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ummmmm.....do you smell that?

"When baking, follow directions. When cooking, go by your own taste". ~Laiko Bahrs

My Nana's Banana Nut Bread

1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, well beaten [important]
1 tsp vanilla
3 large or 5 small banana's
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped nuts [I use pecans or walnuts]
1 cup raisins


Cream together butter and sugar. Add well beaten eggs. Mash the bananas and add. Mix together well. add flour, salt and soda [I mixed well together first before adding to the cream mixture]. Add chopped pecans and raisins. Place in loaf pan [I use a four small loaf pan]. Bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour [in the four pan, Iit usually takes about 30 to 35 minutes]. Cool and wrap in waxed paper.

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“You cannot be wimpy out there on the dream-seeking trail. Dare to break through barriers, to find your own path.” ~Les Brown

and after the midst was lifted the sun broke through the remaining clouds.

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"As with a heavy fog on a road, what lies ahead on the path of life is never completely clear, but the choices we make can help shape out the shadows." ~- Bryson Staley

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Let us go in; the fog is rising." ~Emily Dickinson

This is the mist rising off the Delaware River today. An incredible day....started with rain, then a magical fog lifed off the river......to sun and wind and brilliant clouds.

A day of dreams

25: 365

"If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry'."
-- John Lennon

Yup, that is all I got for Berries.

A very stressful week, not feeling it at all.

24: 365

“The most introspective of hearts tends to be the most sentimental. We cling to the smallest moments from our past because we fear that emotion will never come our way again.”
― Shannon L. Alder

For my Birthday I was given the gift of promise from my dear friend Pakini. She is from Tailand and she is such a kindred soul. She gave me a pot, some dirt and a doment bulb. She gave me a gift of promise.

I planted the bulb and set in in an old window at work.......and time has revealed the promise. A flower that has been captivating me for the last week.

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“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature -- the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.” ~ Rachel Carson

My favorite tree at the end of the lane.


I can not drive by it [or run by it] without pausing......as its wavy branches beckon me to stop and breath deeply and cherish the moment of the day.

I call this my Buddha tree.

22: 365

“How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.” ~Albert Einstein

I am always behind the lens....today I was capturing the special moment of a dear friend ~of shopping for her daughter’s Wedding gown. Upon editing the images, I realized that I had captured a self-portrait of myself doing for others. I find I am at my happiest when I am helping capture the 'moments' of other people’s life. This is something I can do, that allows others to truly live and experience a moment, knowing that they have photographs to look back upon. A memory keeper of sorts.

So here is a memory for me………doing something I so love to do.

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“I love snow for the same reason I love Christmas: It brings people together while time stands still. Cozy couples lazily meandered the streets and children trudged sleds and chased snowballs. No one seemed to be in a rush to experience anything other than the glory of the day, with each other, whenever and however it happened” ― Rachel Cohn, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Celebrating the glory of this day.......the first snow fall of 2012 in my sweet little valley.

20: 365

"A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy dare live." ~Bertrand Russell

For weeks I waited for my Amaryllis bulb to grow and blossom. She has blossomed and I am marveling in her beauty, as her blooms will only last a short time ~ before her life recedes back into her bulb to await another year to grow towards the winter sun once again.

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“Blacker than a moonless night. Hotter and more bitter than Hell itself… That is coffee.” ~Ace Attorney Phoenix Wright in Godot

......and an addiction that is hard to break.


This is me, not on caffeine.  this is how I see the world, not on caffeine.


Doing a nine day cleanse and coffee is out of my repertoire........and what do I do, I find myself at the little coffee shop buying a cup of that blacker than a moonless night....cup of Joe.

Ugh.

18: 365

"What is beauty? not the show
Of shapely limbs and features--no!
These are but flowers
That have their dated hours
To breathe their momentary sweets, then go.
'Tis the stainless soul within,
That outshines the fairest skin."~Sir A. de Vere Hunt

My Amaryllis is blooming......and she is stunning.  What a gift to have a bulp blossom in the middle of winter ~ reminding me of the promise of sping.

17: 365

"So much of life, it seems to me, is determined by pure randomness." ~Sidney Poitier

A foggy, gray day along the Delaware.  A random moment, a random shot.

Life is beautiful like that.....

“Food is the most primitive form of comfort.” ~Sheilah Graham (1904-1988)

Dear Lord, Please protect me from myself. I am stressed.....and I just baked a batch of Heathbar cruch * milk chocolate chip cookies.

They are warm....and I am weak.

15: 365

"I was just a bumpkin. Just a country bumpkin. I had just come to New York from Virginia. Or was it Baltimore?" ~Cass Elliot

Inner-Harbor........My Greta is attending the University of Maryland Nursing school in Baltimore. 

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“The merry year is born like the bright berry from the naked thorn.” ~Hartley Coleridge

The Holly Berries on my tree......the newest treat of the deer. Seriously, I didn't think deer liked to munch on Holly.

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“There is strong shadow where there is much light.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Götz von Berlichingen

BitterSweet.....Greta and I at The University of Maryland Medical School as she heads back to college. I am going to miss her dearly.  She truly is a Brilliant Light.

12: 365

"For a few minutes each early morning in midsummer, the sunrise pours a warm honey glow across my old dresser through the tiny amount of window I allow it to find it's way through in the wee hours, when most people are greeting the day and I'm saying goodnight."  ~the art of Peace

.....and I remember how much my Mother loved welcoming the new day.

11: 365

"In life there is nothing more unexpected and surprising than the arrivals and departures of pleasure. If we find it in one place today, it is vain to seek it there tomorrow. You can not lay a trap for it" ~Alexander Smith

An unexpected pleasure.....everyday at work, I look out the window upon this building that houses a salon/barber shop. Much to my surprise there was a new sign outside the building on Wednesday that stated "Complimentary hand/foot massage today from 11 to 4. My lunch time treat. Ahhhhhhhh...bliss.

10: 365

"In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous." --Aristotle

A Christmas bulb from my dear friend Pakini. She is from Thailand, and her spirit makes my heart so joyful.

In the summer-time, I will come into work and she has sprinkled Jasmine flowers on my desk and over my keyboard. What a delightful gift to receive ~ friendship that radiates from the soul.

9: 365

"A really hard laugh is like sex—one of the ultimate diversions of existence." (Jerry Seinfeld)

Reminds me of a date I had back in the late 70's. I was a *good Catholic* girl and my date came to pick me up in his custom van.....complete with shag carpet, dice hanging from the rear-view mirror, beaded curtains and what I believe was a mattress in the back. There were velvet posters on the walls and mirrors on the ceiling and pink champagne on ice. No, not really…. But when you are 17 and dating an older guy ~ this is enough to kind of freak you out. I was so scared to even turn around to see if what I thought I spotted back there was really what I thought I spotted back there.


Needless to say....Lesson learned. Never trust a man with a van.

Especially if it is sporting this bumpersticker.

8: 365

"Like a graceful vase, a cat, even when motionless, seems to flow." ~George F. Will

There is something magical about a cat. I have always had, and always will have a cat in my life, as just watching them is enough to relax me and give the greatest sense of peace.

7: 365

"There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery." ~Joseph Conrad

Abandoned farmstead in Middle Valley.

Interesting evening...I went to photograph at dusk, and my path crossed with three incredible souls, all out doing the same thing. Two for a film and one with her camera. We stopped and chatted and it made me realize that everything in this world happens for a reason. Serendipity.

6: 365

“Fly free and happy beyond birthdays and across forever, and we'll meet now and then when we wish, in the midst of the one celebration that never can end.” ~Richard Bach

Melissa's birthday today at work.

The human connections of those we work with are powerful throughout our lives...and when you forge friendships through a working relationship, the sweeter life is.

5: 365 plus one

"Knowledge of what is ~ does not open the door directly to what should be."
Albert Einstein

4: 365

HoarFrost on the 4th of January, taken whilst I warmed up my car.

“He giveth snow like wool: he scattereth the hoarfrost like ashes.”~The Bible

3: 365

Window of the old Milford, NJ train station. [it is now a bakery and coffee shop]

“An ordinary mirror is silvered at the back but the window of the night train has darkness behind the glass. My face and the faces of other travellers were now mirrored on this darkness in a succession of stillnesses. Consider this, said the darkness: any motion at any speed is a succession of stillnesses; any section through an action will show just such a plane of stillness as this dark window in which your seeking face is mirrored. And in each plane of stillness is the moment of clarity that makes you responsible for what you do.”
― Russell Hoban, The Medusa Frequency

2: 365

There's a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons-- That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes--
Emily Dickinson

The first Sunrise of 2012

"The grand show is eternal.  It is always Sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising.  Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, eah in its turn, as the round earth rolls." ~John Muir

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