Winning the Lottery

Something a bit different today ...

It's a poem I wrote years ago about my maternal grandfather.

It's a true story.

And it's a lesson that I often think of, when I've had a close call, when I've had a bit of good luck, or when I've had what seems like bad luck but is really nothing in the big scheme of things.

*******

Luck       

He was a small man, thin and slight;

Tough in his younger days, but

Frail now, from eighty years of living.

Perched on his heels

On the edge of a wooden kitchen chair,

Smoke curling from a neglected cigarette

Held between trembling fingers,

He gazed into the air,

Brown eyes bright and alert.

"You know," he said slowly,

"I've never bothered to buy lottery tickets.

"And I'll tell you why."

Grandad paused, to make sure I was listening.

I was.  He was a good storyteller.

Stories of his working life, mostly.

He was a coal miner,

Working shifts underground, in "the pit".

His level voice came again.

"One day, we were working the face as usual,

"Planting the shot to bring down the rock and coal.

"But the shot blew too soon.

"It blew boulders the size of a man,

"And I would have been killed, except

"The blast knocked me over, down between two rocks.

"When the noise stopped,

"And the dust cleared a little,

"I opened my eyes to see another rock,

"Balanced on the rocks on each side of me –

"Right over me, but not quite touching me."

He tapped the long ash from the trembling cigarette.

"There was just room for a small man under that rock."

A small man, thin and slight.

Slowly, he added,

"I had my sweepstakes luck that day."

Then he looked at me and smiled,

Brown eyes gentle and deep.

TED and Fred

Before starting this blog, I envisioned one of its purposes to be a platform for sharing some of the fascinating stuff I find on the internet.

Aside from linking to worthy blogs, that hasn't happened much. And after trying to write today's post, I think I know why.

It's not that there's a sudden shortage of interesting, moving, or funny stuff out there.

It's that I can't seem to form an original thought to comment on it all. If there's going to be brilliant commentary on the topic, it's going to have to happen in the comments section, by someone who isn't me.

Today I wanted to share a 2015 TED talk (video) by neuroscientist David Eagleman, who researches perception and brain plasticity. He's also an articulate, engaging, well-prepared speaker. His topic: Can we create new senses for humans? It's twenty minutes long, but seemed far less. And I learned a new word: umwelt. It is a weirdly useful word.

Anything to do with brain plasticity grabs my attention. Plasticity describes the ability of one area of the brain to take over the functions of another area in case of stroke or other damage. I first learned about the concept after my father's stroke, when I was trying to find everything I could about stroke rehabilitation. He was desperate to be able to walk again. Unfortunately, there were too many strikes against him in terms of damage done by the stroke, his general health, and available therapies, and re-wiring his brain to allow him to use his paralyzed limbs was not going to happen.

But that explains how I got to the TED talk. If you're interested, click HERE.

If not, you are welcome to look at these pretty things:

mixed deciduous and evergreen forest near my home

a dianthus, one of my favourite flowers in the garden, still blooming

lacework against a grey sky

another hardy soul in the garden - its leaves are turning purple as the weather gets chilly

the sky at dusk

wild berries along the walking trail

wild apples, also along the trail

our burning bush (Euonymous alatus, I believe)

after a rainfall

the butterfly bush is still blooming, but the blossoms are about one-third as long as they were in warmer weather

I hope the owner of this didn't need it anymore

Hope all is well in your corner of the world.

P. S. In case you wondered, Fred is my camera. (See title.)

Want To Know What Really Scares Me?

On Friday I promised to post a spooky photo today, because it's Halloween.

Are you ready?

Here goes:

neon yellow and neon green

Not scary enough? How about this, then:

They're like little headlights, aren't they? Not actually scary, just bright.

Still not frightened?

Maybe one of these will do the trick ...

a local graveyard when I was just learning to use my camera

ditto

harvest moon, a year ago

Oh, you're all just too sensible to be spooked, aren't you?

Time to get serious.

What could be more scary than this, I ask you?

Thanks, Pixabay. You always provide so much more than I expect.

That's right, people. Only 55 days until Christmas.

Sigh.

Enjoy Halloween while you can.

Do you celebrate Halloween? Do you go to a party? Do you dress up to answer the door to hand out treats? Do you hide in your basement with the lights out and eat all the candy yourself? Do tell!

More Fall Colours, and Black

So much colour!

More fall leaves; these were taken about a week ago.

 Since then, many leaves have fallen, helped along by the wind and the passing of time.

Some of the trees are half bare:

Some of them are completely bare:

... bare of leaves, that is ...

One of my favourite trees is showing its beautiful gnarled bones again. It was quite nondescript during the spring and summer, but look at it now!

 
The leaves in this puddle came from the tree reflected in it:

Some of the sidewalks are covered in luxurious carpets.

Close ups of some of the brilliance:

Another puddle; another reflection:

 Another look at a plant from my last post:

A big thank you to Steve from Shadows and Light, who got me on the right track to identifying it. He suggested Virginia creeper, so I checked Wikipedia and it turns out that this is false Virginia Creeper. The difference is in their tendrils: Virginia creeper has sticky pads that allow it to attach to trees or smooth walls, while the imposter can only grow through shrubs and trees by curling around and around them, as it's doing above.

Although ... it seems to be trying to adapt to this fence as well:

And what I thought was ivy on Big Leafy Critter ...

... on closer inspection is not ivy after all, but false Virginia creeper:

... and I'm hoping to get a full-length shot now that it's turned to red. I think I'll call it "Big Red Critter". Why mess with the formula??

I was also lucky enough to see this, mixed in with the leaves:

... and joining me in the little shelter:

I've been seeing this fellow almost every day now, in a certain spot along my walking route. In fact, he's been getting underfoot and almost tripped me on one occasion.

Good thing I don't believe in bad luck caused by black cats crossing my path.

Because I've got this one at home, too, and he runs in front of me every chance he gets:

... waiting ... waiting ... waiting ... here comes Donkey now ...

Speaking of black cats, it's nearly Halloween.

I've got a spooky photograph all ready to post on Monday :)

Have a good weekend!

More Fall Colours

Our fall is progressing quickly. I want to record more of our colours here before they disappear and the new season is on us.

This has been a beautiful fall, even more so for me because I am taking closer note of it all with my camera. It feels a little like I am storing away beauty like a squirrel stores nuts, to have a source of energy throughout the coming months of cold, snow and ice.

Where's a Cat When You Need One?

If you've been reading from the beginning of my blog about six months ago, you might remember this post, or this one, about mice that my cats have captured in the house and how they escaped with their lives (the mice, not the cats) (wait, that sounds like the cats died, but honestly, they didn't).

Well, it's that time of year again - autumn - when the nights get crispy cold and the days aren't all that warm either, and all Mother Nature's critters get a little nervous about the coming snow and ice and lack of food. The spiders and the mice seem especially worried, or at least those are the critters that seem to want to get in our house the most. The spiders I'll leave to another time, or maybe never, because my friend Chicken has a thing about spiders, and not in a good way. Although she does write hilariously about them, and it would be worth your while to read that link, if you haven't already.

Let's hope that this mouse story will be the one and only mouse story this fall, although it's early in the season, so optimism may be unwarranted. This happened a couple of weeks ago, but it came to mind again today when one of our cats was being extra inquisitive in the living room, sniffing around under the furniture. Cats are usually our early warning system for small intruders. He kept poking around, so I felt the urge to poke around, too, and while gingerly feeling under the coffee table (the kind that goes almost to the floor on all sides) I found three toy mice (one pink, one blue, one grey) but no real ones, and while I'm glad I didn't find a live mouse, I'm also hoping I didn't miss finding one.

While the mouse I set out to write about never actually got in the house, it sure seemed like it wanted to. My husband and I had just finished supper and were chatting in our den, which has a regular door with a sliding screen door opening onto the deck. We had the door open to air out the house a bit, because I may have burned something while cooking. Eventually I happened to look up, and there was a tiny grey mouse near the top of the screen door, hanging on for dear life and trying - I just know it - to find a hole, any hole, to get inside for some of what we had cooked. Even bad cooking smells good to a critter, apparently.

I wasn't too sure that there wasn't a hole somewhere big enough for it to squeeze through, so after admiring its cuteness for about a second, I hastened to shut the door, got my camera and went out the kitchen door to the deck. My husband told me the mouse jumped down in the meantime, and it was nowhere to be seen by the time I got outside.

Probably just as well. It might have run up one pant leg and down the other, like a mouse did to my father when he was a young man. He worked in a commercial hen house, and there were a lot of rats and mice around because of the hen feed, but still - the nerve of that rodent! Dad still shivered telling the story sixty years later, and from the way I felt just thinking about that mouse maybe being on the deck with me, I'm pretty sure I understand why.

This is not the mouse hanging onto our screen door, not even remotely. When I was searching for "mouse" on Pixabay, there were a terrifying number of snake pictures mixed in with the mouse pictures, so I gave up looking and picked the next mouse picture I saw. Thank you, Pixabay .. I think. Please sort your photos in a more logical way before I need you again. Pretty please?

 

Looking Up; Autumn Edition

The trees and shrubs are nearly at their peak of autumn glory here. They were just starting to turn colour when we were hit by the remnants of Hurricane Matthew on Thanksgiving Day. I thought the wind and heavy rain would blow away all the leaves, no matter what colour, but surprisingly they did not.

To balance out the winter/spring editions of Looking Up, here , here, and here, it's time to have a gander at glorious autumn:

Orange ...

Red ...

Yellow and still some green ...

What IS this colour, anyway?

And, finally:

Technically, I wasn't looking up to see this; it was at eye level because of the configuration of the walking trail. But it was so pretty, I had to include it. Pinky-red ... Reddish-pink? Brilliant. Eye-catching. Goes well with Grey.

Two more "up" pictures ("way up" might be more accurate):

There is an airport a little further east of us on the planet, and it seemed all their planes were taking off during my walk. At least eight went overhead within a half hour, and there were other, older contrails in the sky as well. The jets were clearly visible at the leading tips of their contrails, although they don't show up in the shot above.

These photos don't translate to a small screen as well as I'd hoped they would. On the Big Screen, a.k.a. "the sky", they were marvellous.

It's been rather quiet in my world over the past week. I have been trying to get out walking, and it has been painful and frustrating. The pain has been worse in my back lately; it's been coming and going, so I suspect a nerve is being pinched, which calls for further investigation, which delights me no end. That might be a tiny bit of sarcasm there. But finding the beauty in nature - and in man's handiwork as well - has been a distraction and a comfort.