Life goes on and on…..

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything here.  Life has been busy since last year when I spent a month in the hospital after a ruptured brain aneurysm.

Life is good.  All the headaches are gone after the surgery to place the two stents and two coils last November.  I recently went back to Milwaukee for my one year checkup and they threw in an angiogram just for fun.  After the angiogram I met with the surgeon and he told me see you in five years.  I was expected it to be an annual event.  God is so good!

I’m back working full-time for the past 9 months.  My oldest daughter got married and bought a home in October.  My youngest daughter will graduate from college on December 21.  We made our final college tuition payment the first week in November.  Twelve years of tuition payments were at times difficult to do but well worth getting all four of our kids through college with minimal debt.

Looking ahead my husband Dean and I will be taking a 8 day mission trip to Jamaica in July.  I can hardly wait for the trip.  It was something we’ve wanted to do for some time but college tuition made it impossible until now.

In Minnesota the weather is changing from cool to downright cold.  The lake was busy making ice last night and this morning.

Hope to be posting occasionally and catch up with all my favorite blogging buddies!

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Selah, A Time to Breathe

In the Psalms of the Old Testament you will find the word Selah within the individual Psalms.  I had to do some checking into what that really means.  There are different interpretations depending on where you read for a definition.

One definition of Selah that I found was this, “The Selah is there to signal the believer to ‘measure’ carefully the meaning of what has been said. i.e., here is some deeper wisdom, reflect on it and understand its true meaning.”

Another definition of Selah is to pause…consider…take time.  This is the one that I think of when I look at this picture of Bond Falls that I took last fall.

 

Life has been busy this past year.  This weekend I’m looking forward to a time to pause.  Selah!  A change in scenery, location and schedule.  Nothing as grand as a vacation but a time to enjoy my surroundings and people in my life outside of work and home.  The weather is supposed to be great so I am looking forward to taking some pictures along the way and some time to rest, read and revive to finish the year well.

 

A Single Drop

A single drop captivated my attention this week. As I walked out the door to go to work I noticed that it had sprinkled leaving everything damp. I went back inside and grabbed my camera for a few photos before work, well about 30 minutes worth to be honest. I went to work later than planned.

I walked out into the field just south of our home and saw drops of water hanging on a few branches. The morning was overcast from the rain but the sun kept trying to peek through the clouds never quite making a full appearance but creating some interesting views.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I was heading back inside I loved the way the sun was hitting the butterfly plant pods. It is from the same family as the Milkweed plant. All the is left of it is the shell. All the seeds have flown away in the fall winds.

Have a great weekend!

 

Looking Back At St. Pete’s Beach

 

 

This evening after an afternoon working out in the cold winds finishing up a few fall projects my mind wandered back to last February and our trip to St. Pete’s Beach.

One afternoon while we were out walking around St. Pete’s Beach we wandered past this old car parked in a driveway. It looked like something off an old postcard advertising Florida, palm trees and all.

I was uploading some photos for my husband when I located my photos from our trip. I played with the photo in Photoshop and this was the final result. I was looking for a picture that had a vintage feel to it.

I think it would make an interesting canvas photo for framing or a jigsaw puzzle. Learning Photoshop in the past year has made photography more fun. I love taking pictures with my Nikon D3100 and all the possibilities with Photoshop.

This is the photograph that I took in St. Pete’s Beach before post-processing.

I love the original photograph just as it is but the post-processing makes it something fun and whimsical.

Enjoy your week.

 

So Still

This morning I was sitting in my living chair and noticed how still the lake was this morning. I decided to walk down to the lake and take a picture of the reflection of the fall colors on the lake. As I was standing focusing my camera this bird came into the photo. It circled and then landed on the lake. It was a beautiful way to begin the day.

This week promises to bring out of season temperatures here with 80-85 degree highs over the next few days. I’ll take the warm weather for sure. CNN reported this morning that somewhere in Pennsylvania received their first snow. I’m glad it was there and not here.

 

The Birds Revisited

I am a great fan of Alfred Hitchcock movies. When I was in college I spent an entire quarter studying Hitchcock movies.

Yesterday brought back memories of watching the movie “The Birds” by Alfred Hitchcock. I looked out my livingroom window and saw the lawn covered with black birds. I think they are grackles. When I opened my window the birds all took off and flew up into the trees in our yard. Then after a moment or two they flew back down to the ground covering it once again.

They were busy eating something in our lawn. I was just thankful it wasn’t all the grass seed we had just planted. Something spooked them once again and they all took off and flew over our house and then began eating again on the south side of our home. Everywhere I looked I saw birds.

In the early 70’s I lived in Minneapolis, MN.  I was about 12 then. We had an entire summer of evening entertainment. All the Dad’s spent the summer trying to move the grackles from our neighborhood to the next.

They were successful in moving them a block or two away but then just a few nights later the grackles would be back again. It reminded me a bit of the antics in the Caddy Shack movie of trying to get rid the golf course of gophers.

As fast as the birds came, they left.

 

Frosty Fall Morning

This morning we woke up to the first frost of the fall. Last evening my neighbors were all busy covering their gardens to protect their produce. It was a chilly morning only 30 degrees with some areas including our area with temperatures below freezing over night. It warmed up to a chilly but 55 degree sunny day.

This is what Pine Lake looked like this morning from the shore in front of our home. Steam rising from its surface in waves from one end of the lake to the other. I watched its ever changing shapes for about ten minutes before my cold feet told me it was time to move on.

I headed up the hill to our house and then out to the field behind our home to see what the field looked like frosted. I’m not a fan of colder weather but I love to the frost on the plants. It gives them a whole new look and of course something new to photograph.

One of my favorite finds this morning was this frosted clover in the roadside ditch along our driveway.

I also loved how this grass looked in the early morning light.

It’s hard to think that soon the ground will be covered with snow once again and the lake frozen solid in just a couple of months. Until then I will just have to enjoy the daily beauty in the few remaining flowers blooming and the soon to arrive fall colors.

I still have a few Hydrangeas blooming. Most of them have changed to a soft mauve color but I still have a few that are white colored.

I love this spider web that graced my porch in the morning light.

Enjoy your surroundings where you live and try to find some beauty each day.

 

Fall: The Best and Worst of Times

I have a love/hate relationship with the fall season. It is my favorite season in Minnesota because of the changing colors and scenery. Harvest times are special watching the farmers gathering their crops and gardeners, the produce from their gardens. Apple trees full of apples begging to picked and made into cider, pies, and apple crisp. I love how certain flowers in my garden are most beautiful in the fall like my Hydrangea.

I love the cool crisp mornings and the fresh air. I am energized by the aisles of school supplies. I always loved the start of the school season especially when I graduated college and started teaching school.  Setting up my classroom with a theme for the fall and for open house was always a highlight. I loved meeting my new students and watching them wander around the classroom to see what there was to look at and finding their desk for the first day of school.

While I love the changing colors of the trees, hillsides and flowers it only reminds me all too soon of the shorter days and the colder temperatures to come. All too soon I will be leaving for work in the dark and returning home from work in the dark. The shorter days seem to take my energy with them.

We live by a lake and it is always a sad thing to remove the dock, boat lift, and boat from the lake each fall. Each year we help my Dad take his sailboat out of the lake as well. Too many summers we have helped put his boat in the lake in the spring without ever taking the time to go for a ride before it is time to take it out in the fall.

I love sleeping with the windows open listening to the frogs in the nearby pond or the waves lapping against the shore and the call of the loons as I drift off to sleep. Fall nights turn too cold too soon and it is time to close the windows at night and close out my favorite sounds as well.

It’s been four years since I quit teaching. The workshop days at school and teachers talking about preparing their classrooms make me long for my classroom and bright smiling faces of the students entering the classroom eager to learn.

This fall is different than past 25 years. No students in my home, no classroom for teaching and no students to watch grow over the course of a year.

I could always go stock up on school supplies for old times sake.