Saturdays in the Garden - Eagle Says It's Gonna be a Great Year

OUTSIDE

I felt like both the dogs and I needed a LONG walk this morning.  I feel like the colors in the bark of the adjacent photo represent the colors of this season so far - shades of gray.  But there are some touches of green and I was reminded this morning how important coniferous shrubs and trees are for wildlife.  We watched about 20 sparrows completely disappear into the interior of a yew shrub by someone's porch.  Perfect shelter, is what I was thinking. I'd like to go marauding all in that shrub and hold one of those birds in my mouth was what my dogs were thinking.  And then there was this lovely juniper which had fallen over but still retained its green foliage and blue berries that looked shocking against all the browns and grays.

I received as gifts this week from two different people  - 2 quart jars of homemade tomato sauce and a quart jar of homemade salsa.  In both cases they were using produce from their garden.  So awesome!  I look forward to a day that I have enough sunshine and room to be able to breezily pass along my processed produce to others.

Eagle Says: It's gonna be a good year.  Photo by Cornella Kopp

I had a birthday this week and over lunch, when I got outside for a bit, I saw a Bald Eagle soaring over the river below my office.  This is not a particularly rare sighting, it's a pretty major river and while mostly frozen in this stretch, eagles move up and down the river all winter. However, I decided to assign it mystical importance and thought it would be fun to see what this might portend for the year ahead.  According to whats-your-sign.com the first lesson that eagles symbolize is not to judge a book by it's cover.  The fact that an eagle is so large but can fly effortlessly symbolizes " not allowing the illusion of our limitations to ground us in our flight."

The second lesson I kind of love because whats-your-sign.com sort of skirts around saying flat out that the eagle's a scavenger (Bald Eagles are kind of glorified vultures really) and instead calls them opportunistic.  Which is true.  Fish is a primary food source but if there's a dead thing just lying there crying out to be an easy meal they are all over it.  The message here?  Work Smarter, Not Harder😊.  Pretty good symbolism to take into the next year of my life!

I also learned that in addition to Birthstones, everyone also has birth flowers.  Mine is the Narcissus.  I think the lesson here is that I must embrace my self-absorption.  I can totally do that.  I do call a little bit foul on whoever developed this system though, because the birth flower for march is Daffodils.  Daffodils and Narcissus are basically the same thing.  The genus name for Daffodils is Narcissus sp.  The strongly smelling Narcissus we think of in December, aka Paper Whites, are a species of Daffodil.  So this whole birth flower thing was obviously not developed by anyone with any true plant expertise.  Or else they were just lazy.

Photo by Audrey

LIFE

So the holidays caught up with me this week on top of hectic crazy town at work.  I have three parties to go to this weekend - fun but sapping for my introverted self.  The real issue, though?  What should I be watching on TV??  I've been obsessed with my re-watch of Stargate SG-1 but I finished Season 8 over a week ago and haven't been able to bring myself to watch the Jack-less outer seasons.  I'm in the lull of mild depression that I get after finishing a great book too when nothing else sounds good.  If I could boil down my favorite shows they generally have a mix of genre, comedy and drama and have a subtle but gripping 'ship between two of the characters.  Anybody got any suggestions?  Particularly for shows I could mainline?  The last show I picked up new and got addicted to was Avatar: The Last Airbender.  That's what I want for Christmas - a new story to dork out over.

BOOKS AND BLOGGING

I finished Sabriel by Garth Nix this week and I wish I wasn't trying to finish out a challenge or I definitely would have gone to pick up the sequels.  The challenge I'm trying to finish is the Eclectic Reader Challenge and I am reading Wild by Cheryl Strayed, The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, an anthology edited by John Joseph Adams and I have yet to start Catch 22 by Joseph Heller.  I've also started (and am loving) The Thousand Dollar Tan Line by Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham. 

Also, stuff happened on the blog this past week.

SUNDAY: Sundays through the Stargate: SG1 Season 6. I really liked season 6 and it is kind of a last hurrah because while I like seasons 7 and 8 fine and there are some excellent episodes in those seasons, they are definitely not up to the standard of the seasons that came before.

TUESDAY: Top Ten Tuesday:  My favorite books read in 2014. 
WEDNESDAY: Review of The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani.  Both of the books I reviewed this week surprised me by being more likeable than I thought they would be at first.  This is a fun middle grade adventure story which plays with the conventions of fairy tales.
THURSDAY: Review of How To Tell Toledo from the Night Sky by Lydia Netzer.  Astronomers in love  - it's a lovely little quirky story.

Next Week on the Blog...

SUNDAY: Sundays through the Stargate: SG1 Season 7.  I will hopefully get this up tomorrow but it needs a bit of work and it is a busy weekend. 
TUESDAY:  The topic for Top Ten Tuesday is the books you wouldn't mind Santa bringing you.  I may do something a little different with this - maybe flip it around to the books I'd like to give folks this year but I'm still thinking on it. 
REST OF WEEK:  Will be kind of fluid.  I'd like to do a review or perhaps two of The Woman in White and/or Sabriel but it's also getting towards the end of the year and I want to start thinking about challenges etc... for next year.  So we'll see.

So how was your week?  Encounter any great books or TV shows or movies?