2012 Is Off To A Good Start

This handsome red-shouldered hawk showed up the other day, landed just outside the kitchen window scoping out the yard for a smaller bird or rodent to eat for breakfast.  I was amazed I got such a clear picture as I had to zoom in to get this close and shoot through the window glass to boot.  A little later as I walked out to hang the laundry s/he swooped right in front of me squawking and flapped across the yard to land at the top of the gateway down into the woods.

Later the same day as I was working in the garden I heard the unmistakable call of a red-tailed hawk, you know the one- the long lonely scree they dub into movies and TV at a critical moment in the plot. I looked up and spied the hawk, high in the air flying away to the north, then it circled back and soared right over me and the yard and house, circled over the farm and then flapped its way back across our yard and off to the north again and out of sight.

I take these hawk sitings as good omens for the new year.

It's been unseasonably warm and as a result the prunus mume is blooming about two months earlier than normal.  Apparently they can bloom anytime in the winter.  I'm not complaining, the pink cloud of blossoms outside my desk window has been very cheery over the past few weeks.  The delicate cupped flowers are to me the epitome of Asian floral splendor.

I've been cooking loads of soups, cleaning out all the leftovers from the fridge, tonight I made a curried butternut squash soup using the last of the peppers, yes, fresh peppers from our garden picked back around Thanksgiving  These were the last handful that had been green when picked and failed to ripen up in the paper bag with the others so got tossed into the fridge. It was time for them to go into the pot with lots of onions, carrots, garlic, celery, butternut, tomatoes, red lentils, coriander, cumin, cardamon, curry powder, cayenne, a little saffron and a bay leaf.  All cooked together and pureed, quite tasty garnished with some fresh yogurt and toasted pumpkin seeds for supper tonight.

Yesterday we took apart the holiday tree, packed all the treasures carefully away and put the boxes back up in the attic along with the now empty cookie tins, cleaned the whole house and put the furniture back to normal.  I was a bit sad to see the beauty go, but it was time to move on into the new year and leave the holiday season behind.  2011 was a good year and the holidays memorable, but I'm ready to embark now on 2012.