Eagle in a tree

I just get home from work
and what do I see...
An Eagle in a tree
and he's lookin' at me!

The Harold Angel

I belong to a sentimental kind of family - the kind that remembers loved-and-lost people, that revels in sharing images in old photos, in old home movies and on video, the kind of family that not only emails candid photos to each other on birthdays and anniversaries, but also has the birthdays & anniversaries of departed relatives marked on their current calendars.
Sometimes we remember those we loved by raising a glass to toast their memories. Sometimes we remember them in .... the kitchen. Does anyone else connect certain relatives with their favorite foods? We do! Oral history tells us that Grandma Kitty loved kidney stew, horseradish and coconut macaroons, Grandpa Jim ate a whole raw onion every night before dinner, Uncle George was a broccoli fan and the key to Uncle Ollie's heart was a big dish of stuffed peppers.
Beloved Uncle Harold's favorite pie was mince - so his wife, my piano-playing Aunt Helen, made sure that a mincemeat pie was always included in the holiday desserts - a choice that was soundly rejected by the kids in my generation. Luckily for us, Harold's other favorite pie was banana cream - one we were happy to share. His December birthday plus St Nicholas Day plus Christmas also confused us into thinking that Herald Angels were Harold Angels.... not too far off the truth! He died a long time ago, but some years I find myself making a banana cream pie on my uncle's birthday and thinking about him.
Harold grew up in Chicago, second son in a big family. His dad had a furniture finishing shop where Harold learned to like making furniture as a hobby... as a young man he worked in the office of a big furniture company, falling like a rock once he saw my cute little aunt -the feeling was mutual. Harold's generosity and courtesy soon made the whole family love him. A few years after they were married, the Second World War separated them, and Harold served with the Army Air Corps (forerunner of the US Air Force) in the Mariana Islands where he worked on the cameras of reconnaissance planes. He contracted malaria, returning to the US many months after the war ended.
With no children of their own, Helen & Harold shared love and worldly goods with the children of their brothers and sisters. They were wonderful godparents! Harold bought a 16mm home movie camera to record family parties and the antics of the youngsters... and this attention made more than two dozen nieces and nephews feel special, and as time went on it was hilarious to watch ourselves grow up when the projector came out for movie shows. We saw Helen and Harold at least once a week when we were growing up, but he was usually behind the camera - not in front of it, so we don't have enough photos of him.
Aunt Helen and Uncle Harold hosted family picnics at their small, perfect cottage on a large lot - with landscaping that he designed, planted and maintained - even letting a small, flower-loving niece believe she was helping.Harold's post-war work was in textbook publishing - and that lead to a perk for us! The display books from the office were nicely bound outside but with blank pages inside. They were replaced periodically and he passed along the outdated models. Having real books in which to draw & write our thoughts let us pretend we were real writers and artists.
Helen's piano was replaced by a Hammond Organ - she delighted in leading family singalongs. Once the group stopped singing and began talking, Harold would take a turn on the bench - coaxing a different set of melodies from the keys as background music for the conversation. How I wish for a recording of even one song!
The old camera was replaced around the time the older nieces and nephews traded dolls and baseball bats for mortar boards and bridal veils - now Uncle Harold was ready to film the great-nieces and great-nephews , traveling to see the younger generations as they set up housekeeping in distant suburbs and other states. There's the camera in his hand below - outside our rickety student dwelling. They drove 1000 miles to see us, and acted as if they were visiting a palace instead of a dump, complimenting our newlywed culinary experiments as if they were dining in a fine restaurant. That's the kind of gentleman he was.
Harold died too young - long before retirement age - breaking the hearts of all he left behind. Many years later as we ring in .., gone is not forgotten... in this Christmas season, you are still our Harold Angel!

Baghead - Review from an Extra

"Baghead - Review from an Extra" was written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose blog.



You can't do this until next month, but last weekend we went to see Baghead, the latest indie film from Mark and Jay, the Duplass brothers, who work on a shoestring budget to turn their stories into films. This movie is premiering in Austin - even New York and Los Angeles have to wait!

Philo and I loved the .. Duplass feature, The Puffy Chair, so we'd have wanted to see the latest Duplass movie in any event, but we had a special reason to see Baghead on opening weekend - to find out if either Philo or I could be glimpsed in the final film.

Most of Baghead was filmed at a cabin in the woods near Bastrop, Texas, a town Southeast of Austin. Hilarious, scary and surprising things happen to the two men and two women who are attempting to finish a screenplay for a movie - while also making sure the movie will provide roles for themselves.

Before they leave for the cabin, the story starts at a film festival, and back in October of .., Philo and I were both extras for a scene of an audience watching one of the film festival entries in a theater. I was directed to a seat right behind the four main characters and Philo was on the aisle, so we're both visible on screen for a couple of seconds - the sleeve of my light green blouse gets a few more seconds as background!

Baghead is said to use a comedy form to combine a scary movie with a relationship movie. That's not a bad description, and I'll add that we both liked the characters and story. It's an 'R' movie, which means casual profanity, nudity, and some violence. (These things don't bother me but I'm not sure who's reading this blog and thought you should be warned.)

And it's an indie movie which means some jiggly hand-held camera moments - and also some wonderful closeups. That visual intimacy with the actors' faces is something that's always been essential to the film experience, but recent movies are so stuffed with special effects, explosions, iconic landscapes, distant vehicles and petty details of historical recreation that there seems to be little time for dwelling on the individual landscape of the human face, keeping the audience at a distance from the people in the movie, sometimes leaving an unsatisfied feeling at film's end.

In contrast, the Duplass brothers let the camera linger on the faces of their four main characters, played by Greta Gerwig, Elise Muller, Steve Zissis and Ross Partridge and all of them were very watchable. We'd already seen Greta Gerwig when she starred with Mark Duplass in another indie movie called Hannah Takes the Stairs. Although I wasn't crazy about that movie it was interesting and I wanted to see the quirkily charming Greta Gerwig again - she's a naturally charismatic actor. Seeing Baghead let us know how amazing Steve Zissis can be - we hope to see him in more movies!

When the post about our experience as extras who'd been directed by the Duplass brothers went up in autumn of .., we didn't know whether we'd be in the movie - now I harbor delusions of grandeur and wonder whether a couple of seconds of screen time would qualify me for an entry on the IMDb. Could there be really be some filmmaker looking for a sixtyish, well-upholstered, grandmotherly type who sings songs to the trees?

"Baghead - Review from an Extra" was written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose blog.

Streams of Mercy

This is the face that greeted me at 7:00 this morning. He was singing at the top of his sweet little voice, "Come Thou Fount of Every Bwessing, Tune My Heart to Sing Thy Pwaise!"
What a great way to start the day and put a smile on my face. I don't care what everybody else says about two-year-olds. Around here, they're the best!

The regulation ride

A day before the "harden the f*ck up" ride, I decided to do another mountain climb, to Springbrook. This is, of course, one of my regular rides, one that I've done many, many times over. However, today there was something different. This year we actually had some rain in October, which almost never happens. The rain re-invigorated some things, and caused the appearance of some that aren't normally there. You can never be sure what you'll see on a trip to Springbrook, which is part of what makes it such a special place.

In summer when the days were long

Fairy dreams of green-wood fern

Feather from the wing of time

Summer's nimble mansion

Berries harsh and crude

My stem was fair, my bud was green

Bloom I strove to raise

Hidden secret of eternal bliss
-----
Notes
In summer
Fairy Feather
Summer's Berries
My Bloom Hidden

Autumn Wears Her Red Dress

We're still enjoying temperatures in the nineties each day, but the plants show signs that it is fall. One proof - the hummingbird garden has gone completely Red.
Tall white hardy Hibiscus, Shasta daisies and blue salvias dominate this area from May to September. I saw a few Texas Star Hibiscus flowers in summer along with the off-and-on red of the short-lived Hummingbird sage - probably Salvia coccinea. It blooms, sets seed, the original plant dies, and another pops up nearby.
The largest red-bloomer hasn't done much since last fall, but look what's happened to the Pineapple sage, Salvia elegans in the last few days:

Its flowers appear when the days and nights are close in length. This can happen in a mild spring when the plant is not frozen back, but is more usual in fall. Most salvias are useful in deer-resistent gardens, but not our deliciously-scented Pineapple Sage! We kept it in deck containers at our previous house.


The Chili pequin [Capsicum annuum, according to the Wildflower Center] still has lots of tiny peppers. Philo hasn't tried it yet, but one of the Divas told me her husband Warren pickles large quantities of the fiery little fruit each year.

Autumn wears a purple hat with her red dress in the photo above. 'Bat-faced' Cuphea llaevea has produced red/purple flowers since early summer.

A few purple berries remain uneaten by mockingbirds on the Callicarpa americana/Beautyberry below.

My attempts to make vines bloom in a crepe myrtle has had mixed results - no new Passionflowers to photograph, and the Hyacinth bean/Dolichos lab-lab is all pods now, dangling ten feet up in the tree.
One of the surest signs of autumn in my garden is the flowering of Barleria cristata, the Philippine Violet. Some sites say this is a native of India, not the Philippines, and not in the violet family, but belonging to Acanthus.The plant below started out as a 3-inch rooted cutting in March, and it's now about two-feet tall in partial shade. The flowering seems to be triggered by the shortening of the days as the Autumnal Equinox approaches.

Those of who garden in the Northern Hemisphere celebrated the autumnal equinox on September 23rd-- and now our blogs record and share what happens as fall arrives. It might mean cooler, shorter days, changing leaves and that slanting, autumn light.
In my mind the term autumnal equinox meant that the days and nights were of equal length, so it surprised me when Philo pointed out that here in Austin, our day & night actually became equal on the 27th, and our descent into winter didn't really begin until the 28th.
I'd already noticed the startling variation in the longest days of summer for the different places friends and family lived - just one of those things that color our individual relationship with our spot on the globe. Philo used Naval Observatory tables to chart a few US cities for me, arranged by latitude, North to South, so we can see how things change as you move toward the equator. He adjusted to Daylight time for summer and this data is for ...

This may be the point where you jump ship, but I enjoy mildly geeky statistics and bet some of you do, too:
The days and nights in Anchorage, Alaska reached equal length on September 25th. Seattle, Washington also had equal days and nights on September 25th.

San Francisco, California took another day to even up its days and nights as did
Chicago, Illinois - both had equal days and nights on the 26th.
Austin, Texas and Miami, Florida waited until September 27th.
Kona, Hawaii was a day later than the others, on the 28th.


That's pretty interesting, but this is the part that really gets me - day length variation:

In Anchorage [latitude N61º 13'] on the shortest day in winter, the sun rises at 10:14 AM and sets at 3:41 PM. On the longest day in summer, the sun rises at 4:20 in the morning, and stays up until 11:42 PM - so the difference in the shortest day and longest day is a whopping 13 hours and 55 minutes.

Seattle [latitude N47º 38'] sees sunrise on the shortest day of winter at 7:55 AM, with sunset at 4:20 in the afternoon; go to the opposite season and the sun rises at 5:11 in the morning, setting at 9:11 at night... what a nice long day for gardening, and the glow at twilight makes it seem even longer. Seattle has a difference of 7 hours 35 minutes between the longest and shortest days.
Chicago [latitude N41º 51'] has a 6 hour, 6 minute variation from longest to shortest days, with winter sunrise at 7:15 AM, winter sunset 4:23 PM, summer sunrise 5:16 AM, summer sunset 8:30 PM.

San Francisco [latitude N37º 46'] comes next, with a 5 hour, 14 minute variation from summer to winter; the sun rises at the winter solstice at 7:21 AM, sets at 4:54 PM. The sun rises on the longest day at 5:48 AM and sets at 8:35 PM that evening.

Day length in Austin [latitude N30º 17'] varies only 3 hours and 54 minutes from shortest day of winter to longest day of summer. Our winter sun rises at 7:23 in the morning, setting at 5:35 that night, not so bad for school buses. At the summer solstice, the sun rises at 6:29 AM, setting at 8:36.

Miami [latitude N25º 47'] daylength varies even less - only 3 hours and 13 minutes separate longest and shortest days. The sun comes up at 7:03 AM in winter, setting at 5:35 PM on the winter solstice. In summer the sun appears only a half-hour earlier, rising at 6:30 AM and setting at 8:15 PM.

If you're in the city of Kona, on the Big Island of Hawaii, [latitude N21º 19'] there isn't a lot of difference in winter and summer: only 2 hours and 36 minutes. This part of Hawaii has sunrise on the shortest day at 7: 04 AM, and the sun sets at 5:55 PM. The sun will rise only a quarter of an hour earlier on the longest day, at 6:50 AM, and the residents will get the extra 2+ hours at the end of their longest day - with sunset at 8:16 PM.

While these numbers were interesting in themselves, since we read blogs by people who garden in different places we might think about how day length affects humans and their gardens.

Back in Illinois the crows started cawing as the sun began to glow - waking us at 5 in the morning. Northern friends could rise early and fit in an hour on a vegetable plot before dressing for work. When we moved to Austin it was a surprise when it was still quite dark at 6 AM in midsummer, and we were often awake before the birds made a sound. [It was also a surprise to see Turkey vultures rather than crows!]

The people in the North get earlier frosts and shorter summers, but they also get used to having many more hours of daylight during the summer. Kona, Hawaii may miss out on the pleasant glow of long summer evenings, but those folks won't need headlights at 4 PM in December.

Do you think the variation in your shortest and longest daylength affects you?

Morning Glory Tower

This is part of the tower of morning glories in my garden. I originally had them on a 15-foot pole, but they kept growing to the top, so I put in some bamboo extensions the other day. They are already twining up!

Where Have All the Hours Gone?

Wednesday morning Bob headed to work from Camping World. I got up and started writing my blog for the past couple of days.

I had no idea when they intended to start the kitchen faucet repairs. As I was writing, someone opened the door of the 5er without knocking. It was one of the service writers looking for the repairman. I jumped up from the table and said, "Hello!" She was taken aback that someone was in here. The cats, of course, had to see who it was. I had to make sure they didn't escape.

She apologized for just walking in. No problem, just don't let the cats out.

At that point, I gathered up the cats and we went in the car. I also had the temporary kitty litter box which was still in from yesterday. That was 10:30 a.m. Make note of that, it's important.

Yesterday afternoon the refrigerator repairman reset the motherboard. They put a digital thermometer in the refrigerator to see if it was cooling. By this morning, the thermometer was down to 37 degrees. Yay!

The remaining repair was to replace the leaking kitchen faucet. It was so bad they told us we needed a new one.

The cats and I went to Naegelin's bakery where I purchased awesome pastries for Bob and I. The cats were in their carriers, but were protesting. We headed back to Camping World's parking lot where I let them out of their carriers to roam the car. Both of them wanted to be in my lap ... at the same time. Sunnie parked himself on my shoulder and Bowie curled up in my lap. We waited.

The first entertainment of the day was to watch the United Rentals guy put a scissor lift on the semi flat bed trailer.

He took it this far.

Then he used a lift already on his trailer to pull up the little one.

Bowie finally settling down.

At 1:00 p.m. I wanted to see how the repairs were progressing so we drove to where the 5er was parked. No one was working in our rig, but the kitchen faucet had been removed. So, no good to go back in the 5er yet.

The kitty crew and I headed down the road to Whataburger (it's really close) where I bought a hamburger for lunch. Then we went back to the Camping World parking lot. We waited. (You see how my day is going?)

Weather-wise we had massive thunderheads and black sky to the east. I could sit in the parking lot and watch the storms roll in. Three or four times today we sat in the car and watched downpours outside. That was more of our entertainment for the day.

One of the thunderstorms (taken through the wet windshield).

All the black clouds and rain meant the day was not hot. Between storms I could crack the car windows and let the kitties sniff. When the sun did come out for a little bit, the A/C cooled us down quickly.

[Something we learned yesterday: The Camping World in New Braunfels, Texas, has the busiest RV service department in the United States. We can sure believe it. This place is a buzzing beehive of activity. Wow!]

At 2:00 p.m., I started calling the service center for updates. The repair would be covered by our Good Sam Extended Service Plan; however, the kitchen faucet for our unit was obsolete. That meant they had to find something similar. The first faucet they put in was too tall and hit our spice rack. Nope, that wouldn't work.

At 3:00, I drove back over to the 5er to see what progress was being made. I just happened to wander up when the repairman was telling a go-fer that he needed to find a faucet that swiveled and had a sprayer on it. They told me they should be able to find one.

"Could we return to the 5er and wait?" I asked. He said we could but the water to the rig was turned off so they could work on the faucet. The kitties hadn't had any water or food all day. I grabbed a bowl and we headed back to the customer parking lot. I left the windows cracked and went in to get water from the drinking fountain for the kitties. Back in the car, we waited. The rain pounded on the roof of the car and I finally took a nap, as did the cats. I slept about 45 minutes.

At 4:00 p.m., I called the Service Desk to talk to our agent about when we could go back in the 5er. The cats and I were bored and stir crazy. We had been in the car for 5½ hours at that point. I was told they found the part, but had to drive to San Antonio to get it. They were installing it as we spoke and the 5er should be ready in (at most) ½ hour. The Service Desk closed, technically, at 5:00 p.m. Bob called at 4:15 p.m. to say he was on his way from work to provide moral support and to hook up the 5th wheel when it was finished.

At 4:30 p.m. I was back at the 5er and saw the technician. He told me the faucet was installed and he was checking for leaks. The cats and I waited in the car.

At 4:50 p.m., I went to the Service Desk to pay. Thankfully, our Extended Service Plan covered the faucet and install. Because we had the work done at Camping World, our deductible was $50. There was no charge for resetting the motherboard. So our total cost for parts and labor was $50 (plus our drive time, gas, and my time sitting around waiting). We were at Camping World from 2:30 p.m. Tuesday to 5:15 p.m. Wednesday. Today, the cats and I spent 6½ hours in the car. Ugh! I don't want to do that again.

As soon as the paperwork was taken care of, Bob hooked up the 5er and we made our way back to Traveler's World in San Antonio.

Tonight, we went to dinner at Zio's Italian Kitchen, I wrote my blogs, and next I am going to get some sleep. All that waiting and time in the car with the cats wore me out! P.S. The cats are worn out too. They didn't wake us up at all last night and ever since we've been home tonight they're zonked out. I doubt they'll wake us up tonight either.

Travel Bug saying, "Nighty night."

A Mysterious Medieval Woman

There is a mysterious woman, who dates from around the 12th Century, living in this little church set high on a hill in the rolling countryside of the Lincolnshire Wolds. A Benedictine Priory shared the site, although no evidence of that remains today.



As you climb up the fairly steep hill it is easy to imagine the gravestones are hurrying down...

The hillside and the churchyard is being constantly undermined by rabbits.

A poem has been written about it, I'll post it on a separate page (top tab) in case anyone would like to read it.

This is the south side of the church - a fascinating patchwork of greenstone, red bricks, old blocked archways and wonderful windows. So many alterations, repairs, subtractions, 900 years of history.



Go in through the porch door, look right, this is what you will see... light, bright, fairly plain.



Turn to the left and ... it suddenly looks altogether richer, possibly more interesting.

Click to enlarge.

Up in the floor of the bell tower chamber you will be able to see three elongated, wingless angels.

Beautiful though they are, these are not the mystery.

The screening is richly painted, picked out in gold.

Beyond, in the base of the tower are two beautiful old doors. One leads outside, the other to the staircase.



Originally the main roof of the church would also have had figures on it, these have been lost somewhere through the ages.

The font was bestowed on the church in the fifteenth century, it looks in surprisingly good condition for something so old - I particularly liked the wooden lid which has a lot of iron work on the top.



The floor is a real mixture of tiles and bricks, more evidence of the many changes through the years.



This is in the floor near the font, I felt an almost overwhelming desire to have a peek to see what was down beneath those doors...then my imagination kicked in.

I decided not to look.

The window over the altar depicts St Michael. Beneath is the beautiful carving on the altar.



I have only visited this church once before, I can't believe how little impression it made upon me at that time.

Today I visited with the sole intention of photographing the myseterious, medieval woman shown in this fragment of a wall painting, high up on one wall, above a very beautiful Norman arch.

It is a woman, she is wearing a lovely headdress and to her right there is a crown and the letter 'M'.

No one knows for sure what the 'M' could stand for Queen Maud, Queen Margaret, or 'M' for Maria? She is cetainly beautiful. I wonder just what this church used to look like in those long gone days.

Can you see the fragment of painting, high up above the pulpit on the left hand side? The beautiful arch is Norman.

I'll finish here, although I have hardly begun showing all the beautiful details of the church - the dancing stags carved into the capital of one column, the Norman shields, Jacobean carving, monuments and memorials. There is even a bit of medieval graffiti.

How could I ever have thought this a dull little church? It is beautiful and I look forward to visiting it again.