Homemade Jewelry 2014 part 1

The last few days I have dived into my pearl and bead storage. Many I have bought myself and many are sent to me from LS. A few are picked up on my travels, in Bologna, Italy, in NY, USA and on local markets in Sweden and other countries. (I have some black Icelandic lava from the past summer trip, but it has not revealed itself yet, I don't know what I will make out of it.)

So, beads are made of clay/ceramics, shell, plastic, acrylic, wood, minerals and glass. These shown in the pictures are mostly glass, colored jade and colored magnesit (often called synthetic turquoise) and metal alloys.

 Turquoise-colored magnesite

 Citrine (?) earrings and painted (plastic) seashell

 Owls from NJ, US and Russian dolls from Stockholm

 Rose quartz and hematite

Sometimes my handmade jewelry have names. This one is called Blue China. Another one is called Gone fishing.....I´ll show it some other day.

Stamps of the Day: American Records

A few years ago the US Postal Service issued a series of 40 stamps highlighting the places, animals, and plants in the US that were the largest, loudest, tallest, deepest, fastest, oldest, etc., called Wonders of America.   They also made a puzzle featuring the stamps (in larger than natural size, of course), and it is one of our favorite puzzles here at home.  Tonight when I sat and looked through some of my stamp images to decide which one to pick to write about, I realized that it is actually amazing how many of these record places and organisms I have seen or been to after living in the US for nearly 20 years (yes, it has been that long, incredible).  

So, here it goes, the list of American records:

You can see these in Central Park these days, the peregrine falcons are back!  But one of the best observations I had was in Yellowstone National Park.
(FASTEST BIRD - Peregrine Falcon)

There is nothing like bumping along an old railroad track in the American west over vast sage brush areas (Colorado to be precise) after a vintage steam train and look out the window and see a couple of pronghorn staring at you.
(FASTEST LAND ANIMAL - Pronghorn)

Ancient ruins at the mesas in New Mexico, such as Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde, makes me wonder what kind of threats made people live like this - with the whole village only accessible by ladders.
(LARGEST CLIFF DWELLING - Cliff Palace)

Oh, Mississippi - I love the name of that river.  4 s's, and 4 i's and 2 p's.  And a single M, alone in the beginning.  The delta at its mouth might be as large as half of Sweden, or something like that. 
And New Orleans is of course set in the middle of it.
(LARGEST DELTA - Mississippi River delta)

Just a bit south of where we live, a few hours, is a giant bay along the Atlantic coast... the funny sounding Chesapeake Bay, once full of oysters, blue crabs and fish, but now overpolluted and overnutrified. It is still gorgeous, but it needs to get healthier again. 
(LARGEST ESTUARY - Chesapeake Bay)

Oh, the bullfrog's noises in the night wakes you up in the early mornings around here on the mountain... It is like a giant toad, fat and fleshy, and rather pompous in its behavior.

(LARGEST FROG - American Bullfrog)

Buffalo, bison, same thing.  I have only seen wild bison in Yellowstone, and there we saw them really close, actually too close for comfort when they suddenly changed direction and went straight in among the parked cars where we stood photographing them crossing the road.  I had to jump into the back of a minivan.  Nobody was hurt, but it gives you a lot of respect for these animals. 

(LARGEST LAND MAMMAL - American Bison)

Alligator meat is not bad.  It is lighter-colored than beef, a little fishy in texture, but not taste, more like chicken.  They can move fast too - I have seen 8-feet alligator lay still for 20 minutes and then be gone in 3 seconds with a giant splash down the bank to the water. Never trust a reptile :)

(LARGEST REPTILE - American Alligator)

I have only visited Rocky Mountains in bits and pieces, here and there.  New Mexico (oh Taos!), Colorado (wow, it was incredible), and up in Yellowstone, of course.  But this summer I think we will see the real thing when we visit Idaho and Boise.  This is something else than the Swedish mountains called 'fjällen'. A bit taller, steeper, fiercer, and younger. 

(LONGEST MOUNTAIN CHAIN - Rocky Mountains)

Speaking about mountains, the ones on the East Coast are the sister mountains to the Swedish mountains, same age, formed at the same geological time, and even if maybe taller in the US with the same feel of a bit worn-down, eroded landscapes, and with sequences of ridges and peaks blueing in the distance.  

(OLDEST MOUNTAINS - Appalachians)

In Hawaii, the mountains are so young they don't exist yet.  They are being formed, right now, tonight and tomorrow.  I have stood and looked at the spouting lava at the Kilauea crater in Hawaii, using binoculars since you weren't allowed very close.  Magic magma, lovely lava, and deadly.  

(MOST ACTIVE VOLCANO - Kilauea)

Here is a manmade record piece, which is something you see if you arrive in New York by boat from Europe - the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge connects Staten Island with Brooklyn over the narrow sound (The Narrows) that leads into New York City.  They are starting to grow oysters again under the bridge.  In the past there were lots of oysters here, more than people could eat, but then they disappeared because of pollution.  Soon we might have New York oysters again! 

(LONGEST SPAN - Verrazano-Narrows Bridge)

No records without the most amazing geysers of Yellowstone.  When I was a kid I used to look in books at my grandfather's house, and he had a book on Yellowstone.  I couldn't imagine the hot water spouts, sulfuric ponds, or bubbling mud pits, but they fascinated me, and I hoped that one day I would be able to see this crazy place.  Geology in action, of the most severe kind.  Well, volcanos might be a bit more severe, but Yellowstone is actually a giant volcano, and it is about to erupt at some point... About ten years ago I got the opportunity to visit Yellowstone during a workshop, and it was as crazy a place as I had imagined, or worse.  It is like a place out of a movie.  Moose grazing grass next to hot water springs that are deadly.  Geysers spouting giant fountains of water and steam on schedule.  Day and night. Incredibly.  I need to go back! (My grandfather's Yellowstone book is now in my house too.)

(TALLEST GEYSER - Steamboat)

When we drove up on Mount Washington in New Hampshire in June or July, they still had snow on the top.  It is the windiest place in America, this curved tip of an Appalachian mountain, and it felt like it.  It reminded me of the Swedish mountains, except our mountains in Scandinavia doesn't have giant weather stations on them.

(WINDIEST PLACE - Mount Washington)

And finally, another manmade thing, and this one is of utter impracticality and uselessness.  It just exist because someone had an idea, made it happen, and now everybody comes to see it. (Brilliant tourist marketing!)  I have never been up in the Gateway Arch in St. Louis by the Mississippi, but I have seen it from a distance.  You can take a little elevator inside to go up to the top, but if you are claustrophobic and or afraid of heights it is better to stay on the ground and look up.  

(TALLEST MAN-MADE MONUMENT - Gateway Arch)

Happy Birthday, AREA!

Love and greetings from Sweden, and what could be more appropiate than a weaving poster.

This is for you

Love
/EH
 

Happy New Year! 2014 is here.

I can't believe it.  I am not ready for this.  I need another couple of months in 2013 to do the things I wanted to do that year, and now it is 2014.  As usual it will take me a few months to start to write the right year on the checks when I pay bills, but otherwise, things are just the same :) 

I like that it snowed both on Christmas Eve and New Years Eve with big lovely thumbnail-sized snowflakes even if they don't last that long.  This morning we woke up to severe cold and it is supposed to get down to 0 degrees Fahrenheit tonight (that is -20 C for those that use the-rest-of-the-world temperature system :).   The cats seem OK outside, and they are getting pampered with hot water bottles, hot drinking water and plenty of treats and insulating blankets.  They don't care a bit about dates, only about morsels of 'Tempting Tuna Flavor' treats.

So, 2013.  It was a year without giant weather events and storms.  Thanks!  I feel we needed that after 2012 which was horrible weatherwise.  Superstorm Sandy, the snowstorm in October one week after Sandy, the spring rainstorm that felled lots of conifers, etc.  So 2013 was calmer, a bit hot of course in these days of global warming.  Lots of canned tomatoes and homemade hot sauce ('Molten Lava' was one of them), two wonderful and successful kids in college, I learned how to use natural dyes for dyeing silk, wool, and cotton, and insect collecting in cold November with my Dad and sister were some of the highlights. And hundreds of great dinners with fantastic homemade and local food, thanks PP!  So, 2013 was a good year.  On to 2014 now...

But, it is still The Year of the Snake in the Chinese Calendar, and their New Year happens in a few weeks. Here is a US stamp showcasing the Chinese new Year celebrations.  Happy New 2014!

Dan före dan (The day before The Day)

Today is the day before THE DAY, at least in Sweden.  Swedes don't care much about Santa fitting through the chimney, reindeer sleighs in the sky, and stockings hanging precariously (and fire unsafetedly) at the fireplace.  What Swedes do is very different. 

Santa actually comes to your house on Christmas Eve, knocks on the door, and asks 'Are there any nice children here?'.  And the kids have to answer (and you better say 'yes' or you will be in trouble.  And then he takes out presents out of his big burlap bag, and hands them out to everybody.  After a while he says that he has more houses to visit, so he is just going to leave the bag with presents for all of you, and then he leaves. 

Soon after, Dad/Uncle/Big Brother/Grandpa shows up at the door after getting more firewood/checking on the ham in the basement/trying to find a screwdriver in the barn and all the kids say 'You missed him, he was just here!!!'.  :) 

 

 With this tradition Santa has had the most curious clothes over the years in our family in Sweden.  He always has a Santa hat and a fake beard, but the rest is up to innovation and whatever is at hand.  I have seen him in fleece jackets, big green wool coats and so on.  One year I was Santa and I had a red Margrete bowl on my head for a while. 

Santa's name in Swedish is JULTOMTEN.  Jul means Christmas, same word as Yule, and tomte are the little gnomes that are helpers around the farm.  Before the tradition of jultomten, it was a goat that came to the house and delivered presents, called JULBOCK.  I am not making this up, it is true, and it was the tradition before Santa became common.  We still put up things in our Christmas tree that looks like goats, made out of straw. There are also lots of little 'tomtar' (gnomes) hanging in our tree, supposedly keeping it safe.  Now when the cats are not inside anymore, we don't have to worry too much about the safety of the tree ornaments.

Swedes also have lots of candlelight, angels, stars, birds, and pigs around for Christmas decorations. We have Christmas trees too of course. 

Here are some Swedish Christmas stamps for you all to get the Swedish Christmas feeling.  The illustrators are Ilon Wikland (above) and Björn Berg (below).  God jul!

Sighs for the technological wonders

Someone said that if cars worked like computers, nobody would ever buy a car that randomly crashes, do not always start, have weird unexplained problems, can get viruses and other bad things that live inside it (and I am not talking about mice chewing on things under the hood of the car), or have parts that refuses to work with each other.  But that is what we get with computers.  These days, we are all also supposed to be able to figure it out ourselves, know HTML, command line code, a billion settings and options, and be able to find buttons that are hidden or staring us straight in the face but not associated with any description or text.

I have just spent more than one hour trying to fix why our little icons for 'mail this', 'recommend this', etc., wasn't showing up on our blog. This blog.  It was added by me a few years ago to the template through the 'click this button and you get it on your blog' in the Blogger settings.  But they never showed up.  So now, a few years later, I decided to see if I could fix it.  Some googling, lots of testing with suggested html code in new places, and now finally it works. 

The Blogger Help Forum didn't solve it, I found the solution in a post on another blog that had had the same issue. Such a simple thing, and just imagine how many of us that are trying to solve similar issues in our daily lives, including our daily work. 
"Why can't I import this file?" 
"Where is that command again to fix the white balance on my photo?" 
"Why did Word do THAT?" 
"How do I get rid of that?" 
"Help, I can't sign into gmail!"
"Why do I have to sign in everyday even if I click 'remember me'?"
"Why is Firefox so slow?"
"Why isn't Netflix working (again)?"
 And on and on...   Ever heard anybody complain about their cars like this?  No, me neither.

How in H*LL is anybody that knows nothing about html supposed to be able to fix something like this by themselves?  Why aren't these things foolproof?  If computers could be insured, and cause bodily harm, like cars are and can, then I bet we would have a lot better working computers.  It is pretty amazing how sensitive and breakable this system is, and I am not talking about silly buttons at the bottom of blog posts, but in general. We are pouring our work and private lives into these machines, and they are totally non-dependable.  Sure, they work most of the time.

But if you have a broken car you take it to a mechanic and he/she fixes it.   For computers, having them fixed by an expert would mean 1) at least weekly visits to a computer mechanic, 2) immense costs, and 3) sometimes things can't be fixed because of bad hardware or software.  For a car, you can usually choose not to fix something because it would not be worth the cost, but many times for computer you simply can't fix it, you are simply not given any options. 
"Sorry, you laptop monitor is broken, can't be fixed, better get a new laptop." 
"Sorry, I can't recover your harddrive data". 
And still, we have so much invested in these undependable units - photos, memories, letters, work data (a lot in my case), finances, and so on.

So, gals and guys, here is my advice:

• Back up your data. 
• Keep a data backup in a different house or building (or the computing cloud)
• Realize that everything on your computer can be gone. Anytime. 
• See the computer as a tool, not as your life.  Your life is what is going on when you eat, breath, walk, see, think... not what is stored on the computer. 

Do I follow this advice?  Yes, partly, but not well enough.  So I need to follow my advice better too. And now, you can all e-mail, Facebook, like, or tweet this post because I fixed the buttons at the bottom. (she says smiling... ).

Blurry Christmas

This morning, while it is snowing outside here in New Jersey. When you come downstairs, you are greeted by this happy tree, before it is overhung with decorations. Just lights and the greenery. Nice!

(Yes, it is meant to be blurry, that is how our eyes work in early mornings)

Sacred economics, and what is really worth something?

PP showed us this amazing video tonight, about what economics is about and what it should be about:

 It is very interesting and great, watch it! 

It questions our current society's focus on money, natural resources, lack of sharing and giving...  I want that Gift Economy that he is talking about.  Maybe, just like Paying it forward, we should be Giving it forward more in our lives.

Stamp of the Day: Hammarby

Not far from Uppsala, a little to the southeast on the large flat plains of glacial clays deposited just a hudnred thousand to a couple of million years ago, is a farm on a little hill.  It is Hammarby, Carl von Linne (Linnaeus)'s18th century farm, where he lived when he work as a professor of medicine and botany in Uppsala.  In town he had his scientific garden, and out here (within riding or walking distance) he had his farm and wild plants.

There are a couple of buildings at Hammarby, most built of horizontal logs that are painted with the typical red iron oxide paint of Sweden ('falu rödfärg').  This is where he lived with his family, the famous scientist that was convinced that he was put on this Earth to catalogue all living species and put it into some kind of reasonable system. And so he did.  Plants, Animals, Fossils, Rocks... all got a Latin name, a binomial of a genus and species epithet.  Like 'Homo sapiens'.

This Swedish stamp from 50 years ago shows Linnaeus in his garden outside the main building.  If you walk up the creaky and narrow (and extremely worn) stairs to the second floor and then take a right, you end up in his bedroom.  All the walls in there are covered with botanical prints, used as wall paper.  He was surrounded by plants, and even while asleep or in midwinter.  Tropical trees, orchids, fleshy flowers from far-away places were pasted onto the walls with starchy wall paper glue.  I assume there was regular wall paper printed in the mid 1700's, maybe not?  It is a bit strange today to see these antique and extremely valuable prints from the 1700s pasted up on the walls, covering every surface, and now stained with water, insect droppings, and dust.  Some of the prints are colored, maybe by hand. 

Hammarby is a great place to visit, so go there next time you are close to Uppsala.  And then go to the Cathedral inside Uppsala ('Domkyrkan') where you can step (or dance) on Linnaeus' grave.  His gravestone is set in the floor.

The downside with corporate positive thinking...

A great piece about why realism is better than overly positive thinking:

Weaving by the Swedish artist Karin Larsson in the beginning of 1900s

I was inspired by a young artist to show you this.
Karin Larsson's The Four Elements, in her weaving loom. Enjoy!

More on Karin Larssons work here, from an exhibition about her.

Stamp of the day: birch wood

Yesterday I was teaching about plant anatomy, about the cells and structures inside plants that make plants work and make them alive.  Wood is an amazing thing, made up from lignified plant cells that become hard, sturdy, and dead and can hold up giant trees through snowstorms and summer rains. Wood is dead xylem, the part of the vascular tissue that transports mostly water up into the top of the plants.  The yearly rings in wood from temperate regions are because the xylem made in spring are made from large diameter cells, lots of water is needed then.  In the summer and fall, then the xylem cells are smaller, and the tissue becomes tighter and darker, and you get the dark band for that year. 

Here are some fantastic photos of plant anatomy, and this Swedish stamp show wood from birch, which you can of course use for firewood. 

November thoughts

November.

Solen kikar försiktigt upp ovanför horisontkanten, en skogsridå av guld bländar mig. Soluppgången är långsam och vacker, precis som om solen tvekar att kliva upp. Precis som jag, som gärna ligger kvar under mitt varma täcke om morgonen. Nu kommer nordbornas svåraste tid, det är mörkt och kallt i mitt Norden. Inte kallt med gnistrande snö och rimfrost på träden, utan ett tråkigt kallt, rått och fuktigt väder, strax över nollstrecket på termometern. En lång väntan, på snön, på glänsande isar, på ljusets återkomst, på växter som återigen knoppas. Bland blåsippsbladen vilar knopparna redan och mina narcisser har långa vita rötter i krukorna. Det känns trösterikt när alla klorofyllblad ligger bruna och vissna på marken, att veta att de nya redan är färdiga för start.
     Himlen är svagt upplyst och molnen är belysta underifrån, en ljust blå himmel och mörkt grafitgrå moln, fyllda av fukt. På natten lyser stjärnorna och jag gör min resa i Karlavagnen på väg mot nästa vår.

EH

Translation by LS:

November

The sun carefully looks over the edge of the horixon, a forest drapery of gold is blinding me.  The sunrise is slow and beautiful, just as if the sun is hesitating to get up.  Like me, who would love to stay under my warm cover in the morning.  Here comes the hardest time for the scandinavians, it is dark and cold in the Nordic area. Not cold with sparkling sno and hoary frost on the trees, but a boring, cold, raw and wet weather, right above the freezing point on the thermometer.  A long wait, for the snow, for the shiny lake ice, for the return of the light, for plants that are in bud.  Below the hepatica leaves are already ready buds and my daffodils have long, white roots in their pots.  It feels promising when all the chlorophyllic leaves are brown and weathered on the ground to know that the new leaves are ready to start. 
    The sky is barely lit and the clouds are colored from beneath, a light blue sky and dark graphite grey clouds, filled with moisture.  During the night the stars shine and I travel with the Big Dipper towards the next spring.

Time passing

Welcome to winter and the change of the clocks!  It happened today here in the US (Swedes are ahead of us as usual, they changed their clocks a while ago).  Back to normal Eastern Standard Time for us now, no more Daylight Savings time (which is called Summer Time, 'sommartid', in Swedish).

The amazing hybrid solar eclipse (Nov 3, 2014) we had planned to watch this morning was hidden by a large could bank.  Oh well.  Somewhere behind those clouds were a partially visible sun.  We will have to wait to 2014 for another solar eclipse. There is some photos and info here of this rare event.

And, sad memories and news - it is 50 years since developers in New York City crushed the old, beautiful Penn Station and built a mega-ugly box on top of it.  Penn Station now are horrible cramped tunnels below Madison Square Garden.  Look at the photos of what once was here... At least Grand Central Terminal is still standing in New York, and Penn Stations are left in Baltimore and Philadelphia.  If you wonder about the names - Penn Station comes from the old Pennsylvania Railroad, and Grand Central was the railroad station for the rival New York Central Railroad.  Union Station in Washington, DC, had several railroads, that is why it was called 'Union'.  (PP can correct me if I am wrong :)

Seeing America sideways (from a long-distance train)

When you travel by train you never look forward, maybe a little backward, but mostly sideways. Quickly landscapes swish past, except at stations where speeds slow down.

 

You see the backyard of American lives, not the front meant for eye consumption.  What you see are the alleys, backyards, abandoned lots, weedy places and industrial parks far from the manicured front lawns of highways and city streets.

 

Bridges and tunnels provide structure and landscape channels - light or dark, over water or through rock.  Both have that sense of danger, non is completely safe, but fascinating and exciting. Better to be back on firm ground though. In the forests and swamps no people are present, their sometimes presence just marked by old, dried-out ATV ruts, a barely holding-together deer stand in a tree, or the remnants of a dock, long since gone. I imagine alligators and beavers in the lakes, but see white egrets and maybe a deer.

Through the backyards and hidden lives of Americans, from swimming-pools so small they are non-swimmable, to room extension after room extension built out back, maybe to fit ever-growing families.

Like an invisible snake  the polished train passes through, nobody, except some young excited kids that not have have learned to ignore, pays attention to the metal Amtrak tech wonder, pushed by electricity down the tracks.  Everybody else doesn't even look up, they go on with their business, be it hanging laundry, carrying groceries, running a red light, yelling at some kids, waiting for the bus with the headphones plugged in, or doing homework behind a dirty window...

Weedy plants are everywhere, covering up the empty spaces people left behind - an old parking lot, railroad sidings, ruins of factories with their hand-painted names that can barely be seen on the old bricks, and neglected yards.  Abundant green life everywhere. They are pretty, but uncontrolled - red leaves color the landscape in sunset colors in the middle of the October day.  Sumac, kudzu, virginia creeper, mugwort and tree-of-heaven... Each plant has a story and the humans have stories about it, all linked to human histories and miseries.

The train on its shiny steel tracks cuts through it all, relentless, just passing by on to distant places, different lives. Behind it are kids starting, pointing, and laughing, and maybe imagining jumping on, one day.

(Written after taking the train today from Trenton to Washington, DC, and passing through Wilmington, Delaware, and Baltimore, Maryland, and over Delaware River and Susquehanna River. All photos are taken from the train, many at full speed, so they are of course blurry, and therefore accurate.)

A year later... superstorm Sandy remembered

2012 was a bad storm year, really bad, and this year we have been incredibly lucky.

Sweden (and Britain) is right now being hit by hurricane Simone, that is wreaking havoc a year later after Sandy, exactly.  We are used to storms now, we have two generators, food  (lots), a gas stove, buckets,  backup sump pumps, extra gasoline for the generators, flashlights, emergency radio, and we know our neighbors...  I don't think most people in Sweden are as prepared because the weather is nicer there, usually.  Our power has probably gone out at least 10 times this year already... rotten infrastructure, indeed. Also a lot of rotten trees.

I remember it all how it was a year ago, very vividly, hearing the noises of the storm that hit our house around midnight and hearing booms and cracks in the dark, power going out, and then trying to sleep for a bit, and waking up in the morning to a changed world.  Here are some photos from back then.  I hope you weather the storm better in Sweden tonight.


Yep, that is a power pole with a transformer on it.


Christmas fell over.


There used to be a very dark pine forest here.


And then, on November 8, still without neighborhood electric power, we got this. Nice! Not. (I love snow, just not right then.)

If you want to revisit our blog posts on hurricane Sandy, just look under keyword hurricane, or search for 'Sandy' in the search box.

Sunsets around the world

Tonight, while driving to pick up LA, there was a golden-red sunset in the west.  One of those that we described in Swedish as 'the sky is on fire" (himmelen står i brand). It made me think of other amazing sunsets I have seen around the world, and how amazing it is that a fireball far away affects our colors and emotions so much.  So, here is a trip around the world in sunsets:

 
Brazil, near Itaiaia National Park, between Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, sunset on thunderclouds in the rainforest.


Costa Rica, over Palo Verde marshlands in early spring.


Sunset over Stockholm in September, Sweden (of course)


Chicago sunset, in Illinois, USA, out on Lake Michigan. A hot day in August.


Sourland Mountains, New Jersey, USA, with oaks and ash trees in the foreground.  Home. 

On the cinema

The life of Monica Zetterlund is presented on the cinema. She was a fantastic jazz singer and her music is loved by many. The other interesting thing here is the cinema "Bio Kontrast". In this case (our town) the city hall also have a concert hall, which is used for movies. When I grew up, I could see, for example, French and Russian films on Bio Kontrast, in a small cinema in the library basement in my old home town. These movies were not the mainstream movies, but a bit peculiar. Like Koyaanisqatsi and Pica Pica about magpies, not a word spoken).

Stamp of the day: Insects and spiders

American insect and other invertebrate fauna is colorful, diverse, and fascinating.  Just here on our place in New Jersey, we have 10+ cm long praying mantises, walking sticks, migrating giant dragonflies and monarch butterflies, large wasp-colored garden spiders, scorpion flies, and a myriad other arthropods.  It is now October, and most of them are gone, but we still here katydids and cicadas in the trees at night.  When there is a warm day, the pesty and invasive brown marmorated stink bugs show up and try to get into our house to hibernate.  We don't see that many Asian lady beetles anymore, they seem to have been reduced in numbers, after their giant invasion a few years ago. There were some years we had to suck them up with vacuum cleaners from the ceiling corners in our living room.  But most insects are not invasive and over-abundant, but form an important piece of the ecosystem puzzle.  Enjoy!
{Sheet of stamps from United States}

Fall colors

I love the red hues that our sumac plants create along highways, fences and forest edges this time of the year. Here is a photo from today's rainy morning.

Old cars by SAAB

When we were small, we had a car exactly like this one. It is funny how the mind works, suddenly I remember details like the chromed list, the window scraper on the frontlights that moved side to side, the shape of the door handles. LS, what is your memory?

Both these cars are standing in a backyard not far from my house.