Journal: ♫ ♪ Oh, The Birds & The Leaves ♪ ♫ & The Cinnamon Trees

 

Here’s the cottonwood tree I planted when we first moved out here 22 ½ years ago.  It started as a wee sprig with two tiny leaves on it.  Now it’s about 85 feet in height.

Some of the trees around here have already lost all of their leaves. Others are gold, and a few are orange or scarlet.

There’s a Black Locust tree east of the house.  I planted it, too, when it was just a few inches tall.  It sheds long black bean pods each fall, and makes quite a mess, to Larry’s consternation.

When Aaron was 3, he called it ‘Grandma’s June Bug tree’.  haha

It got tall and lanky, and a branch or two broke in high wind, and I was afraid it was going to come crashing into the east window of my sewing room.  So Larry cut it down, but left a fairly tall stump — and the thing has grown back again, quite tall already in a couple of years, but a whole lot bushier and less likely to come down in high winds.

When I was in 4^th or 5^th grade, we did a big project where we collected leaves and bark rubbings (made with crayons) from different trees, then labeled them and wrote a paragraph or two about the tree.  I loved that project.

Later, my children did a similar project for school, and we had fun walking around the neighborhood gathering leaves.  There was a bigger variety when the children were young than when I was little, but we also found a couple of the very same trees from which I had gotten leaves.

One of the neighbors had a linden tree where I’d found a leaf for my project when I was 8 or 9, and it was only about 7 feet tall.  When I helped the kids get their leaves, that same tree was about 45 feet tall.  Here are the blossoms – they make the tree look soft and fuzzy, when the tree is covered with them.

Here’s the whole tree in the autumn.

Linden blossoms smell sweet and honey-like, a little bit like lemon, vanilla, or fresh florals.  Depending on the weather, they can have an aroma similar to honeysuckle, jasmine, or lilac, with a little bit of a woodsy scent thrown in.

Last Tuesday, I made myself a tall mug of Watermelon Ice Celsius and an even bigger mug of Lazy Bear (wild honey and blackberry) cold brew and trotted upstairs to my quilting room to work on Aaron’s quilt.

I walked in – and found dozens of flies, dead ones all over the floor in front of the north window, and half a dozen live ones on the window itself.  Where do they all come from, and how do they get in?!!  I vacuumed them all up, turned off the vacuum, turned around – and there were six more on the window.  Aarrgghh!

There were a bunch of those nasty biting Asian beetles, too.  They look quite a lot like the native ladybugs, but the native ladybugs don’t bite.  I don’t swat either of them, because they stink to high heaven if you do.  Soon they were all vacuumed up, and I was ready to sew.

I added the piano-key border to Aaron’s Soaring Eagle quilt, finishing the top.  It measures 101.5” x 107”.

We had chicken noodle soup along with kale and bacon salad for supper that evening, and I had a strawberry cream cheese Danish roll that Larry brought me, while he had a piece of apple crumb pie.

Wednesday, Victoria sent pictures of the cute little dolls she’s making for Christmas gifts.  She’d just finished embroidering some of their faces.

I told her the following story:

Once upon a time when I was 11 or 12, I saw a little art project in a magazine, and decided it would be perfect for Christmas presents for my friends:  powder puffs, with faces painted on them.

I accordingly coaxed my mother into taking me to the dime store, where I purchased the powder puffs and the paint.

Problem:  drawing faces was not in my skillset.

What I made were gargoyle faces — the stuff horror movies are made from.  And I actually gave those things to my friends for Christmas.

My parents never let me spend a whole lot on gifts, partly because we weren’t ‘rich’ by any means, and partly because some of my friends were poorer than we were, and they didn’t want to obligate anybody to give a return gift above their means.  So there was no getting something else for my friends; the powder puffs were it.  After they got those powder puffs, I doubt if any of them felt obligated to give me anything ever again.

Wednesday, I pressed the backing for Aaron’s quilt – a big job, when it’s 108” wide and about 5 yards long.  I left it long in order to wind up with a bigger piece still whole when I’m done.  I loaded it on my quilting frame, followed it with the batting, then the quilt top, and started quilting it.  I didn’t get a whole lot done before it was time for our midweek evening church service.  There were already 65 ½ hours in the Soaring Eagle quilt.

I’m using bright dark gold Bottom Line thread in the bobbin.  The backing is a mottled black/dark charcoal with a muted gold swirl in it.  That thread is going to show.  I’d better pay close attention to the tension, or I’ll be sorry I chose that color!

This custom quilting takes a while, but I’m always (well, almost always) pleased with the results.

As I was walking out of the church, I greeted Aaron.  He gave me an extra-big grin, and I thought, Hey, kid!  You’ve been a-peekin’ at my Facebook page, now, haven’tcha?!!  😂

By Thursday evening, the top Piano Key border was quilted, and I rolled the quilt forward to the next row.

Larry went to Lamar, Colorado, Friday to pick up an older Mercedes he bought on an online auction.  Hopefully, it will take the place of the BMW SUV he drives, which is almost on its last leg.  Because it had hail damage, a flat tire, and wouldn’t start, it only cost $675.

If he can’t get it running, which is improbable, he’ll be able to get his money back by selling just a few parts alone.

I washed two loads of Larry’s work clothes and went on quilting, making fairly good headway on the next row of Aaron’s quilt.

Spotting a couple of unrecognizable little birds in the apple tree and in the chokecherry tree, I grabbed my binoculars and discovered... pine siskins!  Or were they?  Look at that slender, dark bill.  And the white circle around the eye.  Plus, the yellow was on throat and breast, but not on the wings.

I took another look – and changed my mind:  they were yellow-rumped warblers in their winter plumage.  They look so different from when they’re in their summer plumage, I misidentified them.  Here’s what they look like in the summertime.  

With the yellow on the throat, these are the Audubon yellow-rumps.  The Myrtles have white throats.  I do believe this is the first time I have seen the Audubon’s yellow-rumped warblers here.  The Myrtle yellow-rumps have been here many times.

For supper that night, I had chicken and carrots cooked in the Instant Pot, rice pudding, a few bites of a banana, a skinny slice of apple crumb pie with sea salt caramel ice cream, and strawberry kiwi juice.

Look at this tiling in a bathroom in an apartment in St. Petersburg, Russia.  (I like to look at videos showing homes and apartments [and scenery, of course] from around the world.)

Larry got home at 4:00 a.m. Saturday morning.

At 11:30 a.m., it was a bright and sunny 44°, but it got cloudy and rainy in the afternoon.

By suppertime, I had finished the second row on the Soaring Eagle quilt and rolled it forward to Row 3.

We had vegetable beef soup with pretzel flipsides crackers, rice pudding again (because once we open one of those big Kozy Shack containers, we have to finish it, or it goes bad – and fortunately, we really like it), White Grape Peach juice, and Moose Tracks ice cream for dessert.

Here’s the second row before quilting the orange and yellow triangles.  By the time I quit for the night, I had a total of 81 ½ hours in the quilt.

It was cold Sunday morning, just 24°, on its way up to 34°.  With wind gusting at 25 mph, the windchill was a bracing 2°!

By a quarter ’til nine, I was all ready for church.  Larry was puttering around hoping to make me believe he was hurrying by the amount of racket he was making.  😂  

I unearthed my leather coat, faux leopard fur scarf, and leather gloves from the closet for the first time this season.

By midafternoon, it was bright and sunny, and 32°.

How do you tell the difference between a sunset and a sunrise in a photo or a painting?  One of the children once answered that question by saying that you position the picture so the sun is either in the east or the west – and that’s how you tell.  😄😊😏

The skies were hazy today, but the sun tried valiantly to shine through.  It was 38° by 2:00 p.m.  Tomorrow, the high is supposed to be 68°.  Over in northeastern Ohio and southern Ontario, though, they’re expecting 6-10” of snow.

I like snow, and snowy days. But snow and ice does wreak havoc for the menfolk in the family who are in construction.

One time we came home from somewhere in an ice storm.  We could only go 20 mph on the highway, and it took three hours to go 60 miles.  We saw many crashes and skid-outs.  We got home late that night, and we could barely get out of the vehicle, because the ground was so icy.  We hung onto the hood and sides of the car until we could get into the flower gardens (even the lawn was too icy to navigate, though we both had good winter boots on) – and we were able to walk in the gardens, because I always leave the growth alone until the next spring – so there were dried Autumn Joy sedum and hostas, and we just walked in them and hung onto the side of the house.  We crawled up the steps on all fours, and nearly slid off the porch before we could reach the door.

It was wild.  It didn’t help any that I got struck funny.

I used to love ice skating.  Haven’t done it for years.  And I won’t anytime soon, either.  Ice skates and osteoporosis don’t mix and match well.  Too bad we aren’t like little kids, who trip, fall flat, and pop right back up straightaway!

Back to the quilting!

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