Monday Madness = Quick Post

In order to keep my NaBloPoMo deadline, I'm going to have to fire off a quick post from the office.  I've been editing scads of cute pictures from the Light up the Rivertown event, and the Excite night event on Friday night.

So, let's make this simple and quick.

I'll post a picture of Clay with one of the sweet friends who always expressed such love and concern for him when he was so sick.

Here, Clay meets Laura in person for the first time.

Aren't they cute?

Simple Sunday: Ruminations

I spent a few minutes this morning reading from one of my favorite childhood books, one called Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

As I start to write this blog, it occurs to me that I usually write about the same sort of things that Wilder did. She focused a lot on the natural world around her, and she wrote about family, farming, growing and preserving food, etc.

Her family butchered hogs, smoked venison, and salted down barrels of fish, enough to last through the winter. They stored root vegetables in a cellar.

Her "sustainable" lifestyle was common for the era in which she grew up.

Yesterday, my family butchered more than 30 chickens.  We didn't have to smoke or salt cure them, because we have the easier option of bagging the birds and sticking them in the deep freeze.

We don't have to do this.  Lord knows it would be much easier and less messy to go to the grocery store and buy chicken.

But the more we learn about super market food supplies, the better home-grown sounds.

Laura Ingalls Wilder was a newspaper columnist after she grew up, got married and moved out of the big woods.

I have a book of her columns that I enjoy dipping into every now and then. The book is called Little House in the Ozarks, and it's mostly filled with short essays Wilder wrote between the years of 1911 and 1925.

She was concerned about how cars and highways were changing her world. She wrote about conserving the trees, and other environmental issues of her day.  She wrote how women's lives were becoming easier because of inventions like the washing machine and refrigerator.

Approximately one hundred years later, Wilder would be amazed at the ways the world has changed.
We have so much less work to do to maintain a household, yet we seem to be far busier.

One of the ways I prepare for a front-loaded work week when I have zero time to cook on Mondays and Tuesdays is to prepare something that will be good to reheat for supper in the following days.

Today, on a simple and quiet Sunday at home, I fried one of those plump big roosters we "dressed" yesterday.
I made potato soup with veggies from our garden, and I baked cornbread and made a blackberry cobbler from berries picked on nearby hillsides a summer or two ago.

I wrote a little blog post and clicked "publish,"and my thoughts went swirling out into cyberspace.

Laura Ingalls Wilder never saw that coming, I'll bet.

I wonder what the next generation of pioneer women journalists will be opining about?

It's hard to imagine, but I'll bet they'll still have to eat.

Kentucky loves green bean casserole

I received a press release at work yesterday which said Kentucky is number one when it comes to loving the green bean casserole.

This press release came from the Del Monte company and included the basic green bean casserole recipe and several variations.

Green bean casserole was never a part of my family's Thanksgiving meal until my sister in law began to bring it a few years ago.

I like her version, but I had never really been a fan of the ones I'd tried before.

We usually eat homegrown beans at Thanksgiving, boiled down and seasoned with pork fat and salt, just like any other time of the year.

They taste so much better than those from a can.

Sorry Del Monte.

Finally Friday

And a frosty one.

I love the way frost makes a plain bare landscape look so magical--and clean.

I think of frost as purifying.   It burns away the dross and leaves only the most solid of elements: earth and rock--and birdhouses.

Is there an elf on the shelf at your house?

Across the country, schools and homes have elves on their shelves to prompt good behavior.
The elves are watching, you see, to see if kids are behaving.  If not, the elves will report to Santa, which means some unfortunate little boys and girls might not get what they want for Christmas.
Decades ago when I was a youngster, there was no elf on the shelf.
Santa Claus himself was watching us, or the Big Man upstairs. Like the popular elf, they were liable to be anywhere and everywhere.
We were threatened with a lump of coal in our stockings, or a sackful of switches for Christmas if we didn't behave.
Pretty dire consequences, right?
But that wasn't the worst of it. Sometimes we were told the Booger Man might get us.
I'm not sure how long these threats are effective, but I can remember being more aware of my words and deeds in the weeks leading up to Christmas.  If I did or said something I shouldn't have, my conscience at least spoke to me.
Of course, I knew Santa wasn't real, but the Big Man?
He's the one I didn't want to mess with.
How were you encouraged to be well-behaved when you were a child?

A little fall texture...

I like the textures of fall foliage.  I captured too much window frame in this picture, but I like the red leaves, the cedars in the background, and the seedy grasses.  That fuzzy stuff on the left is goldenrod.

I used to dislike "barren" fall landscapes, but they aren't really.  There's a lot going on in the fall, even when plants and trees look dead.

They are getting ready for another growing season already.   No matter what the season, spring is coming!

Because we could all use a little extra serenity in our day...

I wish it wasn't this cold so early in the year, but there's nothing to be done about it, so I'll just admire some of nature's handiwork.  

When two seasons collide, it makes for some pretty and peaceful-looking landscapes, don't you agree?