Nowruz, lichen and doll beds

Happy Nowruz if you celebrate. It's Iranian, but not much to celebrate there  this year. Still marking it in the hope that its concept -- a new day, an end to cold and darkness -- comes true there. Everywhere, really.

Yesterday's walk, finally the wind dropped enough, yielded all kinds of spring. The flock of mourning doves, until last week flying in a group, were flying in pairs. I heard the shouts of the redwing blackbird, and the hammering of woodpeckers.

And I saw this

Beautiful crust type lichen, like red gold hair shining in the sun, spread over the downed  tree. My searches have not yielded a name for it beyond red lichen (!). 

But the State University website yielded this valuable information. See the end.

 I took the pictures to preserve as much as I could of the tree trunk in case that helps identify it. Can anyone help? 

On the way home here's a cheerful little sign of spring

And I came home to afternoon tea with toasted cinnamon soda bread

And my sock in progress. I think of Rose every time I pick it up. 

Halfway through Lent and winnowing continues. Here's the current offering

Twin doll beds, 12"by5", seen here one head, one foot, which came via Freecycle some time ago with other doll furniture. 

The Dollivers took the chairs and the garden bench but rejected the beds. 

So here's hoping good dolls, deserving dolls, not dolls fighting with each other, get these nice beds...

Happy day everyone and thank you all for thoughtful responses to my question about spiritual practice and the brain. This is a great group of friends, much valued by your humble blogwriter.

Battling the forces of darkness on another front 

Jigsaw puzzles, small treasures, chocolate,

 First, to blogistas who observe 

The Freecycling yesterday was a love fest end to end. Such happy and courteous people. All the surplus plants gone and more than one recipient said they're happy in their new homes! Chairs to a very nice person who never fails to get back to thank. Anyway, very encouraging.

Probably more soon. Meanwhile the last piece of the San Francisco street scene goes in 

And the completed image is the one I'll use for Freecycle to show potential takers it's complete.

Yesterday's walk yielded beautiful lichen

And a discarded bluejay feather

There were local thunderstorms, but here just rain with sunny intervals. 

And the front path was getting narrower with sedum, chrysanthemums and spiderwort spilling over it.

So I pruned back the bits catching people's ankles and have a house arrangement

In the afternoon, time for a little something, and I hadn't got around to making banana bread, so I made a  chocolate spread for afternoon tea

In addition to what you see on the counter, I added a drop of milk and a spoonful of confectioner's sugar. Worked nicely. And later last evening, a spoonful blended with a mug of hot milk made a late night hot chocolate drink. 

Meanwhile here's my knitting group

Well, if you don't count the gracious living room, the hats and the knitting of blankets for the troops, that is! Otherwise exactly the same.

Notice the hatless lady near the window winding a hank of yarn off the skein held around her knees. Probably the kids were at school, otherwise this was a classic kid task, holding the yarn and learning to move back and forward to make it easier for your mother or Gran or older sister or aunt, you could be called on anywhere, to wind.

At this period the guests,  even relatives, kept their hats on. My aunts would, in our house. Only the lady of the house went unhatted. And everyone hatted up outside the house, even to run to the corner shop. 

Evelyn Dunbar was more than a wartime illustrator. She was an acute realist social historian. She's worth looking up.

Happy day everyone, tend to our knitting, glad for the friends in PEI who came through Fiona, many thoughts for all our Florida blog and rl friends facing Ian 

Photo AC 

Lichen and wild daylilies

Cool and windy and grey yesterday with sun now and then, lovely contrast to the day before.

Here's a lichen that suddenly appeared on the fallen tree I've shown you before.

Here's either mating, male and female dragonflies of the same species, or battling for territory between different species. If anyone knows, please say. anyway a lot of circling and darting.

A few yards away, wild daylilies. 

We see them on roadsides, at the edge of woods like here, always a few days earlier than the cultivated daylilies.

I'm still very jangled about the eye situation, not helped by, every time I calm down, yet another text requiring information, most of which I already gave. And the dox being required by the HOA, who I think have assumed I have a new tenant, but I'm too tired to get into it!  Tiredness is my main thing going right now. 

However, art will save us all, so today was about using a calligraphy pen not in the way it's designed.

I love all the shades of color happening in the ink, depending on how it's applied. Even some flying white, that broken cloudy line beloved of  Chinese painters and calligraphers, except they usually do it with a fairly dry brush.

Happy day everyone, stay calmer than I can!

Vegtravaganza and red crest lichen

Roast vegetables on a sheet pan are my go-to at the moment.

Today baby bellas, fingerlings, onions, broccoli, celery. Old Bay seasoning, sprigs of Thai basil, tarragon.  425°f twenty minutes, turn them over, another 20 minutes.

Three meals.  

Cool sunny weather, and one of my favorite sights, before it vanishes for the winter

See the tiny red flowers on grey green foliage? There's a big colony of this red crest lichen on top of my old gate. Earlier in the year there are crowds of the red flowers or whatever they are. I love the miniature world of lichen, and here are proofs that other people do, too

I follow a couple of lichen accounts on Twitter, a pretty niche interest, i think you'll agree.

The only issue is that mostly it's a world of scholars talking in lichenese, many terms I haven't got yet. But I love how they crawl around under logs and over rocks and up trees studying this world, and uploading great photos.  

I'm amused when people who've never ventured into Twitter talk about the dark side of it as if that's all it is. We who follow lichen, birding in the Orkneys, medieval manuscripts, animal sanctuaries, artists, writers,  select political news, and a few quirky folk, never encounter any of that. We do get a lot of value from it, though.

I'll miss my personal lichen colony when,  eventually the wood fences and gates are replaced with composition material.

But there are plenty of lichens and fungi in this damp, tree-rich region, so I won't run out.