Fuck you

BTW, American coal and oil companies have the same message.

Hallelujah! Rain at last!!!

After months of dry winter weather, the last week on the Northern Coast of California has seen a LOT of moisture. So far this month (only nine days old) we have gotten almost five inches of rain. For comparison purposes, the month of January saw only 1.19 inches in 31 days, and we've had more than that just today alone.

The flowers are happy!

Again for comparison purposes, here's a picture I took at the end of last October of the board we use to get to the island in the middle of our pond. At that point most of the pond was just a mud hole.

Today the same board is half submerged.

This has been a year of wells running dry and drought restrictions on watering your lawn or washing your car. We haven't caught up entirely, but we're making headway.

And anyone who doesn't think our climate is changing should pull their head out of their behind!

Wood for the fire . . . .

Our wood stove

He who cuts his own wood, warms himself twice.

That quote, which is more than likely on old proverb, has been attributed to folks as disparate as Henry David Thoreau and Henry Ford, two gentlemen who shared little but a first name. Since our household depends on wood for the heat we get during the winter months (our sole exception being an oil-filled electric space heater in the room where our birds reside), we can attest to the truth of that statement. 

Though we do buy loads of wood from a couple of local sources, we always have tried to  save a bit of money by searching the forest around us for fuel for our fires. I'm not a woodsman by any stretch of the imagination, though I can handle a chain saw fairly well---enough to get the job done. I'm not about to start falling trees (I leave that to the experts), but I look for the odd "leaners"; trees that have another tree or brush holding them up so they are not on the ground and full of rot. They provide dry and mostly seasoned wood for our needs.

There is more than the financial savings involved here, however. By taking this effort, I have a more direct connection to my source of warmth than those who depend on a thermostat to regulate their comfort. I know where my heat comes from because I am part of the process. There is a sense of gratitude and awareness that I never had when I depended on an electric or gas furnace for heat. It also requires a constant vigilance to keep the fire going, adding large chunks of hard wood and shutting down the stove before going to bed so there will be coals to rev it up again in the morning, watching for sparks when the doors are open, and of course maintaining a wood supply to feed the flames.

I think of recent studies I've read where young people who have never seen a farm---except maybe on TV or at the movies (if anyone even goes to movies anymore)---think the source of food is a grocery store or the refrigerator. There is such a tragic disconnect in that perception. Food, heat, clothing, and other essentials become things manufactured in factories, rather than harvested on farms or created by crafts people. This is not just a nostalgic thing which is quickly going the way of the dodo and buffalo; it is a recipe for dysfunction and ignorance as we forget the natural world we are still a part of and dependent on.

I really love our wood stove. It is a center of our home during the darkest months of the year. And I am happy my grand daughter likes to feed and poke at the fire. She at least will have some memories of the place that warmth comes from.

Spring is comin'!

So here we are in January, and I believe I already feel Spring in the air. As residents of a part of the country that actually benefits from the global climate change afflicting our Earth (but I won't go there right now), I am grateful for beautiful, sunny days like this one.

A calla lily leaf illuminated by the afternoon sun. 

Our pond, which is full to capacity from the winter rains.

The first Rhodie bloom outside our front door.

Some of the rosemary my wife recently planted, going great guns (and ready to season a chicken or turkey.)

This tree fell during the winter storms, so I am taking advantage of the weather to cut it up, both for clean up of the yard and future firewood.

That's some good warmin' there . . . .

I realized as I was taking these pictures just how hard my wife and I work to make a good life for ourselves. We are what is considered "low income", yet we make our lives as pleasant and enjoyable as possible by being frugal and careful, and, by the way, working our butts off. The tree I am cutting up (with a borrowed chain saw) will provide us with heat and save us from having to buy firewood. The Rhodie by our front door is one my wife rescued years ago from one of her gardening jobs, and it gives us a cheery welcome for no cost. We drive vehicles that we bought used decades ago, and watch a TV that we got used from one of my former employers. Even these pictures I post here are taken on a camera I bought from someone who was upgrading their setup at a discount.

So when I hear people like my wife and myself derided as "takers", it really pisses me off. We work hard for what we have, as modest as it is, and the folks who make their fortunes by skimming money out of the system that is the corporate shell game called "Capitalism" are the real takers. The people in Congress who rail about government making people leeches, while having their own benefits, salaries and pensions provided by the government they supposedly detest, THEY are the parasites on this country.

In a system a rigged as the one we live in, it is hard not to see politics in almost everything. So, there you have it. Now back to our regularly scheduled reality . . . .

The crime of silence:

Four debates without any mention of climate 
change. The historians (and the rest of us) 
may not survive . . . .

Not just a river in Egypt

(Via Crooks and Liars

)