Raindrops on tulips

Don't panic.

I know where my towel is. Do you?

Perfection

At my house, just now.

Wait .. WHAT????

At the risk of sounding glib and tempting fate, my household has remained largely unaffected by the financiapocalypse. The combination of frugality, discipline, and sheer good luck have left us sitting pretty and feeling quite secure in these troubled times. And while I do realize that the slightest change in the winds of luck could have pushed us in an entirely different direction, I have little to no sympathy for individual consumers who have lived beyond their means for the past several years, and are now - finally - having to pay the piper. They made their beds with the overpriced Bajillion-count Egyptian cotton sheets that they so "desperately" needed, and now they can pay for them, with interest. C'est la vie, et ce n'est pas mon problème.

As it turns out, though, it might become mon problème. Consumers like me who use their credit cards wisely, and pay the balance in full every month, may soon feel the clammy hands of the credit card industry dipping into their pockets. To quote Edward Yingling, the Chief Executive of the American Bankers Association: “Those that manage their credit well will in some degree subsidize those that have credit problems.”

The "free ride" enjoyed by people like me, in the form of reward programs, may come to an end. I'll be the first to admit that I've made out like a bandit on the rewards program offered by our LL Bean Visa card, and I have the closet full of clothes and the vast collection of tote bags with free monogramming to prove it. I think it's safe to say, however, that the rewards program was more of a carrot on a stick for me, and that LL Bean comes out ahead in this particular equation. If the banks start punishing "dead weight" consumers like me, who pay no interest or fees, I'll simply stop using the bank's services, and I'll put my money under the mattress. I have no intention of bailing out greedy, undisciplined conspicuous consumers, or the greedy, undisciplined banks who subsidized their shopping sprees.

And to Mr. Yingling, I must issue this warning: Don't blame me when Maine's economy collapses and we run out of tote bags. It will be entirely your fault.

Country living in glorious technicolour

Prince Edward County, Ontario, May 2009

Powerful, dangerous, and beautiful

Lake Ontario, May 2009

Flying jewels

Bird on a wire

The hummingbirds are back, and I am filled with joy.

A walk in the woods

The kidlet and I returned to one of our favourite spring haunts today. The trails at Wellesley Island State Park are, simply put, the best science lab and the best gym a homeschooling family could ever hope to find. We find it to be most beautiful in the spring of the year, when everything is waking up again after the long, cold winter.

The Ospreys, whose regional population was nearly decimated in the middle of the 20th century, is clearly thriving in the region now. One swooped in front of our windshield as we crossed the Thousand Islands bridge this morning, the closest we have ever come to this bird of prey.



After dozens of excursions to the beaver pond, we finally spotted the busy engineer at work, and were treated to its iconic slap of the tail against the surface of the water.



The Canada Geese appear to be settling in to their nesting grounds, and may have already begun to lose their flight feathers. This one made no effort to fly away as we walked past its section of the marsh.



No sooner did I wonder aloud if the garter snakes were awake yet, did the first of a dozen rustle through the leaves and taste the air.



The chipmunks entertained us with their Napoleonic posturing.



And, to our utter, utter surprise and delight, we saw the season's first ~



~ wildwood flower, ~



~ butterfly, and, ~



~ A BLUEBIRD!!! SQUEEEEEEE!!!!

They're back!

Some of my favourite birds are back, much to my delight!

The delightful harbinger of spring, ready to make her nest.

The Great Blue Heron was patiently waiting for the pickerel.

The ospreys have returned to their nest near the Lennox Power Generating Station.

And away they go ...

Great minds think alike

As I have previously mentioned in these pixellated ramblings, I greatly admire the President and the First Lady. I was especially impressed by Mrs. Obama's initiative in planting a Victory Garden on the South Lawn of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and I was charmed by the fact that the President and the Secretary of State held a meeting at the picnic table adjacent to Sasha and Malia's swing set. What a breath of fresh air, eh?

The other day, as I was blissfully hanging the laundry out to soak up the sun, I mused that it would be awesome if the First Family started using a clothesline as well. Surely, if anyone deserved the God-given luxury of sleeping on line-dried sheets, it's our President and our lovely First Lady.

It appears that I am not the only person who is so obsessed with clotheslines. There is already an online petition to ask the First Family of the United States to dry their clothes on the White House lawn during a one day photo op. This symbolic act will send the message to America and the world that our nation is ready to regain energy independence.

I urge all of my friends to go and sign the petition. Let the fresh breezes continue to blow through this great land.

This is as it should be

As a Canadian citizen married to a (now retired) American soldier, I have often lamented the vastly different ways in which the media of our respective homelands have covered the deaths of soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. While the Canadian media puts the relatively rare casualties of Operation Enduring Freedom at the top of the newscast and often breaks into regularly scheduled programming to cover the repatriation of fallen soldiers at CFB Trenton, its American counterparts were prevented from doing the same for the fallen soldiers of OIF and OEF.

Until now.

President Obama directed Secretary Gates to review the ban on media coverage of the repatriation ceremonies at Dover Air Force Base. Now, with the approval of family members, the media is able to observe and report about the return of our fallen heroes.

The first hero to be honoured in this manner is Air Force Staff Sgt Philip Myers. May he rest in peace.

Vee-Dub Love

From the archives ...



My Great Aunt Margaret is holding me in this picture. That's my big brother giggling in the foreground. To the right is the front bumper of my parents' 1966 Volkswagen Beetle. It was the first car I ever rode in.



My brother and I in front of my parents' 1965 VW. My Dad tells me this was a 1500 Varient. I have no clear recollection of these vehicles, but I believe this must be the genesis of my love for German engineering.

Best. Birthday. EVER!!

For the past several months, we've been contemplating the replacement of Wolfgang, our 2004 Jetta Wagon. Wolfgang has served us well over the years, but his warranty was close to expiration, and his transmission, like many of his ilk, has been cranky and ill-tempered of late.

But what to get? The choices around here have been plentiful, to be sure. There has been a plethora of gently used, late model, higher-end cars and SUV's on the local lots. None of the choices have really wowed us, though. There are also some great new cars on the local lots .. but all of them, it seemed, were grey, silver, or white. White is an inappropriate choice for an area which receives snow for at least five months out of the year - unless one likes to be camoflaged in the winter, of course! And grey and silver are just too boring for our tastes. Yes, I am a pampered princess. Why do you ask?

Last week, the Mister and I were discussing dream vacations. The idea of driving through central and western Canada on the Trans-Canada Highway, and then south to California, was floated and received with much enthusiasm. The conversation then turned towards what type of vehicle would be most suitable for such a journey. We immediately agreed that the new diesel Jetta Sportwagen TDI would be perfect. As it happened, our local VW dealership had a couple of them on the lot, but they were the most hideous, boring shade of gray imaginable. Blech and ptooey and all that childish, pampered princess stuff!

And then .. and then .. my blog heroine and the object of my serious girl crush, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, aka The Yarn Harlot, bought a red Jetta TDI sedan. Well, that did it for me. I needed a red TDI Sportwagen, period, end of discussion.

The Mister, who was undoubtedly thrilled that I finally made a definitive decision for once in my life, went out and test-drove one of the soul-crushingly grey TDIs on Monday. He was impressed by many of the improvements that Volkswagen has made to the Jetta Wagon, but he didn't care for the highly-touted automatic transmission. Well, said the friendly VW salesman, we do have a TDI Sportwagen with a manual transmission coming to our lot tomorrow. It's red, by the way.

By staggering coincidence, the red TDI Sportwagen arrived on the lot on my 40th birthday. Can you guess what I got for my birthday??



His name is Amadeus. Isn't he lovely?

There is a riot of purple ..

.. erupting in my south-facing flower bed.




Nice, eh?

Hitting all the right notes

Throughout the embarassing epoch that was and is The Great War on Terror I have often lamented the great disparity between the sacrifices borne solely by the military and its families, and the blissful oblivion of the rest of the country who were distracted by American Idol and the shopping sprees encouraged by the (thankfully) former Commander-in-Chief.

While not directly related to her stated mandate to support military families, the First Lady's endeavour to plant a vegetable garden on the White House's South Lawn strikes exactly the right tone for our troubled times. This will be the first time since World War II, when Eleanor Roosevelt oversaw the White House Victory Garden, that veggies have been grown at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

It's still a little early in the season to be turning the soil in our raised beds. There was a sheen of frost on them this morning, after all. But soon enough, we'll be growing our own lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, beans, and whatever else strikes my fancy this year. Maybe I'll try to get some raspberry canes growing in one of the beds, as the First Family will be doing.

How fortunate are we, in this country, to have such an awesome and tuned-in First Lady? I can't wait to see what she does next. But in the meantime, I'm off to do a little workout with some free weights. I need to emulate the First Lady if I want to earn my right to bare arms this summer!

HA!

Enough said.

Loving this new lens!

I hope that my faithful readers - all five of you - will forgive the recent silence on the blog. I picked up a whole bunch of night shifts over the past few weeks, which is good for the pocketbook, but bad for the brain, the body, and the blog.

The brain and the body benefitted greatly from a nine hours of deliciously decadent, uninterrupted sleep last night. Aaah, the wonders of 3 mg of Melatonin. Don't leave home without it.

The blog will now benefit from a new stash of photos, taken with the monster lens that I bought myself as a reward for picking up all of those extra shifts. Here are a few of the three hundred shots that I took at the Rosamund Gifford Zoo in Syracuse, NY, today. Enjoy!

While the coffee brewed

Who is that crazy lady?


Oh, that's just Rose. It's perfectly normal for her to go outside, at dawn, in her bathrobe.


Check it out! Rose bought a new lens for her camera!




Well, let's help her get her money's worth! Excelsior!