yucca pods

Some proof, perhaps, that I didn't spend all day at home with cats, Christmas tree, imitation birds and catnip bananas ... the intricacies of yucca seed pods are quite something.  By the middle of the afternoon, it was warm enough for a good walk.  On the other hand ... who knew that yucca pods are quite so hard to photograph, without them appearing like a dark brown glommy mess.  Black and white improves things, sometimes ... 

 

the allure of the catnip banana

Ah, Mothy.  Not tempted by the birds on the tree, she's happily gnawing on a catnip banana.  And the plum pudding dancing cats are progressing in their festive way across the top of the fireplace.  That instrument of torture isn't a thumbscrew, but is a rather fine press that I bought out of a garage here in Santa Fe - oh, I think twenty years ago, and I'm dismayed how little I've used it ...

 

some progress

Grammy finds the red birds resistable - mostly.  That doesn't answer the question about why the white ones are, for him, so much more - well, bird like.  So now we have (scarlet) birds, and lights, and tomorrow, with a bit of luck, I might complete the tree's decoration.  In the background ... Moth, looking vaguely sceptical.

 

more white birds

No, I won't be posting images of these white birds every day - but Gramsci's assault on them as tree decorations certainly has launched a million possibilities.  And yes, it was a wonderful sunset.  And what else was I going to photograph today?  The inside of the trailer where I waited while my car was being serviced?  The endless graduate admission dossiers? (obviously not the latter - but they are what have been most prominent in my line of vision all day ...)

 

on (not) decorating the Christmas tree

Decorating the Christmas tree didn't go as well as I'd hoped (quite apart from the fact that none of the strings of lights seem to work).  Last year, we brought the tree inside - we decided that Gramsci really wasn't a kitten any more, and could be trusted.  And the red birds were all over it, and he ignored them.  This year, I went full-on avian camp, and bought thirty six more white birds to match the scarlet ones.  They were irresistible!  Grammy tried to pat them off their branches, pulled out some tail feathers, looked as though he was going to climb into the entire tree ... This clearly wasn't going to work.

So I rehomed the white birds onto the withered stalks of the morning glories outside, where they are now probably confusing the real birds (or not - they're still happily splashing around in the heated bird bath), and are glowing interestingly in different lights.

 

our house truly has warmed up

One burrito, and one donut.  It's not just that the underfloor heating is now working ... it's that the house has passive solar heating - a posh way of saying that it faces south and gets really hot when it's sunny, especially in winter when the sun is relatively low in the sky in relation to the windows.  These two aren't complaining.

 

varied produce

So ... what to buy at the farmers' market today?  Some turnips? (we didn't).  Some scallions?  Yes.  Some spinach? - seen in the basket beyond.  Definitely yes!  Even though it's winter, there was fresh produce aplenty - we had spinach salad for lunch, and I had arugula sprouts for dinner, and I'm eyeing the newly dug nobbly potatoes, which I'll have with some of the Camino de Paz Montessori School goat cheese - an agriculturally-based school that's somewhat precarious, at the moment (they suspended admissions for last academic year), and admittedly I know nothing about the actual education there, but I've appreciated their cheese for years and years.

Or maybe some herbs, or cyanotypes of herbs?

Or maybe a poem?  Not so easy to cook for lunch, though.