Amazing things...

First things first! Please meet Alyssa Wendie Sisemore born January 20, 2009. Alyssa is our second Great Grand child. She's a big girl at 8 pounds fourteen ounces. And isn't she beautiful?

I stole the above picture from her Mommie's blog, the Sisemore Family, and couldn't resist the picture below as well. Her lovin' parents are wonderfully happy. Bless their sweet and loving hearts ! And Alyssa has already found the purpose of her thumb!

As you see..., finally I'm back online. My Grandson kindly took my computer in for repair and I have it back. Unfortunately, I'm having some of the same problems although it is much faster and has a pretty new picture of Diamond Head installed as wallpaper.

Ummmmm... did that sound cynical? I'm not complaining, since I can upload pictures to Blogger, save them to disk and also save music to disk.. I'm going to have to call them about a few things though.

Meanwhile, I've had some time to think about blogging and bloggers and the way we travel through space reading different blogs and then one will resonate and we say, "Yes, that person has shared my experiences, or loves the things I love, or makes me think, or laugh, or awakens the poet in me... we gather those people together on our lists of favorites and keep them in our hearts. We are woven together in an invisible tapestry of unseen threads that is truly amazing!

Granny Annie at Fools Rush In features a favorite blog every day and I always try to follow her lead as I always enjoy the blogs I read at her suggestion. I'm going to do more of that!

I just started another blog, Prescott Past, about my hometown of Prescott Arizona. It will be mostly based on Ee's old post card collection and people's memories of the way things were. I plan to keep on keeping on..blithering away here...

Computer Problems!!!

I'm having some real problems with my computer. I have missing php and also 404. If you're a geek you might know what that means, but I think I'll have to take it in for repair. It started as a javascript problem and has crept through my system destroying (I think) Html. A virus?

Yet, I can still access Blogger and write here!

Just wanted to leave a note in case I lose that ability too...........meanwhile I'll keep working on it as best I can...

A Rose is Still a Rose..Isn't It?

When I posted yesterday, I meant to have a two part post. The theme being a rose by any other name.... but I accidentally hit enter and was published, so left it for today. Garlic is sometimes called the stinking rose, no explanation needed.
I wanted to talk about garlic because I have started eating a small clove of raw garlic a day to fend off colds and flu. I started this regimen on the advise of my daughter, who is interested in the antibiotic qualities of garlic, and suggested it after I'd been trying to fend off a respiratory tract infection for several weeks and was getting discouraged. Every afternoon I would run a two degree temperature, so I knew my immune system was working..it just didn't seem to have enough oomph to fight off the bug. After eating one large clove of garlic a day for three days, the fevers vanished and I started getting better. To benefit medicinally from garlic, it must be eaten raw right after a clove is minced or crushed. I like mine best on toast with some cream cheese but it can be sprinkled on any dish.
Here are some Cautions:

Raw Garlic is very powerful and should be eaten with other food and not on an empty stomach.
Too much raw garlic can cause injury to the digestive tract. (My thought..we have little friendly bacteria in our intestines...antibiotics tend to wipe them out and that's why we should eat yogurt any time we are on antibiotics.)
Garlic interferes with blood thinning drugs and shouldn't be used by someone taking one, nor should it be taken prior to entering the hospital for a surgical procedure.
I got this information from Garlic Central and I'd suggest that anyone who is seriously thinking of taking raw garlic on a regular basis read all about it there.

Garlic's proven antibiotic property is called acillin and was seen to kill bacteria in Louis Pasture's laboratory as well as being acknowledged as an antibiotic by modern science.

I liked this garlic wreath. It's been said that the blood of garlic eaters has antibiotic properties. No wonder vampires avoid them. As for other social issues involving the stinking rose..I leave it to you. I try to eat mine late in the day. If everyone ate a clove a day, it wouldn't be a problem.

Garlic blossoms are pretty and popular with bees, although this is a garlic chive as are the white flowers in my header.

Juliet Was Right

a rose by any other name would smell about the same....

When I started this blog, I was all for cutsie. The One Acre Wood being a takeoff of The hundred acre wood from Milne's Winnie the Pooh. I gave family members the names of Milne characters and called myself sheoflittlebrain after Winnie ther Pooh who is the bear of little brain. While I'm not totally ready to put these childish things aside, I have a second blog in mind that would not be associated with Pooh and friends, so I've decided to change my blog name to my own, Linda. Since there are lots of Lindas out there, I'll be LindaG.

My other blog will be for the purpose of sharing Ee's collection of old post cards of Prescott and the surrounding area, something I've been meaning to do. This blog will stay about the same, focusing on my life, interests, and interesting animals and their stories..

Sunday Morning Meanderings

First of all, I have a retraction..My Best Friend is not afraid of snakes. She emailed me to that effect and I believe her because she is truthful and also pretty much fearless. I do apologize to her and think I must have transferred my own feelings to her. While I have handled quite a few snakes in my time, I still feel a little trepidation when doing so.
I remember when our youngest son was in about the fifth grade or so, he longed for a pet a bull snake. We lived in Chino Valley which was still rural and one day, just as I was driving to pick him up from school, I spotted a huge bull snake just stretched out between a cornfield and the road lying full length, parallel to the road. I stopped the car, walked confidently over to the five foot or so snake that just lay there in absolute cooperation, reached down..and just couldn't make myself pick him up!
We stayed that way for a minute or two, the snake motionless..me just as motionless with my hand hovering a few inches above his body just behind his head..finally he slithered away into the cornfield. I got in the car and continued on my way. I didn't tell my son until years later because I thought he'd be terribly disappointed in me...

Of course, I fell in love with this story of a mother duck who enlisted the aid of a policeman to save her babies that had fallen down a sewer grate She pestered him by tugging on his pant leg until enlisting his cooperation. This is a lovely story and makes you realize there's something going on in those little bird brains after all.

I know everyone's seen this photo before, but it's still cute.
Have a wonderful day............

Friendship

This is my best friend, Donna. We met in the eighth grade fifty-seven or so years ago, and although she's lived all her adult life in Florida while I remained here in our home town of Prescott, we've remained close.
I like this photo of her because it shows how brave she was to hold my grandchildren's pet snake with no shivers or squeals although she clearly wasn't enthusiastic about it. She's brave that way..and she's fun to be around...and we share a million memories of two silly girls trying to grow up....

Sometimes you meet someone and something just clicks.........




Have a beautiful day....

Arizona Alpacas

A couple of months ago, in the outstanding company of Granny J. of Walking Prescott, we traveled the twenty miles or so to Chino Valley where we visited Singletree Farm. Granny J. had an eagle eye out for details regarding Alpacas and the wool made from their cold resistant fleece. There were yarn making demonstrations and lovely creations made from the wool. It was all lovely and beautifully described in GJ's post right Here.

As for me.....it was the beasties themselves that mainly attracted me. They were as amazingly different one from another, in appearance as people. The owner gave us some carrots and even Ee felt rather uncomfortably mobbed as he tried to dole them out fairly.

I wanted to get some close up pictures of faces. Like that cunning panda-face above.

Well maybe not quite this close up!

This one tickled us. Her eyes were completely lost in the depths of this luxuriant top knot.

With her flamboyant hairdo and her slender nose, one wonders if there's a poodle in her ancestry.....

This little lady was the only one willing to pose and was in most of my pictures. I see that GJ got one of her as well. She has a distinctive under bite, so can't be mistaken!

It was a lovely day, and if you're a knitter, be sure to look at GJ's pictures of all the luxurious items made from their exceptional, cold resistant coats.

In reading this, I hope you didn't detect a certain preoccupation. P. D. James latest novel, The Private Patient, just fell into my clutches, and the brooding figure of the published poet, Commander Adam Dalgliesh is about to enter a stage already set with darkly intriguing, well rounded characters, so I'm pretty well lost for the day.. Retirement's not so bad, even if one has to be old to enjoy it!

Trees

My Grandparents listened to a radio program called, I believe, The Bell Telephone Hour. It was an hour of music played and sung by the great artists of the day. One of the songs I remember was this Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918) poem put to music and sung by the deep and passionate voice of Paul Robeson.

There is much controversy about this poem. Published in 1913, it's arguably, not the best poem ever written, but for many people of my generation, it was a poem memorized and recited so often that it's woven into our very heart strings....we will cherish and defend it to the death!

Trees

I think that I will never see,

A poem lovely as a tree

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;


A tree that may in summer wear

A nest of robins in her hair;


Upon whose bosom snow has lain;

Who intimately lives with rain.


Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.

This old pine that stands a little way from out back door offers shelter to any number of birds. Here a young Acorn Woodpecker works to store some tidbit in bark already riddled with storage holes. As you can see, there are still many uneaten acorns from years past tamped into place, but the urge to store and store and store is upon them. This fellow was hatched out in a hole inside a dead branch on this tree and he hasn't strayed far to fill his larder.

This pair of young Ravens were hatched high in the top of a tree at my Daughters, but they chose this tree for their daytime nursery. They would arrive fairly early in the morning and sit there all day alternately dozing and screaming for the tidbits dutifully provided by their hardworking parents. About four in the afternoon they would make their way back toward my Daughter's house. Maybe they still slept in the nest..

After about a week of this, they began flying from tree to tree, first one would fly and then the other would follow. At this stage, I noticed that a Raven would call out.."Caw-Caw." A second later another would answer, "Caw=Caw." Then one would say, "Caw=caw-caw-caw." The other would echo precisely. The parents teaching the offspring Ravenspeak? Was it a specialized twin language between the two young birds? I listened this summer and found that they did this a lot. Sometimes one would echo another and then send back a new series of caws which the first would then repeat. Maybe the repeat is a sort of verification..Ravenspeak for 'copy that.'

This sweet mother Mourning Dove brought her babe into the tree for a last feeding before dark, and this is the tree the peacock chose to roost in.

Enough rambling on........