from the ground.

Even the squirrels were cute. I hate them when they are in my garden eating the veggies, but in their own backyard, they were fun to watch. 

The last two laps, I walked with a mission. Not noticing the sights around me, but focused on getting a good workout at the end. Attacking the hills, all I could hear were my keys jingling in my pocket and my shoes hitting the ground. The clicking of my knee was heard only on occasion, as my stride had shortened and quickened, decreasing the range of motion of my knee. 

I closed the morning out by going to a different path and finding a bench to sit and read. Yes, to read. Actually, it was quite nice. I don't really remember what I read, but I remember the calm feeling of being out there. What a lovely morning.

"Like a small grey coffee pot sits the squirrel." - Humbert Wolfe

Philosophy

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

That was my favorite question that Dr. Bob used to ask in our Neuroscience class. His answer was that it would make a noise if someone were there to translate the sound waves. I don't remember the exact answer because I always sat in the back of the class and would daydream...

TOS

TOS, been thinking about you this evening. Wish I could reach through this computer screen and give you a great big hug. I know I say it in a joking manner, but I do appreciate you. I admire you, and I am glad that you are my friend. Or at least I hope we are friends :) 

You are very encouraging and supportive. I have learned so much from you. 

I think  you're right that we just need to go away to a place far from everything. Relax. You can take your H2O colors, books, and whatever. Me, I'll take my snacks, music, and more snacks. (Because we all know from my last entry that books would only take up space in my suitcase.)

I've chosen several places to go...

"Sometimes it seems your ever-increasing list of things to do can leave you feeling totally undone."

 - Susan Mitchell and Catherine Christie, I'd Kill for a Cookie

(Lugano, Switzerland)

"A vacation is what you take when you can no longer take what you've been taking." 

- Earl Wilson

( Windward Side - Oahu, Hawaii)

"Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and  proportion is more readily seen." 

-Leonardo Da Vinci

(Vinci, Italy)

...I'm ready when you are!

Reading

Bookstores. I love bookstores. Just going to a bookstore, I can be lost for hours. I would like to say that I do collect books. I buy books with the good intent to read them. Or I have a friend who reads like a fiend and she gives me her books when she is finished. Funny thing is that I don't read them from cover to cover. I just cleaned up my room and found that I had a pile of books, all of which had bookmarks somewhere within the first 75 pages. Not that I don't like reading. I guess I just don't know how, or don't have the attention. I seem to get distracted easily. All I see are words. It's been that way since I can remember. It's my learning disability. One of the things I struggle with that drives me crazy. I think my reading comprehension is well below the national average for an adult. That's why I prefer picture books. When looking for quotes for today, I found this one.

"There should be a little voice in your head like the storyteller is saying it. And if there's not, then you're just lookin' at the words."

- LaKeisha (9th grader in an article about reading for understanding-I lost the article so I can't tell you which article it is from!)

This is what I'd like to use as an excuse for my pile of books:

"Never read a book through merely because you have begun it."

- John Witherspoon

This is for the picture below.

"There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing."

- Isaac Disraeli

Postcard

I ran across this photo that I made for my sister on one of my vacations to Hawaii.

"If you don't understand how a woman could both love her sister dearly and want to wring her neck at the same time, then you were probably an only child."

- Linda Sunshine

Yea

Wahoo! Look what I spotted peeking up from the landscaping in the front yard. Even Mr. Spider wanted in on the action in the top photo.

"The flowers of late winter and early spring occupy places in our hearts well out of proportion to their size." - Gertrude S. Wister

The Thin Man's House

Here are a couple of photographs of a house in a place called Nieve, which is a municipality in the Province of Cuneo in the Piedemont region of Italy. This house is located on a road on the way up to the Parish Church of Saints Peter and Paul. I found it interesting and wondered what the inside looks like. Did somebody decide to squeeze a house in where the road turned, or was the house there first?