Just Us Chooks

Here are the girls. Because I love them so much, I have been overlooking the amount of damage they do to the garden. Since I'm not interested in building an enclosed coop, and I enjoy seeing them run around, I have decided to refocus on flowering shrubs. Zinnias and cosmos are just too tasty, apparently.

I went to the wonderful nursery we have in my little town. It's the kind of place where the owner will walk around with you to show you things. They will look at photos you bring to help make plant selection, and they will deliver heavy things for very little. I bought one shrub, and put it in.

I was pleasantly surprised that my H*umira was in at the pharmacy. I gave myself the shot as soon as I got home. We shall see.

OLd Quilts

Check out this quilt. Link to ebay auction. I haven't been sewing much. I have been not as well as I would wish, which is the bad news, and I am going to get to try the wonder drug H*umira, which is the good news. It has been special ordered, the pharmacy thinks it will be here Wednesday.

The rheumatologist was positively giddy- he said that if it works, it is a "home run" drug and that bicycling, swimming, and yoga could be in my future. I am enjoying the happy thoughts of it working for me. If it doesn't, well, it might not, and I suppose I will be fine with that, if I have to be. But it is fun to dream.

camel shawl

Last Sunday I bought this nice camel yarn, handspun by women in Mongolia. The blue is indigo dyed, the dark red looks like madder and I don't know about the orange. This is my standard no pattern pattern for a top down shawl. It's very soothing to knit. When it is large enough, or I am out of yarn, I cast off.

Why I Hide Downstairs and Sew

Conversation between three men of the family:

Son #2: So black holes are real?
Dad: Sure they're real.
S2: So what are they?
Dad: They're places where the gravity is so strong that the light doesn't have enough energy to get out; so they're black.
S2: Then what happens to the light?
Dad: It just disappears.
Son #1 interjecting from the hallway: That's not right, the black hole gains mass from the light.
Dad: (surprised) That's right, the photons add to the mass of the black hole.
Son #2: So as the black hole gets bigger, the gravity gets stronger.
Dad: Right (backing slowly towards the door).

Folk Chicken

Isn't he wonderful? There is a little drawer in the base. I like to think of whoever made it, and who he made it for, and if she liked it. I hope I have it long enough that the kids remember that I always had it, and that I raise the kind of kids who will want to keep it- or give it to their kids- when I'm gone.