Wordless Wednesday - Autumn parking lot
Wordless Wednesday
Posts
I want you to know them
It is perfect weather out today. After two days of a hard north wind, the air is calm, but the sky is still clear, and the sun still warms. It is the perfect walking weather. And because it is 2010, I walked to my grandparents' grave. The Norwegian custom is to bury the dead, primarily, though cremation is more common in crowded cities (and their equally crowded churchyards). Norwegians usually tend the graves themselves, with one of the more beautiful customs being a lit candle on the grave on Christmas Eve. I have never done any of this, but part of the funeral costs included gardening services from the city so the grave is always tended. The dead here are not embalmed, so their bodies do return to dust, as the Bible says. The usual is to reuse a grave after 20 years, when there is nothing left of the previous "resident". Exceptions are made for historical graves and family plots. I don't care either way. I am ambivalent about visiting graves. Mostly they remind
Wordless Wednesday - Autumn pansy
Wordless Wednesday This would have been my grandma's 100th birthday. She loved pansies.
Digestion: Discovery and dilemma
I have been reading a lot lately. My latest read is a book by a Swedish doctor, Annika Dahlqvist, who was reported for malpractice a couple of years for advising diabetics to eat a low carbohydrate, high fat diet. She was found innocent of the charges as her advice was supported by studies. Lately, this nearly-vegetarian has given up her decades-long breakfast choice of rice milk and rolled four-grain mix and replaced it with boiled eggs and bacon. Butter is back in my cupboard. Meat and fish are finding their way into my home (if not in great amounts). Fruit is abandoned completely while nuts and vegetables are still favored. My beloved pasta is ignored, and I no longer eat bread or even oatmeal. This is the first time in years, lots of years, that I am not gassy and getting stomach pains on a daily basis. The discussion about whether or not you'll lose weight aside, the scary thing about reading up on diets, is discovering all the disinformation that's been fed us since
A weed is a flower
…that happens to be in the wrong place. Yesterday's photo is a close-up of the sunflower that has surprised me. I started this summer with pansies in all my flower boxes, but they quickly died. One did manage to sow a seed, though, so I have a pansy plant in one flower box. Weeds took over the other flower box. I decided to leave them as an experiment and to see what they would turn out to be. Most I recognized as local flora, but one was a bit odder. It turned out to be the sunflower. The other weeds do seem to be the flowering kind. And since they are welcome where they are, they are no longer technically weeds. PS: I can't remember where I first heard the definition of a weed introducing this post. The closest I can get to an original is by E.J. Salisbury, found at this delightful page of weed quotes .)
