23 May 2005 ... Progress Report

The Petunias are getting quite carried away in my basket full of flowers. I counted 13 Petunias blooming yesterday... and 17 this morning... and more on the way! Pretty!

And there are tiny little wildflower babies in my garden. Yay. I noticed them Friday morning, and then Friday afternoon, it hailed. Ack! Stop that you big mean cloud!

It's okay, there are survivors... The hail was tiny and it came down for less than a minute.

I worked some more on my closet boxes. And found my field guides. I've got birds and trees. I immediately looked up a little sparrow-looking bird with a dark hood that I've seen hopping around in the parking lot, and immediately found him on the first page! Oregon Junco.

The trees are a lot harder to figure out. Just outside my window is a Sweet Gum, you can tell by the brown spikey balls that are still hanging from the tree. The oak trees are either California Black Oak or Oregon White Oak. (Not very good at this identification thing yet!)

I finished yet another book, and decided to get serious about searching for my commonplace book. I opened up the last two book boxes, and nada. I thought for sure? hm. okay. A couple small boxes on the shelf, maybe I've not opened those yet...

Old computer crap, old papers I have to go through, starting to get nervous. But of course, the commonplace book is in the very last box! Yay, then I spent over an hour writing... listing the books I've read and looking up the quotes I had noted.

It's the quotes that makes my commonplace book so interesting. I just started the current book, so there are just a few pages done in it... but I love to page through the commonplace book that I finished.

The quotes are just passages in the book or story that catch my attention. Sometimes they make me laugh out loud. Or they seem to sum up some life-truth succinctly. Or they piss me off. Or whatever! Here's a little taste for you...

"It's a good night for looking." Axel gazed at the Moon, his mouth wide open, "It's the biggest, best universe in the whole world!" "Bronte's Egg" by Richard Chwedyk

One comes to the great masterpieces of the past, expecting some miraculous illumination, and one finds, on opening them, only darkness and dust and a faint smell of decay. After all, what is reading but a vice, like drink or venery or any other form of excessive self-indulgence? One reads to tickle and amuse one's mind; one reads, above all, to prevent oneself thinking. Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley

Throughout these and other ordeals, Dr. Bone treated her captors with contempt, and never ceased to protest her innocence. She is not only a shining example of courage which few could match, but also illustrates the point that a well-stocked mind can prevent its own disruption. Solitude by Anthony Storr

If we settle for the puddle of knowledge in which we sit, we shall never know the majesty of the sea and it's endless possiblities. The Nine Modern Day Muses by Jill Badonsky

"It must be inconvenient to be made of flesh," said the Scarecrow thoughtfully. "For you must sleep, and eat and drink. However, you have brains, and it is worth a lot of bother to be able to think properly." The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

Cows were not put on this earth to give us their flesh, nor even their wisdom. However, it makes more sense to take the latter rather than the former. The Pig Who Sang to the Moon
by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

"The sun is coming! And the sun is a star! And it's spinning through space! And we're spinning through space around the sun! And -- there's stuff to do!" Axel in "Bronte's Egg" by Richard Chwedyk