Christmas in Saluda

This year the India half of the family was missing from our Christmas celebration in Saluda, but we were so thankful to be able to gather with the rest of the family in the mountains of North Carolina!

Daddy-O and BMa had done a ton of work getting the house winter-ready - installing new heaters, fixing the gas fireplace, replacing old windows and doors, and preparing the house for new insulation.  All their effort paid off as the house was nice and warm, and the fireplace was a cozy place to gather in the evenings.

Everyone worked to clear a new trail off the front of the house down to a magical rock - which provided hours of exercise and fun for all!

Daddy-O put up a slack line for the kids to practice balancing on, which was a ton of fun.

  Cousin Katherine taught the girls several circle dances.

 She also taught all the children how to finger knit, which later turned the Saluda house into a finger-knitting factory. (He eventually got the hang of it) :)

Katherine also showed the children many other cool things like playing the whistle and weaving bookmarks.

Four Little Miners

This chapter describes the Mole family, the second family in the order Insectivora.

Miner the Eastern Mole (Scalopus aquaticus)

He has a soft-gray coat with a pinkish / white tail.
He eats grubs, insects, and especially loves angleworms.
He works and sleeps when he chooses.
He tunnels around looking for his food.
He has tiny eyes that are barely useful.

Hairy-Tailed Mole (Parascalops breweri)
*Burgess calls him the Brewer’s Mole.
We decided to leave him out of our field guide since Burgess only briefly mentions him.



Townsend Mole (Scapanus townsendii)
*Burgess calls him an Oregon Mole.

He is the largest and handsomest member of the family.
His coat is blackish gray.

Star-Nosed Mole (Candylura cristata)

His nose has a fringe comprised of 22 fleshy points.

His tail is hairy and gets bigger in the fall and winter.

He is especially fond of river banks, swamps, and other moist areas.

Teeny Weeny and his Cousin

Burgess Animal: Chapter 19

Here is a Wild America short on the shrews.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FTOXMKC/ref=dv_dp_ep2

Teeny Weeny
Long-Tailed Shrew (Sorex dispar)
1. He is less than 4 inches long with mouselike feet.
2.  His head is pointed and his nose long.
3. He has tiny eyes and depends on his great sense of smell.
4. He is from the order Insectivora, which means he is an insect-eater.
5. He eats a lot and is extremely active!
Long-Tailed Shrew Coloring Page

Blarina
Southern Short-Tailed Shrew (Blarina carolinensis)
1. He prefers moist ground.
2. He is much thicker than Teeny Weeny and has a shorter tail.
3. He eats primarily insects, but also seeds and beechnuts.
* Free-Hand Drawing based on Plate 7 from Happy Times with God's Creation (Rod and Staff Publishers).



























Water Shrew (Sorex palustris)
1. He is longer than Teeny Weeny or Blarina.
2. He is a good swimmer.
3. He gets his food from the water: water beetles, tadpoles, minnows, etc.
*Plate 70 from Happy Times with God's Creation (Rod and Staff Publishers).

Morning Prayer for December 8th

Lord, help us to minister to others in ways that validate and authenticate them as fellow children of God.  Keep us from daring to assume that our good fortune is of our own doing or that our ability to serve is anything other than a gift.
Amen
- Common Pray, A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

Christmas Cheer

Songbird's Nativity Rocks.

Our angel broke as we were unwrapping it, so we made a paper star for the top.

And a treat for the birds.

Mice with Pockets, and Others

Burgess Animal Book Chapter 18

Midget
Silky Pocket Mouse (Perognathus flavus)
1. He weighs less than an ounce.
2. He is a good jumper and has pockets on the outside of both of his cheeks.
3. He makes burrows in the ground and gets along without drinking water (which is a necessity living in the hot, dry country).

Northern Grasshopper Mouse (Onychomys leucogaster)
1. He eats may kinds of insects, but he especially loves grasshoppers and crickets.
2. In the evening he makes a shrill whistling call.

Western Harverst Mouse (Reithrodontomys megalotis)
1. He is one of the smallest in the mouse family.
2. He loves grassy, weedy, or brushy places.
3. He builds his nest in a round ball of grass, and keeps the inside nice and neat.

Nibbler
House Mouse (Mus musculus)
1. He came to America in boats and is a great pest to man.

2. He lives in between walls of houses and often gnaws holes in them.
3. He eats all kinds of food.
4. Cats are his greatest enemies.

A Hidden Work

It was a mid-November day, and it was perfect Fall.  There was a crisp coolness to the air, but enough sun to keep my jacket off.  The morning had been spent suffocating indoors, weighed down by my own sin and the mess of the house.  We were fighting for clean, but I was being crushed by the weight of the mundane.  There is always cleaning to do, and new inspiration leads to new projects which necessitates new cleaning...  And then there is the daily bread, which once savored becomes dishes and sweeping. It is the grand monotonous cycle of daily life - and we are struggling to push back the chaos just enough for space to live and breathe. But all too often thriving is traded in for surviving, and I forget the point of the struggle.  The point of the struggle - or that there is something more than struggle.  I forget the hidden work that is being done in the dark.

The cleaning moved from inside to out, as the day of the slaughter was upon us.  All our plans for a helper for Hubry and a party for me and the children had been cancelled, and so it was a movie for the children in the attic and Hubry and I alone with the rabbits.  Hubry was doing the slaughtering and the dressing (which is really undressing) while I stood around with clean hands carrying things to and fro -opening  books and pushing play on the youtube video that was our guide.  And while I was not needed I swept the porch, washed the outdoor windows, scrubbed the table and chairs, and organized the pots.

It was in the organizing of pots that I was reminded of the work being done in the dark.  All around were pots half-filled with sterile soil - plants and seeds long having lost all signs of life, but never having been dumped out.  It is easier to cast the pots to the side and forget about them until they are needed in the Spring.  But this day was a day of busying my hands and being available to Hubry, so I set out to clean and organize all the pots - discarding the wasted soil and stacking them neatly on the outdoor shelf. 

As I was dumping out the soil from my white, ceramic pot I noticed three bulbs fall down to the ground.  They were Paperwhite bulbs which I had totally forgotten about, and they had been hidden inside the soil since last December.  Strangely, I noticed a bright shoot of green sticking up underneath one of the bulbs.  When I picked up the bulbs I saw that they were all sending out 3-4 of these beautiful shoots - shoots which spoke life after nearly a year of being left alone in a forgotton pot.

I was struck by the work that had been taking place inside those forgotten bulbs - work that was happening completely independently of my conscious acknowledgemnt of it.  And I was encouraged to see the hidden work which is being done in the dark places of my own heart - the very places which seem forgotten.