Kathleen's Korner at TheStidhams.com

I stand, or I sit

or walk

I rest, or wait

or work

And doing, or not

I give thanks

for being here, or there

my thoughts my own, my body alive, my heart curious

about the morrow.

I am so excited about this…

Artist Trading Cards are something I remember hearing about years ago. Today a fellow babbler mentioned them. We are going to set up a trading session among babblers! I am going to coordinate it, and am trying to think of cards I can make.

I am filing this post under “Peace Making” as well as my usual Gardens and Life because it seems to me that this sort of thing brings people together — people of such diverse backgrounds, interests and lifestyles. Like the “penpals” of old, these small, cooperative sharing experiences allow us to learn and appreciate each other.

What a fun thing it would be, to see children and adults participating in more things of this nature. What if…

What if more people had the experience of being appreciated by near-strangers, allowed to express themselves, in fact encouraged to make something beautiful, with no reward other than receiving something beautiful in return. Or, if not beautiful, at least interesting!

If you are interested in participating, and I hope you are, please go ahead and contact me at my usual nickname, stidmama, at yahoo.com (my public email) with ATC or Artist Trading Cards in the subject line.

All over Western Washington, records are being set.  We have had three power outages in the last week, apparently all from waterlogged trees being blown over by the wind.  The most recent, yesterday, was on the little 1400-foot long road that connects our dead-end street to the rest of the peninsula…  luckily a neighbor allowed us to use their extra-long driveway (which connects both streets) so we could get M to his rehearsal yesterday.  By the time he was done, the crews had cleared the tree from the road and restored power.  But it was a good 7 or 8 hours before the lights came back on!

Seattle has had, as of this evening, 12.34 inches of rain, the normal amount to this point in the month is about 3.61 inches (data from KOMOTV.com).  The record for ALL of November has been 12.92 inches.  We are south and west of Seattle,  and typically get more rain than they do.  I haven’t been keeping track here.  It’s been a lot though…

The trees seem to be holding their own on our property, though I haven’t checked the ones down front — Most of the ones I would worry about are still small enough that I don’t think their bare branches would catch enough wind to tip them.  The quince, however, are still pretty leafy, and I am concerned that if enough of a gust hit them they might go over.

The medlar finally dropped all but the few leaves on its tips, so I am comfortable with it’s status.

The figs are done for the year, and the last ripe ones we harvested went bad in the fridge.  Oh well, we’ll have more in early summer!

The dogs would like it to dry out a bit again, even the galoot doesn’t much care for being covered in mud all the time!

And I?  If more of it were falling as snow in the mountains, I would be happier.  But though some of the ski areas have opened early (some of them last week), it’s been warm and most of the precipitation has been liquid, filling the rivers, channels, lakes and puddles instead of building reserves as snowpack.