Tiny Life Journal
- Days 1-2 were feverish and body aches. Taking ibuprofen.
- Days 3-4 were dominated by runny nose, congestion, sore throat. Extremely sore throat. My dad suggested that ice chips might help. I used a blender to make a spoobable ice slushee and it made all the difference. Instant relief though I had to keep eating it. I added frozen blackberries and sugar and had blackberry slushees all day on Friday. Helped a lot. Lots of napping. Low energy. A bit of brain fog. Added Sudafed to the ibuprofen for the congestion.
- Day 5 I felt tired all day. Napped much of the day and not much ability to focus. Sore throat mostly gone with much less congestion.
- Day 6 Feeling mentally alert and just about normal. Sore throat and congestion are no longer noticeable. Will take a couple doses of Sudafed today to be sure. To early to say anything about energy levels.
For the forseable future I’ll still be doing shorter posts here but longer posts have moved to a new hand-rolled labor of love. First post:
I’m not sure how well this will work out, this experimental next phase for my website and blog. This is the first time in a very long time that I’ve decided to return to an entirely manual blog. In a way it feels like returning home. My first websites were built back in the late 90s. Good times! I built Liberated Existence as the online version of our neighborhood resource center in late 1990s Memphis.
Tiny Life Journal - Sunday morning health notes
My first encounter with Covid seems to be finished. Feeling better today, much improvement. Sore throat mostly gone and I feel mentally alert. So, assuming continued improvement, Covid symptoms will have lasted a full 5.5 days, Monday night till Saturday evening. My guess is I would test negative for Covid today or tomorrow. Will wait till Tuesday so as to have no doubt about outcome, don’t want to waste the test.
Summary:
Final thought: Not only was this my first encounter with Covid but, also, the first time I’ve been sick since before 2020. Not counting the 2022 sudden and extreme vertigo which continues as some sort of new normal I attribute to labyrinthitis. I wouldn’t call it vertigo but rather a low level lack of balance that my brain has adapted to. Sorta feels like my head is floating in a bowl of water. And, along with that sensation is daily tinnitus.
Tiny Life Journal - Treating myself to a cup of iced sumac tea! Though, really, it’s very tart and tastes far closer to lemonade than tea.
A fairly common small tree around rural Missouri and much of eastern North America, sumac produces large bunches of seedy red berries that hang from the branches by mid to late August. This particular species is Rhus copallinum commonly called winged sumac, shining sumac, dwarf sumac or flameleaf sumac.
To make into tea just soak the berries in water overnight in a fridge. It’s better and more flavorful to mush the berries a bit or run the mix of berries and water through a blender for a couple seconds to release the juices. Use a filter of some sort to separate out the berry bits which will contain seeds that can be planted if one is so inclined. I’ve also read that the berries can be dried for use in winter though I’ve not yet tried that. I added 4 teaspoons of sugar to that portion.
Tiny Life Journal - I took a walk in the woods yesterday in search of pawpaws. I didn’t find any but I did come across a few Cardinal flowers in and near the dry creek bed. A nice surprise! I’d seen one several years ago in the area but not since.
What’s notable is that these flowers are a favorite food source of the ruby throated hummingbird which, while in flight and feeding, seem to resemble the flower. There are three lower petals that look like the tail of the bird, two petals each stretched upwards and sidways from the center that look like wings. The central pistil looks like the body and head of the bird. If you’ve ever seen a hummingbird feeding you may note the similarity when viewing the flower from the front or side.
Tiny Life Journal - While on a bike ride back in June I noticed that there were paw paw trees growing along the road. I have no idea why I’d not noticed them before. They were right there! In any case, I kept a lookout for flowers and fruit. I didn’t see any flowers but finally spotted a few fruit recently.
I harvested one a several days ago and I ate it yesterday. Oh my was it delicious. If you’ve never had one, it’s similar to a banana and mango combined, both in consistency and flavor. Also, it’s native to much of North America and is the largest native fruit. That said, they’re hard to come by. They’re usually not sold in stores so you’re most likely to only get the chance if you grow them, discover them or know someone that has them.
You can buy the trees from some mail-order nurseries. I’ve got a couple that I planted from a nursery and not long after I discovered a patch of them that recently started growing just hundreds of feet from my cabin. They’re probably less than 3 years old. The seeds are very large, not wind born so I’m guessing they were transported in via some animal’s poop. Most certainly there are others in the nearby woods I’ve not yet found. I went in search a couple weeks ago and was, not surprisingly, rewarded with a leg full of seed ticks for the effort. No paw paws though.
For now I’ll enjoy the fact that I’ve got a handful growing, I’ve got some seeds and I know there are a few more fruit nearby waiting to be harvested. That’ll have to do.
Morning porch time. Unconventional use of the Logitech Combo Touch Keyboard with back kickstand resting on the keyboard as a stand. Easily balanced with weight on the pillow. Perfect for reading, screen at eye level. If I want to type, it only takes a second to attach. iPad modularity for the win.
Tiny Life Journal - I have a large forehead. It’s not a receding hairline, always been like that. I won a jar of mayonnaise at a party once for largest forehead. True story. And my eyes are not symmetrical. My eyebrows are out of control. I am unkempt. Year-by-year I am disappearing into the surrounding woodland. I am becoming that weirdo in the woods I’ve always dreamed of becoming. 🤓
Tiny Life Journal - A view of the countryside from my morning ride. The mix of fields and forests over the gentle rolling hills of Madison County never disappoint. Not in the image, an immature (2-3 years old) bald eagle seen in a nearby field.
Tiny Life Journal - As a freelancer with a very minimal, energy constrained lifestyle, I often have days when I’ve got no paid work. It’s not a problem given my careful, restrained expenses. I try to enjoy or otherwise “make good use of that time” though to be honest, sometimes the best use of time is simply to sit on the porch and listen to the birds. I do no harm when I’m sitting on the porch listening to the birds and my cat likes the fact that my lap provides her a nice place to stretch while also listening to the birds.
Then I have days when my mind will focus on a topic or a task and suddenly there is not enough time in that day to get through what it is I suddenly want to do. And so the past couple days I’ve found myself exploring and searching out new-to-me blogs. It’s something I’ve neglected for too long and now that I’m taking more time to look around it’s a bit overwhelming but in a good way. Woot!!
I’m really enjoying Bear Blog’s Discovery Feed! Also, the Blogroll Club blog directory is proving a lot of fun.
Tiny Life Journal - I’ve been seeing these two sweeties several times a week while taking my morning walk. Always in the same spot and same time.
Tiny Life Journal - Well, file this under a stroke of good luck and the benefits of paying attention. I stepped outside to take Cosmo on a little walk and I heard a Yellow-billed Cuckoo not too far off. It was answered by another just above me. I looked up just as the closer bird flew onto a branch 60 feet above. The second arrived moments later and I believe I observed mating as the second landed on top of the first and from my vantage point below their two bodies seemed to mostly merge with the exception of their two tails which were cris-crossed. I’m 55 years old and only just today have I seen two birds mate in a tree.
Then it occurred to me that it might be a bit late in the season for that. They’ll soon be migrating thousands of miles from North America to South America. But according to All About Birds Yellow-billed Cuckoos have one of the shortest nesting cycles of any bird species.
From the start of incubation to fledging can take as little as 17 days. Although born naked, the young birds develop quickly; within a week of hatching the chicks are fully feathered and ready to leave the nest.
Imagine, they hatch and grow and then within a few weeks embark on such a long journey!
Tiny Life Journal - Missouri has been spared much of this summers' heat but last week was hot and humid here (90s with humidity at 90%+) so I used the window AC in my tiny house. But this morning at 5am it’s 69°. Had I paid attention to the forecast I would have opened my windows last night. A missed opportunity.
To conserve energy I usually turn the AC off at night and just run fans so it warms up a good bit. It was 80° in here this morning. A bit stuffy but tolerable. I stepped outside to heat some water for coffee and was met by the more humid but much cooler outside air. And of course, the birdsong. There’s nothing quite as cheerful as birds singing in the morning. Good morning birds!And off in the distance the occasional twang of frogs around the lake.
I’ve taken the opportunity to open my windows and turn the window fan on to freshen the air up and cool the cabin down without the AC.
Cool morning air and coffee in the company of bird song and frog conversation is a good morning.
Tiny Life Journal - Out on my morning bike ride and I’m thinking that there’s nothing better in the world than a slow bike ride on a quiet country road. It’s an old paved road, nearly flat with just a few gentle hills that curves several times through a mix of landscapes.
To my right a hayfield mowed just yesterday fills the air with it’s delicious, wholesome scent. The hay is still laying on the ground and in a week or less it’ll be bailed up. On my left there’s a woodland with its own scents and sounds. A mix of hickory, oak, cedar, walnut, and I’d guess quite a few other species in there. The road edges are a mix of shrubs and trees like paw paw and sumac with wildflowers like bee balm and blue lobelia mixed in. In the next half mile the road moves through a more open terrain of fields with cows on one side and a couple of horses on the other. Indigo buntings frequent the wire fencing along the road.
The return trip has me back on a mile-long shared gravel driveway. The neighbor is sitting outside and I stop for a chat.
I just felt a sting on my arm and looked down to see this little critter, smaller than a dime. I’d guess 10 mm. Left an easy to see bite and quickly swelling welt!
Zelus luridus, also known as the pale green assassin bug, is a species of assassin bug native to North America.
Dancing in my tiny house to Footloose and various other cheesy hits from the 80s as one does on a Friday afternoon. Anything to avoid the existential dread that is now a part of daily life. And right on cue, the theme song to Ghostbusters pops up and seems appropriate to the moment.
Tiny Life Journal - On my morning walk with Cosmo I stopped to enjoy the smell of a button bush and noticed a little Flower Crab Spider perched on one of the spheres of flower clusters tucked under a leaf. A lone bindweed flower softly lit by from behind was also worth a stop!
Tiny Life Journal - My mornings start with a dog walk followed by a 30 minute bike ride and, finally outdoor chores. Lately those chores start with picking blackberries. A beautiful view of the nearby Missouri countryside then, while picking blackberries I met a female widow skimmer dragonfly that was sunning itself.
The widow skimmer is one of the group of dragonflies known as king skimmers. The nymphs live in the water, molting and growing until they are ready to emerge from the water and then molting a final time to reveal their wings.
Tiny Life Journal - In my woodland garden, two of my favorite native wildflowers: Purple Coneflower and Black-Eyed Susan. Growing nearby, the American hog peanut which has edible seeds I hope to try this year.
Tiny Life Journal - A morning dog walk is the start of my day. One mile on a gravel road that takes me through a mixed ecosystem of woodland, open fields and small meadows. A visual and aural mix of birds, butterflies, flowers and more. It’s simple, quiet and beautiful.