Sarah Lynn's Nature's Splendor: August 2021

In answer to some questions about last week’s letter: Our Internet Service Provider is Verizon. I use a hotspot on my tablet. I had the tablet before I had the smartphone. I have not activated the hotspot on my phone. I left our local Megavision partly because of cost, but the greater reason was because we kept having to raise the receptor dish higher, higher, higher, so it could receive the signal over the tops of the trees. Eventually, Larry’s method of getting the dish higher was making my hair stand up on end, and I don’t look good in that style. Furthermore, even when the dish was high enough, if it wasn’t exactly and precisely aimed at the tower, several miles away, I might be online/offline/online/offline (mostly off) for days on end. Frustrating.

Also, I wanted a signal that was portable. Most of the time, I like Verizon fine, and even when it slows down, it’s not bad. I usually get 10 or 11 days a month on high speed. But even with slow speed, YouTube videos play at 360p or 480p without a hitch, and most of the things I do online work fine.

Here’s a nicely restored covered wagon we saw in the huge barn at Scout’s Rest Ranch in North Platte.

You know, what bugged me the most about our excursion through Buffalo Bill Cody’s ranch was that multitudes of their plaques and signs all around the entire place had numerous misspellings, punctuation mistakes, and grammatical errors. Ugh, that drives me berserk.

(And usually when I write something like that, I make typos myself. heh I shall now try extra hard to avoid doing that.)

Late Tuesday afternoon, I finished my customer’s Rail Fence quilt. I decided to contrast rather than match the thread to the forest green backing, and used a light yellow. The pantograph is ‘Alfresco’. The quilt measures 86” x 86”.

And there’s no Teensy hiding under the quilt. 😥

My dogs used to camp out at my feet while I sewed. Once upon a time, there I was, sewing a loooong ruffle lickety-split, really going full bore. It was the middle of the night, and not another creature was stirring, not even a mouse. Neither, so I thought, was the dog, Ebony, our Black lab, who, so I thought, was sound asleep under the table.

Wrong.

She was chewing the cord.

And then she chewed through it.

All at once, my sewing machine stopped in mid-seam, the light went off, the dog yelped, sprang straight up, and ka-blanged her head on the underside of the table.

I, who am not jumpy, went directly into the attic without benefit of a ladder.

It was right before Easter, and those little girls had to have their ruffled dresses. Sooo… I awoke Larry and implored him to come repair my cord. He clambered groggily out of bed, put on his slippers, went out into the garage to get his electrical box, came back in, and spliced the cord.

I thanked him profusely and went back to sewing.

He replied, and I quote, “Grum grum grum.” Yosemite Sam in person.

The dog did not again chew cords. One of the children’s Bibles, yes. Cords, no.

That evening, I loaded my customer’s ‘Sewcialites’ quilt, on which she wanted a custom quilting job, and got a little bit done on the border before bedtime.

Wednesday, the batting arrived for the two quilts a customer in Phoenix is sending me. Just like the last box from her, this box, too, was quite squished. Fortunately, batting is squishable.

But I couldn’t imagine what in the world I’d ordered from Cellar Door Books in Lexington, Kentucky. I looked it up for the fun of it (after opening the box), and found an honest-to-goodness bookstore by that name – in California. I also found a Lexington listing on ‘Find Us Local’ that says this company is engaged in mining, excavating, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction. ?

“Oh, the wonders we wonder,” quoth Dr. Seuss.

I spent most of Wednesday working on the top border and the top row of my customer’s Sewcialites quilt.

The BMW, which Larry hasn’t had a chance to work on yet, ran fine for him the first three days of the week. Then we got in it to drive to church Wednesday evening (with me protesting) – and as soon as he started it, the warning lights on the dash all came on, and the thing would barely chug up the driveway. I bailed, and headed for the Jeep. I think the Beemer didn’t like my breath mints.

Larry has a code scanner, and an app on his phone that reads those codes. I sure hope we can get that vehicle to run right; it’s excellently made, really a nice SUV – when it’s not chuggity-chug-chugging in limp mode.

That evening, Loren evidently got the time for the church service mixed up again, thinking it started at 6:30 instead of 7:30. He headed off quite early, as usual – but after making a circle through town, going south and then west toward the church, he turned north and went to Robert’s house instead of the church.

Robert gave him the correct information, and he went home for 20 minutes before driving to the church without any troubles.

I wonder if he later wonders why the church services seem so much longer than they used to?

Thursday morning, Loren discovered the hitch lock on his camper, and a ker-fuffle (I should say, a KER-FUFFLE!!!) (yes, that’s more accurate) soon ensued. 🤨

He first called Larry. “I went out to hitch up to my camper, and found a big lock on it,” he said, “and I can’t find the key! Do you know where the key is?”

“Yes,” said Larry, “I have it. I’m the one who put the lock on, because the State Patrol does not want you taking that rig anywhere after what happened in North Platte last year.”

“That’s illegal!” exclaimed Loren.

“No, it’s not illegal,” said Larry.

“They can’t tell me I can’t take my own rig on a vacation!” Loren protested.

“Yes, they can,” Larry told him. “And if you do, they’re liable to take away your driver’s license, too.”

Loren said, “If I had’ve known this, I would’ve sold that camper!” Then, “I need that hitch lock removed, so I can sell it!!!”

Larry told him, “You don’t need the hitch lock removed in order to sell it. If you sell it, we’ll remove the hitch lock as soon as the buyer arrives to get the camper.”

There was more to-do, with Loren saying the only reason the State Patrol hauled him to their office was because of his eyesight (it was before he had the cataracts removed). Larry said no, that had nothing to do with it; it was because he was looking for Norma, concerned people called 911, and when the police looked up information on Norma, they discovered she’d passed away several months earlier.

Loren said, “She was there! I saw her! One of her girls (it’s Kenny’s girls he’s referring to when he says that) took her back to Columbus!”

Larry was driving the boom truck, and he didn’t want to have such a conversation whilst trying to drive. So at that point he told Loren he would come talk with him a little later.

After parking the truck at the shop, Larry came home for lunch. I cooked a meal for Loren while Larry ate, and Larry took it to him; we decided Larry would be the bad guy that day.

And now here’s a ‘Rest of the Story’ we didn’t expect:

When Larry arrived at Loren’s house, he met him coming out of his attached garage. He was cleaning out his camper in preparation for selling it!

So Larry spent 2 hours and 45 minutes helping him get everything out of it. (So much for me cleaning Loren’s basement; it’s now piled again with the stuff from the camper. 🙄 He had that thing packed. There were enough blankets for all of Nebraska’s Boy Scouts to go camping in January and stay toasty warm.)

Larry then took the camper to a friend’s camper sales place, putting the hitch lock back in it in case Loren suddenly decides someone is stealing his camper, and he’s gotta have it back, or he’s gotta go on a vacation.

Larry turned the water on Loren’s yard, too. The grass is dying, and Loren forgets how to turn on the well that powers the irrigation. He has underground sprinklers, but must turn everything on and off manually. Also, in one section there’s a leak in a waterpipe, so he’s been setting up hoses and sprinklers here and there; but he hasn’t been able to get nearly enough water on that big yard.

For a while he thought there were water restrictions here, evidently remembering the time when he and Janice lived in Solon, Iowa, and people were being fined if they watered their lawns; so he wasn’t watering at all, and the entire large lawn was nearly all brown. Larry convinced him we have no such restrictions here; but he still only waters small areas for an hour at a time, and never overnight. So he simply cannot keep up, in this hot, dry weather.

All afternoon, Loren was in a totally different frame of mind from the morning, appreciative for the help, fixing Larry some toast with peanut butter and honey, offering him a drink of water or milk or coffee, and there was absolutely no problem whatsoever.

The brain is a mysterious piece of work, especially when it misfires.

Meanwhile, I quilted. Five new cones of Omni thread (BIG cones! – 6,000 yards each!) in soft blues arrived. With any luck, one of them will be the right color for the quilts that are on their way and should arrive tomorrow.

I got the pieced blocks in the second row of the quilt finished that night, then retired to my recliner with a steaming cup of Cameron’s Toasted Southern Pecan coffee. (And no, it doesn’t prevent me from sleeping. I don’t make it very strong.)

The Nebraska State Fair started Friday morning. Why don’t I have a scout who can hurry in as soon as the gates open, and tell me what happened in the Expo Building, and over in the Fine Arts building?! In 2019, a friend was sending me pictures of my quilt early on opening-day morning. I checked online several times throughout the day – in fact, I’d started checking a couple of days earlier – but didn’t find any listing of competition results. I tried hard not to waste my time continuously clicking ‘Refresh’ on the page where I thought those results should be. 😉

Larry and I are old enough this year – 60 – to get in for only $5 each. We will go a week from today, September 6^th, Labor Day, as that’s the day I have to pick up the quilts.

By midnight, row 3 was done, and I’d rolled the quilt forward to the next row, ready to start on Saturday.

By this time, I’d decided they just weren’t going to post the quilt competition results online this year. I clicked ‘Refresh’ anyway.

And there it was!!! – the word ‘Results’, in blue, with a line under it! Yep, it was a link to the pdf file.

I clicked it so fast I made the mouse squeak.

And here are the results for the Antique Sewing Machine wall-hanging:

5^th Place

The following results are for the Atlantic Beach Path quilt:

1^st Place in Division (I really don’t know what that means)
1^st Place in Overall Quilt Awards & Best of Division
1^st Place and Reserve Best of Show
1^st Place in Best in County Contest

The lady who won 1^st Place and Best of Show is Margie Sergent, who was an assistant in my Home Ec class in Jr. High. I loved her then, and she’s just as sweet a person now as she was all those years ago.

I’m looking forward to seeing all the quilts at the fair. When I entered mine some time before noon a week ago Thursday, there were hundreds of quilts already stacked on tables in the big Expo building – and they would be receiving quilts for three more hours.

The plantain lily hostas are blooming like anything. The front yard is brilliant with hundreds of the blooms. Hummingbirds (and sphinx moths and bumblebees) love them.

I could see by the tracers on Loren’s Jeep and the game cam that he was busy driving here and there Friday. He went at least three times to the camper sales where Larry had parked his camper so it could be sold. The owner, Tom, wasn’t there; he’d taken a few days of vacation.

I knew all this agitation wasn’t good.

At 7:30 Saturday morning, Loren arrived at Walker Foundations wanting the keys for his camper. He was driving his pickup, and had tried hitching up his camper, only to find the hitch lock on it again.

Larry was behind the shop unloading his truck. Our nephew Charles, who is Larry’s boss, took Loren where Larry was. First Loren said there was something in the camper he needed. When Larry reminded him that they’d spent nearly three hours emptying it Thursday, he switched to, “There are tools in the outside compartment I need.” So Larry, Charles, and Loren went over to Tom’s (just a couple of blocks away), and Larry unlocked the compartments, one after another.

As expected, Loren didn’t see anything he needed. He then changed to, “It’s getting dusty. I need to take it home and wash it.”

Larry told him that Tom and his workers do that; Loren doesn’t need to.

A bit of a brouhaha followed. We were glad Charles was there, and helped Larry talk with Loren. Charles is levelheaded, and he and Susan love Loren as we do, so he won’t say a word with anything other than Loren’s (and our) best interests at heart.

Loren was difficult, but Charles and Larry stood their ground, kindly but firmly. No, he can’t have the keys. No, he can’t hitch up to the camper. No, he can’t take it anywhere. No, Norma was not at that rest area near North Platte. No, there is not another Norma.

When we took Loren some food that afternoon, he acted like nothing under the sun had happened; everything was hunky-dory (to use his very own terminology).

As we left, I said to Larry, “You know, we shouldn’t be surprised that there are two Normas, because, after all, there are two Lorens!” 😅

Hollyhock

We continued on our way to see Andrew and Hester’s new home. Bobby and Hannah and the children came to see it, too, while we were there.

Joanna, 18, and Keira, 3, had fun playing together. They are 15 years apart, but they’re best of friends.

The house was built in 1926, but has been totally refurbished, from the basement to the third-floor attic walk-up, which they’ve made into a big playroom for Keira. It’s a delightful space for a child, and the little girl cousins are thrilled to death, too.

AND!!!! Heerrrrrrre’s the best, most important, news of the day:

Hester, showing us around their house, pointed out one of the three upstairs bedrooms and said, “That’s mostly just an empty room...” (pause) “...but come February, there’ll be a new little person in there.” !

How ’bout that. We have three new grandbabies on the way – Dorcas’ will arrive in December, and Victoria’s and Hester’s in February. So you see, we once again have greater blessings than trials.

The German words painted on the flowerboxes at the side of this upper deck say, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”

Home again, I went back to my quilting studio to spend the rest of the day quilting.

Some time after 10:00 p.m., violent winds struck our house quite suddenly and without warning. I was near one of the upstairs windows, and I backed away from it really fast, because it sounded quite like it was going to blow right in. I quickly checked WeatherBug – and it said the wind was gusting up to 12 mph.

I knew better than that.

Half an hour later, after the winds had calmed down a little, I looked at WeatherBug again, and it said the wind was blowing at 58 mph, and it stayed that way for another half an hour. Judging from previous experience, I’m sure that first powerful wind that hit was 65 mph or greater. There were a few branches down, and someone else’s bag of garbage is in our yard, but nothing terrible happened.

When I quit quilting that night, I was nearly done with row 4.

Since Larry was still in Genoa working on vehicles, I pulled up the State Fair’s website and looked at the various food and drink vendors that will be at the fair. If we are there at suppertime, we like to head for the place that sells Jumbo Smoked turkey legs. One is enough for both of us, and they are soooo good. But I see some other foods that look good, too. I like trying new and different things; Larry prefers sticking to foods he knows he likes. But we’ve found a whole lot of new foods to like, through my penchant of trying things out. 😉 Pulled pork at the Ol’ Tex BBQ sounds mmmm, good...

But... coleslaw drizzled with cheese?? 😲 What in the world?! Cheese – especially drizzled cheese – doesn’t belong on coleslaw!

I won’t try something if I know I won’t like it.

I couldn’t sleep much that night; I got only about two hours of sleep. I have this happen periodically – almost always on Saturday nights, of all things. 😏 If it happens other nights, I just get up and do something. But Saturday nights, I need to sleep, or the ushers with the electronic cattle goads will get me!

That’s a joke, Aunt Virginia; our ushers don’t really carry goads. You can laugh now.

A friend wrote in regard to the coleslaw at the fair: “If you like broccoli and cheese sauce, and if you bake Brussels sprouts with cheese, coleslaw with cheese might be good. Try it! You might like it!”

“Yikes, do I hafta?!!” I retorted.

I like broccoli – but I like it best steamed just until tender, and then with plenty of butter and a bit of salt. I like cream of broccoli soup, too. I should make that again one of these days. Since I often make two suppers and sometimes even three (one for my brother, another for Larry and me – and if Larry is late at work, sometimes a supper for each of us, if it’s the sort that wouldn’t be good warmed up later), I choose things that are quick and easy. Healthful, but quick and easy. That leaves out some of our favorites – including Mexican stuffed peppers. Loren wouldn’t like that, anyway. But I gotta make it someday soon; Larry and I love it.

Neither of us like Brussels sprouts much, though we eat them now and then – in small quantities. Very small quantities. 😉 It’s one of the few foods we don’t at all like from Schwan’s, because they season them with something we both find unpleasant. So if I ever cook them, I buy them fresh, steam them, and put a cartload of butter and some salt on them. I’ve tried them with cheese... we didn’t care for it. In soup, they’re all right, so long as there are plenty of carrots, onions, celery, and maybe some small chunks of steak. Actually, that sounds good, doesn’t it? 😃

I spotted another vendor at the State Fair (looking online) called Boki European Street Food. Their advertisement says, “Beverages, Ethnic Food, Healthier Food. Paella plate or wrap with beef or chicken, rice, salads and vegetables, fresh squeezed lemonade & Pepsi products.” We’re going to try ... something on their menu!

A fellow quilter, upon looking at the photos I posted of the Sewcialites quilt, wrote to ask, “How do you choose/decide what designs go where?”

“Well, hmmmm...” I pondered, then told her, “I drop the needle down in a corner somewhere, grab up a ruler, ker-plunk it down, get a grip on the machine’s handles, press GO, and head off in one direction or another toward another corner! If there’s a big open space, I throw in a feather or a curlicue or two. With a sampler quilt like this one, whatever happens, ... happens!” 😅

Rose of Sharon Hibiscus

When we walked into church before Sunday School yesterday, Loren was seated even farther from the end of the pew than usual. Larry and I are often crowded because of this, and Larry doesn’t want to be so ‘rude’ as to ask him to move closer to the end. This time, though, I refused to crowd the young woman on the other side of me, and just sat, ‘like a bump on a log,’ as my father would have said; so Larry was totally squished. Loren seemingly does not notice if he’s smushed right up against Larry and has three feet of space to his left. (Is he leaving a spot for Norma, or what?)

I elbowed Larry and pointed, and Larry finally gestured to Loren to scoot down, whispering (loudly – he can’t tell how loud [or soft] he is) that we needed more room. Loren proceeded to scoot even closer to Larry, then snickered loudly and patted Larry’s knee before moving over – proving, once again, that he still has his sense of humor, though he’s prone to use it at inappropriate moments.

So, having made a scene, we pretended we hadn’t and sat vewy, vewy still and quiet from then on.

Bumblebee on plantain lily hosta

After church, Victoria made chicken vegetable noodle soup and gave us a big bowlful for ourselves, and a generous bowlful for Loren, along with some slices of her yummy homemade bread.

Last night, we went to Super Saver for dairy products, bread, and other things I can’t order online or have delivered. I finally remembered to use the gift card one of the kids gave us for our anniversary.

White-lined sphinx moth on tall lavender phlox

Tall lavender phlox by the back deck

So far today, I’ve scrubbed the bathroom... put a tall, skinny, new vinyl lidded hamper/container/thangamarolphgidget into place between tub and counter, where bottles of this and that sit and collect dust; now the bottles are tucked neatly into the thangidget (scientifically shortened terminology), and only the vinyl lid will collect dust after this.

And now it’s time to get back to my customer’s quilt.

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

February Photos

Tuesday, August 31, 2021

Photos: Flowers Around the House

Monday, August 30, 2021

Journal: Quilts and Campers and Other Quallyfobbles