Spent...

 

A barn swallow baby is the last one left in this spent nest, 

but he's hanging onto the remains of his home for as long as it will support him.

To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same field it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Take a bath...

Picture from Builders Square

In the winter months especially, I love a hot bath.  A good, long soak in the tub with a cup of hot tea on the ledge and a good book or magazine in my hands is a really happy place to be for a half an hour or so.  Doesn't this bathtub look like the perfect place for unwinding?  (I wonder how you clean a wood bathtub?)

When I was a kid at home, long baths were never an option.  I recall taking group baths with my siblings when we were littles.  Do any of you remember pictures taken in the tub with your hair all sudsy and formed into a tall curlicue?   My mom loved doing that, and I'll admit that I have some pictures of my own children with their hair all done up in suds and their clean faces smiling for the camera.  As we grew up, baths were dumped for showers. Timed showers -- about five minutes.  Unlike homes of today, ours had just one bathroom and there were six of us to share it.  There was also limited hot water.  Oftentimes we took our showers in shifts.  Some of us showered at night and some showered in the mornings.  It helped with the hot water and the time factor of getting everyone ready for school and work.  So bathing became a luxury or something that was done when you were really sick or needed to soak a throbbing back.  

This past winter you'd find me soaking in the tub in the evenings after the chores and the dishes were all done, and I'm not yet finished with taking baths.  It has become a way of treating myself for a day's work well-done.  The rest of my family enjoys an evening bath too, so we have to take turns having a bath night since our tub is fairly big and requires plenty of hot water.  The first to call it, gets the first chance at the tub.  Lately we've been taking turns passing the flu back and forth and so the bathtub has had a lot of traffic.  A hot bath is so therapeutic for the flu sufferer.  Stuffy heads, achy muscles, and pounding heads seem to melt away when you can submerge yourself in a hot bath.

I have found some interesting facts about bathing recently when I decided to try adding some Epsom salts to my bath water.  Here's what the Epsom Salt Council says about adding salts to your bath.

Studies show these benefits from the major components of Epsom Salt may: Magnesium:

• Ease stress and improves sleep and concentration
• Help muscles and nerves function properly
• Regulate activity of 325+ enzymes
• Help prevent artery hardening and blood clots
• Make insulin more effective
• Reduce inflammation to relieve pain and muscle cramps
• Improve oxygen use

Sulfates:

• Flush toxins
• Improve absorption of nutrients
• Help form joint proteins, brain tissue and mucin proteins
• Help prevent or ease migraine headaches

I didn't realize it, but magnesium is easily absorbed through the skin and most of us are very short on the mineral.  Magnesium is not easily absorbed through supplements and so the best ways to get it is to eat foods high in magnesium (nuts, seeds, grains, fruits) and to take a bath or soak your feet in Epsom salts three  times a week or so.  How about that for a healthy way to relax?

I pulled out my blue Ball canning jars and filled them up with Epsom salts and set them out in the bathroom so my family could easily dump salts into their baths.  Pretty and functional! 

Another way I like to soak is to take an oatmeal bath.  I made some Oat Floats a few months ago for gift-giving and for my family.  I add one to my bath and squidge it around so the powdery oats dissolves in my bath, and then I use the pouch to rub the moisturizing, oat-y goodness all over my skin.  If you have dry skin, it is very soothing.  I sometimes add a little coconut oil to my bath water which also moisturizes the skin nicely.  I have even used coconut oil as a hot oil treatment for my hair and then follow up with my regular hair washing routine. Click here for more information on using coconut oil for your hair.

So if you're feeling tired, sick, harried, overwhelmed, or you just need a few minutes to relax, consider a hot bath. Would you like to know more about the health benefits for taking a hot bath?  Click here.  It'll cure what ails ya.

Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of wine.   
~Thomas Aquinas

Simple pleasures....

 Someone once said, "Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the Big Things."  In that spirit, I would like to share some of my simple pleasures, the little things, that make life Big.

Fresh citrus from my Arizona friend.

It's been a blessing to have juicy, sliced lemons to 

make hot lemonade to fight the sniffles.
 
Buttermilk pancakes for breakfast!
I like this recipe.

 Playing in the snow and making a snowman with Hazel Peach.

Fresh air makes everything better, doesn't it?

My knitted acrylic scrubbies.  

My Arizona friends have made these for me

and there is nothing I like better for scrubbing dishes.

A good book.  

I'm coming to the end of my adventure at 

Pilgrim's Inn by Elizabeth Goudge.

Steamy, hot oatmeal baths.

When the body aches, the bath relieves.

 I can't think of any sorrow in the world that a hot bath wouldn't help, just a little bit.

~Susan Glasee

A piping hot bowl of corn chowder.

Comfort food supreme.

Water.

Whenever I've been away from home, I appreciate more than ever the fresh, non-chlorinated water that I drink from the tap every single day.
Water is my favorite drink.

Naps.

I used to think napping was weakness. 

After a long bout with a bad back, I realized the best thing I could do for my family and for myself was to take a daily nap until I was better.  My mood, my attitude, and my physical strength all improved.  We know the old adage well, "When Mama ain't happy, aint nobody happy."

I say, when Mama ain't happy, she might need a good nap.

Nap in Jesus name.

Singing a hymn.

Yesterday J. and I sang Jesus Savior Pilot Me.

We both agreed, it's good for our souls.

Old friends and new friends.

It's been a joy catching up with old friends and meeting new friends too.

Thank you for being friends with me.

Stay a while!

"Stay is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary."

~Louisa May Alcott

A day of simple pleasures...

It was one of those days that you appreciate every little thing; you see things and hear things and feel things  that most days, slip by unnoticed.   Do you ever have a day like this?  When I awoke this morning, my window was cracked open just enough for fresh air to breeze in and to hear the gold finches and robins saying their last farewells.  I know they won't stay long.  It reminded me of a morning in spring when I first heard them arrive.  In God's Good Earth, there is constancy in the seasons -- in coming and going, in new arrivals and migration, in the earth's slumber in fall and winter.


My morning started with a walk through the feedlot where nervous calves bolted as they heard me traipsing by (I am not a light walker) and saw the dogs trotting along beside me.  My goal this fall and winter is to walk down the alley every day to gentle them and to look for sickness or any distress.  I see innocence, contentment, watchful eyes.

At the end of the alley is a gate that leads into a large pasture with a stock pond that is always loaded with waterfowl.  Now it is mostly bare, but my eyes caught hold of something unusual.  A large bird.  Perhaps a goose or a swan.  I walked home for the camera to see if I might be able to capture an image of this lovely bird to identify it.  My photography went from careful, distant shots so as not to disturb it to close-up shots right at the water's edge.  This creature did not mind my curiosity one bit.  It kept on feeding, dipping it's long neck and head down to graze the bottoms of the pond.  I kept on slowly walking closer and closer and spent some time just watching it graze -- focused, hungry, unaware.  After my return home, I consulted the bird guide and decided it was either an immature Tundra Swan or Trumpeter Swan.  The more I searched images online, the more I was convinced it's a Trumpeter.  I'm so excited for I don't think I've ever seen a Trumpeter Swan in the wild, and rarely have I seen a tame one in the parks.  It appeared to be all alone.  It is surely migrating, but why it is not with others, I don't know.  I said a prayer that it might find other swans to migrate with.

 In the mud beside the water, you can see imprinted tracks.  All the wild things nearby come here to drink at night.  The hand-like prints are raccoon and the others are duck or goose or swan prints.  It's fun for me to think about a raccoon family all trailing down to the pond to drink.  Soon the raccoons will decide to hibernate for the winter.  It hasn't been cold enough yet, but this week promises much colder weather.

 Since we are expecting snows tonight and tomorrow, I chose to spend my time deliberately enjoying the outdoors all afternoon.  I dug the rest of the potatoes and came up with two 5 gallon buckets full.  The purple potatoes made an impressive showing this year.  There were several of them the size of a small roast beef!  I sorted out the spuds that I accidentally sliced with the shovel and brought those in the house to use up first; the rest I will store in a dark place in the garage.  I also dug up more of the carrots, ate three, but left quite a few in the garden to dig up later.  They tend to get sweeter the longer they stay underground.  The trick though is getting them before the ground freezes and turns the carrots to rubbery mush.  I'm thinking of a hearty potato soup for tomorrow's lunch. Food from the garden is best!

 

 I've been slowly collecting pine and spruce cones.  The pine cones came from the golf course and the spruce cones came from underneath my parents' huge spruce tree that towers over their house in the backyard.  I collected some spruce cones with Only Daughter one afternoon from underneath the Lutheran Church's spruce.  The president of the church council drove up as we were picking cones and asked us what we were up to.  I told him, "Community service."  He smiled and said we could have all we wanted since it would be less for him to rake up.  I'm thinking of many ideas to use my cones.  Here are some of  the ideas:  pine cone garland and another garland, fireplace starters, pine cone bird feeders.  I think cones are lovely sitting in bowls and in clear jars all about the house too.

After shutting the chicken coop, I walked home and noticed how perfectly God hung the moon over our  house -- somewhere, out in the middle of nowhere.  Simple pleasures.