I posted this the other day on my sangha group in response to a question about verbal communication - someone implying that words were the only way to communicate. This was my answer. I have gotten some interesting answers since then. What do you think???
I have a neighbor who, like me, drums. He is mute but not deaf. Often we communicate with the drums, facial expressions, sometimes color, texture, flowers, feathers, dead grass, thorns, we almost never use the written word. Almost every time he comes over here, he brings me some small object that expresses how he is feeling that day. If I asked you to try a couple of times a day to express how you felt by showing me an inanimate object in your hand, could you do it? Are you a flower? A leaf blown by the wind? A seed? A twig that will snap if bent or a pliable vine? Hmmm, sounds like a fun exercise – no right or wrong answers – the only challenge is in your own mind.
One friend now emails me almost everyday sometimes with just one or two words. One of the best - well, no wait, there is no best or even better - so let me say, umm, one that I totally identified with after a day of Christmas shopping was - "a hairball!" Yep. I felt chewed up and spit out by the shopping mall. I hate shopping these days. Can't decide what hurts worse - my knees or my wallet!
Anyway - give it a shot! What are you today?????
I will post my answer this afternoon when I get back...
Today I am a frost bitten camellia bud, waiting... Tomorrow, it will warm up and I will open and bloom in the sunshine! Well, maybe not perfectly, the frost bite and all, but hopefully I would bring a smile to your eyes.
Spook and Punk came here during hurricane Isabel, a few years back. Animals often travel in bad storms or get disoriented. (During one storm, a friend’s cat crashed thru the screen on her bedroom window which opened onto a porch, and disappeared. She never saw the animal again. So, sadly, it happens…) I posted pictures at the local SPCA and all the vets and advertised in the lost and found of the local papers and radio – nobody came to claim them. For the first month, they hid out under one of my several barns until they discovered the barns go under water in a heavy rain.
Eventually they got brave enough to hang out on the carport, and I built a shelter for them, well, 2 shelters, actually, both heated. One (the Cat House) opens with a vent into the furnace room, 
the other, we call the Nest, is heated with a vent from under the house, with hot water baseboard pipes right next to this vent.
Then, last summer I had a shed built covering my oil tank. 
With heating fuel over $4 at the time, people were discovering their fuel tanks were being emptied in the night or while they were at work, so I thought, “out of sight, out of mind.” The cats thought it was a great place to hang out as I stored some lumber, bird feeders, and plastic containers in there.
During this last soaker, with it’s more than 5 inches of rain and high winds, the cats hid out in the shed, but discovered the way out was now under water. Poor babies! They were soaked! So, I called my neighbor across the street who had promised me a small load of gravel next time he recovered his driveway and asked him when he was planning on redoing his driveway. He decided Monday was the day and brought me 2 scoops of gravel in his Bobcat front loader. It really tore up my yard,
but I have gravel to spare, and the floor of the oil shed is several inches higher and Spook, for one, is much happier.
. Next warm day I promise I will build them a suitable “porch roof!” But, this will have to do until then. See Spook's little feet? Last week, that would have been underwater!
and greenery on the railing, now what is going up out by the road???? Oh… well… that’s OK, I guess… 
at least it does not insult anyone like the Bush White House Chanukah card that had a Christmas tree on it! (SO embarrassing, that!)
LOL! Hadj, on the other hand, took to the scarf like he had always worn one,
and will come over to you if you hold it down to put it on him. He tries to push his head thru it. Once on, he happily wears it all day. This morning, he actually brought it over and laid it at my feet and stood there waiting for help after pushing it across the living room floor with his head for several minutes!
By the way, it says “Wreck the Halls” – more a Rascal concept… Hadji tried the antlers on, too, but was not thrilled. 
He came over to me to ask to take them off.
Scarf, yes, stupid, no.
It is like having built in Christmas decorations in December – all red and green, and so beautiful when it gets snowed on! This was Punk and Spook having a moment while I was putting up my yard decoration.
Is that sweet or what????? Is there mistletoe out here that I didn't notice?????
We had a serious frost this morning. Last night I looked longingly (in the comfort of my warm Southern home) at the pictures of a Canadian blogger friend's yard and thigh high snow. Maybe it is the memories of my childhood to the north that makes snow so - um, magical. Or maybe it is because I no longer have to drive in it. Or maybe it is because snow always meant NO School down here on the Shore... I don't know. Maybe it is the way it changes the scenery, eliminating the dirt, fallen leaves, dead grass and weeds... instant yard clean up! Anyway, we are about to have a cold spell. And the frost this morning at 28 degrees was also beautiful. 
The BeautyBerry Bush, Buddha and prayer flags in the early morning sun.... The sun had been up not quite an hour and was rapidly burning up the frost.
So I had to grab the camera and try to capture a bit of the magic of the frosty morning. 
