Heart Shaped Leaves of Spring

Spring is my favorite time of year. The whole world shows the promise of new life. It's a joy to walk outside each morning and see what has changed since the day before: the dawn breaks earlier, new birds sing, the peach tree blooms....

This vase is filled with heart-shaped wild flowers: Shepherd's Purse seed pods are heart shaped, and the budding leaves of the Redbud Tree are nature's valentines.

I know it is sappy, but everything really is beautiful, "robed in the blooming garb of Spring."

Thirty Pieces of Silver

President Obama and Kathleen Sebelius have set the value of human life at $1.00, and in the process, they have set the value of the US Dollar at 30 pieces of silver.

Congress passed this horrible bill over the citizens' objections, but at least they insisted on clauses to require that abortion coverage NOT be paid for by anyone other than people who wanted abortions.

President Obama and Kathleen Sebelius have now declared that they will instead require merely a token $1 premium for these abortion policies. 

They have chosen to claim to obey the letter of the law while thumbing their noses at the spirit of it, and in disdain of all  people who believe - for scientific reasons as well as religious, moral or ethical reasons - that abortion is the deliberate taking of human life.

Read the rest at Political Junkie Mom's blog, and others.

I am a Christian, I am an American, I am a mother and a grandmother. I don't see how I can buy the insurance this law says we have to buy. I will pay the penalty - the Religion Tax - if necessary, but I cannot participate in this.

Encouragement!

Today's "Verse of the Day" is worth remembering in this election year:

“Know therefore that the LORD thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations;” Deuteronomy 7:9 

We benefit from the faith of those who went before us.





.

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranchette....

....Normal Life goes on for the authorette at Pecan Corner. 

Our tiny rural town has never had a sewer system - everyone used septic tanks. Until now, when we are all being connected to the new waste water treatment facility. YAY!!!  We had been told when we bought our house that we'd have sewer "by next summer". Although we weren't having any problems, the two septic tanks have been inconvenient in that there are things we wanted to do with our yard that had to wait for this municiple project to be completed first.

We are nearly there. Our house has been connected to the sewer system and soon they will return to remediate the old septic tanks. A wooden deck (that existed to protect the top of one septic tank) and a large unusable rock patio have been removed. Couple those with the loss of most of our lawn last summer to "Saint Augustine Decline (SAD)" disease, the loss of other plants to the drought, and we have an opportunity to remake our backyard landscape.

Our yard is already wildlife friendly, and we have a lot of native plants (the photo of the butterfly on a wild coreopsis is from 2009). Many birds of various species come here: cardinals nest here every year, and
woodpeckers, wrens, mockingbirds, dove, hummingbirds, swallows, jays, and others come to visit, get a drink, or have a bite to eat. Squirrels chase each other around, lizards and geckos dart here and there, butterflies and other beneficial insects do their thing.

We also have vegetable garden plots in our back yard, and these need to be maintained because the fencing keeps the deer from coming in and eating up all the Swiss Chard. Paul has gotten more excited about growing our own food, and made the wise recommendation that we put our limited space and energy into raising things that either are not available in the stores (like Swiss Chard or Delicata squash), or are too expensive to buy fresh when out of season (like bell peppers at a dollar apiece!).

Fresh flowers in the house are one of my joys in life, and I am eager to create a cutting garden as well as plant more things that bloom at various times of year. A four-season garden in Texas is not only possible, but, as we have seen in the difference between this lovely temperate winter and last winter's frigid cold, almost a necessity.

Texas has some great resources to help with planning urban and rural landscapes for the animals around us, and one such is the Texas Wildscapes Interactive Habitat Planning DVD. Produced by Texas Parks and Wildlife, the full title is actually "Texas Wildscapes: Gardening for Wildlife, An Interactive Guide to Creating Vibrant and Beautiful Wildlife Habitat". It is well worth the $5.00 to order it (the $5.00 covers costs of copying and mailing) and you can share it or make copies freely so long as it's not sold. While it is designed mostly for people with acreage, there's a lot that is useful to homeowners in town.

For great native landscaping ideas, next time you are in Austin (isn't everyone in Austin once in a while?), by all means, visit the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. It's in South Austin, easy to get to, and a nice way to spend a free afternoon or a couple of hours between meetings (or have a walking meeting - what better way to get to know your coworkers?).  From micro habitats to birdseye views, from stately trees to bonsai, the grounds are beautiful, the sculpture is whimsical, and there's nearly always something blooming.

The center also hosts internet resources, such as the Native Plant Database. The How-To articles are full of good ideas, and step-by-step guides even include craft projects such as homemade paper and seed balls, as well as how to prune a tree and propagate cactus.

The National Wilflife Federation also has a certified habitat program that can provide lots of help and encouragement to enhance wildlife opportunities through food, water and shelter. Even a tiny yard or a balcony can become an oasis.

I don't know that we will want to "certify" our yard - this is our home. We will put our own happiness first, and local conditions in nature are never the same from one place to the next. If I want to let the little seedling  mimosa tree on the south side of the house continue to grow, I won't worry about whether it is native, naturalized or "invasive": it's here already, it came up by itself, mimosas are true to the history of my house, and it won't hurt anything.

New landscaping will be a lot of work, but we are excited to be starting on the project so that we can enjoy the outdoors more right outside our own door.

A New Movie

October Baby - in theaters March 23rd.

Yes, you can heal. Life is good.  

Will Someone Please Start A Courageous Conservative Companies List?

 Surely there are companies out there that make their decisions based on actual hard results, instead of caving to the lone nutter planting signs outside their door?

Surely there are companies out there that use actual customer acquisition and retention data to determine where to spend their advertising budgets, instead of trusting the skewed numbers claimed by their naive and progressive young marketing managers?

Surely there are companies out there that have the integrity to refuse to change their business model to acommodate imaginary bullies (and yes, all loud leftist twitter campaigns are imaginary) ?

Surely there are companies out there that understand what REAL statistics say about the conservative majority vs the obnoxious but numerically insignificant left?

Surely there are companies out there that understand the differences between genuine public relations issues and media tantrums - and how to take mature measures to diffuse both without abandoning their principles?

There are opportunities for companies with mature leadership that make rational and effective decisions.  A very large, well-funded, independent-thinking customer base is looking for products and services provided by companies that support traditional American values, the Constitution, Patriotism, Marriage, Private Property, Self-Reliance, LIFE, Freedom of Religion, and frankly, that make rational decisions instead of running scared every time a Stepford organization starts copying and pasting its talking points.

So, like it says in the title: Would someone please start a Courageous Conservative Companies list?

To Those Companies That Bullied Rush Limbaugh

Dear Citrix Systems Inc., Carbonite, ProFlowers, Quicken Loans, Sleep Train, and Sleep Number, and any others who made calls against Rush Limbaugh's Freedom of Speech:

I appreciate the public relations issues that caused you to decide to pull your advertising from the Rush Limbaugh show in order to coerce an apology from him for stating his response to statements made by a 30 year old woman named Sandra Fluke, who spoke voluntarily about her sex life in front of the United States Congress, and thus invited all media personalities to weigh in and discuss those matters.

I can appreciate that you exercised your own freedom of choice to decide not to fund Rush Limbaugh's show in which he criticized a woman who wants to force you to pay for her preferred, expensive, non-essential, elective birth control method.

I can appreciate that your companies have the freedom to determine for yourselves where you will spend your advertising dollars, and I hope you will continue to have that freedom for as long as your companies exist.

I'm sure you will also appreciate my exercise of freedom of choice when I politely say it's nothing personal (and I don't even listen to or watch Rush), but I will never spend a single dime for any product your companies produce - not even years from now. The older I get, the better my long term memory will become and I will not relent, even when it's a moot point.

I'm sure your CEOs and other executives will also totally understand when I quietly stop buying from their next companies as well - I'll simply change brands with no fanfare or announcement, so they won't notice at all, I am sure. I'm sure that the people who, unlike me, still support the Susan G Komen Foundation  will make up the difference.

 It will be quite civilized, nice and polite. I'll still smile and say "hello" should we chance to meet in passing.

I'm sure your people will all understand that its simply "the right thing to do" in response to your deliberate failure and refusal to demand that same freedom for others.

3/5: Thanks to Pat @ SIGIS for the link in her Not-Quite-Full-Metal-Jacket post!

3/6: Thanks to Miss Quite Rightly for noting in the comments that Go To Meeting is another company that does not want our business.     Also, I see a report that AOL Inc and an artist we used to think of as Peter Gabriel have added their own names voluntarily to the pile.   Plus, don't miss the list with a call to action to "Rally for Rush" over at Doug Ross @ Journal.