grateful for the sunshine. off to work in the yard! won’t be long now until we’re planting spring peas. i’m really enjoying our herb garden, which looks like it may survive winter. parsley, sage, rosemary and two kinds of thyme! (pineapple and standard. get it? standard thyme? ha! ha! yeah i love a bad pun.) we also have lemon balm and oregano in pots. we have some ornamental oregano, too — v. pretty.

some of the herbs are in the ground, some are in pots. wasn’t sure if I was going to want to move them around or not, so we tried to stay flexible last year. I have a long rock wall with a few spots to fill in, up above. (here’s the picture from last summer. the area I need to deal w/ is to the left, above the strawberries.) the raspberries are taking over, the apple trees are a mess and may need to come down. (diseased fruit, diseased leaves — we keep treating with copper sulfate, but this could take awhile, or not be a success story at all.)

my mom is giving us a couple more hydrangeas and another snowball bush, too. now where to plant everything?

happy friday, y’all.

— wm

grateful for critters and nature.

“Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar.” — Bradley Miller, activist (b. 1956)

grateful today because i feel optimistic. i feel wildly, uncontrollably, ridiculously optimistic. the economy is lousy, the wars are still raging, there are still way too many people going hungry and homeless and without jobs. but i have hope that someday things are going to get a little better, or at least ease up, a bit. and maybe, after that, things will get a lot better.

why do i feel this way? i have no idea, but i’m going with it.

grateful and hopeful and yearning for a better world for my kids and everyone else’s to grow up in.

peace, and peace and love and happiness.

yours,

wm

grateful for everything today: the rain, salmon leaping across the roads, my health being way better than it was two years ago at this time. grateful that my wildass tomcat is feeling better, grateful that Steve has a week off for vacation (? what???), grateful for the apple pie I just assembled and threw in the freezer, to bake on Thursday morning, and grateful that it’s almost December, cuz I like December. not cuz of Christmas, necessary, but because it just seems like such a cheerful month.

also grateful for brussels sprouts, which i hated so much as a child (ask my mother: “God, no, I’m not making brussels sprouts, calm down”), but which now i adore. especially roasted with a lot of balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper.

the end.

— wm

grateful for all my blogger friends, cuz without them, i’m nothing.

go read Nan, she cracks me up.

my husband made this movie — check it out.

— nancy

http://youtu.be/RjXp2e0GqNQ

xo

n

grateful that no shots or tear gas was fired by Portland Police in riot gear who we saw this afternoon, just before dark fell. not saying that they’re not mixing it up as we speak, but they weren’t hurting anyone right when we saw them. we were driving home from my mom’s (Northeast Portland) back out to west side, and there they were heading east over the Burnside Bridge. a whole van of them, hanging off both sides of truck, and inside was full, too.

full riot gear. to me, they looked excited. their body language and all but how can you you tell when someone looks like this.

reminded me of the stormtroopers and made me sick to my stomach. only they’re even more suited up, nowadays.

peaceful protesters need to be left alone. we are peacefully, respectfully telling the government that the U.S. healthcare system is a mess, the banks are on the take, the schools are sinking down, we’re sick of the buy-outs (and criminals walking free who should have been jailed for their crimes), we are tired of war, and the money spent on wargames, bombs and guns.

we want the babies fed, we want to be able to get the bills paid, and we would like to go back to work, please, if only there were jobs out there for us. (jobs that pay a living wage? oh, i’m sorry, is this too much to demand? am I being too demanding? would you like to tear gas me? yeah, i bet you would.)

my note to the Portland Police in Riot Gear, and their Mayor, Sam Adams: it’s like I used to tell my old, drunk friend J when we were out at the bars: if you go out looking for a fight, you’re going to find one. you don’t need to mix it up. please just hear what we are saying, and help.

we have the right to peacefully assemble, and we do have freedom of speech.

Sam, call off your dogs.

— wacky mommy

ps silent vigil tonite at 10 p.m. in front of City Hall, Portland, Ore.

pss this good news showed up about an hour after I posted last night. and then there’s this, too. peace, nancy

grateful for photographic and written documentation.

grateful today for the wisdom of others.

“Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.” — Lin Yutang, writer and translator (1895-1976)

I am grateful that my hissy, bitey tomcat, Baby, seems to be recuperating from the icky head wound he wound up with (wound/wound, get it?) after yet another CAT FIGHT. God he was sick.

the vet’s office called today to check on him. “How is that big, handsome boy, Baby?” me: “He’s high as a kite on the pain meds you gave him.” office lady: “Isn’t it lovely? Enjoy it!”

oh my wacky cat, I love him so. he gets to live in our room for two weeks. he is wearing one of those crazy cones around his neck.

and while i am not grateful that Panda, our one remaining hamster, died last night… I am grateful that she wasn’t in pain and miserable, in the weeks leading up to her demise.

damn pets.

— wm