Britney, Brad, and Beatle

This is an entry that Suzanne should be making, but she's busy with important things.
Britney is pregnant!
Brad and Angelina stopped fighting, trying for number two(4-6), whatever!
And the Beatle is dating around!
So, There! Read all about it!

#100

So now that I've reached one hundred entries I should write something significant and thoughtful. Sure!

When I was teaching pre-school we taught our students to understand and count to five. Now that number is twenty. Then in Kindergarten students often have the project of finding one hundred of something. Cheerios, seeds, matches, often pennies,(but they won't stick well with Elmer's Glue!) But I digress.
In grade school one might brag of having one hundred dollars, or maybe grandpa does.

Money in hundreds is big during our working years. Then it becomes hundred thousands, or the need for it , or even a mortgage, or college education for a child.

At my stage in life, I think in time, not money. Maybe I'll live to be one hundred years old!
We have a sick neighbor who might wish for one hundred hours.
I hope to live in health for that many more months or two hundred, or three even.

We shall see.
Anyone need one hundred beans?

Once Upon A Time....

Once upon a time there was a young dog that truly enjoyed life.
She loved children, always happy to invite them into the yard with great fanfare and noise. She especially loved to bark. Barked for the sheer joy of it, for no apparent reason, but long and loud.
She was strong, could pull eight foot landscape timbers out of their position, move them clear across the large lot, to chew on them at will.
She liked a variety of drinking water. Fresh or feathery from the bird bath, delivered out of a sprinkler, from the little in-ground pond where the plants had to be lifted out along with the water. She could also perform elegant, acrobatic stunts to get to her most favorite water source. She would jump up three feet to the edge of the fish pond, lean over just so and have the water delivered into her mouth. Fell in only once!
She looooved the cat, she loved Azi, even played with the pigeons when she could. She's not a killer, so she seemed so happy when she came across a baby mouse one day. To keep her little playmate safe, she did the best thing she knew, put it in her mouth where it was nice and warm. Nobody knows how long she had the mouse-icle. Eventually, a human noticed the tail hanging out and she gave it up.
The last time she was seen, she was exploring the possibilities of digging to China.

Yummy Mandarins

Last year, it was so cold that the fruit froze on my citrus trees.
This year, that's not the case. The lemons and naval oranges are not quite ripe yet. The mandarins are another story. I picked a dozen of them and tested them - three times. They taste just wonderful, sweet and seedless.
The citrus season has begun.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I saw this flock of turkeys on a seldom traveled road in the Sierra foothills. They were there just so I could capture their picture.

(No, we will not be eating a bird this year.)

Waterfall in the Black Forest

We were driving through the Black Forest in search of a small town known for its Cuckoo Clocks. Near our destination was a sign pointing to the tallest waterfall in Germany? Sure, why not check it out.
It all looked very makeshift. Scraped parking area, hand painted sign pointing into the forest. It's all about walking into the woods in the Black Forest. So about a half mile along this trail sits a little shack, kiosk, with a woman inside collecting an Euro from us if we intend to go on. (Would she have chased us down had we continued without the toll payment?)
So we stood on the little bridge, looked up then down this section of the falls and went back up the trail to our car.
The falls were a bit of a disappointment, to be truthful, and I had not been in the mood to stumble, again, through a section of some wood. But never fear, we had to do the hiking again another day!
Now on hindsight, I appreciate more fully the calming effect of that little walk. It was cool in the forest on this warm day.
When we came to the little clock town, we drove over the bridge at the foot of the falls. It was perhaps prettier there than it had been on the hill.
So we ate our lunch sitting on a low wall, bought the required clocks and drove to the northern edge of the Black Forest on this day.

Cats

My cat Pepper has always been a sweet thing!
But what is it with the stretching on corners?
She has and uses her cardboard scratching thing. Then she stops in door ways, or the kitchen corner, or the window mullion, stretching up. She doesn't sink her claws in, just stretching.
Why not stretch against the flat wall? Would she loose her balance and fall? Does she need the 90' to angle her paws?
Deep questions to which we must find the answers.

Ray and 'Shel

Happy anniversary to Ray and Michelle!

Flu Shots

It's that time again. I've never had a bad reaction to a vaccination, but picked up many illnesses from elementary kids. So flu shots are for me.
This year was the most convenient ever. Drive to the (new and beautiful) county health department, Get in line behind the other cars, stop at a couple of stations in the parking lot, pull up to the nurses station and one of them will step up to the car and inoculate as needed. Donate $2 and leave.
I understand these drive through clinics are not new in some parts of the Nation, but they are new in this area.
I like it!

The Most Beautiful Doors

As a young girl, at the end and after WWll, my family lived in a small village in Southern Germany. We girls had a lot of freedom and ran around the village as we pleased.
My sister, two years older, loved going into the forests and looking for mushroom and berries. That is something she still does now.
On the highest rise sat a little church and next to it was a grassy mount, flat on one side with steps leading halfway up. On the flat side, maybe ten feet tall, and as wide, was a set of wonderful steel doors. The steps were a great place to sit and watch the world go by, slow as it was then.
I never saw those doors open, but behind them was the water reservoir for the community.
These doors were a treasure. Very ornate, swirls around the edges, and in the center of each door was a huge lion head, in its mouth a heavy ring. We would put our ears to the door and listen to the water moving somewhere beyond those doors.
The best part was to swing the lion's ring against the door and have the sound travel far into the hollow behind those mysterious doors and back.
The last time I spoke with someone who lives there was in 1994. The mount has been leveled, the road redirected, the gates are gone. Just gone!
The then major supposedly had them in his barn. It's too bad they are not used on a structure in the village. By now they probably have made their way to an antiques dealer.
But, no matter, I have a set in my head!