Homemade Rainbows

We spent this last week in Colorado, visiting family during Family Fun Week. We ran the boys pretty hard, until one night Joe fell asleep on the futon in a very odd position, striving to watch just a little more of It's a Wonderful Life.

One of the highlights for me was we went to see The Nutcracker. Isaiah's comment at the end was, "It wasn't as boring as I was expecting." I thought it was magical, to see people who move with what seems to be less than the normal amount of gravity. And during the dramatic Russian dance, two males dancers did leaps in which they touched their toes, in unison, seven or eight times. It gave me goosebumps.

I came home with a collection of beaded necklaces. My Mom had a collection of garage sale finds, mostly extremely ugly clunkers that needed a makeover. With my sister and sister-in-law, we spent several evenings exercising our creativity to create beautiful works of art perfectly suited to our own personalities and colors. My favorite, I think, was a recreation of either my dad's mother or grandmother's necklace. Although my grandmother died when I was in kindergarten, and my great-grandmother followed shortly afterward, I have vague memories of both. The light blue glass beads are, possibly, a century old.

And I made three suncatchers. My Mom has windows with dangling crystals that produce rainbows, and I was ready for some rainbows of my own (though her window does not have a guinea in the background, as does mine).

The sun came out this morning and produced the hoped-for rainbows. Very cheery.

The the charm on the bottom of the longest is a stained glass made by a friend of my mom. I like having the warming red at my window.

As we pulled in to the driveway close to 11pm last night, the stars shone bright in the moonless sky, and a hint of pleasant bovine smell wafted to me. Home again.

On rising, the bovine smell became more clear. The rain gauge showed 1.6" of rainfall during our week away.

The fourteen cows and six sheep had treaded multiple haybales and the resulting manure into what was our driveway. The standing water did not help the conditions in the dry lot, so Phil spent much of the morning forking hay over the deep manure so the cows would have a nicer place to rest.

I went to check on the bees. When I pulled out their tray, there was a faint buzz, so I know they are yet living, and hopefully doing well in this thus-far mild winter.

While away, I picked up a bag of worms from one of my sister's neighbors. This neighbor has raised worms for years, and had a simple and helpful set up: a rubbermaid with holes drilled in the sides and bottom. I took the worms out of their plastic bag (where they had gone through airport security without fatal consequences) and put them in a new box.

I was curious about my old box of worms, and was horrified to find that it was entirely moldy, with dehydrated worms. I could have figured that the cardboard would wick the innards dry, but I had been so focused on the joy of decent air movement, I had ignored the drying peril.

I plan to get Phil's drill tomorrow and make holes in a five gallon bucket, so the new batch of worms will live and thrive. No more dehydrated worms for me!