one more reason

this is why i love where we live! you may think i am being sarcastic, but i promise you i am not!! meg and i each found one of these in the backyard yesterday!





the one meg found, the smaller of the two, was still pliable and tacky, as though the snake had just wrigglged out of it! they are really quite remarkable - intact from the tip of the tail to the rim of the mouth...how is that even possible? every scale accounted for, even the eyes are a glossy sheath of skin. wow.

i sent pictures to Vincent - my naturalist brother - and found out:

"They're both from the same species of snake -- the black rat snake (Elaphe obsoleta obsoleta), a subspecies of the common rat snake . It's a male and a female. The female is the longer, larger one, and her man is the shorter one. These two are making sure that there are no mice in your house. They are incredibly efficient hunters. And from the looks of things, they're probably both full grown... probably 5 or 6 years old. They're called black rat snakes, but they're rarely black -- they're usually a grey/yellow mottled colour. The reason that they live at your house is because:

You have bird feeders... birds are messy eaters... birds fling seed all over the place... mice come at night because there is free food (bird seed) laying all over the ground... the snakes follow the mice that follow the bird seed... and therefore you have snakes!

Rat snakes belong to the family Colubridae which are a family of snakes that kill their prey by constriction and crushing their prey. If you were a vole, you and your family should be terrified. As it stands, black rat snakes are totally harmless, totally neat-o, and they're diurnal (awake during the day), so you should be able to see them out and about on warm days. They're generally docile and probably won't bite if handled, and if they do bite, they have no venom. "

he is a handy brother to have around!

my pogo stick

hello out there! after painting sabrina's great room 2 lovely shades of green - don't worry, purple will be represented in the hall! - i came home to 3 unique things.

1. my heels hurt. not my feet, my heels. possibly from using them to balance on the steps of the ladder?

2. a dead female goldfinch directly under my kitchen picture window. so sad. maybe i shouldn't have windexed it yesterday.

3. a silver snake slithering (good alliteration!) across meg's foot while she stood in the grass of the backyard! not a small one, either. (the snake, not the foot or yard.)

busy bee

i will be spending the first half of this week painting my friend sabrina's house - pretty much the whole lower floor! i love to paint, and i love sabrina, so it's not a big deal, but it does mean that i probably won't be posting...when i get home, i will definately be resting! :)

i'll talk to you later - wednesday?

the doctor is in

after many months of talking about it, i finally got my sheep tattoo yesterday! hooray! and a certain doctor (who shall remain nameless) helped me out with a numbing patch so that it wouldn't hurt so much! hooray! i know, i know... you all think i'm a wus.. .well, surprise surprise! of course i'm a wus! :) so thank you, nameless doctor!

it is a beautiful rainy day here in durham, and my husband is taking a much needed personal day to recover some of his altitude...so he is going fishing in the rain. good for him! i hope he catches many fish, and does not catch pneumonia!

happy friday!

the sunny side of the street

hello out there! for the first time in many, many days, i woke up to inner sunshine this morning. i feel like there's been a shift in my inner landscape, and it's a good one. i have been trying to walk out of darkness for a long... long... long time, and maybe this is the first day in the clear blue of the sky! oh, God, may it be so!

i hope your inner landscapes have sun in them today, too!

final draft

many thanks to my baby brother, who emailed me all the sheep pictures he and i had looked at months ago in a search for the perfect sheep tattoo! they caused me to call curtis back to the 'drawing board' (or in his case, macromedia fireworks) and finesse my sheep until it was a little less dog-like. so, for the second time in as many days, how do you like my sheep?

bees!!

ok - this shouldn't make me happy... but it does. there are a group of 4 young, burly type guys out surveying behind our house. they do this every fall, and every fall i hate it. i feel infringed upon. this morning, as i have been drinking my coffee, i've noticed something...those 4 big boys are running away from what i can only assume is a hive of bees! i also assume that these are the bees that drained my hummingbird feeder repeatedly this month, so they are strong and mighty from all the sugar! these foolish boys have cut down a small sapling and are waving it at the bees from, oh, maybe 6 feet away? keep going! that will help, surely! oh! there they go! run, boys, run! i wish they would take the bees as a sign from God and leave the whole thing alone. go away! i realize they are not here to bother me (the boys, not the bees), but they carry machetes! and they are scruffy! and they are hanging around, basically, my backyard. it offends my girlish instincts for self-protection. needless to say, i am rooting for the bees this morning.

on a different note, 'it's not like painting a wall'. these are the wise words of advice from my husband, after i came home from a night of ministry feeling somewhat unsure. he reminded me that it's not a concrete effort. oh, how i wish it were! :) i did not see the wall change it's color last night, but God speaks even when i do not hear it. and it's about his satisfaction, not mine. so... c'est la vie. i will leave it to God.



on yet another different note - meet sparkles, my sheep. this is the tattoo curtis designed for me, and i am going on thursday to get it! hooray! those of you who know me well will know what sparkles is for... those of you who don't, well, you can just appreciate the cuteness of the sheep!