Aloha, Another month, another earthquake. This one was only a 5.0, though, so nothing broke except our nerves. Last month it was a 6.5 and things are still not entirely picked up off the floor. Sigh! Still don't have an official garden with the vegetables and greens planted but there are two new orange trees and four new banana plants in the ground. The weedwhacker has been repaired finally, however, the guinea grass and reznor grass are now taller than my shed. We did have high hopes for the new chainsaw edged metal blade for the weedwhacker, but it didn't do much against the huge grass. Looks like either it will be cutting it with loppers one blade at a time (that actually works since this grass is more like floppy bamboo than grass) or with a scythe. It was a nice lawn area last February. I guess 120" of rain a year is just too much encouragement for some types of grass. Tomorrow we should discover how many of the eggs in the incubator will hatch. There are a half dozen buff orphingtons, a dozen silver crested Polish and a dozen Appenzeller Spitzhaubens hatching out. They should add a bit of festivity to our backyard flock. So that's pretty much things around here. A hui hou, Cathy

Cream and Ron, for this picture I used a Panasonic Lumix FZ5(not a DSLR) without any adjustment to the ISO. A lot of digital cameras have a Scene setting, often on the little dial. If you turn to it, you can scroll through various scenes in your viewfinder (or LCD screen). Night portrait uses flash, but in a different way than the usual flash shot. It's wonderful for photographing Christmas lights at night. Susan

Ok, I got through half of Pillars and am tossing it in the trade pile. I am now wondering if I actually read this book, coz I don't remember it being this bad. (WARNING WILL ROBINSON....SPOILERS ABOUND!) This book badly needs an editor, one who will keep his descriptions of every minutea (sp) of daily life to a minimum, one who would stop his constant reminders that so and so is sooooo horribly ugly, that this woman has unruly red hair (which in that day and age wouldn't be the case, it would be hidden), that her big dark eyes opened wide, it might have been readable. Said editor could also have told him to make the building of the cathedrals reflect the grandeur of these buildings, rather than a blow by blow description of every little thing (it read like a how to manual). Basically, his research was showing, something that is not good in historical fiction. The story of Tom itself was really well done, and if he just stuck with that, and his cathedral it could have been a shorter, tighter, more interesting book. But aside from Tom, every other character was cardboard. Each person was either good or bad. There was little complexity to them, little growth. But two things that really did it to me: the anachronisms, and gratuitious sex and violence Every other page had an example of either something out of place in the time period (the uncovered hair was the most glaring) or 20th century speech coming out of 12th century characters. AS to the gratuitious sex and violence - it was so unnecessary. Yes, it was a violent time. But why was it necessary to graphically detail every single murder in bloody detail? There were several descriptions of rape here that could have come off a police blotter, it was so detailed. This last was really creepy - the really bad bad character was a horribly self centered noble's son who thought it great fun to cause misery and death. He has fantasies about this young noble girl that were so over the top that I had to wonder if these were of the character, or of the author. When he finally does rape her, brutally and repeatedly, the author spares no details. And this happens several times throughout the book. Again, it makes me wonder about the author, more than gives me the sense that this young man is evil incarnate. The political angle between various chuch members and various nobles were interesting, but again each incident was black or white - he did not show the complexity that I am sure was involved in each situation. Ok, thats enough. If you want to know more about 12th century England, start with the Caedfael series. Then move on to Sharon Kay Penman, start with There Be Dragons, and continue on until When Christ and his Saints Slept, an incredibly well told tale about Englands first devastating civil war. And no, I won't be reading the sequel. I do need to read something tho that will get the bad taste of this book out of my head. Mary Modern has been recommended several...

Good Morning, Y'all. We only dropped to 28 degrees so, surprisingly, many flowering plants survived and look half-decent. When I looked at the garden around 7:45 a.m., I still could see flowers that looked fine on the Cape honeysuckle, begonias, lantanas, marigolds, some of the Texas hummingbird sage plants, mealy cup sage, autumn sage and the globe amaranth plants. The remaining herbs (rosemary, sage, chives, parsley and basil) also looked fine. Even some of the remaining zinnias looked good. Everything else probably is gone though. If the butterflies that were flitting around the garden yesterday survived the cold night, and it is likely they did, then at least they still have some flowers for nectar. Jennifer, I need to give our dogs a bath. Maybe on Monday. I have one grandchild here for the weekend, so just don't want to mess with bathing dogs while she is here. Larry, Mud has us at a standstill here as well. I'd say that I'm hoping we'll dry up in this cold, dry air, but more rain (and snow) are in the Monday forecast so I guess we'll just have more mud. You're quite a bit colder than us this morning, but then you're quite a bit further north. Our Mesonet station went to 26 but at our house the Min-Max only shows 26, and it still was at 30 when I got up at 4:40 a.m., so we really weren't at 28 degrees for more than a very few hours. A mole has tunneled across our driveway, from the neighbor's pasture to our yard. I hope he or she isn't planning on sticking around. When moles show up here, the cats usually take care of them so they normally aren't a problem for us. I kinda felt sorry for the mole having to tunnel through all the mud. Some people that I know dig up their regular potatoes with some sort of attachment they pull behind their tractors. I don't know if it is some sort of mechanical digger or what, but it merely turns over the soil and then they can easily find the potatoes. I wonder if such a thing would work with sweet potatoes? George, I bet y'all were cozy and warm with that fire going. Jen, That's a lot of dogs. Are you dog sitting? Jennifer, If you know what caused the injuries to the dog, I'd just explain it to the vet. I suppose if the vet questions why you didn't bring in the dog you could just explain you used your own holistic methods to heal the wounds? Lots of folks here that have lots of animals do a lot of the routine day-to-day doctoring of their animals (not just cows, horses and such, but farm dogs and cow dogs as well) and don't take their pets in for every injury--not if they can heal it themselves. Wherever the hair is not regrowing there probably is scar tissue. We've had that with snakebitten cats---the hair did not grow back in the snakebite area. Our cat, Shady, is 18 or 19 years old and still has a circular scar that is white flesh with no hair growing there in the same spot where he broke out in a copper-colored rash after a copperhead bit him in the abdominal/groin area when he was only a couple of years old. I just think of it as his copperhead bite scar. In the early years I did think that hair eventually would grow back there, but then it never did. Today is sunny and bright and it looks so nice outdoors, but it still is very chilly. Looks can be deceiving, I guess. The leaves on the red oaks look a brighter red this morning, so at least there's that. Everything that had yellow or golden leaves left on the trees has lost them over the last couple of days. I expect the red oaks will lose the rest of their leaves soon, although some of the red oaks have foliage that still is 95% green. It is odd how some trees are so slow to change color and lose leaves this year. There's not much consistency. The post oaks are still green too, but usually are about the last trees to lose their leaves here and some of them will hang onto their leaves all winter long before dropping them in early Spring so new leaves can emerge. We had a lot of hungry deer waiting for deer corn this morning. They remind me of cows standing near a fence waiting for the rancher to show up with cattle feed. I don't go back there and put out food for them until they've all moved far enough away from the feeding area that I feel safe. Generally, I feel safe if they've jumped the fence into the adjacent pasture and moved at least 30 to 50' away from where I feed them. Deer that are too friendly can turn dangerous in the blink of an eye, especially bucks during the rutting season, so I'm always extremely careful. I hope everyone has a good day. Dawn