nature

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Mon 3 Oct 2011

5 things not related to an 800 pound gorilla

Posted by PJ under books, cats, five things, lists, Min, nature, tv
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1. I accidentally locked Min out of the house last night. For two hours! And after dark! She was scared and pretty glad to get back inside. I felt terrible. She probably thought she’d been abandoned/lost again. I’ll be extra careful from now on.

2. I finally finished Dead Reckoning by Charlaine Harris. I liked it okay, but you can sure tell the series is winding down. And this one seemed to peeter out just like the last one. I love Ms. Harris dearly but she can’t write action scenes worth beans. I’ve had a pathetic reading year this year. I think I’ve only managed to finished 17 books.

3. We’ve started calling the hummingbirds who frequent our yard “Nazi Buzz Bombs.” They are quite insistent when you’ve let their feeders go dry. They buzz around in the kitchen window giving out malevolent stares until they’re filled, and buzz your head when you go outside.

4. I still love reading Post Secrets, even when it makes me cry.

5. I actually find myself liking Pan Am. It’s not the T&A show I feared it would be. It’s actually about the nascent “New Woman” of the early sixties who rejected the idea that marriage and 2.5 kids were the only options for a woman’s life. There were painfully few career options for women back then: nurse, teacher, homemaker, dental hygienist, secretary/clerk, stewardess. The stewardesses were always considered the more adventurous women.

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Thu 7 Jul 2011

Journey around my room: Green Man

Posted by PJ under 4th avenue, goddesses, gods, journey around my room, nature, renewal, travel, venice
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Green Men are found in many cultures. They are commonly a symbol of rebirth and regeneration, the spring greening that inevitably follows the dying of winter.

I’m fascinated with them. I have two of them, one in the back yard garden near the peach tree:

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The lovely lady to the left of him is the Roman goddess Flora, and the lady on the right is simply named Ivy. The man himself is cast iron and he is aging gracefully, starting to rust in interesting patterns.

I also have a Green Man inside, in my room:

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He’s smaller, also made of metal, but I doubt he’s copper as the green of him suggests. I believe the “aging” on this one is artificial—but I still think he’s rather cool. Here’s the grouping in which he sits, right next to Freya and the prayer sticks, which you may remember from past entries:

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Truth is, I’d have more Green Men if I had the space and money (so it’s probably a good thing that I don’t). I like the ones with serious and slightly sinister expressions, and I like them to be made of serious natural materials like metal, not these comical cast resin ones that you see here and there and everywhere (though I admit, Flora and Ivy are cast resin). Why am I so fascinated with these Green Man images?

This post is really about Nature.

(more…)

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Mon 25 Apr 2011

Peace

Posted by PJ under bird, music, nature, peaches
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These guys have been at the bird feeder all week.

They have one of the strangest calls I’ve ever heard: like a baby dragon. Or a hawk on acid.

It’s quite unnerved the wild finches, sparrows, et al. All the little birds have kept away from the feeders since they’ve been around. I have to think it’s that call that’s frightening them—too much like the hawk, I suspect. But no worries because these blackbirds are seed eaters.

They come up from the marshland less than a half-mile from our house, but I’ve never seen them here before. Quite a wonderful surprise to look out the window and see those yellow heads.

The beautiful singer from last year has returned, too.

The peach tree is absolutely laden with fruit, fecund branches hanging so heavy I’ve had to prop them up with a ladder. We’ll be having peach cobbler very soon now. The entire neighborhood is tingling with anticipation.

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Wed 13 Apr 2011

Kitty just wants to be loved

Posted by PJ under cats, nature, video
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You’ve probably seen this already, but…oogie boogie woogie. So cute.

ETA: This video’s access seems to have changed overnight. Try this link: http://uk.video.yahoo.com/vyc-24875442/yahoovideo-24875443/cat-and-dolphins-playing-together-24875449.html#crsl=%252Fvyc-24875442%252Fyahoovideo-24875443%252Fcat-and-dolphins-playing-together-24875449.html

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Fri 1 Apr 2011

Not lost, but disunited

Posted by PJ under nature, quote of the day, transformation
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Random quote of the day:

 

“Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed.”

—Anaxagoras, (450 B.C.), quoted by Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics

 

Which reminds me of this famous bit from Lucretius (yes, I am inflicting poetry on you):

No single thing abides; but all things flow.
Fragment to fragment clings—the things thus grow
Until we know and name them. By degrees
They melt, and are no more the things we know.

Globed from the atoms falling slow or swift
I see the suns, I see the systems lift
Their forms; and even the systems and the suns
Shall go back slowly to the eternal drift.

You too, oh earth—your empires, lands, and seas—
Least with your stars, of all the galaxies,
Globed from the drift like these, like these you too
Shalt go. You are going, hour by hour, like these.

Nothing abides. The seas in delicate haze
Go off; those mooned sands forsake their place;
And where they are, shall other seas in turn
Mow with their scythes of whiteness other bays…

The seeds that once were we take flight and fly,
Winnowed to earth, or whirled along the sky,
Not lost but disunited. Life lives on.
It is the lives, the lives, the lives, that die.

They go beyond recapture and recall,
Lost in the all—indissoluble All:—
Gone like the rainbow from the fountain’s foam,
Gone like the spindrift shuddering down the squall.

Flakes of the water, on the waters cease!
Soul of the body, melt and sleep like these.
Atoms to atoms—weariness to rest—
Ashes to ashes—hopes and fears to peace!

—from On the Nature of Things by Titus Lucretius Carus (89 BC)
(tr. William Ellery Leonard)

 

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

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Thu 10 Feb 2011

Hard-hearted

Posted by PJ under indians, nature, quote of the day
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Random quote of the day:

“The old Lakota was wise.  He knew that  a man’s heart, away from nature, becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things, soon led to lack of respect for humans, too.”

—Chief Luther Standing Bear, Lakota Sioux

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

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