ups and downs

 I was thinking that the day has gone by and I hadn't accomplished so much. But sometimes you get an inspiration to do a thing here, and another there, and it doesn't take long but you've done something that's been hanging over your head for ages. And it was quick, and rather easy. 

I finished reading God's Hotel, and was poking through my book pile. I found something which we'd withdrawn from the library, called From Laurel Hill to Siler's Bog: The Walking Adventures of a Naturalist. It's not exactly a journal, but a chronicle of the author's time in the Chapel Hill (North Carolina) area, studying the animal and plant life. As naturalists do. 

Books like this are very pleasant and quiet to spend time with.  He mentions a spot called Morgan's Creek, named after a Mark Morgan who settled there with his wife, but "until he could build a cabin from the surrounding forest, he and his wife lived by his creek in the hollow trunk of a tall sycamore, ten or twelve feet across." Well! Can you imagine? I wonder how long they lived like that. I hope their marriage was a happy one.

A month after starting my blouse, and there's an issue, so I'm stopped for a while. I would just like to work on a sewing project which goes along from beginning to end, without any out-of-the-way problems. But I also don't want unfinished projects to pile up. A mending pile seems normal, but other piles I don't want.

I brought home a cookbook the other day, which is all one "pot" recipes, but not all in pots, exactly. A chapter on skillet meals, one on the slow cooker, another is oven dishes, etc. This one is a keeper, for the oven, on a high temperature. It's got chicken in it, three carrots, some frozen peas and a yogurt and lime sauce which you stir in afterward. Very tasty!