Yes?
More experimenting here. I am not thrilled with using a child theme. I just don’t know enough about css and php. But lots of time to work on it. So instead here I am using a free theme from WordPress.
Anna
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Pushing Away
As the world around me changes, internationally and close to home, I feel myself changing too. There is still awhile to go on this blog, but I have turned off the automatic renewal. I have another cat site on wordpress.org that I have been tinkering with.
This site has served its purpose. I got myself through the saddest times following the loss of Muffin. I still have lots of reminders of her in the trailer and in the yard. Zillions of photos and old web pages. I still have her hair brush even.
I find working with wordpress.com limiting. And costly. I have months to go still. But I don’t like working on the site anymore. I don’t know if this is the “last post” or not. I don’t think there will be too many more.
Rosalee and I are entering a new phase. She is becoming a bit of a lap cat. Which makes up for her choosing the living room as her sleeping spot. She was up here on the computer table with me for a bit.. Now she is kneading the clean laundry pile on the couch. The rain pours down.
April Foolishness
Today I want to start my first indoor seeds. I couldn’t find an underneath tray anywhere in the greenhouse or sheds, but found substitutes. I think I can fit them onto the sewing table and rotate them under the UV light.
Rosalee and I have begun reclaiming the yard. Little by little we were able to pick our way through the ice piles to the back yard. The piles formed when huge chunks of melted-then-frozen rooftop ice came crashing down, tearing eaves and soffits with them.
Every day I chipped a little ice from the sidewalk. Today I expect the last of it will be melted away. I invited a local carpenter to discuss building an overhang for the stairs. I hope we can proceed. Working people get swamped with orders this time of year so I got my request in early.
Rosalee and I now spend a lot of time outdoors. A new puppy next door is very friendly. Rosalee feels threatened when it barks but they will get used to each other.
Birds are singing, and visiting the garden beds, foraging for whatever they can find. One day I noticed Rosalee in stalking mode, belly to the ground, advancing towards potential prey. I shooed her out of the garden and shut the gate. I am not sure if she understood why.
I have not seen any birds in there lately, and have not found any corpses, so I will leave open the gate for her in the daytime, and close it at night. This year I must replace some of the raised bed lumber, and get new stakes to hold them in place.
Pruning the apple trees and cherry tree is done. I decided to make one last cut on the cherry and went up the ladder with my little pruning saw. I gave up and got the Fiskars pruner. One snip and the job was done.
Year of the Tiger Countdown
Chinese New Year starts February 1, 2022. The Year of the Tiger. What that means I am not sure. Real life tigers are known for being ferocious. Surely we have had enough fierceness in the world lately. Tigers are also strong and elegant. So maybe this will be a year of courage and grace. Courage to be honest and good, and graceful in how we go about displaying our honesty and goodness.
This morning brought snow. Dangerous walking for the snow covers the ice on footpaths and roads. Rosalee has refused to go outside even though I shovelled the porch. It was fun having a little respite from winter, but now we are back at it.
My little tiger is snoozing where she can watch the fire through the glass door of the wood stove. I am now burning birch wood. I have used up all the big pieces of fir. Birch wood leaves hot embers that last a long time. I have to keep my eye on the fire and not let it burn away too quickly. There is more cold weather to come, it appears, and I am now about halfway through my wood supply.
This afternoon I carefully walked down to the lake to feed the wild ducks. They were very happy to see me. About twenty of them today. Hard to count when they are milling around on the shore. They moved very quickly, scrambling after the handfuls of grain I tossed. I tried to make sure none get left out.
I wonder if the Year of the Tiger will be a particularly propitious year for cats. I would like Rosalee to have a happy year.
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Snowed In
Okay WordPress. We are having a snowstorm. A mild one, but enough of one to justify spending time on a post. I am set to go with a photo which I could not get off my cell phone via bluetooth because my phone was “not connected to the internet”. (It is). I got the photo into iPhotos. And am trying to Insert from URL, following all directions assiduously (is there really such a word) to no avail…
Thanks to blocks, I cannot see what I am doing, Blind faith, however, isn’t working.
Rosalee and I have been having a great day, playing, eating our repective breakfasts, followed by napping (Rosalee) and website posting (me). Rosalee is having a more successful time of it. I see her napping on the couch. I am not doing well and am becoming really frustrated because what used to be so easy to do is now a time-consuming nightmare.
Yes I have restarted both the computer and the phone as well. At least I got the photo into iCloud. There it sits. Let’s see if blocks will let me look at the html. It did the other day. Dead end, I can’t figure out where to put the imaged id amongst all the parentheses…
Well finally I got wise. HEIC files are not supported by WordPress. So we’ll haul out the file convertor… Done in second. Then drag and drop. Done. Rosalee still sleeping. I am going to go out snow wading now if I can find pair of boots with no leaks that don’t hurt my feet. Must remember the ice at the front door. Cleats a must for descending the stair case.
The Season of Christmas
Long ago when I first seriously began going to church services, I learned that the Christmas Season lasts a long time. I like the idea. I like Christmas being a holy time full of celebration and tradition going on and on and on into January. Hymn singing! Alone at home in front of the computer watching a Youtube service!
Rosalee and I celebrated January 2 Epiphany feast together. She listened to, and I watched and listened to, an English service from Chester, England. I learned a new hymn tune (Caithness). Last week I learned a new (to me) hymn tune for “It Came Upon A Midnight Clear”. I have missed beautiful church music. I have missed singing it.
The little church has been closed here for over a year. When I showed my daughter and a granddaughter music for Joy to the World , they didn’t join in. They didn’t know it. Somehow this little piece of cultural tradition was not passed on, at home or at school. Or just forgotten among more basic, pressing daily priorities.
Eventually I hope to get another blog where I can go on and on about church music and religion, and focus more on spiritual thoughts. Spirituality and our material life are one, of course, but writing requires a some discipline.
Rosebud and I went outside together the other day when it was quite cold. Today we have snow! Lots of it. I heard my neighbour come and clear the walk for me this morning with his snow blower. Rosebud came scooting into the bathroom to hide. I was trying out a Christmas gift of home made bath crystals (lovely!).
Rosalee is especially interested in a tiny patch of sheltered lawn. Looking for her daily greens perhaps. I have been offering her a bit of catnip every day now for weeks. No ill effects, and lots of good ones. It helps her cope with being inside so much due to the cold weather. We are both inside a lot these days. Looks like her back claws are extended to grip into the snow!
Tidying Up
After a very long break from web site work, I am back! It is like coming back from a vacation and seeing your garden is overgrown and the lawn needs mowing. I don’t know where to start.
Rosalee is snoozing on the couch. The fire got lit this morning. Winter hit us especially hard on the day after Christmas. I am afraid my front gate is jammed shut until spring. It wouldn’t close no matter how furiously I shovelled away snow and chipped at ice. I wanted to get it latched so I gave it a very hard push. A few years ago I had a similar problem. I managed some way of climbing over but I forget how. I’ll figure something out.
Rosalee has never been a winter cat. She has been outside once in the last few days. And not for long. There is a giant bag of cat litter in the van (which is covered in snow). I still have some left inside so no rush.
Today I noticed that my photos were not loading on the old posts. I think it’s time. to “weed the garden” here. This theme has never worked well for me. Not the theme’s fault, but probably mine. Our wifi may be slow today with a lot of people stuck at home for one reason or another.
So the first step I shall take is to post this and see what happens. And then try changing things.
YEAR TWO
Calicocats.ca will drag on for another year. I couldn’t decide whether or not to renew and procrastinated to the point when auto renewal kicked in.
There is much to celebrate here. First and foremost we have had rain. Enough to turn brown grass green again. Enough to clean the smoke out of the air. Enough to cool the temperature too. It got a little uncomfortable here this summer. Like a lot of places in the world.
I purchased a lovely cedar board from a new sawmill, oiled it, and stuck in the bedroom to hide and protect the water pipes which run along the wall. A project I have been planning for a long time. The bedroom was emptied for a new bed, which has yet to be delivered. I have my grab and go kit there now, with a yoga mat and Rosalee’s carrier. Rosalee has taken it over for a cat room. I have been sleeping in the sewing room all summer.
Today I saw a baby fawn. Deer were feeding on fallen apples in the pasture on the next street. I photographed discreetly from a distance. The deer got jittery but didn’t run off.
Depending on how long it is rainy, I hope to get my shed painted before fall. I washed off all the chalk art that daughter, grandson and I made on it this summer. I was looking at the part of the plywood wall today and see a pattern… I hope I can do it. I am a terrible artist, but I really want to try to make a simple mural.