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a postcard month
sat 6 apr 2013 | |
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Permalink: http://www.static8.com/journal/2013/20130406.html.html | |
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I've decided to do another month of daily mail. In February, for the official LetterMo, I put over 100 postcards, notecards and letters in the mail. This time, I want to focus on making ONE reply postcard or notecard every day. Yeah, I'll still be doing my "batch" postcards on the weekends because I'm still behind on my monthly sendings. But I have got a ton of reply mail to send, and it's a bit overwhelming! I'm hoping that one a day won't be so difficult. April Daily Mail: Week 1
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Crow Happy
sat 6 apr 2013 |
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Permalink: http://www.static8.com/journal/2013/20130406crow.html |
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As a photographer, I especially love birds. I can go outside, any day of the year, and take a picture of a bird. I can't do that with any other wild animals. And as an individual, I have a special place in my heart for Corvidae: Crows and Jays. They are smart and they have a sense of humor. Crows are common in my city. We also have a good population of scrub jays. The Steller jays are more shy. Ravens live outside the city; I've never seen one. Since Crows are common, I often photograph them. And since I like them so much, I often turn my photographs into a postcard. This is one of my favorites from last year. (um, yeah, all my postcards are "one of my favorites". that's why I turn them into postcards!)
This photo also included a wonderful story. Here's what I wrote on the back of the postcard... This crow is one of four crows who have hung out near our home all year. They are a family: Mom and Dad raising a baby with help from last year's child. The baby yelled a lot thru the summer. He or she finally learned some manners tho, and it's much quieter around here now! (But maybe I miss their noise:)) At the end of the summer, I was delighted to see Baby learning to fly. And being shown the nearest and easiest food source (my neighbor who feeds the squirrels nuts!) and this is how you open a peanut shell. It was wonderful. And I wondered if the crows would come back next year. Well, I think they may have returned! I was sitting on my bed, reading my book, when motion in the bare oak tree outside caught my attention. There was a crow... and another one further away... strange behavior. I had to watch them both for several minutes to figure out what they were doing. Gathering sticks!! They would hop out to the end of the branch and test the twigs. *yank, yank* move on, *yank* "Oh Hey! I got one!" Re-arrange for easy carrying (in the beak). "Oh wait, is this twig better? Hmmm..." And then they would carry the twig to the top of a big, nearby spruce tree. I definitely saw three crows gathering sticks... most likely last year's baby is helping this year. This is a normal crow family practice. (I'm assuming this is still the original Mom and Dad!) But I do wonder about the sibling that helped out in 2012... Is s/he starting their own family this year? I hope so. How far away are they? Still close by? I hope so! |
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garden
sun 7 april 2013 |
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Permalink: http://www.static8.com/journal/2013/20130407.html |
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Well. It wasn't actually "between". I did get rained upon. Ha! At the garden, I was annoyed to discover a third patch of the evil invasive weed that I've been battling since last year. It was right in the middle of the garden plot and I killed it with zeal. Also worked a bit on patches 1 and 2, which are at the edges of the plot. The rest of the weeds are still at the manageable stage... Except maybe the grass, which is getting a pretty good establishment, since I've ignored it due to the Evil Weed. But we have much less of the grass this year, due to our forking efforts last autumn. The state of the Garlic Patch...
The tall, spikey ones are the garlic. By planting it last fall, we gave the garlic a good head start and we'll have huge and wonderful garlic in the late summer! In between the garlic are happy cover crops. We seeded some clover at the end of last year. And the purplish ones are a cover crop from the previous owners of our plot. I haven't looked up what they are yet, but I always let them grow because they are easy to pull up. To the right of the garlic is our strawberry patch. It's mostly grass now, and I suppose I should do something about that. But in the meantime. I'm sure I will be amply rewarded for my weeding efforts with sore muscles tomorrow. |
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garden
sat 20 apr 2013 |
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Permalink: http://www.static8.com/journal/2013/20130420.html |
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An excellent beginning... but I want some serious flowers this year. We were walking back, through the back edge of the Market, when this caught my eyes...
Wow, look at that BLUE! This is a teeny tiny plant, native to the Alps. Stemless Gentian. It will probably die of root rot before the summer gets here. But I'm going to enjoy it immensely while it lives! |
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postcard organization
sat 27 apr 2013 |
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Permalink: http://www.static8.com/journal/2013/20130427.html |
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Organization is not my strong point, but when you are sending out 70 or 100 bits of mail every month, and getting who-knows how much back... well, a little bit of orderliness is required! I have a couple of ways of keeping track of my mail... ∞ I scan all mail. Everyone gets their own directory on the computer. In theory, I also scan the text side of my out-going postcards, which goes into everyone's directory as well... I am no longer able to send mail to everyone in my address book every month; So, scanning my out-going mail helps to know who got what. ∞ Every bit of daily mail gets listed in a table... I look at and add to this file almost every day. Sometimes, seeing this file, I realize I am crazy. Fortunately, I am crazy in the good/happy way that makes people smile. ∞ For the postcard exchange that I run, I keep a simple database. Each participant gets an entry which includes their address and when they joined. And then each monthly postcard exchange has an entry with the different participants listed. I spend quite a lot of time hosting this postcard project... it's something near and dear to my heart. But I worry about what I'm going to do if I ever get a membership explosion! ∞ Today, I set up a separate table listing for my LetterMo replies. Yes, LetterMo was in February. And Yes, I am still working on my replies! As I mentioned: organization is not my strong point. :) I'm hoping that having a smaller file, that is focused on replies, will call my attention to what needs to be done. ∞ I really like the little "April Daily Mail" reports I've been making here! So! I'm going to continue with my saturday morning "Weekly Mail Check-in". My hope is that I continue with the mail replies. |
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