Books and Birds and Buds

There is a pair of hawks swooping around our block lately. They shriek together while they soar high over the convent next door and in the morning I often watch them preening in the tops of the very tall maples across the street. I stand in tadasana and then swan dive down towards my yoga mat while they shift and ruffle feathers and the wind silently blows their tails in chill flutters. I hope they will decide to nest nearby. I'd love to see a nesting pair of hawks raise their young. I've never seen birds so big so familiarly. And maybe the local feral rabbit count will go down too which could be good for my vegetable garden, eh?

I am slowly getting bits and bobs of the house together. Today I moved some of the rugs and art work around and yesterday I figured out how to hang a mask I wanted to display. It's all stop and go and a painfully slow process but I feel like at least the motion is forward. And I know that soon...I'll be all outdoors minded and it will be all that I can do just to make myself wash the dishes, hang the rest of the house.

View into the sunroom/studio

Ru and I are reading aloud the rest of The Little House books again...we have worked our way through the first two and are beginning the third and A is reading Farmer Boy at night. I am not sure why I use the phrase "work through" the right label is "burned through" or "tore explosively through" or some other wildly manic phraseology. It is all I can do to keep the reading sessions down to an hour at a time. He's so thrilled to listen that he will beg and beg for it continue no matter where I leave off. If only I didn't want to sit there reading all day long myself. Heh. I don't know where he gets it.

The last of our snow, in that little sloping pile behind Dee.

The latest garden plan at the moment is a standard, tree-form wisteria. I was ready to give up the wisteria dream. All garden types say it is absurdly invasive and no matter the heartbreaking beauty of the plant it is evil and it will send four million runners all over your lawn and worm a thousand robust fingers up your gutters and then beginning to tear lustily at your siding.

Promising looking buds on our forsythia!

Yes, but I do love it and I have dreamed of having wisteria for years and years and A says I shouldn't live so safely. Claim a dream. I'm thinking that the grafted tree form varieties I've read about seem safer...less prone to runners and wildly unkempt habits than their vining relatives. How does this one look? The next question is: "Do I have to keep it in a planter in order to survive co-habitation with said plant? I wouldn't put mint in the ground to save my life...am I insane to consider plunking a wisteria down?

Related articles

• 13 Reasons to Grow a Vegetable Garden. (frugalupstate.com)
• Hawk's Nest (wvcabins.wordpress.com)
• My Hawk Friend (40dreams.wordpress.com)
• How is a hawk's nest different than a blue jays (wiki.answers.com)
• Yep, the FDNY rescues hawks, too (nydailynews.com)
• Proud to Read Aloud (thereaderonline.co.uk)

Early Morning Habit

One of my resolutions this year (I didn't share all of them publicly, a girl has to reserve something) was to get up every morning, at 5:30 (i.e. before everyone else in our house), do a yoga routine and have a morning window of peace to arrange my mind before the house was a wild, humming hive of short males. I have decided that when I am sick sleep is good so, my recent sinus headache was a legitimate reason for "sleeping in" but otherwise, I am now up and at 'em. So, I get up, turn up the heat, make a mug of tea, unroll my yoga mat and light a candle or two.

And I have to tell you....I love it.

The head-start is pretty priceless, the time of stretching and mental dusting and conscious movement is good for my body and soul and folks you have to admit, the stunning sunrises I've been taking in, are a totally swank bonus.

Witness.

Here are a few other little bits and nibbles that might help you make the leap to an early morning start yourself.

I have been doing some of the yoga routines from yogayak on YouTube...all free. I especially like their heart-opener morning routine...yoga in the Costa Rican jungle is very refreshing this time of year.

This little gizmo of a website will help you be sure you can catch the sunrise where you live...and honestly, it's become one of my favorite things about the start of my day.

And then there's this clever little sleep-cycle calculator which will help you be sure that waking is less painful. I am planning to give this a try for the first time this weekend. I will aim to go to sleep 10-ish since that's when the all-wise Cyclometer says I will slip into an effortless rhythm allowing my painless release at 5:30. Wish me luck.

I promise, if you live in a busy household, it is one of the only things I've found that give you a little island of peace in the middle of the madness. Even if it sounds painful, even if it IS painful...try it. I almost promise you won't regret it. :)

Run Carlie, Run

Well friends, I can't rightly believe it myself but, it's true...last night, I went running by myself, for the first time in my life.

I had made an amendment resolution that besides just doing yoga in the mornings, five days a week, I'd  do one aerobic workout on the weekends. A huge, huge thing for me to promise. I hate aerobic workouts. But friends, there are lungs and a heart, not just leg muscles to stretch and a mind to relax so I bit the bullet. It's a new year, it's a new me.

And yeah, my friend Sam has been inspiring my eyeballs out, AND my friend Anna, two non-runners who suddenly positively athletic. I had told myself that once it was warm out, I'd run outdoors like Sam was. (Barefoot running! So exciting!) Yeah. Barefoot running will be cool, and I sure can't wait for outdoor warmth again but if I'm doing an aerobic something anyhow...why not run now. And then I forgot about it. Heh.

And then there I was last night, reading a book in which a woman makes positive life-changes (one of which is exercise) and I remembered..."Oh crud. I was supposed to run this weekend. I blew that." And then, I realized it was still Sunday night and before I lost my nerve, I dug my old tennis shoes out of the closet, pulled on a sweatshirt, a scarf and a hat and bolted out the door.

I didn't do anything impressive. I went around the block. And I don't mean I ran around the block. I ran down one side of our block and I walked the rest, in slight pain from the running bit. It hurt and I felt fat and pathetic and super uncool but, I also was so proud of myself and the night wasn't nearly as painfully cold as I'd imagined and there was Orion winking brightly over the corner of our neighbor's roof. So, that was something.

I'm trying to block the memory of the searing burn in my lungs and just ride the high of finally being big enough to do something good, even if it's hard and scary. Next Sunday night, you know where I'll be.