Framing the Sound

Tag: nature

  • Being told you have high cholesterol…

    I’m certain there are worse things you could be told by your doctor and it’s not my intent to minimalize serious health conditions. My intent here then, is to cry in my beer!

    I love donut holes, I get mine, well, used to get mine at the local Walmart. They’re bite size and you can choose glazed, plain, blueberry, and on occasion I’ve seen them with powdered sugar. I’ve not counted but there’s probably around 20 or 30 of the delicious little holes per package.

    I trashed the last few that was left after I got home from seeing my doctor. I gave serious consideration to have just one more but decided against it.

    There are other things that can contribute to high cholesterol, take my blood pressure medication…yes, they can make it worse. But I’m not going to stop taking my bp medicine. I have a plan that I know will help lower my high cholesterol.

    Get off my ass and get out in nature! Exercise more! But unfortunately it’ll have to wait till warm weather returns. I can’t function outside during winter. So, I’m hoping the disappearance of donut holes will lower my cholesterol a little until I can tackle it with better armor this spring!

    Red Bellied Woodpecker looking like it has high cholesterol.

  • When Winter Ends

    And the warmth of spring begins that’s when my brain slowly but surely signals the rest of my body to start preparations for another new gardening season. It also tells me to start planning for a new photography season as well. Let me explain…

    I’m not a cold weather photographer, never have been and probably never will be. Me and cold don’t get along at all. I might brave the cold for a short walk with my camera to where my back yard meets the tangled woodlot after the first snow, and after Old Man Winter decides to slack off for a while.

    A day or two after that first snow melts, Nature reveals the tangled, cold, wet, soggy woodlot behind my house. Maybe I’m just a cynical old man when it comes to trying to be a winter photographer. But I always lose my cynical outlook when spring returns and I hear the first chirps of tree frogs, and robins with their confusing but pleasant song of “is…it…spring…or…still…win…ter?”

    If you’re wondering what helps get me through these forever lasting northeast winters, it has six strings and the wood it’s made from might just be related to those trees in that woodlot I mentioned.