Blooming witch hazel

The Ozark witch hazel shrub has several good attributes for Missouri gardens:

• it's native
• it retains its leaves for a long time
• it blooms in the middle of winter

The blooms aren't particularly showy, but they don't have any other flowers to compete with at this time of year. The Missouri Botanical Garden considers Hamamelis vernalis a Plant of Merit. We have been happy with this one that is growing at the top of the driveway.

Soft hands

I suspect I'm not the only person who needs heavy duty hand moisturizing in the winter. The Skin Creme Stick from Bee Naturals is my solution. It's waxy rather than oily and stays on even when I wash my hands. Bee Naturals is a small boutique in the town downriver from the one where I grew up. I've shopped in the store, but usually order my skin creme from the web site.

High Tech Yoga

Seems I'll do anything to put off doing yoga -- ooo! take a picture! I really did the yoga routine on the DVD that was in my compuer after I took this picture.





In even better news, my doctor reduced my blood pressure medicine today. He was crediting the exercise, but I suspect all those local veggies from my CSA and the farmers market helped, too.

New heat pumps

Here's the most visible part of the project that I wrote about a few weeks ago. Of course, there are lots of interior bits when replacing an ancient, inefficient HVAC system. It took two guys working more than 6 days in our house to put it all together. The two shining heat pumps are the most photo-worthy.

Wicked Good Slippers

I had a different idea for a photo today, but I out-foxed myself by planning to wait until the good sunset light. The sun was completely obscured by clouds at sunset. So, instead, you get a picture of my slippers and a low light experiment. The image stabilization magic in the lens is pretty good, but not a miracle. This was the only one of six pictures that wasn't blurry.

These are the comfiest slippers I've worn since I grew out of the pink fuzzy ones I wore when I was five.

February 7th

Today is the first anniversary of the tragic shooting at Kirkwood City Hall. Some people in Kirkwood refer to that as "February 7th" the way the rest of the country speaks of "September 11th."

On my way to this morning's community dialogue meeting sponsored by the Community for Understanding and Healing, I stopped by City Hall because I figured the light would be nice for pictures on the east-facing front. While I was there, someone left flowers on the door.

The front door is always locked now, for security reasons. It's no real loss of function for the citizens of Kirkwood -- we all use the back door where the parking is. But, if you believe that architecture has meaning, there is something sad about not being able to walk into the grand porticoed entrance of our City Hall. Still, amidst the sadness that we have experienced in the last year, this is not so great of a sorrow.

I'm pleased and proud to report that the locked front door does not seem to be a metaphor of anything in Kirkwood, now. There are certainly things that we Kirkwoodians can find to complain about. But the fact that we can and do complain about it in both official and unofficial settings means that the door is metaphorically open even if it's physically closed.

A day of photographs at the Garden

Today, was a rare warm day in February. We took advantage of the weather and went to the Missouri Botanical Garden for my first lesson on my new-to-me camera. Here we are reflected in the Lehmann Building.