The Gray fox family that lives in my woods must be expecting… she is visiting my compost area a little before dark every night. Isn’t she beautiful?
And then there were these 2 love birds…
Normally possums are solitary animals… Obviously they get together every once in a while… The romance is short, but I understand it is intense. I hope the mama brings her little ones around in a couple of months.
In spite of a lot of illnesses, our group got together and headed out once again to carol in the neighborhood. The weather was very cooperative with temps in the upper 50s! I remember the first year – we sang standing in snow!
Once again we had singers from several different churches. The Baptists provided the words in English for those of us who learned out songs in Latin! We included the words for Ava Maria for them to ponder. We did not try to sing it. Maybe next year. About half way thru the men disappeared to try to get my van running. Dead battery. Oh well, it is the original battery… I added up how old it is and much to my shock, it is 7 1/2 years old. Since I only have 47,000 miles on it, and it is a Toyota good for another 200,000 miles or so, I don’t think about things like age. But I guess the battery did.
We did not have our usual police escort this year, so that limited where we went. We stayed off the Main streets because of the kids – they get excited and sometimes run across the street. So, to keep them safe, we stayed on the back streets. We sang at the homes of several people who usually come and sing with us. It has been a year for surgeries and such…
Anyway, we had a good time. Lots of cookies, hot chocolate, and a Muslim friend made us a tray of Turkish Baklava. I thought that was a good way to top off my 4th Ecumenical Moment.
Where is Spring, you say! Here we have daffodils, pansies, even the forsythia is opening… the late camellias are starting and I swear I saw a little color on a couple early azaleas. I did! But if you listened to that dumb groundhog up in Philadelphia, well, I am sure you must be disappointed. You can see a picture of this liar on this blog: http://thefrogandpenguinn.blogspot.com/2013/03/dont-shoot-piano-player.html.
Very possumly Phil should be retired – a suggestion that he can’t refuse, kind of retirement… I, the Onley Proud member of the Possum Prognosticator’s Club, President of Possum Patrol (always on the lookout for lying 
But I digress… Just how accurate is that dumb groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil? According to StormFax Weather Almanac, Phil has been right 39 percent of the time since 1887. It is amazing that he still has a job. I, on the other hand can never be replaced. Not only is my Prediction record Perfect, but where else can you find an animal this cute who eats copperheads for snacks, catches mice and rats and all sorts of buglies and does NOT ever get rabies? Can you beat that with a stick? Impossumble.
My human will tell you, “It always snows on the daffodils.” 
(If you were a possum you would find that hairlarious!)
OK, so it is only 5 snowflakes an hour right now. Hang on. Just wait! You’ll see!
The snow geese are on the move again - huge flocks have been flying over. When I say huge, I am talking thousands Really. They make so much noise, it is easy to keep track of them. The ponds are snow white, some of the fields are white... I am not a farmer, so I think it is beautiful. I understand not everyone feels this way. But they don't eat any of my crops. If I had to worry about that, one goose would clean up my garden in short order! But, It feeds us... and I still find it exciting to go out in the yard and pick something I am going to eat for lunch or dinner... or pick berries for my cereal. No chemicals, not even any chemical fertilizers, and my cow manure comes from field grazed cows... remember? Like they used to do? Cows in the pasture? What a novel idea. Home grown food. Not crap from China or some other country with worse rules than we have, and folks, we have bad rules when you consider GMOs, pesticides, herbicides, and tons of chemical fertilizers. If you are close to my age, you will have noticed food just doesn't taste like you remember it from when you were a kid, does it? Even many of the tomatoes from farm markets taste like cardboard these days. Why? They have been genetically modified so they look prettier, grow bigger, ripen faster... Didja ever notice cherry tomatoes are sweeter than regular tomatoes? The goal is not to take all that flavor and stretch it into a huge tomato, so it is sweeter. Now the big thing is grape tomatoes. They grow fast, are harvested in weeks, and have tough skins so they can stand rough treatment without bruising. But how do they taste to you? Lots of chemicals in those tiny red things.
THE BEST $108 I EVER INVESTED had to have been this chain saw. For one thing, it is FOOL PROOF! Which is a good thing since I have been known to hurt myself with tools. This saw comes apart, each section being 4 feet in length. Here I have assembled 2 sections, the third or middle section is on the top shelf of my potter's bench. This saw runs on a battery pack that goes in the handle end, so the blade part is always at least 8 feet away from the hand holding down the run button. That way the user cannot possibly cut off their own toes! It is up to you to stay out of my reach! The chain part is only 8 inches, so one is limited to cutting a branch or tree 4 inches or under. Now how much trouble can one get into with something that skinny? (I am still doing research...) The unassembled saw fits in a neat black canvas bag and the screw driver/allen-wrench fits in the chain shield. These are 7 foot doors, to verify the size of the saw as I usually use it. I am not comfortable with the 12 foot length, tho' I have used it.
My problem is not that I am a Klutz... but that I have problems understanding limitations. Maybe it is because I grew up as the only girl for miles in a neighborhood of boys. If they could do it, so could I! As a kid, my step-father always made me help him do things. I learned about making mistakes by watching him rip up more than he fixed. When I lived with my father, he made me help him do things, and with a Master's in Mechanical Engineering, he did not make as many mistakes, and he was a good teacher. He taught me not to be afraid to try things. For example, he made me rotate the tires on my first car before he would turn the keys over to me. That way he knew I would be able to change a tire if I had to - and I had to change more than one! He knew I could not call im and have him help me out as he was seldom in this country, let alone close enough to change a tire for me. 'Course, now I am too old and have no idea how to even get to the so called spare tire. Oh well.
pile #1... Remember, that saw is 8 feet long, so this pile of little trees is over 7 feet high. 
Now on pile#1, it doesn't look like much until you notice, some of these trees with a 2 and 3 inch diameter are 20 to 30 feet long! Most of them I had to cut in half just to move them to the pile....
Pile #2...is badly piled... too many trees I should have cut kept getting in my way. It was an unplanned pile, but really high, long and deep. I planned on going back and cutting the few trees holding the pile in place and restacking the trees, but it actually started to sleet. Needless to say, I quit.
Besides, I was getting cold. I hate sweating and freezing at the same time, but I am really pushing my body to do this stuff. However, I am determined to be as independent as I can be. I have learned there are not many folks that can be depended on... not even the folks that supposedly make a living doing this kind of work... or the folks that beg for small jobs. So, if I can stand and walk, I will keep at it. Do not remind me that a woman of 68 is not supposed to be doing this stuff. Do not remind me of that wheelchair in the barn.
It is raining harder now and is mixed with ice pellets... supposed to turn to snow tonight. That will be good as a nice heavy snow will compact those piles and also show me all the little stuff I missed because of the leaves. Lets just hope we don't have an ice storm because someone always gets hurt. But, a nice clean snow will be good. Actually, I am excited as this was impenetrable last summer. When I get done, I am going to transplant a couple dozen camellias into this area. I want to turn it into a Meditation Garden...
A week or so ago, I did a post about Ramazan (Ramadan) and the comments to the blog were few, but I did get a number of emails about the post. http://possumlane.blogspot.com/2010/08/ramadan-ramazan.html.
As most folks who know me at all know that I used to live in Turkey and that I have traveled extensively throughout the Middle East. I have a number of close Turkish friends here on the Shore. There are several restaurants here on the Eastern Shore of Virginia that are owned by Turks. I can think of 8 without straining my brain all that hard…
Anyway, my Turkish friends seem to appreciate my pitiful attempts at speaking their language (which I had not spoken for nearly 50 years, except for a selection of cuss words when needed – that my boss could not understand) and they appreciate my love of their country, food, and understanding and acceptance of their customs. So, I and some friends that I hang out with were invited to a Break Fast at an American Turkish cultural center in Georgetown, Delaware. If you read my post on Ramazan, you will remember that they do not eat or drink during daylight hours, which is a long stretch when Ramazan falls in the summer months. Remember Ramazan is based on the lunar calendar, so it is about 11 days earlier every year. Next year the days will be even longer as Ramazan will start about the 1st of August. So, last night, our dinner was served at 8 PM, just after sunset.
Most of the women were dressed in their finest headscarves and long sleeved, floor length dresses. Most of the women and children sat on one side of the room, most of the men and visitors on the other. It just seemed to work that way for ease in feeding and caring for the children, not as a segregation thing. Think about your home at Thanksgiving, the men in front of the TV set or hanging out on the porch or gazebo, the women gathered around in the kitchen… I remember G-ma threatening the men with a spatula if they did not get out of her way… the gazebo was the escape from work or just being underfoot. 
Our host, Asher, served us.
We had a delicious dinner, lentil soup and fresh baked rolls, Turkish meatballs (Köfte – pronounced kind of like Kurftah), pilaf with beef and chickpeas, and a salad, and a sauce to eat with the pilaf. The sauce is a mixture of yogurt, cucumbers, onion and light garlic. All this was followed by fresh made baklava and çay (chai).
It was an emotional experience for me.
If you’ve read much of my blog or if you have known me for a while, you will know I dearly loved the few years I spent in Turkey, I was treated like royalty wherever I went, and I was most fortunate to be able to travel throughout much of the country. That might not look like much on the map, but back in the early 60s, the only paved roads were in the major cities, and there were often no bridges over the shallower rivers, one drove thru them. So travel was slow and yet it gave one a chance to experience the country in a way today’s tourists will miss whizzing by things at 70 mph. Part of my dad’s job was to help set up facilities for building roads and bridges. And being young (I graduated high school in Ankara) I picked up a bit of the language – enough to get in or out of trouble, get something to eat or drink, and find the bathroom! For some reason some of the words have always been part of my thinking vocabulary and just pop out from time to time and I don’t even realize it. I learned to eat eggplant in Turkey, so I learned it as patlican (pot-la-john) and still have to pause and think of the English for it, which in my old age can take some time.
An imam called us to prayer. It has been 46 years since I have heard an actual live voice do the call to prayer. It brought tears to my eyes. I felt very homesick for Turkey. There was prayer both before and after dinner giving thanks for the food and fellowship.
So I want to thank my dear friend, Asher, for inviting me and my friends, Grenville for offering to drive, Beatrice for her company, Mehmet for being my dinner companion, Ülkü and her friends for preparing a wonderful dinner, and the Turkish community for sharing a special occasion with us.
I am still smiling. Çok teşekkür ederim.
Ramadan, or Ramazan as I learned it many years ago, started August 11th this year. It made the news the other night because of some football player who is a Muslim is going to be observing Ramadan, and they are concerned with his ability to play during the fast. Of course… football… we can’t have someone impaired and not entertaining us, can we? But, I must look at the good side and shut that cynical self up… The good side is, it brings up the concept of Ramadan and thus the meaning is there for those who want to learn from it. So, a number of my friends have asked me about it knowing that I have many Muslim friends and Muslim family members.
For many, it is just seen as a time of fasting, from sunrise to sunset. But it is so much more than that. I will include a link to an excellent site for anyone who wants to learn more about Islam – not the fundamentalist jerks, who, like most any other fundamentalist group take holy words and distort them into a license for violence, but the true Islam which is a religion of peace. I know it is not perceived that way in this country anymore, but we often judge an entire people by the actions of a radical few. And another truth is, many of us in the USA see “them” in exactly the same way as they see us – after all, we have troops on the ground in several Muslim countries, we have bombed wedding parties, innocent villagers, farmers in their fields, women, children and babies in their mother’s arms… and we have a reputation for “occupying” countries, keeping a military presence after we are no longer being openly called the enemy.
If you have an open mind and wish to learn more, I suggest you visit http://www.islamicity.com/ramadan/ . It is an excellent site if you wish to be educated about Islam.
The following are excerpts from Islamicity on Ramadan. I have included a few things folks don’t expect to see… things beyond the usual fasting rules and prayer.
Eat, drink and be moderate
Almost all of us do it - once [the sun sets], we just keep plowing food and drink into our mouths till it's hard to move afterwards. And those of us who do it know this is totally contrary to the spirit of Ramadan, through which we're supposed to learn self-control not self-indulgence. Let's try to stick to the Prophetic rule on eating: fill our stomachs with one-third food, one-third water and one-third breathing space, even in Ramadan.
Give a dollar a day in charity...or five or ten
The Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, was always generous but even more so in Ramadan. Let's open our hearts and dig a little deeper in our wallets this year. Even less than a dollar a day adds up. Whatever you can give, it's the intention that counts.
Stop swearing and/or backbiting - with a special box
It's hard not to shoot our mouths off when someone's upset us. Whether we utter those four-letter words or backbite about someone to our family and friends, we know this isn't the God-approved way of letting off steam. In Ramadan, when we want to build our spirituality, we've got to [fight] our bad habits.
Try this: get a box [or jar] and every time you catch yourself swearing or backbiting put some money in it. It could be a buck or less. The point is to choose an amount that makes it feel like punishment.
At the end of the month send the money to a charity or buy a gift for the person whom you've backbitten the most against.
Call/email your relatives
You'd think that given the easy access to email, competitive long-distance calling rates, phone cards, etc. these days, we'd keep in touch with family and friends more often. But the opposite seems to be the case, as we get caught up in life's "busyness."
Strengthening ties with family members and keeping in touch with friends is part of our way of life and an act Allah is very pleased with. This Ramadan, call family and friends or at least email them a Ramadan card and ask them how their fasting is going.
Go on a technology diet
Even if you work in the IT industry, you can do this. Avoid checking personal email and surfing the web during your fast. After [the sun sets], instead of plopping yourself in front of the screen, pray. The same goes for the television. The point is to try to give our full attention to spiritual elevation this month.
Forgive everyone who has hurt you
Still got a festering wound from the fight with your friend last year? Still upset about something your spouse said during a heated argument? Or are you still bitter about the way your parents sometimes treated you as a kid? Let go of the anger and pain this Ramadan and forgive those who have hurt you. Forgiving someone is not only good for the body, but it's also great for the soul. And in Ramadan, ten days of which are devoted to Allah's forgiveness, shouldn't we lesser beings forgive too?
If you find it very difficult to forgive everyone, forgive at least three people.
Q: Why does Ramadan begin on a different day each year?
Because Ramadan is a lunar month, it begins about eleven days earlier each year. Throughout a Muslim's lifetime, Ramadan will fall both during winter months, when the days are short, and summer months, when the days are long and the fast is more difficult. In this way, the difficulty of the fast is evenly distributed between Muslims living in the northern and southern hemispheres.
Q: What do Muslims believe they gain from fasting?
One of the main benefits of Ramadan is an increased compassion for those in need of the necessities of life, a sense of self-purification and reflection and a renewed focus on spirituality. Muslims also appreciate the feeling of togetherness shared by family and friends throughout the month. Perhaps the greatest practical benefit is the yearly lesson in self-restraint and discipline that can carry forward to other aspects of a Muslim's life such as work and education.
Q: Are there any exemptions from fasting?
Some of these exemptions are optional.
Children under the age of puberty (Young children are encouraged to fast as much as they are able.)
People who are mentally incapacitated or not responsible for their actions
The elderly
The sick
Travelers who are on journeys of more than about fifty miles
Pregnant women and nursing mothers
Women who are menstruating
Those who are temporarily unable to fast must make up the missed days at another time or feed the poor.
Q: Is fasting just about not eating and drinking during daylight hours?
Despite what many may think Ramadan is just not about restraining from food and drink. Muslims must also refrain from things such as verbal abuse, fighting, eavesdropping, backbiting, lying and slander as these acts render the fast as worthless. In essence Muslims must be model human beings during the fast. The act of abstinence is not meant to starve you; it is an act of worship like prayer. It enables people with plenty to empathize with those who have very little in this world.
To all my Muslim friends and relatives, Have a Happy and Blessed Ramazan. Peace be with you.
and mostly what I am doing now is puttering... whatever that actually means. The seeds are all sewn, some are up, some are not, and the lima beans were transplanted earlier this week and looking good! The strawberries are almost finished for now. Sometimes I get a second harvest. We shall see what happens this year. The garden has taken off on its own with a wild riot of color... I never know just what I am going to get out around St Francis,
but it is usually beautiful any time of the year. Sooo, now that I have 5 minutes to putter between potting/planting and harvesting, I decided to build myself a potting bench, except, of course, the potting is done for this year. But I end up with all kinds of miscellaneous chores and the old back just needed a place out in the yard where I can DO STUFF without bending down or making a mess in the house, carport, or in a hot stuffy barn. 
Important stuff like bird feeder cleaning and repair, a place to throw the garden gloves and tools when I have to answer the phone, a place to store the pots, trays, and some of the mixed potting soil till next year, being always mindful to keep that little square spot open next to the Scoop Away bucket (now containing potting soil) - that is the shed where Spook goes when the weather is terribly wet or windy. I decided to give the flat surfaces a coat (or 2) of paint since it is sitting outside. And yes, the bench is tilted. My good friend, Pat, came by and lifted one end so I could tilt it more for rain run off. Another note - I did buy new 4x4s and 2x4s for the legs... 4x4s so it will withstand the hurricane force winds and not blow out in the yard - unless we get a Cat 3 or more. The wood is treated to have contact with the elements. The shelf and work top and all other pieces are scraps I saved for the moment when I might need them. Some of my scrap wood came from the lumber yard's scrap pile. If you go to buy lumber and have them cut it for you, you might notice they have a big scrap pile. Ask and they will usually let you dig thru the pile and take home left over pieces that might come in handy when you make your next project. Got grandkids? A friend's grandson and neighbor kid built a tree house completely out of scrap lumber from the lumber yard. All they bought were nails! 
It also seemed like a good place to display my very old shore bird decoys... 
By the way, did you notice the clematis in the St Francis garden???
It is amazing this year. This is not a good shot, but I was in a rush. Forgive me!
Better than that, I decided to actually do it with the ground cloth and sand to make it level, due to all the moles that seem to like this place and have tunneled under the stones.
And I also picked up a plastic Adirondack style yard chair that is light enough for me to move easily, versus the old one that takes a strong man or a steady wheelbarrow. At any rate, I am as satisfied as I am going to be. The cats love sprawling out in the middle of it and it is comfortable for several people to sit and have a glass of tea.
The back did get shaved pretty close… fortunately it grows back in fast, so it doesn’t really look as bald as it is. I was shocked at how dark the back is – the hair around the front is white! Go figure! Bald heads are cold!
Beans are thru the dirt in the Stand Uppity garden.
Other things are potted waiting to germinate, or in little pots waiting until we are sure of no frost. The strawberries are in full bloom,
the asparagus is slowly popping thru the ground – so far never enough for one meal at a time. Onions are up about 5, 6 inches. 
In another couple of days they will all be open and magnificent. I wonder how many people will stop and tell me how much they enjoy driving past my little acreage? I think that is so cool. Makes all the work worthwhile. I usually offer them a job weeding. So far, no takers.
I planted one bush outside my bedroom window. It has been a long struggle, but it survives. I do believe it is my favorite fragrance. I told that to one of my tiny visitors one year. She said it was nice, but not as good as chocolate. The Bleeding Hearts made it thru the winter.
This is the first year for the white one on its own. 
I planted it last year. The redbud was a bit pitiful this year, not nearly as full of blooms as in years past. Probably so much wind damage over the winter – the little twigs and tiny branches were all over the ground.
But, we have had an almost dry couple of weeks and so it no longer squishes when I walk in the yard, and the Deere no longer leaves ruts in some places. I am hoping I can get some mulch moved this week and use the tractor, not a wheelbarrow.
