Sunrise

Oh, if only I had my camera with me this morning! I was taking Michael to school early because he had been invited to attend a Bible study in one of the teacher's rooms. Halfway down the hill I saw pink in the sky ahead of me - lots of pink. We couldn't see much through the trees and the mountain, but beside Buster and Annie's house I stopped the car and got out. Down there was a ground fog that was also colored. The sky was filled with brilliant pink clouds that looked rough, like the coarsest setting on a cheese grater. I wish I could adequately describe the sight. Pastor Paul said on Sunday that the most fundamental expression of worship is, "Wow". Wow.

As we drove on to school the fog around us was sort of a diffused glowing color, lavender, pink, peach. Then it cleared and the same cheese-grater clouds were now brightly glowing palest golden with a background of deepest gray-blue. Michael wondered out loud if Christians have a deeper appreciation for this sort of thing than atheists.

It changed so fast. I wanted to sit and watch it, but M was squirmy about stopping at all. Maybe he heard me tell him that it's sometimes important to stop and get out of the car to look, maybe he didn't. Duty made me get back in and keep driving. Soul longed to stand and see until the show was over.

Collecting leaves

So the other day the the compost was too wet and I was collecting dried leaves to add to it. Picture me holding two rakes like a big set of tweezers with a big wad of leaves between them, bent over, when I feel something on the back of my exposed neck. A definite something, not a small fly or a leaf. I completed placing the leaves in the tote, gently reached back, and found the largest praying mantis I have ever seen.

Their feet cling.

He didn't brush off.

(Pause for shudder...)

So I gently removed him to the closest flower, a salvia of which I am fond, and went for the camera. Here's the guy.

What made the moment even more interesting was that after snapping the picture of the gigantic insect I had just removed from the back of my neck, I returned to leaf collecting. The very next sweep of the rake revealed this beautiful little snake, which might be a red racer, I don't know. But he has red on his sides. I know, not a very scientific identification process. Actually, very shortly after that a very nice lizard whisked up the wall beside me and paused in the shade of a bearberry plant. But I can't get the picture in the proper place in this blog and he is very hard to see anyway. You'll just have to take my word for it.

Quite the afternoon for creepy-crawlies.

Girls out the back door

Not exactly as exotic as the moose on Megg's blog, but still pretty fun to watch. Until they complete the eradication of the Blue Wave petunias by the upper stairs.

Salsa for the winter

It took a whole box of tomatoes, many of different types of peppers (but none very hot), a whole lotta onion and garlic and cilantro, to come up with twelve quarts of salsa to freeze. That's three gallons of salsa for winter. Kinda pretty, huh? And it tastes really good.

It was pretty enjoyable to make.