Author Archives: lifelessons

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About lifelessons

My blog, which started out to be about overcoming grief, quickly grew into a blog about celebrating life. I post daily: poems, photographs, essays or stories. I've lived in countries all around the globe but have finally come to rest in Mexico, where I've lived since 2001. My books may be found on Amazon in Kindle and print format, my art in local Ajijic galleries. Hope to see you at my blog.

Feed the Birds?

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Feed the Birds

I‘ve always preferred to see birds feeding off natural sources in my garden: flowers, trees, plants—(please click on first photo below to enlarge the photos and to read the rest of this tale🙂

Then, my next brainstorm was that the somewhat leafless plumeria tree next to it would be a great place for a hummingbird feeder. I had one that generous housesitters had bought a few years ago but that I rarely filled, so the first step in this plan was to fill and hang the hummingbird feeder,
then to go buy bird seed for my alternate two ton bird feeder!
Morrie was the first to express interest in the project.
Something in that bag of seed interested him,
and he even offered to help me open the bag.
I scattered the seed and retreated to my desk, hoping to see the first birds descend.
Then there was Morrie,luckily, to join our family, for a few years later, Frida passed away..
First a sniff,
then a taste, during which he brushed a few sunflower seeds off onto the stones of the deck.
then found he had no problem at all reaching the seed up on its original level and soon both seemed to be grazing on bird food!!!
Side view of felon
all too soon, they had exhausted the supply of bird food
as quickly as they had scarfed down their own food fifteen minutes before.
But when I returned to the house, the scavengers returned, hoping I’d left more provender.
Morrie, a stubborn little guy, returned to his former feeding place.
I watched from inside the house as Morrie discovered a new potential source of nourishment–the hummingbird feeder! Luckily, it is just out of his reach, but I doubt any hummingbirds will investigate it too closely with him as watchman.
Not quite the feeding frenzy I had expected to watch. Definitely a new species of bird. The End.

In a nutshell: the little dog stands on his hind legs to examine the high stone slab sculpture for evidence of seeds. I’d put them out the morning before for the birds, thinking the three-foot-high stone sculpture placed 20 feet away, but directly in front of my computer table, would be perfect for observing birds. Wrong! Within ten minutes, every single seed was gone–completely eradicated by the vacuum cleaner tongues of Diego and Morrie. On to the next plan! I try again, after having fed the dogs. This is the result. (If you click on the first photo, you can see the photos in a larger form and read the entire story.)

 

 

Window on the World

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For the Monday Windows Challenge.

Ducks in a Row: FOTD, Dec 10, 2019

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I love these little buds that look like a bunch of ducks or a gaggle of geese in a row.

For Cee’s FOTD

Monument

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Monument

A cow is screaming across the arroyo. Fireworks explode in honor of whatever saint’s day is being celebrated this week, drowning out her loud shrieking bellows. It is twelve hours later that someone finds the cow, her horns caught in the wire fence. Too late to save her, they do the kind thing and a single shot rings out. When her owner leaves her for the buzzards, a stench settles over the neighborhood, and we pay a man to cover her in quicklime. It is months later that someone ventures up to find a perfect effigy of the cow—jaws open in her last cries of agony. In mistaking concrete for quicklime, the man we paid to do away with her has instead constructed her monument. Immortalized on that mountain where few others will ever see her, I often see her in my dreams.

For dVerse Poets, we were to write a story of 144 words or less that made use of the line about the screaming cow above. You can read the stories others wrote on the topic by hitting the dVerse link above. This one is exactly 144 words. True story, by the way.

Thunbergia with Spike

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For Cee’s FOTD

Big Hair and Histamines

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Big Hair and Histamines

“These Kleenex are too flagrant, they always make me sneeze,” she said as she added yet another wadded puff to the pile in the trash can beside her bed. “Why in the world would they add perfume to something people with allergies blow their noses into?”

“Yes, it’s a fragrant abuse of medical logic,” I said, but she didn’t get the joke. She was too miserable and so I just let her malapropism slide by as I had so many times in our long friendship.

The air in this season of new growth was full of pollen. We indulged our roommate by keeping the windows of our college quad closed at all times and we had long ago relegated all our perfume to bottom drawers or trash cans. In those long-ago days of “big hair” when there was no such thing as unscented anything, we took the calculated risk of using hair spray, but only by climbing out onto the fire escape, pulling the window shut behind us and waiting a good five minutes before entering the room again. And this only if our allergy-prone friend was not in the room.

Occasionally, she caught a whiff of us as we passed in the game room or dining room, but she didn’t mention it. We knew that look, though. Only vanity won out over our need not to irritate the nasal fibers of our good friend. No one would miss our perfume, but in terms of hair, no girl dared to defy the norm. Bubbly, big, smooth and helmet-solid—that was the hair-fashion decree of the sixties.

Prompt words today are flagrant, indulged, quad, calculate and air.

Christmas Preparations

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Click on first photo below to enlarge all and read captions.

Christmas bags are easier to stuff than Christmas stockings.
Assembling the ingredients for green bean casserole…not as easy in Mexico! No waterchesnuts.

For the Friendly Friday Photo prompt: Xmas Preparations.

Shaving Brush Bloom: FOTD, Dec 8, 2019

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I have driven under the huge tree that sits in front of Pasiano’s house thousands of times over the past 18 years and only today did I notice that it is a shaving brush tree! One of my favorite blooms and the only one I’d seen before was in La Ribera in Baja California. I stopped the car, backed up and got out to take a few shots. Amazing what we can overlook so close to home.

Click on photo to enlarge.

For Cee’s Flower of the Day prompt.

Wardrobe Change

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Image by Ivan Dodig on Unsplash. Used with permission

Wardrobe Change

Her sequined dress, once fabulous, has lost its shape and glitter.
It lies beneath her window, reduced to roadside litter.
She might have been more charitable—donating the gown.
They could have earned a pretty penny for a dress of such renown.
But she needs its story ended. She could not bear to face
another woman’s body and another woman’s face
pictured in the tabloids in that gown made just for her.
Its memories running through her mind, quickly, in a blur.

Trips down long red carpets, the flashbulbs and the fuss.
Minding how she sat so its gathers would not muss.
How its beauty cut into the soft mounds of her flesh.
The sharp knives of its edges. The fine silk of its mesh.
The fusing of those opposites—the pleasure and the pain.
His gentle kiss, but how, at last, he left her once again.
The lovely words once spoken that turned out to be just script.
The dress tugged off in anger. The dress she’d pulled and ripped

to be free of all it brought to mind—the glamour and the pain.
Best it be diminished by harsh sun and rain.
She flung it out the window, not caring where it rested.
Rid of it, would painful memories be bested?
Covered up by road dust, bogged down by stormy weather,
sequins floated gutters, each weightless as a feather.
Threads loosened and seams parted as the garment ceased to be—
its combined pains and pleasures consigned to memory.

Prompt words today are charitable, litter, fabulous and dress.

Floral Fan: FOTD Dec 7, 2019

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IMG_4344 2Loved the fan shape of this little cluster of kalanchoes.

For Cee’s Flower of the Day.