the busy heart

Photo Source.   (We didn't take a single photo. It seemed like taking a picture of a holy moment, or a car accident. So here is a blue jay who is not ours, but is also lovely.) We recently watched our neighbors--a nice retired couple with chickens and a gorgeous garden--build an elaborate net structure around their bushes to keep birds and squirrels out. It was like a room for their blueberries, made of net. Since then I've seen birds fly into it, glancing off one way or another as the netting pushed back.  But last evening, as Henrietta and I hung out in the backyard while Sam finished dinner, I realized the bird by the blueberries didn't fly away, though he tried. And then I realized he was somehow inside the structure, flying against it from the inside again and again, getting more frantic each time.  "Birdie stuck?" Henrietta asked.  "Birdie stuck," I said. "Let's go tell Hank and Linda." I carried her on my hip an...

The other day I went out for my morning walk as usual, and at the end of the driveway I passed a giant swarm of black flying insects. It must have been ten feet high. "Whoa," I said out loud. The swarm frightened me, is the truth. I was grateful Henrietta had made it clear she needed additional sleep more than she needed to join me on my walk and was back at home with her comfort-lamb, doing her baby snore. I walked a little further and passed another swarm, and another, and another. They were as tall as houses, as tall as the giant Saguaro Cactuses that lined the road. There were half a dozen of them before I'd even left the cul-de-sac. There had been a big storm the night before, a monsoon, and I wondered if that had somehow signaled all of these colonies to hatch. It was if they had alarms that rang promptly at six a.m., and now they were getting on with it, with the next stage of their life cycles. But what were they? I pretty much assume everything that flies ...

Before A year or so ago, I found this baby lamp at the thrift store. I think I paid a couple bucks for it, thinking I'd revamp it at some point since I wasn't crazy about the yellow gingham. A few weeks ago I thought I'd tackle the project, and found this stretchy turquoise lace fabric in my stash. I used modge podge and some hot glue to cover it (which was ... maybe not the best method, but it got the job done), and here's the after. After And because he hopped up right as I was taking pictures and looked so picturesque, here's Meatsock with the Moon. Cat + Moon

So, I have a dear friend who lives in Utah and has two exquisite boys and I had a Christmas present for her, but I forgot it at home when I saw her over Christmas, and it only took me until, oh, March, to actually send it. But! It was because I decided to make a gift for the exquisite boys as well. And here is what I made. A bunny and a giraffe. Both were Pinterest-inspired . I made the bunny first, and when I finished it Sam rather sheepishly but utterly sincerely asked, "Ummm, may I have the bunny?" How could I say no to that request? So the first bunny lives on his bedside table, and I made another. Both bunnies were made from a shirt Sam used to wear while we were dating, and this shirt, whenever he would wear it, would make me swoon. So I am glad the bunnies are wearing it now. I am pleased with how the giraffe turned out, too. It's for a baby boy. I even bought a cheap (and exceedingly ugly) soft rattle toy and dissected it, stole its rattle, and used it for ...

Do I wear a lot of this orange sweater in outfit posts? Possibly yes. I think this might be because I'm not your typical orange wearer, so when I wear orange I think, "Heyyyy, I'm wearing an OUTFIT." Does that make sense? Anyway, I thrifted this dress sometime back. It went like this: it was a half-off sale, and it was a frenzy in Savers. I mean, people were excited. People were filling cartfulls upon cartfulls. And I filled my cart with shockingly (and I mean shockingly) lovely dress shirts for Sam that came out to $2.50 a piece, and that was filling my heart (and cart--ha!) with joy. And then I thought, hey, shall we check out the dresses? And this was my strategy: if I love the fabric, it goes in the cart. My sewing skillz extend to cutting off the bottom and making a skirt out of it. And this one, oh, isn't that a nice fabric? Look. Up close. See how it looks like a psychedlic wonderland? It does to me anyway. Someone homemade this dress. And it was barely...

[sunrise.] Before we left for Mexico, we watched a few of those Planet Earth movies, and happened to see one that had a shot of hundreds of sailfish swimming through the water like kites.  Oh, they were pretty.  So although we were looking forward to fishing, we were reluctant to find one of those guys on the other end of the line.  I needn't have worried.  I didn't fish a bit, since about a half hour after I got on the boat I threw up my breakfast over the side, and pretty much stayed horizontal with my eyes closed for the rest of the day.  Seasickness was not a good time for me.  But I did manage to get some pictures, and Sam did catch a sailfish.  It was enormous (you'll see), so I think by the time he got him in the boat, after several near-escapes, Sam didn't care about the scene where they all looked like kites.  At least not when it came to this guy.  Kite, shmite.   ...

[they jump. we grin.] When we landed in Mexico, a woman on the plane told us about swimming with dolphins and I was instantly obsessed.  Granted, it also made me think of this New Yorker cartoon , wherein two dolphins are swimming around and one says to the other, "If I could do only one thing before I died, it would be to swim with a middle-aged couple from Connecticut."   I find that endlessly amusing, and thus felt a little silly about wanting to have a swim, but, seriously, look at them.  And look at those enormous smiles on our faces.  We'll be the couple from New England any day if we get to hang out with these guys. [we pet a dolphin belly.  i think this one's name was habana, since she was cuban. (they spelled it with a b, yes.] This was one of those things that was exactly as cool and exhilirating as I dreamed it would be. Okay, it was probably cooler. I have to say that at first I was frightene...

[the pools and view from the condo.  zihuatenejo, mexico.] Sam and I went to Zihuatanejo, Mexico for a week at the beginning of October, just after we moved.  We visited his parents, who rented a condo down there for six months, and are generous souls.  They treated us well.  It was a whirlwind of swimming in the pool, reading books in lounge chairs, eating fresh-fresh seafood, fishing, eating more fresh-fresh seafood, swimming with dolphins, drinking limonada, nursing sunburns, practicing my (meager) Spanish skills, and taking very long naps.  Can strenous relaxation even be considered a whirlwind?  Anyway, it was grand. [i love this one.  gosh it was gorgeous there.] I'll cover other material in a few more posts (swimming with dolphins!  fishing (and seasickness)! glamorous book reading by the pool and sea!) but I must first tell you about La-La the porcupine, whom we met at a animal rescue type place called ...

Last, ummmm, July, we went whale watching with our friends Kenneth and Emily.   We hang out with those folks quite a bit.   They’re the kind of couple-friends that, when we drop them off or they drop us off, we sit in the car talking, not quite finished hanging out.   We think they’re pretty cool.  (As this is four months late, it's light on words, heavy on pictures.)                                                           [dockyard north of boston]                                      ...