| The site you are trying to view does not currently have a default page.If you still experience the problem, try contacting the Web site administrator.Click Start, and then click Run.From the Help menu, click Help Topics.Click Internet Information Services.The Wittig Clan: All of Us!Request permission before copying text or photographs.I've been here for nearly a week, but it will take longer than that to get used to this stunning view from our deck.The hardest part about relocating my work from Meadow Knoll to Coyote Lodge (our place here in NM) is getting the computer set up and functioning.Bill has this nifty system of saving my data and email folders from my TX computer to an external hard drive, which I brought with me (along with the three dogs).Lady, our elderly black Lab, who has to be hoisted into the van.Wednesday (eleven hours), settled in on Thursday, shopped on Friday, partied on Saturday, and got down to work on Sunday, catching up on email and small writing projects.But I'm planning to blog regularly, now that I've figured out how to post photos.If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that's tough.Endless fussing with photos this morning, since I changed my photo program (the old one crashed) and had to figure out how to get the new one to talk to Typepad.November, when I need to be surprised by beauty.If I can get the heater fixed.So far, I've invested 14 hours in this repair project, with more to come.So we made the best of a bad deal.She's definitely her mother's daughter.Back at our computers first thing this morning.The mitts I'm knitting (for Robin) are of handspun alpaca yarn, from a carded fleece that my friend Jane (thank you, Jane!She said Dusk is a young female who had just had her first cria (baby alpaca) and was turning out to be a very good Mum.That's the kind of Mum to have, wouldn't you say?Boy, did I have a job getting this simple picture loaded.My photo program crashed this morning, and I've had to learn to use another one that's installed on my computer.I'm guessing at the little girl size, hoping it will fit somebody named Becky who lives in Juneau, whose mommy is named Sheryl.Claus to drop them down the chimney.Now that the blog tour is over, I'll try to get back to more personal blogging.Congratulations to the drawing winners (your names are posted here).There's one more post you might be interested in reading, especially if you're an author who is considering doing a blog tour some time in the future.Dani Greer and I chatted about blog tours and live tours at her Blog Book Tours blog.Doesn't this look good enough to eat?Honestly, this has been nearly as much work as getting in the car and driving around from here to there!Sure enough, about an hour after the robins, the wind picked up from the north, the leaves began to blow, and the cold front arrived, just in time for the dogs and me to have our evening walk in cool comfort.Warmest November on record, so far, I've heard.Going on is, after all the ultimate pleasure of our lives.The goldenrod has been gone for a couple of weeks, but while it lasted, the fields were painted with gold even more brightly than usual, because of the summer rains.The goldenrod market perked up when the plant was discovered growing in great plenty in the American colonies.Learning that goldenrod sap contained a natural latex, Thomas Edison, that relentless inventor, selectively bred the plant to increase its latex yield.Henry Ford made into a set of tires for his own personal automobile.Edison was still experimenting with his rubber when he died in 1931.His research was turned over to the U.Margarite sold lots of books.What a wonderful life I've had.Crystal fixed her post, so you can go directly there.If you want to read about Beatrix Potter's doll's house, that's the place to go.The drawing at Page 69 closes today at noon, so you may still be able to enter.Today, I'm visiting Julia Buckley's blog, Mysterious Musings, so you can pop on over there and see what Julia and I are chatting about.However, we forgot to post the URL for the drawing page for Julia's blog.For a full schedule of all the tour stops (lots of chances to win that book!Those Shakers were not entirely unWorldly.That's all I can say at the end of a wild, wild week that took me to Lubbock, Dallas, home, Austin, and home again.Ford dealership fixed the tire.Muleshoe on Bill's last trip to New Mexico.Who's dropping all these nails on Texas roads?In Lubbock on Tuesday, I talked to a goodly group of China's best friends at the Special Collections library.In Dallas on Wednesday, I got to spend the afternoon with my favorite high school English teacher, whom I hadn't seen for more decades than I care to tell you.On Thursday, I was one of several speakers at the Arboretum.And remind me, the next time I'm tempted to agree to drive 1200 miles for three events, to just.I've been telling you about just went public!This is a site that Peggy and I put together for Story Circle five or six years ago.If you've just read a book that you've enjoyed and want to share, we'd like to read your review.I've been plotting for a couple of months is about to happen, finally!I'm knitting the second sock in a mystery pair.This bristly beauty is blooming all across Meadow Knoll, turning the fields a brilliant purple.I'm not aware that this particular species (Eryngium leavenworthii) has had any medicinal uses.One of its cousins was widely used by the Plains Indians, though.Rattlesnake master or button snakeroot (Eryngium yuccifolium) was used as a sedative, and to treat veneral disease, snakebites, impotence, and intestinal parasites.It's said that the medicine men chewed the root, blew on their hands, and could then handle the snakes (it put them to sleep?We're not quite through with the pecan harvest, but Bill took time out to make a trip to Houston to see his mom and brother, and he's mowing today.In addition to the Lubbock event, I'll be at the Dallas Arboretum on November 1, but don't get too excited.For such an upscale event, Bill suggests that I find a pair of white gloves to disguise my transgressions.The weaving is going forward: I'm working on a sampler now, trying out some different yarns, just to see how they work.Thinking of some place mats with southwestern Indian motifs for the table in New Mexico.And of course, the writing.I'll try to blog tomorrow over at the Pecan Springs Journal, where I'm blogging the book.Cottage Tales Blog Tour, which takes place in November.For me, weaving is a solace, a retreat from computers and calculators and book galleys and business reports...Handwoven), that will be a bonus.Want to read a good book?Thanks for visiting Lifescapes.Writing a personal history raises
a lot of questions about how the process works.You are an integral part of that team."We keep each other alive with our stories.We also require for our health the presence of good companions.We live where we have made definitions, and in the process of making
definitions, we create a place in which to live.""The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the
universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction."Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough, to pay attention to the story."As you know if you've been reading this blog for a while, I've been thinking of finding a new blog host.The big day has finally arrived!You can read the new blog here.Please bookmark this new site.It has a different look, a different feel (for me, as a writer), and encourages me to see my blogging work (which is in a way like seeing my life) in a different frame, a new context.One writes in order to know why one writes.Sorry, folks, but sometimes you just have to know when to call it quits.Blogger and the new blog site, and will announce the move in a couple of weeks.Bill is tending about 30 pecan trees on our 31 acres here at MeadowKnoll, with four or five varieties.Since he doesn't harvest mechanically, these trees are not arranged in rows in an orchard.His theory has been that the native stock has a strong root system, and when a nut finds a place where it can happily germinate, put down roots, and flourish into a small tree, that's a strong indication that a mature tree will be happy and productiv there, too.The pecans will be ready by this time next week.There are pecan pies in our future!The cawing of a dozen or two of crows, who were talking politics among the pines on the New Hampshire hillside, affected me most agreeably.Below are notes in calendar order, top down, from my recent trip.This is actually a repeat post.Blogger ate my post, explaining that their system was down for "planned maintenance."Not only that, but Blogger still won't let me post photos.Peggy is looking into it, but in the meantime, no pics.If you know of a blog host that is easier to use, more reliable, and more stable (meaning: the host doesn't keep changing the software!I'd really love to hear about it.Today's big news: a cold front.Autumn is here at last, and Bill is starting to think about harvesting his pecan crop.The Culprit is Identified.Mystery of the Missing Goldfish) has been proven.We suspect that Snorkle is the same species of water snake that took up residence in the toilet in our guest house at the lake, frightening one of our guests into spending the night in her car.But the snakes live here too, I remind myself.Kansas City this morning.From Biography to Fiction: Writing the Life of Beatrix Potter.And the library itself is a treat.It was designed by Michael Graves, an architect I knew back in my university days, when we collaborated on a couple of academic papers.Manhattan from Topeka, across the plains and into the Flint Hills.Love a Mystery, a mystery bookstore in Shawnee LINK, sold books.And on Thursday, Bill and I are going to Llano, a small Hill Country community, for a library lunch.Everyone I know flails around, kvetchng and growing despondent, on the way to finding a plot and structure that work.You are welcome to join the club.My brother John lives in Florida, north of Orlando, where they had three hurricanes last year: he says he spent weeks getting ready for and recovering from the storms.And of course, the recovery is never complete, because the trauma is still there inside, tangled up with the fearful memories.One of the things I've done in the past week (with the help of webmistress Peggy Moody) is to set up a page on the Story Circle site for people to share their storm stories.Now, we've adapted the idea to storm stories.If you'd like to post, feel free.I've been trying to post a photo of those lovely sunflowers, but Blogger doesn't like photos this morning.This seems to happen far too often.But I also need to get to work.TV, I managed 1500 words in DAGGER.I've come up with a new idea and am seeing where it takes me.Artists pursue whatever excites them, groping sometimes, but always tantalized by the chance that next time they'll get it.This site is a member of WebRing.If you are not forward with in 10 seconds please click here. |
