2015: Preparing for Changes

The new year of 2015 is just hours old, and we have had our annual dish of black-eyed peas. This year, Tom served up the peas (seasoned with turmeric, cumin, fenugreek, ginger, salt, cayenne pepper) with arugula  and tomatoes over rice. This was a very tasty dish and, I hope, a harbinger of a good year. We know it will be a year of changes, some of which we have hints of already, others which remain yet to be identified. Our daughter will finish up a nine-month teaching practicum in environmental science and will be transferring to another university--perhaps to another state than the one in which she currently resides. She has begun to submit applications for further graduate study. Our son will be researching to discover the focus for his PhD work in aerospace engineering. And we have changes in sight, as well, which I will be writing about on this blog as the year progresses.

Several of our friends are preparing for changes, too: our daughter's boyfriend will be moving to the Northwest to work after finishing his undergraduate degree in December; our best friends are hoping to sell their house in the Northwest and move to Texas to be closer to family. 

But the year is yet young, and all of those changes, while visible on the horizon, are for another day's worry. Meanwhile, I am thinking of all the good things I have enjoyed this past year: another year of gardening in a state where gardening is a year-round possibility; another year of relatively good health; another year of travel and of seeing places I had not seen before and enjoying again places I had visited in the past; a year of being involved in social justice projects, of investing time in trying to make this place where we live a better place. 

It has been a good year. I hope this next one will be even better.

Below, a few photos from 2014

from Bayou Cane, looking across Lake Pontchartrain toward New Orleans (our daughter and her boyfriend)

anole shedding its skin on a potted poinsettia at the edge of the patio

Afton, WY

Jackson, Wyoming--view from Teton Pass

Fossil Butte, near Kemmerer, Wyoming

Campo, Colorado