A small community of cedar waxwings came to visit, and cleaned off the hackberry trees before they left. 🙂
Visitors
Tag Archives: kansas
Chase Away My Winter Blues
Photo re-posts from old stock, to relieve my yearning for color.
Spring’s on its way, slowly but surely – but sometimes you just have to force the joy. 🙂
Nearly B&W
Here Comes the Sun
and I say: I’m ready for winter to be gone. 😉
Early Warming and Bare Toes
The first week of February is simply too early.
Buds on trees. Crocus blades nearly two inches above ground level. Daffodils pushing hopefully sun-ward. Tulips rising in anticipation. Blueberry bush buds, like little flames tipping the ends of the bare branches. Song bird songs and mourning dove coos… it’s simply too early.
Granted, when there are several days of 60+ degrees, these things are bound to occur. But dang! It’s not typical, I say!
Enjoyable, definitely, but it makes me leery for what the consequences might be: the options seem to fall anywhere along the lines of an extraordinary proliferation of bugs due to the prolonged warmth, or a snap kill-off of trees and early plants due to a harsh return of winter. I’ll hope for middle ground.
In the meantime, I took myself right out the door and immensely enjoyed that warm ol’ Kansas sunshine.
A visit to a nearby lake with the dog, then a meetup with friends at the lake.
Walking around the yard barefoot, giving early test of foot to rock callous as I ambled over to the dead grass.
Oh the feeling cannot be described as I rounded the corner and found the patch of freshly damped bare loam! A few spots that do not get much sunlight, in a high traffic area. The result is a finely powdered dirt, newly enriched from a recent soft rain, finely soaked in to leave what felt like milk chocolate for my feet. It was pure enjoyment.
I don’t know if you’ve heard of the term ‘earthing’. It’s a movement of sorts, the principles and theories of which I’ve not researched thoroughly.
What I know, for myself, is that there is nothing quite so satisfying as touching Almighty’s creation.
Skin to creation. Simple pleasures are the best. 🙂
Grafitti
Every time I visit the park, these bridge pilings beckon. This last visit, I finally decided to shoot some pictures. Edited to bring out the colors and the lines.
A Day At The Park
Understanding Snowbirds
Each year, another notch of unrest strikes at my aging body.
During the early years of marriage, our primary difference was where our ‘dream’ home was located. He said humid Texas and I said rocky Colorado. He loved the moist heat and I loved the dry cold.
As an easy compromise, we remained in Kansas. Hot humid summers and cold-ass winters. Neither of us really thrilled about the locale, but staying put is ever so easily accomplished.
Aging, it seems, makes me reconsider – perhaps there’s merit in warmer climates.
As the joints in my fingers squeal little prophetic tunes of ‘if you think this is bad, just you wait’, and my cold ankles send icicles up my spine, I recognize that there will need to be some more compromises made – and quickly!
I’ve discovered that once my ankles become chilled, there is no other body part that I can warm to adjust my core temperature back to comfort. I simply have to find a method to keep my ankles warm, always. Similarly, the back of my neck is now a temperature modifying zone.
Where are those leg-warmers of the 80s? Why didn’t I subscribe to that fashion phase and store a box of them as mementos?
Thankfully, scarves have been quite the recent fashion craze – and as usual, I’ll finally be interested in them once they’re going out of style. Count on me to be completely off the tracks of fashion sense. 🙂
Seriously though, I’ve recently discovered that quality “short”boots – not the ankle boots, mind you – provide just the sort of heat entrapment necessary for these thermostat ankles, so I’ve stalled the caravan South for a bit.
But I do understand those SnowBirds now. Does that mean I’m still learning?
Blue Skies Look Better With Cloud Contrast
Here’s to just enough contrast and just enough sunshine. 🙂
The Last Hurrah – Part Two
Shabbat shalom. 🙂
