Monthly Archives: October 2024

Sunset over Lake Chapala, for Whatsoever is Lovely, Oct 23, 2024

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Tonight’s sunset over Lake Chapala, taken from my back yard.

Whatsoever is Lovely

More Hammock Adventures

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Guess who finally found time to swing in the hammock again and guess what she found????

You guessed it, another caterpillar spinning its cocoon in the blanket I pulled out of the  chest to throw over me! (You may recall my first encounter I describe HERE.)  Forgottenman just had to try to determine what kind of caterpillar it was, with no success. I then was driven to trying the same and the closest I could get to a possible solution was a silkworm.  At one stage, their cocoon looks like this, only white. But the caterpillars look a bit alike and many years ago Neill James did import mulberry trees and started a silk industry here. I don’t believe it has survived, but perhaps one of the moths did!  Forgottenman thinks I’m wrong and he’s probably right. Nonetheless, here is a silkworm photo I found online:

And a silkworm.

Here is an excerpt from THIS story about Neill James, an American expat who came to Ajijic in 1943 and who had a huge influence here.

Don’t Pick the Daisies (For Sadje’s Spring Flower Prompt), Oct 23, 2024

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See poem below flower collage. (All photos by jdb. Please click on first photo to enlarge all.)

Don’t Pick the Daisies

Please leave those daisies in their wrapper.
I find them just too pert and dapper.
I prefer a floral decoration
prone to promote excitation.
I’d choose something a little queer
to be used as a boutonniere.
Yes, I agree, daisies are cute
but aren’t held in good repute
for inclusion in bouquets exotic.
They aren’t sufficiently chaotic.
All their little petals are spread
in order. They are too well-bred.
I like my flowers with frisky sproutings,
curling ‘rounds and sticking-outings––
birds of paradise well hung
with orange feathers and bright blue tongue.
I admit, I am a binger
on passionflower and wild ginger,
on orchid and bromeliad.
Daisies I find a little sad––
too Doris Day and sixtyish.
A bit of odd is what I wish
for when I choose to pick a flower
for an arrangement or a bower.
Give me heliconia,
proteus or begonia.
For an occasion that is formal,
daisies, dear, are just too normal.

For my mother Pat who liked her food plain and her flowers exotic. XOXOXO

For Sadje’s prompt: Fall Leaves or Spring Flowers

The Meeting Place, for MVB

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The Meeting Place

What are you waiting for––
divine inspiration?
Do you think Shakespeare waited for his muse?
And if your muse came,
would you even recognize her?
Will she wear long white flowing robes?
Will she play a lute or will your voice
be her instrument?
Will she whisper in your ear or speak to you
though your mind?
And will she be beautiful or will that even matter?
As you age will your muse age with you
or is she perpetually young?
And what about wisdom?
Will it be your own acquired wisdom or hers
that will make your words cut like a knife
though the soft texture of days,
that will give them purpose
when those around you
fail and fall
into the magnetic cloud
of forgetfulness or boredom?
What if as you sit there
waiting for your muse,
watching reality TV
or doing crossword puzzles,
your muse is waiting for you
in the keys of your computer
or in your pen point?
What if she has been lolling all these years
in the pages
of that lined notebook
sitting empty on your shelf?
I keep telling you
that every day I see her
pass behind you
as you pine for her,
always looking
in the opposite
direction.

The MVB PROMPT today is meetings.

Cozy in My Skin

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IMG_3144


Cozy in My Skin

I seem to fit my life now, I’m cozy in my skin.
No matter how far out it goes, I always fit right in.
When I gain a pound or two, my skin grows out to hold it,
and when my skin begins to sag enough for me to fold it,
my flesh grows out to fill it in. It’s become symbiotic.
That state of growing me out to my skin’s become hypnotic.

When encountering fresh pastries, a fugue state might ensue.
A box of chocolates empties, though I only ate a few.
Whole pizzas vanish in thin air, to my midnight grief.
They left the box behind them, this culinary thief!
The thought of uninvited guests is not very nice.
I make much of the mystery. Could it be dogs or mice?

Perhaps once more the kittens have discovered a way in
and at night when the lights go out, pursue their lives of sin.
Feasting on my pizza. Gorging on my pies.
Surveying my milk chocolate with their greedy feline eyes.
I spin a pretty fantasy, but the truths of this tale
are revealed to me each morning as I step upon the scale.

For the Writer’s Digest Prompt, a Cozy Poem

Wilted Beauty for Cee’s FOTD Oct 23, 2024

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For Cee’s FOTD

After the Garden Tour, October 19, 2024

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Click on first picture to enlarge all photos and view as gallery.

Sam has requested photos of the garden taken after my two week intensive spiffing up period to get ready for the garden tour. My garden was one of 6 viewed in the Raquet Club as a fundraiser.  I published some photos earlier. You can find them HERE.  Above are today’s photos.  The tour was on the 19th but it takes me longer to recover from work binges these days and I spent yesterday mostly in bed. Today I feel fine!!!   Three of these “arrangements” actually are memorials to three pets who have passed away in the last 22 years. Their ashes are buried beneath.  See if you can guess which ones. There is one more memorial up on the dome in the 6th photo from the end .You can see Frida’s effigy sitting on the top of the dome which was her favorite spot for the 13 years she lived with me.  Inside are her ashes.  Since i put her up there, two of the neighbors have done the same. I guess I am the neighborhood influencer…;o)

For Cee. Oct 21, 2024. FOTD

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For Cee’s FOTD.  Hoping she will soon be well and back with us, sending us flowers back!!!

Please Read This!!! Frightening!!!!

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Heather Cox Richardson,Oct 19, 2024

A number of people telling me we needed a night off had almost convinced me not to write tonight.But then Trump spoke at a rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where he told a long, meandering story about golfing legend Arnold Palmer that ended with praise for Palmer’s… anatomy.

He went on to call Vice President Kamala Harris—whose name he deliberately mispronounced—“a sh*t vice president. The worst. You’re the worst vice president. Kamala, you’re fired. Get the hell out of here, you’re fired. Get out of here. Get the hell out of here, Kamala.”

As Trump’s remarks got weirder and weirder, the Fox News Channel cut away and instead showed Harris being cheered at a packed, exuberant, super-charged rally in Georgia.

Trump’s speech comes on top of his repeated backing out of interviews and his bizarre appearances. Last night, his advice to an audience in Detroit to vote took its own wild turn: “Jill, get your fat husband off the couch,” he said. “Get that fat pig off the couch. Tell him to go and vote for Trump, he’s going to save our country. Get that guy the hell off our— get him up, Jill, slap him around. Get him up. Get him up, Jill. We want him off the couch to get out and vote.”

Trump’s performances over the past few days seem to confirm that the 2024 October surprise is the increasingly obvious mental incapacity of the Republican candidate for president.

It seems clear that a vote for Trump is really a vote for his running mate, Ohio senator J.D. Vance, who if he becomes president will be the youngest American president in our history. At 40 years old, he is two years younger than Theodore Roosevelt was when he took office in 1901 at 42. Vance would also be one of the least experienced presidents ever. His 18 months in the Senate has given him only slightly more experience in office than Chester Alan Arthur, who succeeded James Garfield in 1881. Arthur was a political operative who had never held elected office at all before becoming vice president.

I’m going to leave you tonight with my friend Peter Ralston’s image of Maine’s Atlantic puffins, in whose expressions I am reading the consternation that speaks for me right now.

I’ll be back at the wheel tomorrow.

[Image by Peter Ralston, “Four Razorbills with Puffins.”]

Notes:

You can find Peter and his wife Terri at the studio in Rockport, Maine, or at www.ralstongallery.com

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-arnold-palmer-comments-ibaffle-1971769

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The Numbers Game #44, Oct 21, 2024. Please Play Along!!!

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Welcome to “The Numbers Game #44”. Today’s number is 165. To play along, go to your photos file and type that number into the search bar. Then post a selection of the photos you find under that number and include a link to your blog in my Numbers Game blog of the day. If instead of numbers, you have changed the identifiers of all your photos into words, pick a word or words to use instead, and show us a variety of photos that contain that word in the title.

This prompt will repeat each Monday with a new number. If you want to play along, please put a link to your blog in comments below. Below are my contributions to the album:

Click on first photo to enlarge all photos. Then click on the arrows!