Just about my favorite holiday! Good friends, family, good food, time to reflect and get ready for the wild holiday ride of the next month.
Wishing the same for all of you, especially my sister, Nathalie, who just came home from an operation, my nephew, Jonna, who is in Afghanistan, and my friend, Dennis.
Archive for November, 2009
Spider Silk
I mentioned before that I used to weave. (See post Oct 12, 2009—I Had a Life as a Weaver.) I don’t weave now but I still like things woven. I was sent a most amazing email this morning on weaving with Spider Silk. I knew spider silk was one of the strongest fibers and that it has been used for gun sights due to its fineness etc. but this blew me away. Let me know what you think.
Strange doings in Germantown!
I live in a fairly urban area. Granted there are yards with lots of trees and gardens and it is about 3 blocks to a large park along a busy bus route, but it is in the City of Philadelphia and the usual wild life we get are stray cats and a possum or two. Today about 10:00 in the morning a full grown deer ran between my house and my neighbors—maybe 20 ft apart—into their back yard. It stood near a large bush and by the time we could get a camera it was gone. Don’t think my garden has seen a deer in a very long time, but you never know.
My street used to belong to a house on Germantown Ave. which was built in the 1600’s. Properties facing the avenue were long and narrow. Narrow on the street side but long enough to accommodate gardens, orchards and stables. During the Battle of Germantown, revolutionary soldiers had to hop fences as they chased each other through these narrow yards.
Land was subdivided after the Civil War and it is now a neighborhood of Victorian homes where stables or carriage houses have been turned into coveted homes. There has not been any livestock kept here for many years, (although Luke does keep chickens, but that’s another story). So a misplaced deer is a big deal.
Creative Avoidance
Kaitlin should be working on her cheesy type project but instead she is reading my blog. What’s a teacher to do?
Cranberries
Well, it’s November, Halloween is over and the Phillies have been scary, so whatch gonna do? It rained all week but now its bright and sunny. Maybe this game will turn around too.
We were on location last week in cranberry bogs in NJ and it was just after the yearly harvest.
To harvest the cranberries the bogs are flooded and the cranberries knocked off the plants. As they float in the water they are gathered up and then the water is drained. All around the edge of the bog were missed cranberries, lying on the ground like jewels. They just had to be this month’s header image. (View older header images.)
Here’s to cranberries, some of which we’ll eat this Thanksgiving. And here’s to the ones that got away.