My Autumn Photos…

Inspired by Cordelia’s Mom and her post, Don’t Fence Me In, I decided to post a couple of fall foliage photos of my own.

Everyone has such lovely leaves. Much like Charlie Brown with his Halloween bag of rocks, we have sand spurs.

Lovely, aren’t they? Here’s a closer shot:

Yeah. They are extremely painful when they get imbedded in the bottom of your foot because you’re an idiot who thinks it’s a great idea to walk outside barefoot to clean and refill the water jugs for over 40 chickens or 6 pea fowl. Yes, I am a bird hoarder.

Anyway, there was something kind of pretty by the sand spurs:

As for said birds, we’re pretty sure we have three pea cocks and three pea hens. 

The boys get bluer every day. 

The hens are beautiful, too.

We have Silkies, Seramas, Polish chickens, Blue Andalusian, Sicilian Buttercups, and our original mixed flock. We’re averaging about 2-3 eggs a day at this point.

It’s funny, when I moved to Dunnellon years ago as a twelve year old kid, I thought of farming as smelly, gross, something I wouldn’t want to do. Now I enjoy every minute spent at home with the biddies and the piglet and the kids.

Lost stuff, Faeries, and Absentee Blogging

It’s a wonder what lack of a decent internet connection will do to one’s blogging habits. Also, what a lack of workspace does to one’s writing habits in general.

Life has become an endless cycle of work, driving, caretaking (humans and birds and other assorted living things) and stitching or beading. Aside from the whole car and electricity thing, I may be working my way back to the 19th Century.

I was musing on “things lost” the other day when I misplaced yet another pair of sunglasses… I can never seem to keep track of keys or sunglasses… 

At some point in my life, I was told when items mysteriously disappeared that I could blame their disappearance on mischievous faeries. Because faeries love to take everything from used teeth to car keys. Then when you’ve given up on ever finding them again, they reappear in an unlikely place.

I’ve lost and found many things these past few months. It’s easy to lose stuff when you are moving great quantities of stuff. Things missing? Movies, music, clothing… normal people lose socks in the wash. I lose socks, and pants, shirts, sweaters… how?!

The one thing we always lose that can’t be replaced is time. We all need the time faeries to bring us some extra days.

Paranoia

“Just because I’m paranoid, doesn’t mean they are not out to get me.”

We’ve all heard the saying. We all have fears and concerns that others believe are irrational. 

I try to keep anxiety from getting the better of me, but two things occurred today (totally unrelated) that left a niggling feeling at the back of my head.

The first occurred earlier today, while Adam and I were sitting in the back yard with our chickens foraging through the yard. A gold truck drove by, slowing and stopping several times in front of our house, turning right, and slowing and stopping along the side of our lot, as though they were trying to see something on our land. 

It disturbed both Adam and I enough that we mentioned it to his friend, Geoff, who has been helping us build a second coop for our Polish and Silkie chickens.

I forgot about it for most of the day, but learned a little while ago that my daughter saw a truck matching the description later in the day driving by our house slowly. 

When we have the funds, we will be fencing off more of the yard, and putting in privacy inserts.

The second thing was this:

http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/15/obama-white-house-threatens-war-russia-score-polit/

Look, the narrative has been all about Donald Trump and how horrible he is. I’m not saying he’s a good person. But one thing I’ve learned over the years – the media is good at smoke and mirrors to distract from what is really going on. And this wouldn’t be the first war we’ve entered to cover up a scandal.

What scandal? That the democratic primaries WERE rigged. That one of the candidates running for president has committed more crimes than Nixon resigned over. But nobody seems to care, because Donald Trump talked trash 11 years ago with some other sexist pig.

The DNC has not so much as tried to cast shadows on the veracity of the content of the emails released by Wikileaks. The response, instead, has been to blame Russia for releasing said emails. And now we are ready to start World War III over this?

Who is behind Hillary Clinton and what IS their end game?

Privacy fence. With barbed wire and locks on the gates. Because we will want to protect anything we grow or any animal we raise from desperate looters if and when we end up in the war that we simply can not win. Unless, of course, we are killed before we have time to starve. 

Pulling Threads

Make a loop, pull the yarn through on the hook. Yarn over. Pull through. A chain of knots, foundation.

Fold over. Push the hook through the chain. Yarn over. Pull through one. Yarn over. Pull through two.

Connecting. Form three more chains, skip one and connect the next chain with a single or a double or a triple stitch. Repeat the process as many times as the pattern demands, hoping that at some point it will all make sense.

Try not to let everything come unraveled. Pull tight, but not too tight, you don’t want the string to snap.

Unravel the strings that have not yet been woven, the strings that tangled in the bag as it was carelessly bounced around. Try not to pull out the deliberate stitches in the process. 

Create.