Spring + Snow = Mud

 We got a nice spring snow this week...

which is turning into glorious mud

and greengrass.

 A Grammy Day means...

splashing in the puddles.

 Everything washes so

go ahead and get muddy.

We are so grateful for the moisture.

Who wouldn't jump for JOY?!

There's an eagle in me that wants to soar,

and there's a hippopotamus in me that wants to 

wallow in the mud.

~Carl Sandburg

Simple Joys....

 
Warm, sunny days that allow for wearing shorts and sun tops in the afternoon.
New toe polish from OnlyDaughter -- Sally Hanson, *Tough Love.*
Finding tulips, daffodils and iris and other flowers poking through while cleaning the flower beds.
The smell of green things growing.
A crane flew through the sky as I was driving through the pasture.
Lots and lots of robins chirruping.
Eating ice cream cones with the Littles.
Visiting Betsy Boo.
 
Got my sewing room/library painted!
Hanging the laundry out on the clothesline.
Visiting with friends.
Hen's eggs, laid daily.
Eggs over-easy with bacon and toast for breakfast.
Homemade strawberry jam made by DIL.
 
Mary Toodles says "Gram" for the first time at our house.
Phone calls from our kids.
Looking up at the starry sky every night at 12:30 when I walk to the barn.  What a sight!
Lots of healthy calves and no birthing problems.
A fresh pot of coffee brewed each morning.
Sharing my days with my best friend and lover.
Knowing....Jesus loves me.  And He loves you too.

of cookies and donuts...

 It really IS fall!  It seems all I think about these days are those heavy-carb comfort foods like  potatoes and gravy, pumpkin pie, chocolate chip cookies and homemade donuts.  Perhaps I'm instinctively  preparing for a long, hard winter.  I sure wouldn't want to get caught in a cold snap with my weight energy down and sapped.  I could blame attribute my baking frenzy on weekend guests, I suppose. ThirdChild came home on Friday to help us pour concrete and then stayed the night to help with today's project which was to revamp an old cake/grain bin into a storage shed for the OldestChild and his family.  The Grandfolks came out for this project since Grandpa Schu is good with electricity and has awesome carpentry skills.

Friday I baked the chocolate chips cookies in anticipation of visitors and squirreled away several dozen in the freezer for pop-in company or for the days when I really need a good cookie to eat alongside my afternoon coffee.

Today, while Grandma was here, she thought it would be a good idea to fry up some cake donuts -- a family recipe that has been passed down from generation to generation.  Notice the names on the card:  Linda, Velma, and Hilda.  Can you guess their nationality?  If you said Norwegian, you be right!  Uffda!  I asked Linda if she noticed that all these women had "a" at the end of their names?   Apparently not until today.

I mostly watched the process and kept the Don Williams music playing while Grandma did all the work -- mixing, cutting and frying.  I did set out all the ingredients like a good assistant should.  While Grandma worked,  I whacked up a pumpkin pie for dessert after supper.  We make a pretty good cooker team.

After all the donuts were fried and sugared, we made a thermos of coffee to take to the guys next door.  We brought a big plate of fresh, warm donuts and were they ever happy.  Uffda mega! (translation:  big uffda) 

Guess what we'll be having for First Breakfast tomorrow with our coffee?  Mmmm.  Mmmm. Mmmm.

 

 

I just couldn't resist one more picture of Fluff and his biggest fan, Peach!  She can carry him any ol' way she wants and he doesn't care a flip.  Gotta love that kind of cat. I hope you're loading up on plenty of carbs this fall.  If not, just follow me home and I'll fatten feed you properly!

Sacred days...

"I wish that life should not be cheap, but sacred,
I wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, fragrant."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

How does life become sacred, loaded and fragrant?  Does it happen when we think of it all as a gift from God?  Why the senses?  Ears to hear, eyes to see, noses to smell, lips to taste and hands to feel.  What are the sacred things that life has brought your way today?  Can you name them?

Hubby's smooth-shaven face on my cheek
Monarchs fluttering through the hot summer afternoon
Earthy stench of steers moving through the working corrals
Sweat running down my back
Dust blowing.
Purple morning glories climbing the wagon wheel
Baby smiles and soft cheeks to kiss
Heady, sweet alfalfa fields in full bloom
Youngest son's voice on the phone
A bear hug
Sun-kissed, wind dried sheets
Sour cherry pie
A fresh cup of black coffee
The sound of the sprinkler spraying over parched flowers
The Milky Way and all the stars shining clear and bright
A lightning fire, and then rain poured down
Thunder rumbling, lightning flashes, cool wind and the smell of damp earth
..............................................
Now it's your turn!
...............................................
The world is so full of a number of things,
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.
~Robert Louis Stevenson

Simple Joys....

Edouard Vuillard, Interieur a la Table à Ouvrage 1893

It seems everywhere I go in the Blogiverse, everyone's reading it.  One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp.  I am too.  I'm not too far in yet, but it's a book to read slowly.  Slowly is mostly how I read anyway, so that's good.  Somebody said, "Ever forward, but slowly," and I think it's a fine way to read or to live, even though I sometimes go forward fast, or should that be fast-forward?  Anyway, the author challenges herself  to be thankful,  to take joy, to live fully in the moment,  to see God's hand on all things.  Throughout the pages, she lists simple joys -- actually writes them down in her journal, no matter how silly or trite they might seem to someone else.  These, I am supposing, will be the One Thousand Gifts.

Back when I was homeschooling a passel of children every day at our kitchen table, we would take turns reading a chapter of the Bible every day aloud.  When we were done, we would always pray together.  Each of us would choose one person to pray for and then give a *thankful.*  A *thankful* was just that.  A thankful.  Whatever you happened to be thankful for at that very moment.  It was the prayer that we all wanted to pray.  Thousand Gifts is like that.  And my list below is a list of simple joys or thankfuls, for to be thankful brings joy.  Don't you think?


Simple Joys

Spring.... new bird arrivals daily, baby calves, warm days followed by snow and frost.  Wild winds which will eventually bring more warm days to us.

Edouard Vuillard

Lack of sleep.  Everyone takes their shift to check the first-calf heifers through the night.  Sleep deprivation  makes going to bed a joy and sleep comes easily.  "O Bed!  O Bed!  Delicious Bed, that Heaven upon Earth to the weary head."  ~Thomas Hood

Cold cookies thawed perfectly from the freezer.  A blend of cold, yet not frozen, and chewy, not crunchy.

I love you's and thank you's and kisses on the cheek from the people I live with.  (They are the best of people!)

Spot and Big Boy just joined the bum lambs after their mother died.  Big Boy has always sucked the bottle, but not Spot.  Spot just started sucking yesterday and he is so happy to have milk now.

Wet snow.  I really don't want any more snow, but I know that snow is good.  It makes grass grow and fills up our stock ponds with fresh water.  There are so many folks in the USA who are drying up and blowing away and experiencing fires.  I've been there.  I don't want that, so I'll take the snow.

Steak and eggs and toast for breakfast.  All homegrown, homemade things.

A little time to read in my bed with my cozy shawl wrapped around my shoulders and a cup of herb tea on my nightstand. 

Edouard Vuillard, The "Voiles de Gênes" Boudoir

Art.  I feel so blessed to be able to enjoy lovely art like Vuillard's on my computer.

Deviled eggs.

Wool-fleece lined slippers.  There's nothing like them for comfort.

Holding hands.

What simple joys are you thankful for?

Playing in the dirt wouldn't hurt....

I wonder....

if we all spent more time playing in the dirt

 wouldn't the world be a happier place to live?

"For lack of attention, a thousand forms of loveliness elude us every day."

~Evelyn Underhill

Simple Joys...

 A delicious and simple-to-make cookie.  All you need is a mini-muffin tin, some foil liners, a package of  mini Reese's cups and a package of peanut butter cookie dough (from the refrigerator section of your grocery) or make homemade dough.  I had to make my dough because our small-town store doesn't carry it.  They have sugar cookie dough but not peanut butter dough.  Go figure.  Line your muffin tin with foil liners and then add approximately a 1" ball of dough.  Bake according to directions and allow cookies to cool just a few minutes.  Unwrap your Reese's cups and push one in the center of each cookie.  Done!  Yum!

I've had my creche set up, but I wanted a little cave-like setting for it so I glued some bark together from an elm log.   I like the result.  Rustic, just as I would imagine it.  Hazel Peach enjoys playing with these figurines, and I let her since they are unbreakable resin.  They are very small -- just 2.5 inches tall.  I talked with her about Baby Jesus and she said, "Paci and blankie," and pretended to hand him the things a baby needed.  My heart melted.

 I've been spending part of my evenings embroidering.  I like having busy hands and yet feeling at rest.  There is a peaceful calm about pushing and pulling pretty colored threads through fabric in tiny stitches that I love.  These are some coasters that I made.  I like the simplicity and individuality of each one.

Our annual bull sale is now complete and we are so grateful for the farmers and ranchers who chose our bulls to help proliferate their herds.  They are a good and generous people with big hearts and hearty laughs.  It was good to shake hands with many of them that day.

The sun is low in the sky now and it shines straight into my kitchen and dining room windows in the afternoon.  I love its warm glow upon everything it touches.  Especially my face.

The Holly & the Ivy carol, another of my favorite carols.

Simply Saturday, simple joys...

I got my bike out of the bunk house and found that it needs a new tube for the back tire and, as you can see, the wicker basket and flower are wilted and dilapidated.  It needs a little TLC.  I'm borrowing Hubby's bike for the now.

I brought some fresh flowers in from the garden and made a cheery bouquet.

There is always laundry to do on Saturday, 

and I'm glad for the nice, warm days to hang the wash out on the line.

My raised bed gardens are coming right along.

There are lettuces, radish, carrots, potatoes, onions, cukes, tomatoes, peppers and herbs.

Hazel Peach helped me dig and pull weeds and put cages around the tomato plants today.  I gave her a wheel barrow ride after we dumped some mulch around a tree.

It's so nice when the dishes are washed and air drying...

....and the eggs are washed.

Best of all, today was Gramma Day!

Hazel Peach and I went to tend the chickens and the peep-peeps.

I made the afternoon coffee, my favorite way.

And we each had a cup at the picnic table 

along with a fresh chocolate chip cookie. 

HP has her very own girl-sized cup.

"Yummy!" 

(She takes hers black, like Gram.)

 

 Look at these comfy shoes.  Perfect for summer days.

We made ourselves chocolate ice cream cones

and ate them in the shade on the front porch

while the dogs eyed HP's drippy cone every minute until....

...it was finally handed over to Penny.

Happy Saturday!

What simply wonderful things did you do today?

 

Thanksgiving Cactus...

She's in bloom again!  She's actually called a Christmas Cactus, but the past two or three years, she has bloomed at Thanksgiving and Easter and sometimes in between times, so I'm really not sure what to call her.   How about Beautiful?  When the trees are all bare and the the majority of the birds have all flown south and the grasses and flowers are all spent, I am blessed and grateful for my little indoor flower garden.  There is no place of honor where she grows.  She prefers the inconspicuous basement corner near the window in my laundry room to any other place in the house.  It's rather cool and very bright there and I guess she likes the climate.  I'd sometimes like to move her out to the main hub of the house, the dining room , but I know she would not be  happy with so much warmth and attention, so the laundry room remains her happy home.  Since I find myself in the laundry room often, I observe and appreciate her ebb and flow of loveliness.  Now and then I will invite a family member or visitor into the laundry room for a peek at her, but mostly, she lives in seclusion. 

I think of her as a gift from God, given especially to me.  He knows how much I love beautiful, growing things, and He knows that the rough and rustic country where I live does not produce blooms like this, but instead, grasses and forbes, with a beauty of their own, but meant mostly for grazing livestock.  I'm not frustrated by that, but I am grateful when I get the treat of such beauty right where I live -- even in the humble place where it prefers to grow -- the laundry room.  In  remote and obscure places, God brings beauty.  He does it in our lives too.

Be still and know that I am God.
~Psalm 46:10

I See the Moon...

Eloise Wilkin, illustrator

I'm thinking of loved ones far away.
Praying, waiting, hoping, believing.

As I take my walks in the evening I see the Moon. It always reminds me to pray blessings
upon my loved ones and friends far away. Have you ever wondered how many people are looking at the moon and thinking of their loved ones looking at the moon? All through the ages since time began, all the people in all the world have been admiring the moon that God set in place. I wonder if it reminded them to pray too? Jesus Himself saw the very same Moon I see tonight. It makes me feel blessed.....and small.

"Even the darkness is not dark to Thee..."
~Psalm 139:12

This is a little song that I sing sometimes when I see the moon.
Do you?




I love this verse of I See the Moon, especially sung with grandparents as it is here.

Simple Joys...

*My Christmas Cactus continues it's on-going Bloom Fest!
Winter has hung on a long time, so I consider it a little bright spot in my days --a gift from God. There are still new buds coming! I don't know what I did to bring this on.



*Meet Quad-Mom.
With all the talk about Octo-Mom, I just couldn't resist a little blurb about our "natural" quads born to this Mama ewe. The amazing thing is that they are all a very good size, are all healthy, all have nursed and need no medical attention whatsoever! We did divide them up. Quad-Mom now has only two lambs, and the other two lambs went to new mamas with single lambs. Generally, most ewes can only raise two lambs successfully and so when triplets or quads are born, we seek to graft the "extra" lamb onto another ewe. When we see a ewe is lambing, we wait and watch to see if she'll have a single or twin lambs. If she has a single, we quickly grab it, wipe all the birth-slime onto the "graft lamb" and put it in a pen with the ewe and her own lamb, hoping she will smell all the natural newborn-smells and accept the grafted lamb as her own. It's been working very well for us thus far.



*Another simple joy is our Bloomin' Narcissus (paper whites).
I planted them on Ash Wednesday, figuring they'd bloom by Easter, but they've been especially happy and have decided to pop-out early. Aren't they pretty? My family insisted that they go from the supper table to the laundry room since they've bloomed. Why? Well, my sons insist that the *fragrance* is that of urinal cakes found in the men's restrooms. After thinking about it, I suppose they are quite right. I did think that the "fragrance" was giving me a sore throat (I'm smell sensitive). A&J thought they had left a dirty diaper under their kitchen table, so perhaps they are a "toilet flower" after all. Still, I'm grateful for a little bit of bloomin' beauty just now.

*The Snow is melting! It was 52* today and the snow and ice are melting into puddles and creeks and there's mud, mud, mud everywhere. It's glorious!

*Hard Work is a gift. We've had some sunshiney days of late, and working outside together is really a pleasure. Falling into bed exhausted brings the gift of a good sleep.

Simple Joys....

Here's the 2 foot drift I've been walking through to the clothesline today. It's feeling very spring-like again and so far, we're up to 55 degrees and hoping for a little more warmth and sunshine in the days to come. ~happy squeal of delight~



My domestic little heart, aching for some clothesline refreshment, got its wish today. I love that feeling of a gentle breeze blowing, the sun shining and warming, the birds chirping, and the scent of the breeze wooshing through clean sheets and clothes. (snifffffff) Ahhhh! The few bugaboo's in snowish hanging of clothes is that I must be extra-careful not to drop them on the ground. I also must know the wind direction because this time of year, the barnyard has an extra pungent, wettish aroma that wafts over to the house with an easterly breeze. Thanks be to God, my first day of the Clothesline Season carries a fresh, clean westerly breeze to my clothesline!

Oh, and one more bit of excitement today......
I saw the First Robin of the year! ~happy squeal~ S. took a picture of him, but it was so far away that it wasn't worth posting, but I will be on the look-out for him again and will be carrying my pocket-camera with me. Simple Joys to be sure.

Simple Joys....

Yes, the pumpkins are still on the mantle.

One of my favorite blogs is Abiding by Leslie, and one of my favorite features at her place is "Simple Joys." Today I'd like to write down a few of my own Simple Joys. Will you join me?

Jody's Simple Joys....

A "Day Out" with hubby, shopping in the City.

Going to Jolly Lane's Greenhouse to see all the gorgeous Christmas trees -- plain and flocked -- and walking down rows upon rows of poinsettias sporting blue, purple, yellow, pink, speckled and sparkly leaves. My favorite is still red, as you can see by my Christmas banner. (Thanks Seth!)

Finding a Rosemary Christmas tree for my table. It smells so strong and spicy. I made rosemary-garlic potatoes with the snippings for supper.

Driving safely home through the ice and drifted snow which glazed the interstate and secondary roads. So many slid into the ditch, but we stayed on the road. I think it may have been the prayers I was whispering along with the steady, wise driving of Hubs.

Sons who are honest and complimentary at the same time: "Mom, that messy bed-head look is really good on you! Really!!"

Freshly washed dogs and their freshly washed rugs.

A new chocolate peppermint cookie recipe that turned out the first time.

The giggle of my grandbaby.

Number Two Son's bedroom cleaned and turned into a sewing/crafting workshop --a work still in progress.

My morning mugs of coffee with a tipple of cream.

My afternoon single cup of coffee with cream and a couple chocolate chip cookies.

A hot bath with tea and a good book balanced on the edge of the tub. Oh, and don't forget a squirt of warm vanilla sugar bath bubbles.

Chickadees at my feeder.

A cozy fire when it's 10 degrees outside.

A long letter from a friend.

Lighting the candles and reading our Advent stories each night before bed (and we're all adults!)