AgWired

Have you ever heard of the saying, “Red sky at night, sailors delight. Red sky in morning, sailors take warning.”? Unfortunately, my husband took this picture in the morning, and I think it was cold and very windy that day. The saying held true.

And, I don’t remember Nebraska being this windy when I was growing up. Maybe it’s the weather this year, but we’ve had an exceptionally high number of windy days. Or maybe it’s just me. Ever notice the difference in how you interpreted things as a child versus how you see them as an adult? When you’re younger, everything is bigger, more grand, even more fabulous than you ever imagined. And somehow, as we get older, we seem to lose our child-like fascination and the extraordinary become plain.

I just read a series of articles in my Real Simple magazine (which by the way, is the best magazine out there, second only to all the ag mags I read, of course) about happiness. In the editor’s note, she says, “Think small, and just look around you.”

So maybe I should quit focusing on the impending gloomy weather because of the old saying about the red sky, and just look around and appreciate the beauty of the morning landscape that my husband captured on the camera.

Until we walk again …

Everybody’s heard about chestnuts roasting on an open fire, especially at this time of year, but how many of us have actually ever had any?

Apparently, there’s a reason for that. According to the American Chestnut Foundation, the American chestnut tree once reigned over 200 million acres of eastern woodlands from Maine to Florida, and from the Piedmont west to the Ohio Valley, until succumbing to a lethal fungus infestation, known as the chestnut blight, during the first half of the 20th century. They estimate that four billion American chestnuts were destroyed by the disease.

The American Chestnut Foundation was started in 1983 by a group of plant scientists with the goal of developing a blight-resistant American chestnut tree through research and breeding. Obviously, that requires funding and you can help by giving that hard-to-buy-for person on your Christmas list a really special gift this year – an Annual Sponsor membership to The American Chestnut Foundation worth two potentially blight-resistant chestnut trees!

I am not kidding. According to ACF, a gift membership includes a subscription to the bi-monthly magazine, access to their most advanced, potentially blight-resistant Restoration Chestnuts for your own planting, and expert advice on growing and caring for American chestnut trees.

If that is not cool enough, they even have a whole chestnut gift store – really! There’s books, posters, prints, handcrafted stuff made from chestnut wood, t-shirts, hats and more. Check it out at shop.acf.org. Guaranteed to be a Christmas gift they will never expect!