A Personal Update

(We interrupt the Adventures of Mom’s Visit to update what’s been happening in Sycamore Canyon)

It’s 5 a.m. and I can’t sleep. I awoke from a dream of being on a secret mission in Africa that was so real I was surprised to wake up in my own bed! Yet in my dream all I could think about was getting back to my blog and, would I be able to write about this. That shows you how much blogging has taken over my life!

I haven’t been able to get on the computer for days, partly due to the activities of the holiday and partly due to a malfunction with the keyboard. I could turn the computer on but I couldn’t type! Gus fussed with it yesterday morning and I’m finally back in business.

I stepped outside for a few minutes this morning with my steaming cup of tea. A crescent moon hangs brightly over Mt. Fagan in a star studded sky. The air is cool but not cold. I am comfortable in my bathrobe. A shooting star crosses the eastern horizon before burning out. Overhead the big dipper is upended and spilling stardust across the velvet sky.

A few Christmas lights are still on, outlining the roofs of neighboring homes. I am a sucker for Christmas lights, though I have none displayed outside my own house. Still, I love to see them. Inside the house my new artificial tree is glowing, along with my lighted Christmas Village. Though I profess to love the west the best, my Christmas village belies my New England Heritage. Complete with a steepled white church, a gazebo and stone bridge, I bought the pieces a few years ago where they adorned the mantel over my fireplace in Utah. It always reminds me of my Nana’s house on the green in Colchester.

When we moved here we downsized and, as a result, I have no ledges or mantels to arrange my little New England village on. I didn’t even pull it out this year until last Thursday night, when I decided to see if it would look right atop my kitchen cupboards. Amazingly, it did, and when I was done, I was quite please with the result, though I paid for it with bruises when I misjudged the step down onto the step ladder from off the counter-top. My bifocals had slid down my nose and, as a result, the step appeared closer than it actually was. I now have a nice scrap atop my right foot and a bruise the length and half the width of a dollar bill on the inside of my right knee. I could take a photo to show you, but some things are best left to the imagination.

This will be my first Christmas without any of my children around. It has made me a bit melancholy and nostalgic. I am amazed at the memories that rush to my brain when I stop long enough to let them come. As a result, I’ve written a Christmas story to be posted here on Christmas Eve. I hope you will come back and enjoy reading it. For now, it’s time to get on with the Adventures of Mom and our visit to Butterfly Magic!

A Gentle Morning

Dawn by Kathie 9-22-08 5:49 a.m. 52mm, 1/60 sec - F/4.5

Cricket songs and a hooting owl greet me as I step out the patio door in the predawn darkness. I’ve awakened early and after lying in bed for almost an hour decided to give up and get up. I’m not disappointed by this decision for it’s wonderfully peaceful outside. I take down the empty hummingbird feeder encrusted with splashes of dried nectar. The lesser long-nosed bats emptied it hours ago. I bring it into the house, clean and refill it, then set it aside to put out once the sun rises. I don’t know if the bats are gone for the night, but I’d like to sit outside without their company. I grab my steaming cup of Irish breakfast tea and relax into the cushion of a patio swivel chair.

From here I can view the sky in all directions. The outlines of my neighbor’s roofs and the dark edges of Mt. Fagan describe the line between earth and sky. Over head the half moon shines like a beacon still strong enough to cast moon shadows on the ground. Off in the desert a band of coyotes wails like banshees in the night. It is a haunting sound, yet somehow wild and peaceful all at the same time. Their cries carry me away, then set me down again in this desert place I now live in. A light wind brushes my face and causes the nearby flag to gently flap in a soothing rhythm.

Morning Tea by Kathie 9-22-08 6:51 a.m. 70mm, 1/320 sec - F/4.5

I snuggle my hands around my tea cup and spin my chair to view the starry sky. To the south Orion sails almost directly overhead in a charcoal sea. I watch the faint blinking light of a distant satellite as it makes its steady orbit east. I rotate my chair 180 degrees to see what the big dipper is doing. Its upended on its handle hanging over the Catalina Mountains with the two pointer stars on the end of the cup directing me to the north star in the handle of the little dipper. I am not an astronomer by anyone’s stretch of the imagination, but this little bit I know helps me enjoy the nighttime sky even more. The little dipper’s faint stars are almost lost in the glow of the Tucson city lights as its cup sinks lower in the sky. As night fades into day I think of how the stars will still be in their place but I will no longer see them as our morning star rises in the east and bathes the earth in its light. It is a gentle morning here in Sycamore Canyon on this first day of autumn and I am thankful to be awake to greet it.

Sunrise Ballerina by kathie 9-22-08, 6:42 a.m. 98mm, 1/500 sec - F/5.6

Click on photos to enlarge for best view