Paddling around the house and home

With schedules compressed and all the elves busy with end of term and Christmas busy-ness, dinner might be baked chicken with cream of mushroom soup as a gravy substitute.
When heading in the heat and stress of final examinations, it is always good to bring along a squad of friends for support. This young fellow has all of his friends ready for action.
Normally yards are raked, or so is the custom elsewhere. Out here we sweep the lawn with broom made from the rachis of a palm frondlet.
Hanna makes a clean sweep

A freshly washed face early in the morning ensures a good day ahead.

Melastoma malabathicum var. marianum (Pisetikimei) has a small fruit that that can be eaten. I usually miss out on getting to the fruit ahead of the birds, but a pregnancy in class required doing an ethnobotany final early in the day before dusk and evening rains settled in onto the campus.

With finals behind them, Christmas beckons, and all is smiles.
Wanida, Rosalinda

Coco-Puffs is best when worn, just ask him

A boat I made circa 1965 in kindergarten was eventually shipped out here and is now back on the high seas transporting cargo. There is no way the kindergardener back in 1965 could have ever imagined where that boat would travel. On my shelves back then was a book, Paddle to the Sea, and while my boat did not actually ever float in water, my boat has come a long way from the shores of Lake Michigan.


Forty-five years later, the inscription on the canoe, "I am Paddle to the Sea: Please Put Me Back in the Water" resonates in a whole new light for me. As Dora noted in Finding Nemo, "Just keep swimming" is a useful philosophical position in life. Just put me back in the water, and I will just keep swimming.

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