they have just left.  It's newly dark,  only 7 something, earlier than usual.    They load themselves up…kids finding their shoes,  collecting their little screens of whatever,  their papers,  Alyssia strapping Emrie into her car seat,  the dangling musical flamingo who we call Flemie,  dangling and playing her car seat song…a sweet song, really.  Tay…

the dumpster kitten.  In one moment an orphan.  In the next, a part of a Hill Story.  She was ready.  Completely ready.  As if she was born for it.  I didn't want to bring her.  Most because of Tazmeena who is old and being in a cat carrier from N Mex to this point in…

many years ago, upon setting out for Oregon,  from Michigan,  setting out to create a new and different life that made sense,  sitting at a picnic table in a remote part of Glacier National Park,  wondering about what i'd done,  what i wanted to do, an old woman appeared and came to sit with me.…

there is a small seasonal stream.   Water travels.  I can't say for sure in which direction yet, i think from North to South?  It runs  along the other side of Carefree Way,  the little semi private road that you see in the pic that finally got edited into the last post,  the little road…

  they work,  They work with the rented Auger,  drilling holes for fence posts.  Under the shallow earth here,  there is granite.  The auger cannot do granite.    Those holes that meet granite early,  need to be chipped with shovel and sometimes a pick axe.  Its slow going.   there was hope, because of aesthetics,…

trees.  trees.    just the word for them, trees.   tree.  maybe tree could be Emrie's first word?   If i show her enough?,  say it enough? that tree in the pic yesterday, the splayed out Live Oak,  ……these along with some kind of giant Pine that i don't yet know the "name" of,  …

this is the Morning Tree.  just out from the little table here where i wake up.   Alyssia had put this pic here for me almost 2 weeks ago now and i didn't post it because it wasn't "right".   On the camera,  it is a magnificant image…of burnished copper/bronze brilliance….that same kind of magic…

ys   Ok. Where did the pic go? -Here it is…and then it wasn't.   but yesterday.  while fumbling around. i see that it is in Draft.  but then,  somehow there suddenly was no mouse.   So wait for my tech support to arrive and while Emrie feeds herself banana stars,  the mouse is retrieved from…

7  days a week.  week days mostly in the afternoons till dark,  weekends, all day.  They work.   A steady pace.  Making decisions as they go,  finding sometimes that things need to change,  changing,   all at a steady pace.  Every day.  Here, they are hauling this tarp stacked with poison oak vines.  They are…

in 1972,  i took Jenny, in a backpack,  same age,  in Ann Arbor, to the Take Back the Night rally.  In 1989,  took Alyssia, same age.   I watched Alyssia moving through the crowd,  mesmerized.   She chose to carry Emrie and i'm glad….Emrie was startled by the noise, the sea of people.  I watched…