'twas the night of

Later the hallowed 25th, we had a late and light (as in lite) supper. Here Sarah puts the final touches on the table. Foreground is tete de moine cheese--thanks Stephanie. Oh, it was one haute cuisine spread! Then gift exchange. The chairs were our gift to each other.

Amish school's out

After a half day of school and carolling by mule drawn hay wagon, the scholars leave and get home in time for lunch. After the children left, the teacher allowed me to snap the decorated classroom.

best lights prize

Nothing in Monterey rises to the level of a best Christmas lights prize, but I am handing out a new category--most remote lights. These are "in" the village, back Spring Road halfway to the illegal goat path crossing. The real prize goes to a house in the center of Leola with a drive-through. Here are two shots. A second house gets honorable mention, close to second place.

it's beginning to look a lot like...

...a blizzard. But what a gentle, soft relaxing one. Just as I download the photo from camera to computer, the email cancelling church comes to my inbox. Those lights are LED ones, a sign of the times.

then siding and windows

This is finger-numbing nail pounding in 38-degree weather, bright sunshine or not.

then come(s) rafters

killing frost

This Wednesday at 6 a.m. the outside thermometer registered 12 degrees. I had to scrape ice off windshields. That's a killing frost. Tell that to the Swiss chard still standing unshielded in the garden. Some of my friends don't like the way the Swiss voted on minarets. But you gotta give it to the Swiss for having hardy chard.

frame goes up

(reverse order) First the concrete floor sets. Then much of the frame is assembled horizontally. Forget those movie pictures of 40 Amishmen straining to lift the side of a barn. Here in modern Monterey we just let the crane do that. It starts to look like a building finally.

timber framing

Aaron is putting up a timber frame shed beside his shop. I'm guessing that, apart from the hot air balloons that occasionally drift over the village, this crane is the highest anything ever got in Monterey.

hometown rap

Put the kids to bed. Well, it's not that rated. (New Holland is a town five miles east of Monterey.) Then...

word play

One of my joys is word watching. This rare one came on my word-a-day email: rhopalic (from Greek for a tapered club, getting wider like a baseball bat). Here's a rhopalic example they sent.

"I do not know where family doctors acquired illegibly perplexing handwriting; nevertheless, extraordinary pharmaceutical intellectuality, counterbalancing indecipherability, transcendentalises intercommunications' incomprehensibleness."

all I want...

for Christmas is a steam engine.

Family Thanksgiving

We were fortunate to have Ryan's parents, Norman and Joyce Schrock, for the Thanksgiving feast, along with other family. The weather was mild enough to do our photo without coats.

milkweed filaments

Since I have the camera pointed to the earth, I'll snap this weed--milkweed. It's in our butterfly garden and is the required plant for the monarch butterfly to get from one creepy crawly stage to another.

dogwood leaves

From my office window I see the Della Dogwood, the tree planted in memory of Grandma Miller. We've got blue skies this morning and beautiful leaves.

fodder's not in the shock

There's this poem I'm learning, "When the Frost is on the Punkin and the Fodder's in the Shock." Outside my window, still tons of fodder, but shocks are out, bales are in. I still like the James Whitcomb Riley lines.

cat wheels of Monterey

At dawn it may look as innocent as a vegetarian behemoth waking up, but this cat eats gas, spews fumes, and pushes dirt that took millennia for nature to create. These are not local wheels, but a neighbor hired them yesterday to start construction.

Millers in Maryland

Dorcas grew up in Maryland, 40 minutes west of Cumberland. So it was a nice surprise to visit many of her family Saturday just over the line in Bel Air, Maryland, at the ocassion of her sister Miriam's grandson Dayne's marriage to Amanda. The wedding was in the bride's Wisconsin. Dayne's area reception is what we enjoyed. The food theme was "our favorite things." Add to that goldfish in goblets, a chocolate fountain with fixin's, deep fried dill pickles and you've got a memorable array of food. Such a good time! Thanks to all!

Westminster singing

Yesterday Westminster Choir performed the Brahms Requiem in this basilica in Newark, N. J. Basilica means church. I sang this piece, too, at Westminster about 1974. The program notes state that the first performance in Vienna in 1867 became a shouting match of boos and cheers. That kind of public input makes me think of the Beatles coming out with "Lonely Hearts Club" in 1967. Some people wanted them to stay with the simple love songs they started with. Anyway, this building looks like it's here to stay. There's reason to love it and reason to question it serving as a location for worship. The acoustics were great and I loved it.

birthday and job change

Over the weekend we added boards to the table, cooked up some stew and paused for Ryan's 29th birthday, replete with ceremony; and we gave Sarah the floor to talk about ending a 6.5 year tenure at Ephrata Hospital and starting a new job at Lancaster's big hospital. They together told us about their imminent trip to Kalona for a wedding. Dogmeister Brutus tries to hold up and be brave and share the stage with le Montreal coq we bought this summer. (Cake pic by Joel; Sarah pic by Stephanie)

Monterey central

You can stand in the middle of our fair village and turn a 360 degree.


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wheels--sold

Sold the Garelli moped today. Bought by a local tech school student. Manufactured in Italy in 1980, it was sold to me by Elton Moshier for $325 in 2002. I sold it for $50. As is. Rear tire flat, rear brake out, headlight out, but the horn beeps and it runs. A green machine.

harvest by the wheelbarrow

Neck pumpkins just harvested from Joel and Stephanie's patch. From three original plants, here's about three-quarters of the total. From garden to wheelbarrow to kitchen to pie to oven to stomach. You know what makes America helpful to the world? Here's one thing that started here.

"the wheels on the bus go 'round and"...wait

...this thing is not a school bus, although it is a friendly yellow. This is one of the two new Three Mile Island generators, made in France, now wending its way north along the Susquehanna River. Milton and I found it yesterday at the intersection of Highville Road and River Road in Manor Township. One hundred wheels supporting each generator. The driver of the "nuclear" pickup stopped and looked at the drying tobacco. I asked if she knew what it was. She didn't have a clue.

wheels of Monterey--military?

It's a slow week. So let's look again at the wheels around here. These have been parked here all summer.

potato harvest

Ah, one of the sweet moments of home gardening. Dumping all your potatoes out like candy from trick-or-treating. Seeing the loot. I put 10 pounds of potato seed in the ground and I got back 125 pounds. That's better than a twelve fold increase. The first basket gets the biggest ones, and on down to the last basket of midgets. This year more green ones than usual: I couldn't hoe up the rows as high as I usually do because they had been planted too close.

invasion of the mushrooms

The huge, 10-inch umbrella mushroom giganticus faded away. Wide didn't work. Let's try pencil-thin. If the soup is over that-a way, let's take a walk this-a way.

Montreal vacation

A selection of our Aug. 9 through Aug. 13 vacation in old Montréal.

portabella, step aside

This has got to be genus mushroomus species giganticus. It makes a portabella look puny. This bad boy popped up in the shade of a bush in a flower bed. Ryan found it. It's got a young'un already. I'm not taking chances.

stimulus at work

Right here in little Monterey we see some economic stimulus at work. Down comes this lathe and plaster house of (let me guess) 1890. Behind it a new structure is up already. I'm calling this Amish urban planning.

wheels--open air

An open buggy (not shown here), once the standard courting vehicle, is now considered conservative or old school. Two-wheelers are relatively new on the scene in Monterey.

small wheels

Here are two more. Speed blurs.

wheels of Monterey skinny

Sit on the front porch for two hours and see lots of wheels. No commentary. Just two pics. Buggy wheels are skinny. Scooter wheels are whatever.

fungus or fugit

Okay, back from giving a blood sample for my annual. First stab was a miss. "I'll get Marilyn." She found a vein. Was not an RN but a phlebotomist, she perkily said. I recall that Mozart and Washington died of blood letting.

So you think big thoughts getting a needle. All is connected, right? The butterfly wing in Peru causes a storm in Russia. Her hands are conduits of the Healing Force of Life. I'm sure I felt something.

Then, on walking from the car to my door, I see this thing. I'm totally ignorant. I can remember from today's front page who drank what at the White House suds summit. But I don't know if this thing is fungus, mold, mildew, mushroom, or yeast. Is it a plant? Do I share life with it? I know it's not fugit. That's from Latin tempus fugit, for time flies. I just had to have a title.

Try me--Obama, Bud Lite (sounds contrived, like he's trying to be just one of the guys); the cop, moon dog (?), blue something (?); the prof, Sam Adams, Biden, non-alcoholic.

u-haul

Today we helped Joel and Stephanie move to the house they bought.

summer lilies

Walk from our house to the car and you will pass these huge displays.

more wheels

Two hay wagons. Why no hay on them? Farmers share wagons sometimes. They're being taken from one farm to another farm.