Return of the clove of seasons

Yep, it's that time again.  Spring and summer seamlessly meld into one another, as do fall and winter.  But the transitions from the extremes, from winter to spring and from summer to fall, tend to be more in fits and starts.  This summer was not anywhere near as bad as the last one; we did have a few stretches of extremely hot days, but they either were short stretches or were accompanied by low humidity and/or a nice breeze.  Mama and I could take our lunch in the graveyard without risking death by mosquito or by heatstroke.  But just the same, the transition from summer to fall has begun.  We still need the A/C by day, the cicadas still keen in the trees, and the errant mosquito buzzes in my ear, but nights are cooler and a few rogue trees have already begun to shed their leaves.  Last Saturday Mama and I even saw a monarch butterfly; those don't usually start hanging around here until late September.  So yeah, it's the clove of seasons again.  I've referred to this twice in the past, once in September of 2014 and once in March of 2020.

As y'all may remember, there is a field behind the library where I work.  Last year it was left fallow, and the year before that there was cotton in that field.  This year the crop of choice is soybeans, and ever-curious Beryl June wanted to get a closer look.  She held her branch a bit too close to the camera, but y'all get what she's getting at.

This is what soybeans look like during the clove of seasons.  There's still a lot of green in the foliage, but some of the leaves are beginning to darken, as are the bean pods themselves.

I love soybeans!  They're not as visually striking when ripe as cotton or milo, but they have their own beauty.  When they're ready to be picked they turn a sandy brown, not terribly unlike Idalia Gale's hair.

While traipsing back to the library I caught this yellow flower, a member of the "damned yellow composite" category.

Damned yellow composite might be a pain in the posterior for botanists, but I love it.  They're all the same...but they're just different enuff that you're never looking at the same thing twice.  This flower was growing all by its lonesome, by the way.  Contrary to what the Brave Little Toaster might tell you, flowers don't die of loneliness...as far as I know.

Oh yes, the sticker burrs are also growing rank in the grass.  I had to be very careful where I stepped and where I set Beryl June.  I hate those danged things!  Luckily I was able to avoid 'em completely.  There have been times where I spent half an hour pulling those satanic little thorns out of my jeans and shoes.  But all is well today!  Now to wait for the rain.  Like the veronal clove of seasons, the autumnal clove is usually accompanied by storms.  Don't wait up!

Love,
RagingMoon1987

Sunday randomness: shellbug hunting

September 17th and I haven't seen a single one, even with Cara Raelean helping me.

Nothing in this beat-up little redbud tree, nothing in my unidentified tree with the Eye of Horus, nothing under my eaves.  The trees are full of cicadas; hell, I can hear 'em every night!  But I've yet to find any husks.

And then Cara Raelean fell out of the tree.  It rained last night, so I had to wipe her head clean.  Luckily, Cabbies are built to last, and even more luckily, Cara's dress didn't get dirty.

Idalia Gale and Cara Raelean will be having some fun in the days to come, so stay tuned.

Happy bug hunting, 

RagingMoon1987 

A spring dress for fall weather

In a marked contrast to last week, today began with temperatures in the low sixties.  True, we're supposed to hit the mid-nineties later on this weekend, but the humidity isn't soul-crushing like it was.  Plus, IT'S LABOR DAY WEEKEND!!!  Uncle from St. Louis won't be down 'cause he's not feeling well, but my mom and I can hang out and relax.  To commemorate, I present Suzie in a...decidedly veronal-flavored dress.  I keep forgetting that it's Suzie with a "Z," LOL!

If springtime did have a flavor, I think it would taste like rainbow sherbet, with all the colors that spring brings.  Anyway, Suzie's new getup is probably better suited for Easter or May Day than the first day of meteorological fall, but...well, unless you're a Hershey bar change is good.  Now if you're a Hershey bar change is bad.  But yeah, I like Suzie's heart dress and will trot it out again around Valentine's Day, but when one gets something new in the mail one has to wear it, even if it's just for a few minutes to take a picture.  In Suzie's case she'll be wearing it longer, because she loves the colors...and the little buttons.  See how they're mismatched?  I love it!

I had a denim vest with buttons like that once.  My grandmother made it; it was just a plain denim vest with a zipper down the front, but to make it fun Grandma sewed multicolored buttons all over the front of it.  The only thing I didn't like was that there was only one green button, and when Grandma explained that she lost its mate I was appeased.  It was a minor complaint anyway; I freaking LOVED that vest.  Suzie's buttons make me think of that, of wearing that on the playground and being extra careful not to get the buttons torn off.

As to my shop, this is one of the few handmade things I've found on eBay.  Usually when I get a handmade doll outfit it's from Etsy, but pixies1952 provided this dress.  As of writing she has one other dress for Baby Face dolls, and one for Gotz Happy Kidz.  Pixie is based out of England so it took awhile to get the dress, but it was well worth the wait.  Pixie also invited me to join an English Baby Face fan group on Failbook, and I took them up on that as well.  If you like Baby Face dolls, a link can be found HERE.

Happy fall, y'all,
RagingMoon1987

That type

You know the type.  The type that wears layers from the waist up during cold weather, and then wears shorts (and maybe also sandals or flip-flops).  And if you ask them if they're cold they answer "No, I'm fine."  Yeah...Luciana is that type.  She's got sense enuff to wear decent shoes in this weather, but that's about it.

Note the frost behind her.  This was the air temperature.

I don't know what I'm gonna do with Astro-Luci, LOL.  I couldn't stand going bare-legged in this weather!

Warm blessings,
RagingMoon1987

First snow of the season

As I noted back in June, we have our calendars and our designated beginnings of months and seasons, but God works on His own time, and the two extreme seasons (summer and winter) begin when they begin.  Case in point:  the Bootheel got its first snow of the season last night.  It was just a dusting, and temperatures are predicted to get above freezing today, so it'll probably melt.  But snow is snow, and it made my unkempt yard look quite pretty.

Rita Cheryl was well-prepared for the sudden drop in temperatures, but Tequila Rose was not.

Tequila Rose is taking it in stride.  She says she's thankful that she got out of North Carolina just in time, as the remains of Hurricane Nicole dropped a ton of rain in that area.  I told her that the snow here isn't always this light, but I don't think she paid much attention.  Luckily she didn't notice when I bought her a coat either, LOL.  That should be here sometime next week.

Warm hugs,
RagingMoon1987

Sunday randomness: Redheads

Today is one of those days where I wish I had more leg strength and more ideas.  The weather is all but perfect for taking pictures...provided one stays away from the fields.  The wind is high, and because of that there's plenty of dust blowing up from the fields.  So I stuck to the safety of my late grandmother's backyard, complete with Robyn, Reagan, and a sweet-smelling bed of pine needles.

I didn't cut Robyn's hair, by the way.  In that first picture she looks like she's got a bob 'do, but that's because I tied it back.  It's blowing around a bit in the next picture.

I've always wanted a picture of my girls straddling a piece of wood!  I used to do that myself when I was little, pretending to be a cowboy or a witch or an astronaut, something that flew.  Robyn looks like the cowboy type, but I'm not so sure about Reagan.

Happy Sunday,

RagingMoon1987 

Autumn at Crowley's Ridge

The passing of a front is often a mixed bag here in the Bootheel, as I expect it is elsewhere.  We can get anything from a single cloud and a puff of wind to a wave of tornadoes.  Last night we got rain and...I think I heard one crack of thunder, and today is clear, cool, and beautiful.  Since Mama and I had the day off we grabbed some grub and went out to the ridge, the same road where I took most of the pictures in this post.  Since it's just fall foliage I'll let the images speak for themselves.

Oh yeah, I had Reagan in tow.  I asked Mama to stop at this footbridge so I could take this picture. 

The home behind all this once belonged to a family friend, and it once served as the backdrop for a few of my senior pictures. 

Then there were more leaves.

Note that the kudzu is still bright and green, LOL.

Not bad, eh what?  I wouldn't trade living in the country for the world!

Much love,
RagingMoon1987 

Butterflies nesting

One autumn evening when I was fairly young and my sister was a wannabe entomologist Daddy called us out to the front yard to look at butterflies.  Monarchs start migrating south this time of year, and on that particular evening they'd chosen to nest in our trees for the night.  We counted about thirty before it got too dark to see.  Well!  Tonight we got a repeat performance, only this time I had a cell phone to take pictures!  Since these guys are all on the move some images will be blurry.  I'll largely just let these images speak for themselves.

This chap makes a lovely silhouette. 

One of these decided to flap his wings a lot.  I had a hard time catching him with his wings open.

Even when I did catch him he was too fast for me, LOL!

I wonder why they chose my tree and the neighbor's tree?  Not that it bothers me; I could gawk at butterflies all day long and be happy.  I feel blessed to have seen so many in one place!  God truly is good.

Cheers and butterflies,
RagingMoon1987 

Zlata and Twinkies for fall

First day of fall, y'all!  It's actually been fall for awhile for me.  It's officially fall for me when I stop seeing commercials for allergy medicine and start seeing advertising for cold medicine, and this year that happened on Labor Day, LOL.  It's been an uncomfortable summer so I'm ready, and so are a few more of my dolls.  Y'all saw Doremi and Zoe, and now Zlata has a new dress to wear too.

Well it's new to her, anyway.  I had it ready for her last fall, but Zlata got held up in customs for a month thanks to this coronavirus crap, and then I had to sew her face.  It was worth the wait.  As with most of my Waldorf doll clothes the dress is a bit big, but I made it work.

From high-end rag dolls to high-end vinyl dolls now.  I have nineteen American Girls, and both Mama and I are both constantly buying them clothes.  Therefore, it was inevitable that I'd eventually end up with duplicate outfits.

Lindsey and Marina don't look a thing alike otherwise, but they're wearing the same exact outfit from the same Etsy shop.  I'm not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth!  At least Mama has good taste (she bought both of these).

Happy fall,
RagingMoon1987 

Never too early!

I know I'm jumping the gun here, especially since daytime temps in Malden are still hitting the middle and upper eighties, but I put Doremi and Zoe in their Halloween clothes anyway.  Both of these outfits are from Etsy, and both were gifts from my mother.

They've actually been this way since Labor Day, but I had to order some shoes for Doremi since her outfit didn't come with any.  They have little ghosts on the toes!

I've got a buddy who is fascinated with the dark and the macabre, even more so than I am.  Halloween is her favorite holiday, and she says it's never too early to start decorating.  I agree wholeheartedly!

Happy early Halloween,
RagingMoon1987 

Magic mushrooms?

Somehow I doubt I'd go on a trip if I ate these, except maybe a trip to the bathroom to barf, but when I went to work this morning I found these guys growing by the mailbox. 

Here's a closeup of one of them.  The cap is split into segments that resemble flower petals.

For reference, here's what the button stage looks like.

Pretty wild, eh wot?  Halfway through last month I found several mushrooms in my front yard that were shaped like an inverted patty pan...or a satellite dish, take your pick.

The largest one was even facing south like a satellite dish!

It's not often that I see mushrooms invert themselves that radically without splitting, but that one did.  I had it for about a week before it gave up the ghost.  It was about as big around as a softball.

I should be back on schedule with reviews soon!  Got 'em planned for every Thursday for the next couple'a months if everything goes right.

Hugs,
RagingMoon1987

A month of extremes

I joked to a patron at the library today that April and October are often months of extremes.  Or at least they are here in Missouri.  April usually begins chilly and ends warm (usually with a few waves of thunderstorms in between), and October usually is the reverse.  This year certainly seems to be that way, as the first few days of the month were hotter than the devil.  Indeed, I told my friends that the rain that came on Sunday was the best birthday present I could've gotten.  Now it's the ninth and seasonably cool, and they're predicting wind chills in the mid-thirties for Friday night.  Yeah, mid-thirties, with a probable wave of thunderstorms in between the two temperatures.  I'm not ready.  As much as I griped about this past summer, I'm not ready.  I was hoping that the air would stay mild for a week or two before it got cold, but it's not and I'M NOT READY!!!  Rael is ready, though.  She greets anything thrown at her with the enthusiasm characteristic of Twinns with the Ariel head.

My father would've called that sweater a "Don't mistake me for a deer" sweater due to it being a nice bright shade of red.  Indeed, this has always been my favorite of the old My Twinn ensembles due to the tassels on the bottom of the sweater, and due to the combination of red and black (always a striking color combo).  It even buttons in the back of the neck so the doll's owner wouldn't have to cram that collar over the doll's head and potentially ruin the hair.

I should probably get Rael some new hair ribbons to match, but other than that she's ready for December.

Ready for December, yeah.  LOL, the sun's shining and there's still green leaves on the trees!  As an aside, I do wish these old My Twinns could bend their arms a bit more convincingly.  Just an inch or two off the top edge of the vinyl part would've done wonders.  Rael is not alone in that department, but it would've been nice to have her playing with the leaves or scrutinizing some piece of autumnal detritus.  It can be done with rubber bands, but I didn't have any on me when I took those pictures.

Now I'm going to make sure my own sweaters are spider-free and ready myself for those wind chills!  I probably wouldn't mind winter so much if the wind didn't have such a bite to it.  That's one more advantage that Rael has over me; I can feel the cold and she can't!

Cheers,
RagingMoon1987

Birthday Haul 2019

Yes, I turn 32 today...or rather, I turn 32 at exactly 11:02 this evening.  Mama tells me that on the night I was born there was a full eclipse of the moon, and that I was apparently born during the time of totality.  It was also the night that the Cardinals clinched the National League title for the 1987 season; my dad was keeping tabs on the ballgame while Mama was having me, LOL.  There will be no moon for me to look at tonight as it is raining and thundering a bit, and no Cardinals baseball either since I don't have a television, but I can show off the stuff Mama got for me.  I like to top my ponytail with goofy-looking hair bows, the goofier the better, and Mama got me three from Etsy.

One with a Nutcracker-themed print, one with Legos, and one with a Christian theme.  The Lego and Nutcracker bows have my initials monogrammed on them.

Here's a closer look at the Nutcracker bow.  It's got Clara, the Nutcracker Prince, and the mouse king.  I really love that, because they all look like a set of Christmas ornaments that my grandmother had.  The mouse king was my favorite of the ornaments.

The Christian bow is my favorite color (green) and has a verse that should be familiar to all of God's children.

Now...the Lego bow and the items that match it require a bit of explanation.  Back in August the library ran a Lego-themed back-to-school program.  The prizes were all Lego sets, but as extra incentives these really cool Lego erasers were given out as well.  The erasers not only functioned as erasers, but they also hooked together like the real blocks do.  I was sorely tempted to keep a few for myself, but I ultimately decided to play fair and give them all away.  Anywho, during this period Mama asked me if I had any Lego-themed clothing to commemorate the event with.  My answer was "no."  Surprise!  Now I've got a ballcap for bad hair days!  See how the front matches my bow?

Mama also got me these earrings to match everything else.  To my delight they're made of real little Lego pieces!

I was a huge Lego fan when I was a little girl, and the sets we gave out to the children tempted me to start the hobby again.  I may have to wait on that though, since I don't currently have an empty room to hide those tiny pieces from my snoopy cats.

The other item that I received also requires some brief explanation.  In recent times the Little House book series has come under fire for being politically incorrect...yeah, kids' books.  Some folks want them banned.  As long as RagingMoon1987 is in charge of Malden Library there will be Little House books, but I digress.  I'd never read the books, so during September I sat down and did just that.  I read on up to Little Town on the Prairie and enjoyed every second of it (On the Banks of Plum Creek was my favorite).  Somewhere along the line I vocalized a desire to Mama to own some more pioneer-themed doll items, and as usual Mama heard loud and clear.  She got me this neat cooking set.

I apologize for that picture being so dark; all of my light bulbs are burned out and I've yet to replace them.  Anyway, these are all wood painted up to look like cast iron, except for the tripod and the fire pit.  The big cooking pot, the spoon, the frying pan, and the spider are all high-quality wood, the fire pit feels like resin (I'll thus have to be careful with it), and the tripod, unsurprisingly, is metal.  If any of y'all are historians, chefs, or Addy fans, then y'all will probably know what a spider is.  For those of y'all who don't know, a spider is a frying pan with legs (sort of like a wok), and Caroline Ingalls did indeed have one.  See the legs?

I think Caroline's spider was mentioned in the very first book, Little House in the Big Woods.  I'll have to look again to be sure, but I know she had one and put it to good use.  EDIT, 1/10/2020:  I was told in the comments that Caroline used the spider in Little House on the Prairie, and upon re-reading the book I found that to be true.  In Chapter 3 Laura wrote:

"Then Pa raked more coals over the fire, while Ma sliced fat salt pork.  She fried the slices in the iron spider.  The spider had short legs to stand on in the coals, and that was why it was called a spider.  If it had had no legs, it would have been called only a frying pan."

The same chapter notes that the large cooking pot was called a bake-oven, and this was used to bake johnny cakes.  Johnny cakes could also be cooked in a spider (they were sometimes called "spider cornbread" because of this), but Caroline used the bake-oven instead.  Caroline also utilized a coffee pot, which unfortunately was not a part of this set.  And that was a simple but tasty supper on the open prairie!  End edit.

Regarding the spider, Addy Walker also had one available in doll size at one time, and it was real cast iron.  Apparently one could actually cook in it.  Thus how I knew what a spider was when my fourth grade teacher read one of the Little House books to us!

As a last little tidbit, I had a devil of a time setting up the tripod until I found that the fire pit has three holes to accommodate the tripod's legs.

I'll soon be digging out my historical American Girls to help with Z Yang's review, and when I do I'll set Kirsten up with this cook stuff and show y'all how she looks.  Kirsten predates Laura Ingalls Wilder's era by a good twenty years...but we can all pretend we don't know that!

Mama says that she's got a couple more things coming for me, which makes me feel guilty since all I got her was a pair of much-needed shoes.  When whatever-it-is comes I'll show y'all that too.  In the meantime I'm going to shove some Cheetos in my mouth and listen to the glorious rain, which may be the best present of all...except for that danged thunder!  Now it's getting loud!

God bless y'all,
RagingMoon1987