Full Ruby and the Land Submarine Moon

The Full Ruby and the Land Submarine Moon rises grandly at sundown on Sunday, December 19. She sets magnificently Monday morning during the dawning and rising of our sun. Winter Solstice Tuesday, December 21, 9:58 am in our hemisphere, shortest day's length 10hr and 12min on our shortest day, here South of St. Martinville.

P, now fully retired, has purchased for us a used but well cared for camper, a Casita 17'. Very compact and efficient little jewel, a tool to get us away from it all. We also upgraded our Subaru to handle the load. The car's name is Ruby and the camper is called the Land Submarine (our son Jake the Sub Commander, because he knows, decided that was the perfect name), thus the name if this month's post.

11-18-21 Call from Becka, a former student and new mom to tell me about her son and new motherhood. She is doing great and is soooo happy, but hey, she is Becka. btw she wants back on the FMA list, hmmmm, I guess I will...

Shoots! I missed the total eclipse of the moon, darn! I'm supposed to be on top of this stuff.

11-19-21 Full Moon, grand rising y'all.

11-20-21 Drove to BR to pick up P's new-ish car Ruby, a manly one, strong enough to pull our new Land Sub

11-21-21 Pre-TG gumbo, since we will not gather on that day as a family. 3 of 4 kids there and 5 grands, it was wonderful. Mya has a small puppy. He is quite lovable and must be watched like an infant, also must have looked edible, when he was running around the yard two hunting RT hawks spent an inordinate amount of time circling, examining our spread, could have been the chickens looking so good in their new feathers, who knows?

11-29-21 Yet another Yogi tea bag quote " Plant kindness, gather Love."

12-3-21 Spent weekend in Chicot SP with P and Ruby and the Land Submarine, just Gorgeous.

12-4-21 Beech fall color is amazing. I'm grateful to Arboretum naturalist Eric Bush (what great name for a naturalist y'all) for gently reminding me about the leaf and bud characteristics of the plentiful Beech at Chicot, a Beech Magnolia ecosystem, we did enjoy that color and form and examining those unique to the Beech "cigar" buds.

Lots of moths about, some kind of mating frenzy is my guess, they look like Sphinx Moths, they were, turn out to be Buck Moths, the ones with the nasty stinging caterpillars.

12-5-21 Home by 2, maiden voyage of Ruby and the Land Submarine was declared great.

Consider this found quote y'all... in David Lee's Stone Wind Water book of poems

"It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us...There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having originally breathed into a few forms or into one: and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

                                                                                 Charles Darwin,

                                                                                 The origin of Species

Oh Charlie, mais la that is profound! Thanks Dave.

A gift from David Lee:

Aubade Paean

Fanfare for the Uncommon Man

   --after Aaron Copland

A soft spot

in the cloud rips

Streamers of light

spill and 

glister the buttes

until the cloudseam heals

Then the redarkening

around dawnseap

trickles through

a notch in the horizon

A pinon

stuffed with song

joyance

of white-crowned sparrows

A crepitant windchime

erupts 

into a geyser

of quarter notes

fills the sky

Glory

Ahhhh Dave, in this one I can hear your voice reciting poetry, thanks for sharing.

Let's here a Naomi Shihab Nye poem:

Bug Hotel

"We're in the middle of an insect

apocalypse.'- bird expert

Once a set of words seizes you

Find the tiny room to live in

Return there every hour

Check on your roommates

The wasp

The moth

The ladybug

The dragonfly

Who has a suitcase

Blessed bumblebee

Who snores

Weary ant

Who needs room service

Firefly

We have not loved you enough

Precious denominators

Essential elements

Of a whole gorgeous meadow

A park

A desert

Royal families of the air & ground

Stay here

Stick around 

All the keys

Are on your ring

12-11-21 I have 2 brothers in a family of 10, I am number 1 and they are 9 and 10. #10 who we call Baby calls #9 Big and both call me Elder. Fits y'all. Today is Big's 60th cycle around the sun. We will get together real soon to laugh and tell stories and love on one another over Taco Sisters smoked shrimp burritos and fancy tea. I cannot wait for Big

 to read the card P picked out for him...

Jane Goodall said "You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. You have to decide what kind of difference you want to make."

ON NOT MOWING THE LAWN

Let the grass spring up tall, let its roots sing

     and the seeds begin their scattering.

Let the weeds rejoin and be prolific throughout.

Let the noise of the mower be banished, hurrah!

Let the path become where I choose to walk, and not

     otherwise established.

Let the goldfinches be furnished their humble dinner.

Let the  sparrows determine their homes in security.

Let the honeysuckle reach as high as my window, that it

     look in.

Let the mice fill their barns and bins with a sufficiency.

Let anything created, that wants to creep or leap

     forward,

     be able to do so.

Let the grasshopper have gliding space.

Let the noise of the mower be banished, yes, yes.

Let the katydid return and announce himself in the 

     long evenings.

Let the blades of grass surge back from the last

     cutting.

Or, if you want to be poetic: the leaves of grass.

                                  Mary Oliver, Blue Horses

 

No Winter Hummers in my world yet y'all. Just a little worried...

We Reach Forth

The way we stand at the mirror
and see strands of hair 
overnight lose their color,
devoid of fresh light
gone gray in the way
a leaf loses the green of chlorophyll.

We lose our vigor.

The way I collapse on the sofa
after the grandchildren leave--
how it sags from years
of holding us.

The way, like branches, we reach forth
and strain every nerve, 
but we seize only a bit of the curtain 
that hides the infinite from us.*

How 96 percent of the universe
is dark matter 
invisible to us, how can we know
what tomorrow will bring?

The way we shed more color,
fall to the ground,
crush into mulch,
then hatch from darkness
and find light
find light
find light.

*Maria Mitchell

Margaret Simon, draft

peace love possumhugs y'all

bt