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[Click the title Tangerine Dream: Love on a Real Train.]
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Sunday Thought: "When we tug on a single thing in Nature,we find it attached to Everything else."John Muir
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My first thought when I read this quote this morning was that Mr.Muir must have had a lot of sweaters unravel on him.
My second thought was that Nature is the one thing that helps me stay connected and grounded, if I wake up and the birds are twittering and the squirrels are chittering I can start my day feeling intact...When I was in California living on the Coast , I would wake early and listen to the Seals barking at each other on the Beach, they would drown out the waves.....
So how about you ? Is there Something in nature that helps you feel Connected ?
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Leaves are Changing...yet it is so hot and humid it feels like July.
This morning we have more rain and showers, it fell all night with sporadic storms.
I turned on Cspan- selfishly hoping for Pavoratti's Funeral ( hey we have had MANY funerals this year...why not...).
I am ready for fall, ready for Change. Ready for the Heat to leave, and I know folks out West feel the same.
I long for Leaves to change, the smell of apples, and jack O'Lanterns, and the smell of the first fireplace smoke on the air.....
Curling up with a good book, with a glorious old ratty sweater and thick socks, and some hot OoLong Tea, or just good Sunday Morning Blogging and waiting for the pumpkin bread to finish baking....
ENIGMA PUMPKIN BREAD:
Oven 350 degrees
2 Baking pans- buttered.
I can pumkin pie filling
1 cup sugar
1 cup flour
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 large egg (or 2 small)
half cup raisens ( optional)
1 tsp. of baking powder
Smidge of Pumpkin Pie Spice
Smidge of Nutmeg
Smidge of Ginger
Smidge of Cloves
half cup water
2 tablespoons Orange Juice
Mix til smooth, then pour in baking pans....
lightly zest an orange across the top....Bake for 30-40 minutes.
(makes fine muffins too)
12 comments:
enigma
First, you make me laugh! Did I confuse your site or something? on my site you identified yourself as enigma from watergate summer?
Anyway because of the screwed up weather here in the North East they say fall will be a month early.
It's funny but I love pumpkin bread and always raised my own pumpkin pies. It's been a while but I still have my own recipe and it is good. I always hand cranked my own ice cream too. Great combo!
John Muir may have been a closet Taoist.
As for our question about whether I feel connected to nature, well kiddo I live in Alaska, and am surrounded by the most beautiful mountains in North America.
My yard attracts rabbits from the neighboring woods, moose who come to chew the leaves off of my trees, and an occasional bear looking for a snack in my garbage. (I had to shoo one away last week after he knocked my plastic bin over.)
So yeah I am always connected to and amazed by the nature that crowds the edges of my life.
i keep begging you to stop sending me your weather- but your insistent, sharing nature keeps sending it along :) the pumpkin bread sounds delicious- it will hopefully soon be donut season for me. hubby loves my flat donuts. perhaps i will share the secret one of these days :)
I'm assuming a smidge is a little more than a pinch.
I guess at my spices too and it always seems to work out. The bread sounds wonderful. I use orange marmelade and juice in my sweet potato casserole so of course it would work for pumpkin.
Afterthought
No leavening except the egg?
Granny: Thank you I forgot- baking powder- 1 tsp....thank you....so I corrected that...A Smidge is a really big pinch...enough to flavor...
Betmo: Hmmmmmm donut season...oh how I would love some donuts...and yes, you keep getting Our Leftover Crappy weather..I am sooo sorry...
Gryphen: Now see, that is so interesting- MOOSE...I have only seen Moose once in my life and I think they are so fascinating...kind of like cows, I guess....I bet they eat alot of leaves...foliage...( closet Taoist...that was very funny)
Patriot: On different sites where there are different people hanging out I have been trying to put enigma4ever from Watergate Summer, beause people would backtrack my name on the comment and then find 6 blogs- so it seemed like I needed to be a little more helpful- I got some emails from people complaing about it- so I aim to make things easier...so no I didn't hit my head...too funny....now when are we going to make some ice cream...???
I love pumpkin bread, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin pie, even pumpkin mousse, but I do not bake much anymore (only when a blue moon falls on the twelvth of never) -- that's what the Great Harvest Bread Co is for. Our local one is very good & donates their leftovers to a local homeless charity called Share and Care.
Nature does connect us all. I appreciate that it can't be intellectualized. Oh, you can write beautiful poems & even take lovely pictures, but nothing beats just getting out & experiencing glorious nature firsthand.
In my previous So Calif home, I loved listening to the loud croaking frogs in a little creek behind our house all summer. It was the best nighttime music to fall asleep to. Here in my current desert abode, nature is laid bare, exposing what is underneath all your green hills & trees. I find it inspiring, though many people think it's too harsh. It does make the occasional sighting of hardy desert animals very precious. I have yet to spot a desert tortoise, but I know they're out there. There are signs posted everywhere warning of what to do if you find one since they are a protected species.
I also love Fall best of all seasons, but don't consider it officially arrived until I can turn off the A/C (usually mid-Oct). The only thing I don't like about it is toward the end when the bitter cold winds of winter begin taking over & we revert to Standard Time (vs Daylight Savings). ~~ D.K.
If you want summer shadowed with a gentle breeze surrounded by green, go visit the place named for Mr. Muir. No wonder he knew that all things are connected.
Muir Woods
Enigma, wonderful post - I'm ready for fall! I want Autumn!!!! I can't wait to get baking again, pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, butternut and acorn squash, sweet potatoes...uh oh, I'm hungry now :D We have a little heat wave going on right now, but I'm faithful that autumn will come soon enough. Then maybe I can turn off some of these blasted fans.
Oh, I have a new post up, very conspiracy theory.
Fall is my fav- still sunny, but cool enough to enjoy it. Tea drinking weather. Somewhere you mentioned Oolong tea & I came across a blend that was Yum! Dragon Eye is it's name.
http://www.revolutiontea.com/oolong-tea/
I'm not associated with the company, just happened to have it at a restaurant a few weeks ago thought it was really nice.
I love nature & live in a valley, where one way is the coast and another the mountains. I think it was Chief Seattle that first made the *web of life* analogy, that everything is attached. Then I look at how campgrounds are arranged in ticky tacky rows, packed in like sardines- people wanting to get away from it all, and instead getting into the thick of it. Back in his day John Muir was relieved the Forest Service was created to get the profiteers out of the forests, the appointed guardians would protect the land. All these years later, the forest Service morphed into the profiteers they were supposed to be halting. The audacity of calling clearcutting "harvest", like it was an agricultural corn crop! The timber industry tries to sell us the idea that trees are a renewable resource. When they can grow an 800 year old tree in my lifetime, (start to finish), I will believe them. The first rule of tinkering with anything (including nature) is don't lose any of the parts. If John Muir were around today, he would be mortified & join up with Al Gore in echoing the environmental drumbeat.
Thankfully, nature tolerates us.
i'll have to try this - modifying the flour to be gluten-free of course - thanks for sharing...
fyi - after hell week last week - i've seem to have turned a corner - thanks so much for your kind support...
santana - righteous - saw him in an outdoor concert down here -- ahhh
and last but not least - every day i wake up to my silliness of a kitten - she's been missing her mommy - and my Siamese, well he's been curling up next to me anytime i happen to sit/lay down...and every morning we wake up to the birds at first slowly making their wake up sounds to a crescendo of noise where it seems like they are all trying to compete with each other...if i lived in the city tenement, it'd be the same only with people...hugs
To everyone that came by...enjoy...I love the idea of all us fixing a little Pumpkin Bread...and fall coming...
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