Journal: The Trashy Saga Continues... & Memorial Day

Last Tuesday, it rained again.  This is creating many problems for farmers all across the state and for people in the Nebraska lowlands, but for us, it’s giving our yard a good watering.  The crabgrass that insists on growing in the middle of my flowerbeds is growing even faster than the flowers, though.

Some friends were recently discussing the dilemma of running into someone who knows you – and you simply cannot remember his or her name.

“Well,” I remarked, “forgetting names might be better than ‘remembering’ people whom you didn’t know in the first place.”

I once walked up to a lady who worked at our local Wal-Mart, and greeted her with a happy, friendly, “Hi!!!”

When she stared at me blankly, I prompted, “We worked together at Nebraska Public Power!”

She looked me over from head to toe, curled up the corner of her lips in a commendable Elvis sneer, and sniffed, “I don’t think so.”  Then she lifted her chin, turned, and went mincing off in High Dudgeon.

I looked at a couple of the kids who were standing there beside me, and remarked, “I’m glad I didn’t work with her, too.”

They, of course, went on giggling for several more aisles.

My sister-in-law, Annette, who has been suffering from cancer for a couple of years, is not doing well.  But here’s a pretty picture of her with her daughter-in-law, Abbi. The quilt is the wholecloth one I made for her a year and a half ago.  Abbi and our nephew Nathan are expecting their fourth child soon, and Annette hosted a ‘baby sprinkle’ for Abbi and the new baby.  

In between the rolling booms of thunder and the noise of the rain late that afternoon, I could hear newly-fledged baby birds cheeping and peeping loudly for food.  It was kind of cold for baby birds out there:  48°... and with winds of 44 mph, the wind chill was 41°.

After supper, Larry finished off a corner in the addition.  And I went on sewing pearls onto the New York Beauty quilt.  When I quit for the night, there were three more blocks of pearl-sewing, and the pearls would be all sewn on the quilt itself.  The pillow shams add four more blocks.  I need to put the backs on the shams before I sew the pearls on, so I don’t accidentally sew over a pearl.

Papa house finch with two fledglings

Wednesday afternoon, the male house finches brought their newly-fledged babies to the sunflower-seed feeders.  The babies know there’s food inside those sunflower-seed shells, so they peck them up and work and work... but rarely can they get them open.  So they drop the seed they’re working on, and flap and squawk and beg for seeds from their parent.  He makes quick work of cracking the shells, and then stuffs seed after seed into gaping yellow craws.

After our midweek church service, we ate a late supper – Schwan’s Supreme pizza.  We had fresh raspberries with Activia Probiotic yogurt drink poured over them for dessert, and some Chilean red seedless grapes, too.  Yummy. 

Larry went up to check on the neighbors’ goats and chickens before he went to bed, as they were still on vacation (the neighbors, not the goats and chickens).  He usually brings home four eggs each time.

Remember the freezer snafu of last week?  Well, a week ago last Thursday, after finding it unplugged, Larry plugged the thing back in, so that the next week before the garbage man came, we could put more of the freezer contents into the garbage frozen, thereby reducing the unpleasantness as much as possible.  Early Thursday morning, Larry put several bags of frozen, bagged stuff into the trashcan, then pulled it, about 2/3 full, up the slope to the road.  He put a couple of stacked, empty boxes beside the can. 

At 9:30 a.m., I watched as the garbage truck backed down the lane.  The driver crawled out in his unambitious way... looked at the can... gave it a slight little tug toward the truck... shook his head... threw the boxes into the truck... and then left the can without emptying it, and drove away.  It was a sunny day, and the stuff in the can thawed by afternoon.  😝  

When I called early on to tell the people at the office in Fremont, 55 miles to our east, what the man had done, and to ask that they please pick the garbage up soon, the lady told me she would contact the driver.

She emailed me at a quarter ’til five, when it was almost time for them to close, and informed me that the driver said the can was too heavy for him.  She said we needed to divide the can’s contents into three cans, and they would pick it up – the next week!

Mind you, that lazy oaf didn’t have to lift the trashcan; the truck’s hydraulic arms do that for him.  He only needed to turn it enough that the hooks could slide into the can’s handles.

Teensy

This would never do.  Larry would have to bring the excavator home, dig a hole, and bury the stuff.  Meanwhile, the neighbors’ worthy schnoz’s would be mighty unhappy if they got too close to that garbage can!

We decided we’d had enough of those trash collectors.  We’ll ask for service from a local company.  They used to pick up our garbage, but they required us to take our cans several blocks over to Old Highway 81, because their driver thought he couldn’t safely back down our lane. 

But they evidently now have a more confident driver, because he backs all the way down the lane to the neighbors’ cattle guard, picking up trash from two of our neighbors as he goes.

Larry called the Fremont company the next morning to tell them we would no longer need their services, and they could pick up their empty can this coming week.

And then the woman in the office informed him that we hadn’t paid our bill since February, and owed them $86!  I sent them a screen print of our payments, which are sent through our bank.  They have not yet responded.  I found their last paper bill, too; it shows the bill was paid each and every month. 

I was glad I had worked in the flower gardens Thursday morning, because by noon AccuWeather was showing thunderstorms moving our way.  It was a good day for a catnap, as you can see!  In looking at the weather, I also saw that three people had been killed in tornadoes in Golden City, Missouri, the previous night, and twenty people had been injured.

Brown thrasher in lilac bush

Right then, it was snowing in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Idaho, and even Arizona.

But here in our yard, a brown thrasher was singing in the lilac bush, and its mate was answering from the depths of the cedar tree.

The brown thrashers around our area often imitate the local cardinals, blue jays, English sparrows, and goldfinches.

That evening, Larry took out the supporting pillar he’d put in place under the big center beam in the addition – and everything stayed perfectly in place.  No settling or sagging.  So the walls and dormers are giving plenty of stability.  Larry kept telling me this would be the case – and I kept telling him to be prepared to run, should everything start crashing down.  😏

Late that night, I finished sewing the pearls on the New York Beauty quilt, then sewed a lace medallion circle onto the center of the quilt and added more pearls to it.  That done, I proceeded to remove the binding, because the quilt wasn’t lying quite flat.  It was flat and square before the binding; but in trying to get the binding very, very close to the beaded piping, I believe I pulled it a bit too tight as I sewed it on by machine, using the zipper foot.  I’ll get it right, I’ll get it right, I’ll get it right, I’ll get it right, I’ll get it right!  

I’m putting the binding back on by hand, since the zipper foot doesn’t let the needle stitch close enough to the piping to suit me.  I’ll make that quilt flat if it’s the last thing I ever do!

The king-sized pillows arrived the other day.  I ordered some inexpensive ones, since they’ll be only for decoration, and was pleasantly surprised to find them good quality pillows.

Friday, snow was still falling – in the mountains of Montana, Utah, Wyoming, and British Columbia.  Oh, and it was also snowing in Iceland.  I knew you’d want to know.  😃

That afternoon, taking a little break from sewing on binding, I picked up my coffee mug and walked over to the front dormer window.

!!!  I looked out just in time to see one of the neighbors dump a huge bag of grass clippings over his back fence right onto his neighbor’s upcoming beans!  He didn’t even bother to spread out the clippings, just dumped them in a huge, smothering pile.  Good grief.

I should’ve taken a picture, and used it for blackmail.

I returned to the binding.  It’s going back on nicely, and I’m fairly certain that a quick spray with starch and a good steaming will make this quilt nice and flat.  It’s slow going, though, doing binding all by hand.

That evening as I was sewing away, Victoria and Carolyn walked into my quilting studio.  Victoria had brought a few more items to go with my Mother's Day gift:  some empty glass bottles, complete with roller tops, in which to mix various oils, with coconut oil as a carrier.  I’m going to try mixing lavender, lemon, and citrus, and see if it helps with allergies/hay fever, as advertised.

Here’s our front yard.  The flowers are growing like gangbusters.  See the board on the roof?  Larry was using it when he put the new ridge cap on.  He’ll be power-washing and staining the dormers before long.  The eaves need to be finished, too, and trim put around the windows and doors.

By Saturday night, the binding was three-quarters of the way on – that is, the top side was.  After it’s sewn onto the top, I’ll fold it around to the back and stitch it down.

After our morning church service yesterday, we took some flowers to the cemetery.

Orchard oriole

Late Sunday afternoon, as we were getting ready to go to our evening service, an orchard oriole landed on the new bird bath, and proceeded to have himself a bath in the center tier!  I didn’t even know there were any orchard orioles around the area.  It’s probably only migrating through, and the weather has delayed migration a month or more.

Shortly thereafter, the bird bath fountain quit.  Bah, humbug.

Late last night, it began thundering... lightninging... and then raining.  We’ve had over 2” of rain since then, and Highway 81 to our north is closed, because Shell Creek is flowing over the roadway. 

I smelled the distinct odor of skunk, and looked around for the cats.  They were nowhere to be found.  Why must they always go outside when it’s raining, thundering, and lightninging??!

It was a great relief when they came sauntering in half an hour later, nonskunked (should be a word) and not even too awfully wet.

American robin

It was too rainy to work in the yard this morning.  The tares and the wheat can grow up together until tomorrow or the next day.

Larry is working on our old pop-up camper, which has been residing in our garage.  The mechanism that makes it go up and down needed to be repaired.  He plans to sell it when it’s fixed.  As soon as it’s out of the way, he can haul off the chest freezer.  It doesn’t work right, and even if it did, it’s old and uneconomical.  Maybe the metal recyclers will give us a few pennies for it.  ’Course, they’re closed today... and when they’re open, Larry is working.  That’s always the way.

Male house finch

The last load of clothes is in the dryer.  The sun actually came out this afternoon.  I filled the bird feeders... then tried the bird bath fountain, just for the fun of it – and it works again!  Last night’s rain must’ve fixed it; it probably had debris in the motor or something.

I just found a nest of newly-hatched English sparrows tucked up inside the tongue/hitch area of the fifth-wheel camper.  I can’t see the birds themselves, only the nest; but I can sho’ ’nuff hear them!  I discovered it when the mother sparrow flew from the hitch, scolding as she went, and then I heard the babies.

Time for supper!  We’re having Black Angus burgers on fresh-baked ciabatta rolls, with cheese, lettuce, onions, tomatoes, ketchup, mustard, and relish.  For dessert, strawberries with yogurt drink poured over them. 

I hope you had a nice Memorial Day.

,,,>^..^<,,,           Sarah Lynn         ,,,>^..^<,,,