IT’S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS

I needed a sewing machine needle threader and stopped by Country Cloth in Angels Camp. Christmas kits for avid quilters are quick and easy. Ginger puts them together, her own ideas, and it makes for a quick satisfying project. But, not for me. I already have too many projects on hold. I enjoyed looking, even so.

I liked this kit, too. Maybe in my old age. I keep saying that.

I LOVE this. Three wise women would have asked for directions, arrived on time, helped deliver the baby, cleaned the stalls, made a casserole, brought practical gifts and then there would be PEACE ON EARTH. My daughter-in-law keeps this on her table during the season.

Her tree is one she and Ken bought from a cut your own tree farm. It is beautiful. I’ve been locked out of my small storage building where I keep my Christmas, Halloween, Easter, decorating stuff. Yesterday, I removed the door. I have little mini plastic trees, but I haven’t gotten them up yet. I’m still doing cards. And, I practically faint at the price of Christmas trees these days. Memory can do a number on you.

But, Christmastime is to fun to stay home. I met my friend Marilyn for lunch at Firewood. She came up from Discovery Bay and had a hankering for Fish Tacos. We met a fascinating woman RVer, 77 years old, who travels on her own or with friends, or grandchildren, all over the country on her own. Her name is Kathy Walsh and I got her phone number. Can’t wait to hear more tales of her travels. Anyway, I think Marilyn was a bit embarrassed because I wore this funky hat, and wanted my foot in the picture. I wore the hat because my hair was wet and it wouldn’t behave.  My foot? Just being silly. Marilyn is a great writer and has a published book, but she is not interested in writing another.

Make good the season. Its okay to be silly. Ciao, my friends.

 

TIMER

California’s most devastating fire, the Yosemite Rim Fire left millions of board feet of trees lying on the ground. Our local district representative,  McClintock,  pushed to fast track getting that lumber to market before it disintegrated. He pointed out that it would provide jobs and money to locals, open up the mills again and put loggers to work.  Good idea.

In past fires, smaller ones in our county, locals brought out volumes of wood for profit. Volunteers cut up gobs of it for firewood for seniors or people in need. Some of it got to local mills. Some disintegrated on the ground which isn’t all bad, since fire blackened areas recuperate faster when the dead timber is left in place, or at least part of it.

Guess what?   SPI went in and machine removed that timber very quickly. It is now sitting on a dock in Stockton to be barged to Oakland to be exported to China and Japan.  So much for opening local mills. There were people who yelled it wouldn’t happen when McClintock was making his “heroic pitch.” They were right, of course. It is all about big corporate profits, not about local communities.

I love trees and wonder if man has a cog in the brain that dictates let no living thing go untrammeled by we superior beings. The little cog shaped like a dollar sign. It started early, with the giant redwoods. Falling the biggest and most magnificent tree to prove they could do it. The wood unusable because they had no saws or equipment big enough to  handle trees of such size.

Now that we know forests are carbon sinks and necessary to help halt global warming, it doesn’t seem to discourage decimating private forest and allowing lumbering on a major scale in National Forests, too. The U.S. Forest Service has sold out to lumber interests all over the country, contrary to what they say.

Politicians see money and workers see job preservation.

There is a 501c3 organization trying to hold up Forest Service Ethics, made up of some Forest Service Employees. Obviously employees serving see a need for this organization or it wouldn’t exist.

Homes to critters.

Used as fence posts, here the barbed wire has grown into the tree. Some cottonwood trees in plains states are cut, put into the ground immediately, take root and grow into a living fence.

Enjoy them while you can and remember to protect these wonders of nature if you have an opportunity. I burn wood, but I hate cutting trees and only burn what gets damaged by storms and fits in my stove. I rarely have a fire to clear brush or dead wood, only twice in over 30 years.   I leave most of it on the ground to naturally decay. Many others do the same, or hire a chipper.