Sarah Lynn's Nature's Splendor: Journal: When It Rains, It Pours

It’s noisy here, on account of the portable air conditioner units and the fans. This gets tiring – but the heat is even more tiring.

Speaking of noise, ever since I got Covid in 2020, I’ve had tinnitus (ringing in the ears). Fortunately, I can still hear all right. I didn’t connect the Covid with the tinnitus until I saw that symptom listed somewhere on a medical site.

Covid was a self-diagnosis, by the way. I never got sick enough to go to the doctor. But I’d been around friends who had it, and actually were diagnosed, so it wasn’t difficult to put two and two together. (And yes, I know that just about every illness known to man has at one time or another in the last five years been attributed to Covid.)

Ringing in the ears is annoying. Mostly, I can ignore it. But if I ever remember it, and stop and think, Do I still have it? – Yep. It’s still there. It’s like baby katydids singing away, persistently, consistently, and insistently.

I had an appointment Tuesday afternoon with the attorney for Loren’s estate. We’re inching our way along to the finish line. It will be a relief to have it all done one of these days.

About the time I think, Okay, just two more steps and this will be over – I learn that last year’s tax returns were not his final tax returns, because there were a few dollars – a very few dollars – of interest accumulated this year. Aarrgghh, there’s no end to it.

I spent the rest of the day in my quilting studio quilting Emma’s Flower Garden quilt.

In the middle of the afternoon, I caught a glimpse of movement near the big white hosta blooms – and, lo and behold, there was a hummingbird! I haven’t seen one here for two or three years. I’ve looked for it off and on ever since, but all I’ve seen are monarchs, Eastern Tiger swallowtails, cabbage whites, clouded sulphurs, and skippers.

August is National Fishing Month. Here are three ‘fishy’ placemats I made for three young grandsons a few years ago, to go with some Norman Rockwell mugs I found at the Goodwill.

One of our third cousins thrice removed (or something on that order) informed me, “Those don’t look real.”

I replied, “I would’ve made them out of fish scales, but I was afraid they’d smell fishy.”

She was unimpressed with my cleverness. Tsk.

Wednesday morning found me spending an hour and a half working in the flower gardens. Afterwards, I showered and then put some curls in my hair while sipping Vanilla Nut Butter Cookie cold brew coffee. That stuff sure helps keep me cool while blow-drying and curling my hair, especially since we’re still relying on portable ACs and fans to cool the house.

Also, I was trying, trying to listen to a young woman on rural radio explaining how to feed lactating cows (because I need to!) (I heard you, asking ‘why?!’), but I was having a hard time, because she says ‘eck-specially’ and ‘accept’ (instead of ‘except’) and ‘three-quarter’ (instead of ‘three-quarters’) and ‘dechizzuns’ (instead of ‘decisions’).

Aaaccckkk. And no, she does not have a foreign accent. She sounds totally midwestern. A midwestern hick, for sure; but midwestern, nonetheless.

There’s a wren singing right outside my window. They’re itty-bitty little things; but, boy, oh boy, can they ever belt it out!

Now a huge shadow of a bird went over. I didn’t see the bird, but it was either an eagle up fairly high or a red-tailed hawk down lower.

Soon I was back to quilting. I rolled the quilt forward, and saw that I had two rows to go. Not quilting rows, but rows of blocks. The blocks are 18” wide. The quilting rows are 9” wide, and the design interlocks. So there were more than four quilting rows to go, and each pass took over half an hour. Would I get it done before time for church that evening? I didn’t intend to work on it afterwards, as I needed to hit the hay a little earlier than usual, on account of needing to take my quilts to the Nebraska State Fair Thursday morning. I wanted to leave home early because the AC still wasn’t fixed in the Mercedes, and it would be getting quite hot by afternoon.

I made myself a big mug of Vanilla Nut Butter Cookie cold brew and another big mug of Strawberry Coconut Celsius (my favorite flavor of Celsius). How long do you think those would last me that hot afternoon?

By a quarter after 7, when Larry was ready to head to church, there was half a row of quilting to go. Both my back and my spirit were willing, to say nothing of my thermometer. (Willing to quit quilting and go to church, that is.)

We got home around 9, ate a quick supper, – and then I couldn’t stand to leave just half a row unquilted, despite needing to go to bed earlier than usual; so I trotted upstairs and had Emma’s quilt finished by a quarter after 11.

Why did I even worry about getting to bed earlier?! Once I finally went, I couldn’t sleep. The clock crept its inexorable way around the dial: midnight, 1:00, 2:00, 3:00... and I finally fell asleep.

A flash of lightning and near-simultaneous crash of thunder awoke me at 3:30 a.m. I got up, went out to the living room, and moved a couple of things in case the roof leaked.

My alarm was set for a little after 4. I reset it for 4:30 a.m.

When the alarm went off, I’d only been sleeping for about 45 minutes. I reset it for 5 a.m. I hardly ever reset my alarm – and I never press the snooze button. I hate those things.

I left home an hour later than originally planned. A few drops of rain fell between here and Monroe. The drive to Grand Island wasn’t bad, as the temperature started out at 68°.

The sky was pretty in the early morning, as I traveled southwest just after sunrise.

The Loup River was quite low, with sandbars showing, as a lot of irrigation is going on. Quite a bit of water is channeled into the Loup Canal, and it’s pretty full.

This is a few miles south of Genoa, south of the Loup River. It looks like a river, but it’s just a pond. The road crosses it.

I got to the fairgrounds a few minutes after 9, checked three quilts in (the maximum allowed), and left the Expo Building just before 9:30 a.m.

I didn’t go anywhere else, because by then it was getting warmer, and it wouldn’t have been much fun driving around in the heat. I was home by a quarter ’til 11.

Loren’s oldest son Richard, who’s three years older than me, has been traveling in Yellowstone National Park with his wife Edith. They’ve seen bison, a grizzly, black bears, elk, deer, etc.

This is one of Edith’s pictures.

When Caleb was nine months old, he was napping as we drove through Yellowstone. Then I saw a bison (everyone called them ‘buffalo’, back then) rolling in a dry wallow, really kicking up the dust, and thought, Surely I should wake the baby to see this!

Accordingly, I woke him, pointed it out, and said, “Look at that buffalo rolling and making dust everywhere! Can you say ‘buffalo’?”

And he, looking tousled and a bit shell-shocked to wake up somewhere other than in his crib, took his thumb out of his mouth and said, “Big dog.” Then he put his thumb back in his mouth and looked at me. (‘Mothers. You just have to tell them everything.’)

That afternoon, I edited my photos, then sewed the binding on the top side of Emma’s quilt, wrapped it around to the back, and began pinning it. Supper interrupted, but not for long. Nevertheless, that’s all I got done on the quilt that day.

I invariably think I’m going to get a whole lot more done than I really do. Either everything takes longer than I expect it to, or my back (or neck or hips) say, “Hey, you’re done!!” And every now and then I listen.

Friday, I headed upstairs to my quilting studio, where I sewed the binding down, and then started sewing on pearls.

Front

Back

It was already 77° by a quarter after 8, and 80° by 10:00 a.m., feeling like 94°, and was on its way up to 93° with an expected heat index near 105°. We’d been issued a heat advisory, and would have one the next day, too. There were severe thunderstorms going on just to our north.

Here are pictures from Thursday’s drive. There are many elevators and silos around the countryside – some working and busy like the one above, and some old and defunct like this one.

We had Campbell’s Chicken & Dumpling soup for supper that evening, and fruit on ice cream for dessert.

There was a Giant Swallowtail in my flower gardens that afternoon. With a wingspan ranging from 4 to 6 ¼ inches, this butterfly is the largest in the United States. The Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, by comparison, has a wingspan that typically ranges from 3 to 5 ½ inches, while the Monarch’s wingspan generally measures around 3 ½ to 4 inches.

I didn’t get outside in time to get a picture. Since it was 89° and felt like 100°, and the butterfly had fluttered out of sight around the side of the house, I did not go put the Tamron macro lens on my camera and lurk around waiting or hunting for it.

This photo is from the Gardens with Wings website.

I put the last load of clothes into the dryer. Whew, the laundry room is sweltering these days. We keep the door shut to the back hallway that leads into that room.

Returning to my sewing room, I pressed the spacebar on my laptop to turn the audiobook back on. I’ve been listening to The Klondike Stampede by Tappan Adney, a young writer and photographer who worked for Harper’s Weekly, who set out on a journey to uncover and record what it was like in the stampede that started in 1896.

Here’s an excerpt, written after Adney and his companions made it through the rapids on the Upper Yukon, and had pitched camp on the shore.

“The next morning, we watch some boats come through. It is a great sight as they come dancing into view at the turn, and as they go flying past, we give them each a rousing cheer. There are no portages today, for courage, like fear, is catching. Last week it was the other way. A great many of the men had wives, and they all had promised their wives that they would not run the rapids.

“It was surprising how many married men there were.” 😄

The Giant Swallowtail came back and fluttered at the tall lavender phlox, tantalizing me, so I finally put down needle, thread, and leather thimble, dashed downstairs, put the 90mm Tamron lens on the camera, and hurried outside.

The Giant Swallowtail was gone, nowhere to be found. I took a few pictures of the flowers and waited a while for the butterfly to return; but it was too hot to stay out for long.

This shot is from the Butterfly Atlas Organization.

By 11:00 p.m., I had sewn pearls on about 1⅓ blocks of Emma’s Flower Garden quilt, which meant I had about 16⅔ blocks to go. There are 96 pearls on each embroidered block. I ordered more, just in case I didn’t have enough.

Saturday morning at 10:30, the temperature was 82°, with a feel-like temp of 92°. The high temperature would be 95°, with a possible heat index of 105°, and we’d been issued the promised heat advisory.

I refilled the bird feeders, and the little songbirds swooped in and landed on them before I ever got the patio door shut. After watering the houseplants, I refilled my tall mug with the last of the cold brew, then made a new gallon of it, this time an even mixture of Vanilla Nut Butter Cookie and Chocolate Coconut. I like to let it steep for 24 hours.

When my mug was empty, I broke open one of the new bottles of Caramel Nut cold brew concentrate that I got specifically to tide us over anytime cold brew is steeping and not ready for drinking yet in the gallon jug brewer.

One bottle is from Starbucks, the other from Dunkin’. I hadn’t intended to get the same flavor, but Walmart gave me a substitute – of the same flavor. Therefore, I shall conduct a taste comparison.

Starbucks’ Caramel Dolce is all right (haven’t opened Dunkin’ yet), but it can’t hold a candle to Christopher Bean’s. Plus, it’s not nearly so concentrated. It’s supposed to be watered down only by half – that is, 1:1 syrup:water (that’s too stout for me; I watered it down more), while Christopher Bean’s only needs 1 ½ teaspoons of syrup for my tallest Thermal mug (20 ounces, I think?).

I soon headed to my quilting studio to continue sewing on pearls. I’m glad my sewing room is nice and comfortable, with the new portable AC.

One of the Tall Lavender phlox put out a big fuchsia-colored blossom head!

Below is the more usual shade of lavender.

That day, Saturday the 16^th, was National Roller Coaster Day.

Back in 1982, when Dorcas was only 6 weeks old, Hannah was 1, and Keith was 2, we were at an amusement park in Denver, Colorado. Neither Larry nor I had ever been on a roller coaster, and we decided to give it a try. We went one at a time, while the other stayed with the children. I climbed into the car next to a cute little black boy.

The cars started, heading first into a long, dark tunnel. The little boy looked up at me with big brown eyes, and said, “Did you know there are lots of big spiders in here?”

“Yes!” I answered, “because one just landed on your left shoulder!”

He yelped. “What?! Where???!!!!” twisting his neck to look at his shoulder.

I laughed.

“Hey!!!” he protested, then flashed me a huge white grin, realizing I’d pulled his leg just as he’d tried to do to me.

So over twist and turn and hill and dip and curve we went, having become good friends in those first 15 seconds. 😊

Here’s one of the hundreds of hosta blossoms that are blooming all over the yard.

The little Double Rose of Sharon Hibiscus bush that Victoria planted in the back yard has gotten huge, and it’s totally covered with blossoms. It reaches the back deck, one whole story up. There are the top flowers, right up past the edge of the upper deck.

There are bright red blooms on the geranium Caleb and Maria gave me three or four years ago, the one I badly need to cut and repot. The peach flower on the first page is also from this same pot of geraniums.

Our supper that night was chicken, yams, potatoes, and carrots, with fruit on ice cream for dessert and white cran-peach juice to chase everything down. Thank goodness for my Instant Pot!

By Saturday evening, pearls were on two more blocks. (They’re a bit hard to see in photos.)

15 blocks to go. What I really want to do is to put smaller 2mm pearls on each of those refractory blue dots that refuse to wash out. They are the marks for hand-quilting. I tried a small variety of methods to get them out, but they seem to be permanent. In any case, all those little pearls would look pretty; but I don’t have time to do it right now. I think I’ll give the quilt to Emma for Christmas as planned, and ask her to give it back some time afterwards so I can put more pearls on it.

The new fan for the Mercedes arrived yesterday afternoon. Larry put it on and plugged it in; it was an easy job. Next, he drove it, hoping and expecting the air conditioner to now work.

Nope, no such luck. It still blows hot air.

After three very hot days, it was quite hot in the house. It didn’t get below 80° in here yesterday. When I was trying to sleep, I’d barely doze off before the portable air conditioner would say gleefully, “CHUG-A-LUG-A-LUG! BONKITY-BOOP! BANG!!!” It would pause momentarily, fan on low, in order to regurgitate the water it had sucked out of the air: “Blorp-glorp-SPEW-drippity-drip-drip.” Two or three times of that, and I never did get back to sleep.

Getting ready for church was a trial by fire. Literally. Well, almost literally.

We visited with family and friends after the service last night, then picked up a grocery order at Walmart before going home.

Oooo, I just got a notice that batik fabric is on sale at Missouri Star Quilt Co. Hmmm... it’s still $8.50 to $9.50 a yard. Too bad I’m not rich enough to save money! 😅

At 11:00 a.m. today, it was just 79°, but felt like 94°. That’s quite the heat index.

As if we don’t have troubles enough in this house, last night we left the patio door in the laundry room open, and it rained! Aarrgghh. The big rug in there was soaked, and there was standing water on the floor. I washed the rug in the washing machine on ‘Bulky items’, tossing a smaller bathroom rug in with it to keep it company.

This afternoon, I went to the bank, stopped by the attorney’s office, and then visited Hester, Keira, and Oliver. Hester had found a big bag of vintage laces and linens at an antique store here in town. She kept a few pieces for herself – and gave me a big bagful. Someday, I will incorporate them into a quilt.

She also gave me some yummy cake she’d made from the cookbook I gave her that I got from the lady who with her husband runs a Bed & Breakfast in Elsah, Illinois, alongside the Mississippi River. The little village of Elsah is all fixed up to look like it did in the late 1800s. The recipe was ‘Honey Bun Cake’.

Along with the cake, she gave me fresh pineapple that she'd just cut, and nectarine slices, too. Mmmm. Fruit is one of my favorite foods. All kinds of fruit. Especially the kind that drips down to your elbow when you try to get a bite.

In turn, I gave each of them a stick of thick, soft Zest fruit leather – mango, blueberry, pineapple, and raspberry. (They don’t drip, but they are sticky. If they don’t drip, sticky is the next best thing.)

I also gave Hester a pair of shoes to sell on her eBay store, and told her to keep the money. She’ll try to give me the money, though; just see if she doesn’t.

White-Lined Sphinx moths have been busy in the flower gardens lately.

After a supper of salad, cottage cheese, mozzarella cheese, and fruit, Larry informed me, “I’ll be outside harvesting the wheat.”

So I said, said I, “Huh?”

He meant, he was going to mow the lawn. It’s been over a week since he last mowed, and we’ve had rain and heat – and it’s a wonder there aren’t jungle animals living in the yard by now.

He went out – then came right back in to tell me about a large moth on the side of the house. I grabbed my camera and went to get a photo.

It was a Waved Sphinx moth (Ceratomia undulosaon). Look, there are perfect little hearts on each of his wings!