Thru the Veil of "Two Buck Chuck"

 At pleasant Tuesday afternoon at my friend Judi's back yard patio, we sat enjoying a beautiful Sierra mountain afternoon.  The sun was shining, the breeze was lovely and cooling and the wine was delightful.  The conversation was effervescent and the day was a delight.

We had started the day off with a great breakfast of bacon, eggs, fruit and orange juice on the deck and quickly decided that this was going to be a day of "relaxing and enjoying the great outdoors."  After breakfast, that turned into a morning of short naps.

I took the first turn of laying on the floor with a pillow on going off for about 30 minutes of "power napping" and then getting on with some person business on the Internet.

Judi decided to get some things done around the
house and just "play it cool and take it easy" for once in her very busy schedule.  Since she rarely has a whole  day off, this was a unique opportunity for her to take a "short snooze".  So while she snoozed on the couch with Grey Eagle (20-year old cat) resting on her chest and Foxy (2-year old dog) laying at her feet, I moved out to the deck to read and enjoy the beautiful Sierra weather.

By 2:30 / 3:00 PM everyone had snoozed and Judi and I sat on the deck chatting.  We decided that it was at least 5:00 PM in Arkansas where I am currently living, so it was a perfect time to open a bottle of wine with the cheese and crackers we were munching on.

A bit of history on the wine... "two buck chuck" is in reality Charles Shaw wine which can be purchased at Trader's Joe for $2 per bottle.  We prefer the Merlot which makes for a great sipping wine or wine with dinner.  Surprisingly it has a great taste and is frequently used in mine and Judi's households and our family's households.

Be that as it may, we were managing to polish off a bottle an half, when I decide I had to go inside to go to the bathroom.  As I entered the living room, I looked on the floor and said, "Is that a snake on the carpet."  Now that was a perfectly normal question to ask of this thing that was laying on the carpet just inside the patio door beside Foxy who was just looking at the thing.  Grey Eagle had already walked around it and just moved to the other side of the room.

Once Judi looked into the room, the world went ballistic!!!!  "What is that doing in my house.  I never leave doors open so that something like that can get in.  What are we going to do about it."  Now you have to realize that we are both a few sheets to the wind and have been giggling and reminiscing about things from our younger days and from the days of our kids being kids. I'm standing on the deck, bare-footed, giggling and asking Judi if she has a blanket or something that we can put over this thing.  Being the city girl that I am I can't tell what kind of a snake it is, but at least I know it's a snake.

Judi runs in one door while yelling "what are we going to do about this." While I'm standing there giggling and asking her how we are going to get it out of the house,  Judi finds the rake and starts to push the snake out on the deck so we can get it in the back yard.  I'm yelling at Judi to give me my camera so we can take a picture of the snake in the house, while she is going crazy trying to get it out on the deck to get it in the yard.  All the while we are both laughing and saying we need to get rid of the snake.

Slowly but surely Judi rakes the snake from the living room carpet on to the deck and then on to the back yard where the snake slithers under the deck where it probably originally came from... who knows.

Anyhow, we get settled down and continue with our glasses of wine and how great we were about getting the snake out of the house. Judi is proud that she identified the snake as non-poisonous and I'm just happy that the damn thing is out of sight and I can get back to enjoying the wine and the afternoon.

Of course we have to call some one to let them about the treacherous adventure we have just endured.  So Judi calls daughter, Farida, but she's not home.  So Judi leaves a message, "You have to call me back right cause we've just had a snake, at least 10 feet long, in the living room."  Sure enough, Farida calls back within 20 minutes and asks what's going on.   As Judi tells her the story, the snake is now "at least 20 feet long."  Farida is kind of laughing and I'm shouting into the phone that is was really something to see your mother get the snake out of the house.  Farida decides that it's not a good idea for us to drive the 20 minutes up the mountain to show her the pictures and we giggle that we have to finish the bottle of wine and will show her the pictures tomorrow.

As we get back to finishing off the rest of the bottle of wine, we talk about how horrible it was with this now, "at least 50 foot long" snake being in the living room and how we managed to get it out of the house and on to the deck so we could push it on to the yard.

It's now getting toward sun down and time to get some of the scrumptious smelling spaghetti sauce that has been cooking all day in the crock pot onto a plate to feed our faces.

We finally finish off the last of the second bottle of Two Buck Chuck and get the dinner dishes into the dishwasher.  We are now ready to sit and enjoy the cool comfort of a Sierra early evening and relive the trails of the day when we were able to get a snake, at least 75 feet long, out of the living room, onto the deck and on to the back yard where it will live it's life, hopefully, without ever coming back into the house.

If you are interested in Judi's version of this day, check her blog at www.beautybreadsierra.com

Visting a 19th Century Southern Town

Friday was definitely the day for visiting history.  First it was the Crater of Diamonds, to find precious and semi-precious stones.  Then it was a trip to the historic town of Washington, AR and the state park to see how things looked from 1824 to 1889.

http://www.historicwashingtonstatepark.com

Washington, AR is a lovely museum village that preserves and interprets the history of the 19^th century town.  At that time Washington was a major commercial and professional center in southwest Arkansas.  It was the home of the Bowie Knife and a major stopping point for travelers heading down the Southwest Trail as well as serving as the Confederate State Capital of Arkansas from 1863 to 1865.  The town is being fully restored so that it shows what life was like in the mid 19^th century of the south.

As we drove into town we could see some beautifully restored building and some with scaffolding around it in the process of being restored.  There are many historic homes, buildings and museums that depict life as it was in that era.  At different times of the year, the town has tours given by various staff in period clothing.  The tours show the life of a thriving community in the 1800s.

We decided to have lunch at Williams’ Tavern Restaurant.  It opened in 1832 and is fully restored.  Currently it serves delicious home cooked Southern meals and desserts.  I had fried green tomatoes for the first time and they are delicious.  After a huge fresh ham and cheese sandwich on delicious bread, I indulged in fresh made peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream.  You just can’t stay on any kind of good eating schedule with food as tantalizing and tasteful as this was.  Along with the homemade corn bread and muffins and several glasses of sweet tea, we both managed to stuff ourselves to the point of wanting to take a short nap before we headed home.  Instead we decided to walk around the town a bit… it helped some.

We checked out the outside of the county courthouse and several of the homes in the immediate area.  In front of one of the homes was a horse and buggy that can be rented for a tour of the town.  During the year there are several tours and events depicting the town history.  We had just missed the Annual Jonquil Festival which was held this year on March 19-21.  Our waitress (whom we secretly call "Scarlette" only because we didn't get her real name) told us this year there was so much rain the festival was actually rained out.

There are also events that depict Civil War times; Frontier Days and what looks like a great event, Trial by Jury Dinner.  You have a delicious dinner at the Williams’ Tavern and then adjourn to the historic Courthouse.  There you take part in a living history drama where you judge the guilt or innocence of a man accused of an actual crime that took place in the courtroom.  They encourage you to wear 19^th century costumes or you can just wear regular clothing.  It sounds like it would be so much fun and wearing 19^th century costumes would get you in the mood.

The city also has several different tours and events for school children both during the school year and in various day camps during the summer. It would be a great way to introduce kids to the life and times of a very different era.

One of the events that we have booked on our calendar is Christmas in Washington.  From December 6 to 18 they dress up the homes and buildings in period decorations.  The whole town looks like it did in the middle 19^th century.  People dress in period costumes and there are carriage rides thru town to see the decorations. The even put big red bows on the horses to add a bit of festivity.

There is so much history in this area of the south.  We are definitely going to take in some of the history and enjoy events and places so we can see how others lived in different times. 

Diamond Hunting

Diamond hunting… now who’d-a-thunk that was possible just an hour from the house.  Well, Jenia and I found out on Friday when we went to Crater of Diamonds State Park a few miles from Murfreesboro, AR.  http://www.craterofdiamondsstatepark.com

Just the drive there was quite beautiful.  When I think of Arkansas I kind of think of shacks in the rural parts and not much else.  But when you travel the back roads, as we did on Friday, you become entranced with the beauty of the countryside.  Sure, there are the rural shacks and the cars scattered in the yard, but when you look at the other side of the road you see some beautiful countryside with huge trees and the occasional small stream. 

I commented while we were driving that this trip surely qualified as part of my blog of “back road traveling.” Fortunately the Garmin GPS took us on the round-about roads and that was fine with us because we got to see so much of the rural area. Had we taken the interstate and then the county roads, we would have missed much of the lovely scenery.

When we arrived at the state park, there were a few cars in the parking lot but not totally filled.  The day was great for scrounging in the dirt: overcast with a slight breeze and the temps in the low 70’s.  A wind-breaker jacket was perfect.  Of course I wore a pair of light-colored pants which turned out to get a bit dirty but nothing that washing won’t cure.

We rented a bucket, shovel and shifter and set out to find our diamonds.  Since about the early 1920’s there have been over 75,000 diamonds found at this volcanic crater which covers over 37 acres.  Along with diamonds being found, other semi-precious stones include amethyst, agate, jasper, quartz, calcite and barite… some of which we did find.

Sitting on the clay-like ground did nothing for my pants but did a lot for my psyche.  It was rather calming and stress-reducing to just sit there, look at the ground and shift thru dirt to see if we could come up with anything interesting.  We did find several fun things including a stone that Jenia turned up.  After discussing it with one of the resident geologists, we found that it was about 80 to 90 million years old.  Don’t remember the actual name, but the geologist called it a “swamp stone.”

The process is kind of easy:  you check a section of the ground.  Shift thru the dirt and put anything you want to keep in the bucket.  Then you take it to the water shed where you use the shifter to clean the dirt and see if you’ve come up with anything worthwhile.  You can take home as much as a 5-gallon bucket, on a daily basis, filled with whatever stones you want.

We sat / stooped / kneeled and filled our bucket with a few things.  It was fun at the water shed cause you got a chance to see what you wound up with and a chance to clean your hands after all that playing in the dirt.  I mentioned to Jenia that it would probably be more fun had we come there a day or so after a good rain.  Not only would the ground have been easier to dig in but we might have been able to get really deep into the ground and find something exciting.  But our day was well spent in any case.

After we cleaned our finds and took everything back to the park center, we checked out the rest of the area.  There is a small water park just as you enter the diamond center.  We thought this would be fun the next time we come back with Stasia.  After we finish digging, we can get into our swimsuits and cool off with some fun at the water park.  We are going to bring a lunch and enjoy the whole day with diamond digging, swimming and a picnic lunch.

Altho we didn’t find anything of monetary value, we had fun, found an interesting area to revisit and enjoyed a few hours of stress-reducing fun.

Contrasts of Spring

Spring is different in different parts of the country, obviously.  After reading my friend Judi's blog, http://www.beautybreadsierra.com about spring in the lower Sierra’s, North Fork, CA, for example… I wanted to show how things look in the south, Texarkana, AR, for example.

One thing I never knew about this part of the country is how the pollen sits on the ground, all over cars, and blows in an open window so it sits on the window sill.  I don’t think I’ve ever really “seen” pollen.  I always knew it was around when I lived on the east coast and also in So Cal because I would always have allergies at this time of the year.  But to actually see pollen is a bit on the strange side.  This is what it looks like sitting at the end of the driveway just before heading into the garage.  With the little dip in the driveway, water sits in this spot and this is dryed pollen just sitting there

Pollen is a fine-grained powder with just a bit of grit to it.  It gets over everything it settles on including, cars, people, pets, buildings, you name it.  When it’s windy, like today, you can see it swirling in the air… really something strange.  The other morning after I took Stasia to school, I thought there was a slight bit of fog in the air only to realize it was pollen. 

The trees and bushes in the area are blooming and expanding before your eyes.  Every day the trees seem fuller and the flowers in the back yard keep coming out… as well as dying off.  This purple bloom is lovely (no matter what’s it’s called which I don’t know); the bushes are gaining more red color and becoming fuller (and again I don’t know the name).

Along with all the blooming is some dying out.  The beautiful jonquils that had been blooming so full in the back yard are these puny things all shriveled and dying.  Guess they will return next year.

Spring in the south is quite lovely with all the colors and blooming bushes and trees.  I’m actually going to the book store and get something that will tell me what all this flora and fauna is called.  Then I can sound more knowledgeable.

Then, of course, with spring is Easter and the lovely young lady know as my granddaughter, Stasia, in her new spring dress.  The dress came with the required new shoes, sparkling flip-flops.  And naturally, the required candy and chocolate Easter Bunny.  Spring is definitely here in the south.

The Sound of Silence

Today I realized what the sound of silence is all about.  Stasia is out of school this week on spring break and the neighbors next door were out last week so she doesn't have anyone to play with, except me.

We have been spending the days doing a few things, like a 4 mile round trip bike ride to a park.  Yipes, I need to get back to that cause I was popped when we got home.  Anyhow, a lot of time we have been just sitting outside (me that is) while Stasia rides her bike around the street.  We live in a very quiet neighborhood where the only cars you see belong to people in the neighborhood.

Be that as it may, today we sat out for an hour or so and it was so quiet.  The only sound you heard was Stasia laughing at something she saw and the wind.  It's kind of a dank day cause the sun isn't out yet and the clouds are still around and the wind is blowing a tad more than lightly... and therein is the sound the silence.

It is so relaxing to hear nothing but the sounds of nature.  The birds are chirping and the wind is blowing and the trees are rustling.... the beauty and sound of nature.

This is a beautiful pine tree in the yard next door - actually two trees.  I recently read that the state tree of Arkansas is the pine tree.  And we have them in profusion all around us.  When the tree sways and sings in the wind, it is a beautiful sound of peace, comfort and, believe it or not, silence.  When there is nothing but nature around that sound is beautiful.

The surrounding trees in the area are pine and whatever... not being the nature person I have no idea what these other trees are.  This one right across the street has gotten buds so quickly in the past few days.  We've had nice temps, low 70's, and plenty of sunshine so everything is beginning to bloom and show it's spring fashions.

Actually this whole area is surrounded by pines and other lovely trees, all of which I have no idea what their names are.  Hmmm, maybe I need to take a class of flora and fauna in this area... could be helpful.

This tree next door is lovely and looks like it will provide a lot of shade to our next door neighbor's house.  I'm sure I could ask Mike what kind of a tree it is because he is very informative on some of the things in the neighborhood and he appears to be a gardener of sorts... unlike me.

So why does all this sound of silence appear to be important to me.  Well, it's so nice to finally live in a place where I don't hear all the sounds of traffic, people, trucks backfiring and just the general hustle and bustle of a busy, city life.  This is much more rural and quiet and just so peaceful.  


One thing truly interesting about this Texarkana area, be it Arkansas or Texas, you can drive about 20 minutes in most directions and you are in rural country area and believe me there the sounds are really silent.

Spring has Sprung

Finally, it seems like the south, at least this part of the south, spring has decided to come visit for a while.  After what seemed like a very long winter, in other words, temps in the 20's, 30's and 40's most of the time, it's  become a bit warmer.

According to those in the know, like the neighbors who have lived in this area most of their lives, this has been a very, very cold winter.  Not like some of the others with terrific ice storms with lots of wind and even some snow, but cold nevertheless.  For a transplanted west-coaster, it’s been exceptionally cold, rainy and cold and even cold.  I think you might be getting the picture.  But in the last week or so, the sun has been shinning and the weather has been warmer.

Take this past Sunday for example.  The temps were in the low 70’s and the sun was shinning… just my kind of weather be it here or in So Cal.  We decided to check out one of the local parks we have seen driving by.  Of course we couldn’t find the correct entrance but an entrance we did locate - that allowed us to park and walk.  It seems this is a favorite park of walkers, people wanting to have lunch in the sun, and families with young kids who could play on the swings and slides and just generally run around and have fun.

 

Stasia, Jenia and I did the short walk from where we parked to the main part of the park where the playground equipment was located.  It is really a very nice park with lots of trees, a really nice .8 mile walking trail and lots of benches and tables for lunches or just sitting watching people and nature.  Of course there is a small lake with ducks and that will be great for later on when we want to feed them the bread we are gathering at the end of the loaf.  Jenia took the whole walk and said it was very refreshing.  For me, just the short walk we did pretty much did me in.  The good knee is OK but the other one is really causing problems.  To me it would be a better trail to bike ride cause it has little hills going up and down.  However, I’m not sure it’s wide enough to handle walkers and bikers… maybe during the week when there aren’t so many people walking.

 

For me, one of the lovely parts of this being spring is the awakening of the flowers and trees.  We have some lovely flowers in our back yard (which is large enough to take a nice stroll around) and some big trees.  I’m not sure what these flowers are… I think jonquils.  Around this area, one of the first trees to bloom is the dogwoods. They really are beautiful… but I have a feeling very messy.  I remember in CA in the spring one of the nicest trees and the one I loved the most was the jacarandas.  Their flowers are a beautiful light purple in color but boy are they messy especially when the flowers fall on your car.  Be that as it may, the dogwoods are incredibly beautiful. 

As I’ve been driving around town the last week or so, I’ve noticed all the beautiful trees and plants all coming to life.  I remember growing up in the Boston area, I always loved spring and fall seasons the best.  Spring was such a renewal of life with trees and plants coming back to life after the first few warm days.  And that’s what it’s been like here in the south.  A lot of the different types of trees still need their leaves to sprout, but the buds are there and just waiting for some more warmth, sun and of course a little rain to give them a good start.

Pictures of the Mini-Mardi Gras

Here's Jenia and Stasia with just a few of the beads from the local parade

And here's what some of the things that are thrown from the floats

How the floats look passing by

Just a few trinket for my neck - cool hat

When arms get in the way, it's hard to see the floats.  

Who Dat was a common theme for all the parades.

And this is only the beginning of the parade. So many more beads and so much fun.

Honestly, the only thing I had to drink at this point was

water, and lots of it.  Some of the things that are thrown

are panties and one has to wear those on your head.

How about some gymnastics on the top of the levy next to the Mighty Mississippi 

This is what the back of the Yukon looked like near the end of the parade

I kid you not... people do all kinds of things for these parades

It's always helpful when you get a boost to get closer to the float for the beads

Even the front of the truck gets decorated.