OK, well this is going to be another one of those brain-salad riff type posts where I am all over the place, but if you follow or if your brain works like mine, you might find the connections somehow. Or not. It starts out one direction and then ends up in another.

To begin with generally safe topics like the weather, we are in that fake-out kind of almost-spring situation at the moment. There was snow, then there wasn’t. It warmed up to fifty for a little bit, so we all got some Spring in our step. The earth began to give off a few teaser whiffs of fertility to come. A few days of that had you looking out the window to see these sunny, intensely blue skies, walking outside in only a light sweatshirt with the expectation that would be more than adequate – only to be pierced by icicle cold mega-gusting winds that turned your hair into Albert Einstein-head and whipped the scarf right off your neck. A week of warmth is predicted – we are probably entering into that “Spring of Deception” phase, although the truth is that you never know what might occur. We could skip spring almost altogether and slip right into summer. It has happened before.

Since I last posted, the dinosaur draped on the fence down the street was changed out of its winter wear and had been dolled up for February. Like the other kids in the neighborhood, I wonder how they will be dressing it for March.

Speaking of kids, I just have to share a bit of a grandparent-y thing. No, it’s not photos of their cute faces in my phone (formerly in my wallet – showing my age here), but it’s just the stuff of moments that give you a tiny taste of Happy, and we sure could all use some Happy these days wherever we can grab it. So here is my slice of it; a little clay cat by a granddaughter. And one of the boys gifted his brothers Lego images of themselves. Sometimes it’s just those tiniest of fragments that can make you smile. File this one in the Senior Musings category.

Moving on into the house, a couple of my indoor plants decided to bloom after not doing much of anything and mostly being neglected, which has lent to anticipation of outdoor blooming to come.

Meanwhile, around the Urban Porch there have been little pokes of hopefulness emerging.

The birds have become more vocal. The regular gang of House Sparrows are gearing up for their annual spring orgy. A few crows have returned to the area and are busy setting up housekeeping somewhere in the tall pines back beyond the yard. One or two have been visiting the Crow Tree again, which is nice to see. The other day there was one perched on the pinnacle while a flock of starlings adorned the branches below, as if subjects to crow royalty.

I continue making the weekly Sunday Dutch Baby. Last weekend it was Blackberry-Black Walnut, and it was extra delicious. I used black walnut extract instead of vanilla for a different experience, along with chopped walnuts and some super juicy blackberries. Light or golden whole wheat flour was substituted for white flour. Milk, butter, fresh local eggs, and I don’t add any sugar to it, as you can put whatever sweetener you want on it afterwards. Since I’ve never mastered the art of photographing food, all I can say is the photo doesn’t do it justice.

Since we are on the topic of food for the moment (this must be the Foodie section), my neighbor turned me on to this rye bread that is extremely addicting. It contains locally grown organic stone ground whole rye, organic sunflower seeds and flax seeds, maple syrup and sea salt. It’s the kind of thing where you keep going back for another small slice until you suddenly notice much of the loaf has disappeared. Great both toasted or not.

Speaking of eggs…….right now the price of eggs in this country has been a topic of dissatisfaction and dismay. So far I have been fortunate enough to have some connections to friends and neighbors to buy eggs from (or even have been gifted) for a while. Especially since there is rarely any meat in my diet, we have been blasting through eggs in this house. I think it is important to support local people. Even though the prices have gone up, they still have been selling them at a more reasonable cost than what is in the store right now, and I’ve been grateful for that.

There is a young mother I purchase from who loves her birds. In addition to raising her small flock for eggs, she makes all sorts of organic products and home remedies to sell. In a small way she reminds me a bit of what I used to be like in my late twenties and early thirties – a time of not being very economically advantaged but certainly more ambitious – growing a vegetable garden, canning, tapping maple trees for syrup, sewing, quilting, and making my children’s clothing – although I didn’t raise chickens. She is often interested in some of the odd things I give away through our local Buy Nothing group, and I tend to choose her name more often because I like her. Recently that included a number of socks from my famous Socks of the Day collection (see Socks of the Day 1/18/23). I am slowly starting to release some of my Socks of the Day, as they have become overwhelming. But that’s another story.

In a good way, there is a flow of goods circling about. She has asked me to clean and save the shells from the eggs so she can grind them up and use them as calcium to add back to the chicken feed, so I have been doing that for her.

Now here is where I swerve off the track for a little bit. The other day I was rinsing out some shells for her and suddenly had this very, very old, sort of weird memory pop into my head.

Back in the 1970’s, my Then-Boyfriend and I had been dropping in to visit people we knew as we made our way back and forth across the country and ended up spending a night in Palo Alto in a house that a friend of ours shared with a group of people. I remember one of them was a published author, the others I’m not sure what they did, but I recall they were a friendly and welcoming bunch. They kept chickens in a shed abutting the house that opened out to a small suburban backyard. There was one feisty, slightly aggressive rooster. They fed us dinner, which included some kind of chicken dish. After the meal they fed all their table scraps to the chickens, including the leftover chicken.

I could not get over the thought of chickens eating chicken. Did they know what they were eating? (Well, apparently not, or if they did, they clearly did not have the capacity to have any moral thoughts about it). There just seemed to be something rather disturbing about it (to me, anyway) and I had to do my nerd research on it. While I have friends and neighbors who keep hens and ducks that they feed grain, leftover vegetables, compost and meal worms, I have never actually asked them if they feed them meat scraps. Chickens are omnivores, so I suppose it is possible. Chickens will eat a dead bird and under stressful conditions will cannibalize another chicken. Somehow I don’t think that my homesteading young egg-selling friend is feeding her girls leftover chicken, but when I get more eggs next week, out of curiosity I am going to ask.

As far as asking the old friend whose house we stayed at what her memories were, she sadly passed away years ago – way too young and in a tragic way. Thus, I’m thinking about eggs, and chickens, and time passing and people you know passing on – the “why” of it all – and how all those experiential pieces accumulate and add up to how we perceive life (this I guess would qualify as a Senior Memories part of the post.)

On another totally unrelated note, multiple times this month (including just now) I have picked up my phone showing the time at exactly 11:11. I am not one of those people who has any investment in 11:11, although apparently that is A Thing. I knew a woman years ago who was a little (OK, actually a lot) paranoid crazy about the significance of 11:11. I think she might have written a chapter in a book about it, along with some other meanings of signs and a few conspiracy theories thrown in. One of my sisters, who has psychic tendencies and generally gives free reign to the universe for guidance, is also into 11:11. It has always seemed a little bit “woo-woo” to me, but for whatever reason, I keep catching the time at 11:11. When I see it I think “Oh, there it is again,” but I haven’t accorded any real thought into what is happening at that moment.

Perhaps I am a bit like the dog that knows it is exactly 5:00 pm and time for his dinner. It doesn’t matter if he ate something as late in the day as 4:00pm, at 5:00pm his internal clock goes off to let him know it’s meal time and he’s in your face. Back to chickens for a moment, they can become accustomed to being fed at the same time of day, and if you don’t appear at that time they will make a fuss. Seems like my internal clock right now is set to 11:11.

Okay, so I just paused writing for a few minutes here and looked up some information about 11:11, since I’m talking about it. Apparently 11:11 is supposed to signify enlightenment, insight and intuition. Or that the Universe is reading your thoughts, which it is about to manifest into reality; that it is time to align our thoughts with our intentions. New beginnings. Or that angels are near. I’m not feeling it that way, at least not at the moment.( I’m not sure if The Universe would necessarily want to be manifesting some of the thoughts I’ve had lately into reality). Maybe something will happen or is going to happen (although something is always happening or always going to happen). I’m all in for more insight and enlightenment, and an angel or two could not hurt right now either. I’ll have to pay more attention.

Daylight Savings Time starts tomorrow (we spring ahead). I wonder if the time change will affect the egg production these upcoming weeks. This will definitely throw the dog off his schedule – as it always does – taking days until he regulates into the new shift. I wonder if it will throw off my 11:11 clock experiences too, altering it to 12:11?

~*~