Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

  For Christmas and other gift-giving holidays we tend to spoil the littler children in our lives with as fancy of store bought gifts as we can afford.  Then, depending on age of course, they spend more time playing with the trappings than with the actual toys  The same is true of kittens.  I bought her a couple three new toys with bells and feathers and all.  Does she play with them? No.  She prefers a little length of yarn and any random cardboard box lying around.   Good thing she is so cute.

 We are off for our family Christmas tradition trip today....at least it is becoming a tradition since Gary retired.   Silver Dollar City This morning we will do some shopping down in Branson, before we go to the amusement park. Gary is going to get me a nice coat for Christmas, for one thing.  Then we'll go take in some of the SDC Christmas shows and lights and all after it gets dark.  It will be a long day, but we will have a good time...barring any random disaster of course. In the meantime here is a picture of some frost flowers I took yesterday on my walk to the creek bottoms. I have posted about them before.  It's only a couple different plants that have them.  When it freezes it squeezes the moisture still left in the dead stems out and forms folded ribbons of ice.  Where there is a patch of these plants it looks like someone threw out a bunch of wadded up paper towels. You can see them along the unmown back roads here on frosty mornings. S...

 A couple of weeks ago I was getting set to take Bella for a walk.  I still had her on her leash, thank goodness, when I saw a cat coming across the field, down the road Gary's kept clear hauling hay back and forth. She had 2 kittens with her.  She took them into the shed where he keeps the dump truck, and kept them there for a couple of days, but moved them I think because we kept going out there. For a couple of weeks we didn't see any sign of them, with the exception of seeing an orange cat around occasionally.  We weren't sure if that was the mother or not.   Then about 3 or 4 days ago Gary was welding down near the milk barn and left the door open.  He came back a few hours later and heard rustling INSIDE the building.  He went in and lo and behold...FOUR kittens.  He chased them all out.   Yesterday Gary came home to see a little gray kitten out in the former hay shed.  It ran when he walked over. So I went out there late...

 This morning is probably the last morning Bella and I will get to walk in the West pasture for awhile.  Gary wants to move the cattle back into it.  The grass has grown up quite a bit what with the mild weather we have had, so they can polish that off before he has to start feeding hay.   When we walk out there we always take a water break at the cattle waterer on the way back to the house. It rarely freezes over, I think the water coming in keeps it above freezing.   Tomorrow we will start going down to the sawmill for our walks, or if I am up to the hike back up the hill, we will go down to the creek bottoms.  

  The past week or so when I take the dog out for a walk in the evenings the first star to appear is off to the southwest.  I do wish I had a much more sophisticated camera on my phone...along with the knowledge to use it properly.  The combination of sunset and this star was stunning. Perhaps from this you can catch a smidge of the ambiance of being immersed in an almost otherworldly experience. The first star to emerge is but the herald of a host that lingers beyond the edge of the light.   As the light fades, the darkness deepens.  Then and only then can we see with mortal eyes the presence of thousands and thousands of other lights appearing.   The light on Earth has to fade in our eyes before we can see the lights of the heavens reflecting down on us.  So many lessons this might teach, but I am not ordained to preach.

  It is silly really, because chores are chores and I long ago resigned myself to doing them with little complaints.  So dishes, floors, laundry...whatever, it's all much of a muchness. But for some reason folding the towels is a task I put off as long as I can.  Occasionally I will even pile them somewhere and leave them until the next day.   They don't require a smidgen of skill to fold, like fitted sheets.  But I resent them.  Always, always towels to fold.  Ugh. That's all for today. Towels. Ha!