Happy Saturday in the November chill!

By Elizabeth Prata

Good morning! It's a chilly one here (finally) in north Georgia. Temperatures are below freezing, the day has dawned crisp and bright, and all is well. Fall leaves are still on the trees but are slowly dropping, while the peeking sun is illuminating them, under a blue-blue sky. Here is the scene:

Happy Saturday

By Elizabeth Prata

I'm ruled by my ears. I seek atmospheres with soft sounds, calming and lovely. I enjoy good music, breezes ruffling trees, birdsong, harps, purring kittens,church bells, and so on. I dislike whistling teapots, ambulance sirens, orchestra tune-ups, screeching women, squealing tires, fire alarms, and much more

Sound is alive and almost physical to me. It roars or grates or envelops and my body reacts. The reaction stays in me for a long time, unless if it a bad sound I'm attempting to rid myself of, I can quickly seek and find a more pleasant sound to overwrite in my ears. I can't stand voices with strange cadence or temp, nasal, a grating accent, or in any other way, grating Martyn Lloyd Jones has a nasal tone but due to the lower quality of the ancient recording device that captured it, I can listen because it sort of evens out. I enjoy John MacArthur's voice, whose tone I consider perfect, because it has no tics, vocal oddities, weird tempo, or anything else to distract from the words I seek to hear. In fact, the voice is comforting and fades into the background as the eternal words come to the forefront. By contrast, Todd Friel's shtick on Wretched Radio is so painful if I do listen on video I put it on mute and turn on closed captions. It's no wonder my word for the school's Vocabulary Parade was mellifluous.

It's the time of year between high seasons, where summer heat that we strive to keep out lessens and the windows can come up and allow in the fresh cooler fall air. As a result, I enjoy the night birds, breezes shaking the leaves, faraway train, distant car traffic, and even the silence as I awaken in the wee hours to enjoy all these sounds. I love that.

On my walk around the yard in the dawn I captured these lovely scenes:

For my food prep this week I'll have

Dinners and lunches:

Lentil salad with cherry tomatoes - lunch
Chicken soup with veggies and quinoa - lunch

Pan fried ocean perch

Refried beans with cherry tomatoes and cheese atop crispy tortillas

Tofu with green beans and peanuts and teriyaki sauce

Veggie sides and Snacks

Mandarin oranges, strawberries, grapes

Zucchini

Broccaflower

I finally caved in and subscribed to Amazon's pantry. I eat some nuts and/or a slice of turkey in mid-morning for a fiber/protein snack. The subscribe & save item I bought will be delivered monthly containing 24 packs of one-serving packages of nuts. I wish I could add cheese to the snack rotation but the lactose is bothersome. Since I'll be eating nuts so often I decided it was worth the $7.50/month for the 24 snacks. It comes out to 32 cents per snack. Pretty good.

Most of the above were on sale at Kroger. The cherry tomatoes were a 99-cents item due to one of the small tomatoes in the pint being moldy. The broccaflower was also in pretty good shape but had one tiny bad spot so it also was marked down to 99 cents. Zucchini was on regular sale, 99 cents per pound as well as the green beans being the same. With having to buy gluten free break and lactose free milk which are expensive, I try to make it up with on-sale veggie and fruit items. Speaking of, the mandarins were also on sale, as were the strawberries. Sale, sale, sale...where would we be without sales.

I got up at 5 am today, excited by the prospect of a day without wilting in the heat, and enjoying the fresh air pouring in. Isn't it cozy to just snuggle under the covers for a while and then get up all refreshed? A day full of limitless possibilities? I have some work to do in the garage that I'm not looking forward to, but I'm putting that off for now, and just enjoying the day as it presents itself to me.

You all have a nice Saturday, too.

Backyard Spring 2019

By Elizabeth Prata

For some reason this week seemed to chew me up and spit me out. I had no particular issues and nothing untoward happened. It was just a busy, hectic, long week that took a toll on my body and mind.

I did write two major discernment articles this week on my other blog, one about Lori Loughlin and the College Admissions Scandal, and one about Francis Chan who seems to be sliding toward apostasy before our eyes. Those kind of articles take a toll on me.

Nevertheless, this morning is sunny, crisp, bright, and filled with birdsong. A new day to admire creation and be thankful to our Lord for the ability to go forward in joy.

I took a walk around the yard this morning, to see the flowers and hear the birds. There are many mature trees in our yard and along the quiet one-way street. There are pastures too. The birds love to fly through the yard and over the fields, alighting from tree to tree. The grass in the yard is also filled with wild flowers. As I walk I'm stepping on a springy cushion of verdant grass dotted with purple violets. I feel like a queen, being able to tread on such richness.

Here are some pictures from my short amble around the grass and bushes.

I don't know what this flower is, but I am fascinated with its perching and blooming at the very end of a long twig from the bush it's attached to-

Irises I think. There is a bush at the front of the house facing the street-

The birds like to perch on the top of the mailbox post, and anywhere else on the post, lol.

I wish I'd noticed when I took the picture that the auto focus was on the branch of the tall tree and not on the moon. The moon was slightly pink, reflecting the rising sun's pink-

Fiery start to the day. The sky was ablaze-

Nothing says weekend to me, an educator, than buses at rest. This is of the school across the street-

The sun had just peeked over the horizon and made the trees across the pasture glow-

The violets in the grass. I love them-

Have a wonderful day everyone!

Plans for the day

By Elizabeth Prata

Ahhh, it's the weekend again. For some reason short work weeks seem longer. Maybe it's the different schedule for the kids, or the fact that they were home a day longer, but short weeks always turn out to feel longer than if we had a five day week in the first place.

Not that I'm complaining. I love three-day weekends. They're great.

Today I'm contemplating going out. Yes, really. I have two library books that will be due on Tuesday so I have to go to the library soon in any case. The Friends of the Library is having their semi-annual book sale this morning so I might drop off my books and check out the sale. If it's not too crowded. I loathe running into people.

Also my favorite vintage store, The Special Store, is having a 75% off art sale and $1 clothes sale. Impossible. To. Resist. Art.

I do need to fill one spot over my bed. I'd had a favorite photo enlarged a few years ago and hung it there. It is a scene from Lubec where I used to vacation at Globe Cove in a little cottage. It's the view from the bay window in the cottage. Lubec is the foggiest place in Maine, the smokey coiled fog bank always hovering just at the horizon, to come in and out like the tide. With the fog and the tide always moving, the scene is dynamic and ever-changing. I snapped this ar full fog and high tide.

I always liked the spot of color from the mooring buoys and the colorful boats popping against the fog and moody pine landscape. However, digital photos, even on archival paper, seem to fade quickly. I've only had the photo enlarged for ten years but by now the colors in my enlarged and framed photo have all faded and the scene is just grey drab. I have 35 mm photos that are nearly 100 years old that aren't as faded.

So...art. 75% off is a good deal, not likely to find anywhere else as good. And it's framed, too.

I have fun in that store because I can get little things I need there, too. I like magnet pads to put on the fridge to remind myself of appointments or to keep a running record of grocery items. I find neat pads there for fifty cents or a dollar. I sometimes find nice stationery and notecards there too. I like notecards. Books and CDs are also 50 cents or a dollar.

Also, I need a cart or some kind of small storage for my room at school. The rolling cart I'd gotten this summer is too small already! I've added notebooks and journals for two book groups, plus ditto sheets, and the books we're reading themselves, I need more room!

I have not been to the Special Store since April or May. The owners had obtained two estates and the store got crammed. It was too jumbled, for me, to see anything or even move. I like a jumble, but when it's too crowded to move, and add excessive heat and a laboring lone air conditioner, the browsing experience palls.

They have purged and reorganized and made the place browsable again with some displays, even! See:

So I might be tempted to go out early when it's still coolish. The weather is supposed to break in mid to late September and I can't wait for crisp mornings and turning the AC off. But with this heat I'll go early and scuttle back home quickly before the afternoon heat makes me so tired and grumpy. When I return home, I'll take a nap. Late afternoon I'll work on two theology lessons: one from Biblical Doctrine/John MacArthur's book, a chapter on Pneumatology. And another chapter video lesson in Derek Thomas's Pilgrim's Progress through Ligonier.

Tonight I plan to make friends with my couch and read more of Bill Bryson's book Summer 1927, and start John Grisham short stories from his book Ford County. It's the plan, anyway.

I hope you have a wonderful fall Saturday.

Today's cooking

Left over from last week's cooking bonanza thanks to a plentiful Bountiful Basket, was zucchini. I had roasted the two large zucchinis and decided this Saturday to make it into a dip, or spread. That happened. I put the zucchini straight into the food processor with softened cream cheese, lemon, and salt. A few 'whizzes' later, it was a spread. I'll enjoy with my baked pita crisps I'd also made last week.

Dips & spreads are so easy to make and so handy to have for a snack or a sandwich filling when I need to make a quick lunch.

At my local grocery store yesterday there were quite a few white button mushrooms for sale at reduced price. They were still white and good looking and there were many that were marked down, so I bought three containers. Knowing mushrooms, they would not stay white and good looking for long. I looked up a few recipes but in the end went the simple route. I sauteed them whole until crisp, only adding a slight amount of olive oil and salt, leaving them to reduce gently. I'd also made vegetable stock lost week and when the mushrooms were ready, simply added the stock and even more gently simmered it. Soup!

These are two containers worth.
I saved one to make something in a couple days.

Of course a few of those golden delicious mushrooms had to go into my scrambled egg... ;)

I also made brownies, and roasted two small heads of broccoflower (a cauliflower-broccoli hybrid).

To sum up:

Mushroom soup
Zucchini dip
Roasted Broccoflower
Hot slaw- for wraps
Brownies
Cantaloupe- for smoothies

The cabbage hot slaw to use in wraps is because I still have two heads piled up from BB. We had successive weeks of cabbage bonanza and it's really hard to eat a lot of cabbage at once but thank goodness it keeps a long time.

Not a bad morning. I've got my food for the week all set and it is a bright sunny day. I think later I will cut up the paste paper I'd made last week into bookmark size, and laminate them to give as gifts. And watch some TV (maybe Last Man Standing or Judge Judy), and at the last as the sun goes down and things get cozy in the apartment, read my book. Saturday!

A normal Saturday

We have some end-of-the-year activities that are very fun for the kids but very tiring for the adults. Field Trip, Field Day, and this week, Accelerated Reader reward party and VIC reward party. The AR party occurs outside where the kids who have read to meat a certain goal over the quarter are rewarded with being able to run around the field in bathing suits under a fire truck's hose as a giant sprinkler, dance to amplified music, eat Popsicles and generally have fun. The VIC party is a reward party for children who have met a certain behavior goal over the quarter. These kids slide down bouncy houses into a pool, like a mini-water park. There's amplified music and general goofing around in the field. It is fun under the sun, but it's also all-hands-on-deck for the parapros as we monitor and help make sure the kids are safe and enjoying themselves. Not to mention working the daily grind of keeping all our little charges in the school academically occupied and behaving or at least contained, lol,  as the school year winds down to the 5 days left. I came home tired Friday night.

This morning I got up at 6 am refreshed from a very long week at school. It was very cool so I took advantage of the weather to use the oven for a long period to cook and roast. I made granola, which I adore. Three cookie sheets of crunchiness to enjoy for the next two weeks:

In addition to the three pans of granola I put in some red potatoes to bake, rainbow carrots, cabbage rounds, and butternut squash to roast. All were tossed with virgin olive oil, salt and pepper. I don't toss the veggies with a lot of spices because I usually turn them into something else. The squash will likely become squash and potato soup, or mashed pan-fried patties. So I save the extra spices for later so as to be versatile. I also cut up a basketball sized, juicy and perfect cantaloupe. It was on sale at the Marketplace for $1.00. Part of it will become smoothies.

After all that, while listening to sermons and some music, I went back to bed. Ahhh, what a treat to be able to do that. I did sleep for about an hour and a half, snoozing happily in the cool air with the cats. What bliss. When I got up I wrote and studied a while and this is what happens when I settle down at the table with the laptop:

Bert settles in. Luke jumps up to either settle also or to groom Bert

Luke wants in. First he grooms Bert, then he settles down on the other side of the table.

Murray wants to be around us, to be near, but not exactly with us. He is under the table.

I'm really blessed. I've got a full fridge, a full house, a full mind and a full heart. Pretty good for an old, tired parapro!

Photographing ants

It was a warm day, but not hot. You know the kind where the sun is almost warm, but the car seat totally is? And the concrete. The concrete was one big slab of invitingly warm under the clear sky and the bright sun.

Sometimes when the neighbor leaves I take a pillow and lay out there straight on the concrete and listen to the birds and enjoy the warmth. I so enjoy the peace and quiet, and warmth in a Georgia spring before the oppressive heat sets in

On Saturday I did just that, also taking my camera with me so I could photograph birds. The longer I'm still, the more birds come around to the dogwood tree, the better chance of getting some wildlife photos.

While I was laying there I started watching the ants. They've come out recently, those aggressive tiny biting buggers, busy digging trenches and holes and cracking the concrete. They walk on a trail in one direction then the other, never varying. In this case, they'd chosen a route along the edge of the concrete walkway from the garage to the front door. I lay parallel to them and started watching their business instead of the birds.

Around then, both the next door tenant and the landlord arrived. They stood looking at me laying on the concrete, still and motionless and I realized that this could look weird. Indeed, they both said later that when they pulled in they thought I'd fallen and they were getting ready to cal 911 emergency. But then I sat up with my camera in hand and said hello. The little girl, daughter to the tenant, came running over asking "What are you doing?" the way kids do.

One thing I was doing was practicing macro photography with my extreme zoom lens. It's a challenge to frame shots, to capture fast moving insects, and to be still enough not to blur the shot. I also like it because I can lay down. No crouching, walking hiking, or traveling to get the shot. It is a method I made up called "The Lazy Saturday Afternoon Photographer Method."

1. Go outside
2. Lay down
3. Turn on macro setting.
4. Wait.

LOL. Well there is more to it but that's the gist. In other words a nice past-time for a vacation Saturday afternoon. Here are the fruits of my labors.

Ant #1: Gotta get to the oasis...gotta. get. there.
Ant #2: Hey wait up!

Look, just ahead, SHADE!!

Remember the way, take a left at the clover and down into the dirt.

Where did they go? Here:

It's a jungle in here. Between the huge pollen dots, birds, and the spiky plants, life is pretty rough...

And miles to go before I sleep...

Miles to go before I sleep.