Frivolous Friday

I just love sparkly things.  I don't think there's much of anything that sparkles more than a good sized tiara. If there is such a thing as reincarnation I figure I must have been a crow or a raccoon in my previous life. I am always having to hunt down my unbreakable gazing balls  that the raccoons have "borrowed" from my garden.  I see the raccoons in my garden at night industriously, yet furtively, rolling them away, pushing them with both of their front paws and I just don't have the heart to stop them...I just let them enjoy them for a while and then go hunt for them.

Anyway, when I'm feeling a little down, I sometimes put on one of my tiaras. I walk around for a bit, enjoying the feeling of it on my head, and then I go and look into the mirror. The sight of me, usually in paint stained, or gardening, clothes wearing a tiara never fails to make me laugh!

Nearly Wordless Wednesday

Fog and sunbeams streaming through the trees...beautiful.

Solitude

This is a road that leads back to my cottage. There is black ice under the new, thin coating of snow and the tire tracks are mine. One set made when I had to get to the store, the other set made when I came back. (Thank goodness for my old, but really sturdy, 4 wheel drive). This time of year, almost the end of Winter, almost the beginning of Spring, is an in-between time when people seem drawn to stay by their own hearth-sides. We who live up here year-round, as I do, cherish this time of year. It's a time of solitude, a time of freedom from flatlanders rushing to the ski resorts (except on the weekends), and the accidents they cause because they don't know how to drive in the snow, and freedom from their rush to the lakes in the Summer and their frenetic, frenzied, city energy that seems to suffuse the air when they're up here. (Don't get me wrong; we mountain folk depend on their money to keep our economy going, and the word "flatlander" is in no way derogatory. It just denotes that they live down where it's flat).

The frantic, beloved, whirl of the holiday season is well past and I revel in the silence, watching the birds that come to the feeders, listening to the muted voice of the wind singing through snow-laden branches, loving the crunch of my boots in the snow during a walk in the woods around my cottage. Soon the slow pace of this time of year will quicken, so, for now, I am grateful for the silence and the solitude.

It's MINE!

That's what Betsy is still saying to me 12 hours after she found a piece of broiled chicken on the kitchen floor this morning. I don't normally let the cats or dogs into the kitchen, so I can only assume that the chicken fell off the plate last night after dinner. She zipped into the kitchen ahead of me this morning, which she does every morning, zooming around the floor once or twice, then dashing out the door. Betsy doesn't do anything slowly. But this morning, she skidded to a halt mid-zoom and started pawing frantically under the kitchen counter. Before I could get over to her, she had the chicken, holding it down with both paws and gnawing on it. I was afraid it might make her sick after being unrefrigerated for so long so I took it away from her. That sounded easy, didn't it? Well, it wasn't! As soon as I said, "Oh, Betsy, give..." she didn't even wait for me to finish the sentence but took off, chicken firmly in mouth. The fact that the piece of chicken was hanging down between her front paws didn't slow her down one bit. What slowed me down was that her siblings (canine and feline) immediately realized that she had a goodie and started chasing her, thereby getting between me and my quarry. So there I am, chasing the whole herd, all of whom can run much faster than I can, through the dining room, across the living room, through the foyer, up the stairs (and I'm really running out of steam by now), down the upstairs hallway...and Betsy reaches the end of the hallway and turns around. She turns around while I'm still standing, sides heaving, gasping desperately for air, certain cardiac arrest will occur any second, at the top of the stairs...and the whole herd turns with her and thunders back down the hallway right at me. Their paws didn't even slip once on the hardwood floor! The only thing that saved me from being knocked down the stairs by the vicious herd of galloping mountain lions and slavering wolves...er, I mean cats and dogs...was that the door to my husband's den was open and I leaped into the opening, a mere nano second ahead of my supposed-to-be-loving-children-in-fur. This brush with certain death renewed my adrenalin and I charged down the stairs after them, yelling words that probably couldn't be said here, and cornered the lot of them in the laundry room. Betsy had leapt up to a narrow ledge where I keep the soap and was gloating over her prize ("I have it and I'm not going to share, I caught it and it's MINE"), when I shoved my way through her whining siblings ("Mom said we have to share, I'm gonna tell") and snatched it from her, saying "Shame on you, shame on all of you!" Her siblings walked out with a "yeah, whatever" attitude and Betsy, my sweet little Betsy, swatted at me! Was she embarrassed by this bad behavior? Chagrined by her attempt to hit her loving human mother? Not in the least. She just stared at me and grumpily said, "Well, YOU dropped it, I caught it, it's MINE!"

A Promise

This time of year, as you can see, the snow and cold has a tight grip on these mountain lands. The sun stays low on the horizon and, in the deep hollow where I live, darkness comes early. I am kept busy keeping the fireplaces fed with wood, and the birds, squirrels and other creatures that live in the woods around my cottage fed with their favorite foods. Breaking the thick ice from the water so that all may drink is a chore that I repeat over and over each day. It's amazing how quickly the water transforms into ice again. The star of the sun, shining through the trees at a slightly higher angle than the previous day, offers a promise that the snow will melt giving the earth the freedom to push forth green shoots, the ice will thaw and give the creek its voice back and the turning of the wheel of seasons will once more come round to Spring.