With a little help from my friends

Juniper tree, bent by weight of snow, rests in the supporting arms of neighboring tree

Waukesha WI 12-9-09/ Due to the heavy snow that fell last night, and is still falling as we write, the slender-stalked junipers outside our window are severely bent-over. One found support in the bare branches of a city tree on the nearby curbing. The amount of snow we got varies according to weather sources, but we estimate that we got around 8 inches so far. It is a wet and heavy snow, very! And still coming......

The junipers have grown tall over the years. Their trunks are stalk-like, but as we've noted in previous winters, they are very flexible, which is what one needs to get along in the world.

Gathered in last evening with a good fire in the fireplace and a blizzard desktop background set on the computer, we listened to Utube's Frank Sinatra singing "Oh, the weather outside is frightful...." We were snug. And, to our knowledge,there are no bugs in our rugs.

This morning we saw just how wet the snow is. No wonder the skinny trees are bent low. Our neighbor, Darrell, brought his new snowblower over and took care of the driveway for us. A new machine he's been promising himself, bigger than his previous toy blower, Darrell informed us that due to the weight of the snow he never got the machine out of low gear.

Thanks, Darrell!

White-eyed Capfish

In delving

through basement findings

we uncovered this pink cap

fish,

a wry, crooked, Dick Cheney

grin, sinisteringly obtaining.

But on closer observation it was a plain baseball cap, and we'd merely painted the rear eyelet ventilation holes white, while the front has an off-center grizzly bear claw in blue. This was meant to be a two-way hat.

(No way tossed, and NFS)

Dec. 6th, Saint Somebody's Day

Every December 6th

my wife puts gold coins in one of my old shoes.

She's been doing this for years, for me and the children.

I once knew what this was all about

but now in my old age I tend to forget.

I do forget.

But if I would have saved some of these gold coins

over the years

I would now have a lot of chocolate.

It's grasshopper and ant-city.

"Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe. All mimsy were the borogoves, and the mome raths outgrabe."

Nest chuts

foasting on an open rire

Fast Jock bipping at

your nalls

^.^

et al'ls

.............................

As yuletide carols are being sung by a choir, and folks are dressed up like esquimaux,

Mother Denise brought home a pound of chestnuts from Pick N Save, which we immediately photographed with the LVD II memorial P6000 Nikon 13.5 picel digital.
We believe we WILL roast them on an open fire and incorporate them into our Christmas regimen this year.

We remember finding chestnuts from a neighbor's tree and carrying them around in our pocket when we attended Hadfield Elementary in the 1940s. They were so beautiful and the more they were turned in a young appreciator's hand the more beautiful they became, like oiled walnut.

A chestnut is a lovely thing.

Likewise the Lewis Carroll poem, Jabberwocky

........................................................

The Jabberwocky

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand:

Long time the manxome foe he sought

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

And stood a while in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!
One two! One two!

And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.
"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"

He chortled in his joy.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

....................

Kings of the road, sooty men

We were here

in the day of the iron horses

plying their track-ed way

up and down the nearby Soo Line trail.

...............

In the shadow of St. Joe's Catholic church steeple,

the particulant-laden dark plumes of coal steam

from the engines passed through town

several times daily.

They caused church janitors to dust and wash windows

and other residents, including my grandma,

to cleanse their curtains frequently.

...............

Yet we rhapsodize these early trains,

say we miss them.

Living now - just barely -

in a noxious bubble o-er the planet

where every single breath we draw has poison it it.

It's too late to throw our lungs in a washing machine

and hang them out to dry.

We thought of the term 'sooty men' when we got this steam train image from a friend. Sooty men, from

http://raccoonnews.blogspot.com/2008/05/for-dorothy.html

Ye shall be made new

And the red-maned lion shall lie down with the ram

Thus it is within the steeple shadows

of St. Paul's UCC and the shrine of Holy Hill

Where scripture is known;

is the metier;

AND

where Paul Bobrowitz's sculpture is found;

reworked tons of scrap metal

and still assembling,

reformed, reforming new things

with HIS magic.

Ye shall be made new.

(Watch for imminent posting here, and see Paul's website)

http://my.execpc.com/~pbjart/

You just never know

New life from morbidity;

Rotting squash

throws shoots to save itself?

Waukesha WI 12/1/09

In a surprise turn of events, a yellow squash was taken up, rotated, from a kitchen table where it has reposed for - too much time before cooking - and the homemaker dropped the squishy object in disgust. "O-o-o-o-o-e-e-u-u-w!"

Bringing it to her husband he looked at it objectively. He noted the gray and green mold and felt the softening texture of the transitioning squash. More significantly, he spied the green shoots rising from the dying mass.

"This a metaphor. Could be a simile....." he absently mouthed. Taking a circumspect, symbolic and scientific view, he said "This, right here, this, this is ....L-I-F-E!"