Journal: Weeds & Stuff-It Tools: The Bane of Happy Hands

 

Last Tuesday, Victoria found Chicken of the Woods, a wild, edible mushroom that belongs to the kingdom Fungi, in a park near their house.  She harvested it, shared some with a friend, and cooked some for their lunch.  Chicken of the Woods is a polypore fungus, meaning it has tiny pores instead of gills on its underside.

It grows in bright orange and yellow fan-shaped shelves or brackets on tree trunks and stumps, and gets its name from its texture and because the flavor resembles chicken when cooked.

Isn’t it funny and strange?

Victoria put it into a pumpkin soup with roasted red peppers, riced cauliflower, onions, garlic, chicken broth, and coconut milk.  “It smells so good!” she wrote, sending me this picture.

Curious, I asked Google, “Do you have to leave some of it for it to grow back?” 

I learned this:  No, you do not need to leave any of the mushroom behind for it to grow back.  The bright orange ‘shelf’ you harvest is only the fruit.  The actual living organism, called mycelium, lives safely hidden inside the wood.  The mushroom does not need a piece of itself left behind to restart or regenerate.  The underground or internal mycelium network controls all future growth.  You can cut or pull off the entire cluster clean from the bark without hurting the fungus inside the tree.

Being a mother, I did what mothers do and wrote, “Just don’t ever get the notion that these look yummy,” accompanying the text with a picture of these red mushrooms with white spots.  They are called Fly Agaric, and they are toxic and psychoactive.  

The white ones below are called Destroying Angels.

“This is a little extra funny,” Victoria responded, “because I got a new phone case yesterday.”

And here she is with her new phone case – which sports pictures of bright red mushrooms.

Monday night/Tuesday morning had been another rainy night and morning, with a lot of thunder and lightning.  The rain paused for an hour or two (long enough for Victoria to find the Chicken of the Woods), then started raining again, and kept it up throughout the day.  It got up to 71° – obviously, the thermometer was stuck, as we had the same high temperature, one day after another.  Various harvests are running late on account of the continual rain we’ve been having for several weeks now.

Here’s a story I read online that afternoon, written by a lady who was the main caretaker for her grandmother, who had dementia:

One day, Grandma wanted to get dressed and go to church; but it wasn’t Sunday.  Nevertheless, I helped her get dressed, got dressed myself, and drove her to the church.

God was looking out for her, though.  The pastor was there, and a few others too.  I explained the situation – and the pastor’s kindness shone through.  He pulled out the notes for the sermon he planned on giving the upcoming Sunday, and practiced it on us.

We went out for an early lunch afterwards.  We had a great day.  It’s one of my favorite memories, because everyone was so kind.

But I still laugh remembering the next Sunday, when the pastor actually gave the sermon to the rest of the congregation. 

Grandma told him after the service that she thought he might be getting old and a bit forgetful, because she thought she’d heard that same sermon before.

He laughed and told her, “Perhaps, maybe so,” and then winked at me.

 

A friend emailed me, finishing with ‘TYK’ – then asked, “Don’t you resist those?”  She then wrote it properly:  “Thank You Kindly.”

I laughed and answered, “Yes!  I don’t use text abbreviations.  Or at least I rarely use them.  Why, instead of writing LOL, I’m more likely to write, ‘That made me laugh right out loud!’  Much more personable, I think.”

Sometimes I have to do a search to find out what some bit of textese means.

Some people think they know what something means – and don’t, at all.  Like the lady who texted her children to tell them ‘Aunt Bertha’, her sister-in-law, had passed away, and to say when the funeral would be.  She polished off her note with ‘LOL’.

“Mom!” one of her sons wrote back.  “We know you didn’t get along with Aunt Bertha, but do you really think it’s appropriate to write ‘LOL’?!”

“What?!” responded the mother.  “What’s inappropriate about saying ‘Lots of Love’ to my children?!”

I got three Dresden Plates made that day.  

I then laid the whole works out on my bed to see how many more I should make.  Below is a tentative layout.

After taking pictures, I cleared off the ‘design bed’.  I needed to use it to sleep in!  😄

That heart fabric (above) was cut from ruffly curtains I made for Hannah and Dorcas’ room, matching their quilt.  That was in 1983.  The fabric still feels sturdy and nice; I gave it the ‘tear test’.  Hannah always immediately recognizes any fabric I used for her clothing or room decor.  She’s so fond of it, I should make her something with it sometime.

By 11:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, it was 67°, almost up to the predicted high of 69°.  It would soon be raining again, and would continue through the day and most of the night.  Were the farmers ever going to get their crops harvested?!  Stalk rot has been causing concern, and flood watches had been issued to several places in the area.

I returned to my sewing room to continue making Dresden Plates.

It was raining when it was time to go to church that evening.  Amazingly, my new umbrella was in the house, for once.  Usually, if I’m in the house, the umbrella’s in the car.  If I’m in the car, the umbrella’s in the house.

By the time the service was over, it was raining like anything.

We headed out to Walmart to pick up our groceries.  Good thing there’s an awning over the pick-up area!

After a late supper, I retired to my recliner.  Shortly thereafter, a whole lot of crashing and banging was heard coming from the downstairs bathroom, where Larry was. 

I sent him a text:  “Who’s winning?” 

A good fifteen minutes later he responded, “I decided it was time to scrub the tub and shower.  😛 😜 🤪 😝 🫣 🫡 😉 😘 😇”

It must’ve been baaad, judging from the racket.

Here are Dresden Plates 16, 17, and 18.  I printed templates on newsprint for seven different butterflies. 

By midnight, Lincoln had recorded 6.15 inches of rain – and it was still coming down.  It rained all through the night, and by the time it quit the next morning, an astounding 10.41” of rain had fallen 3 miles north of Lincoln.

This historic downpour, caused by the remnants of Hurricane Polo, shattered previous daily rainfall records to become the wettest day ever recorded in Lincoln’s history.  The official measurement was taken at the Lincoln Municipal Airport, though individual totals varied across different neighborhoods in the city.

There were several hundreds of people without electricity in the Lincoln area, on account of the flooding.

Thursday morning at about 11:00 a.m., the most amazing thing happened:  the sun peeked through the clouds!  It soon hid again, but... we’d seen proof that it was still there!  Drier weather is predicted through this next week.  Hopefully, the farmers will be able to get crops harvested.

That day, I got out the lightbox Larry made for me, traced the templates onto freezer paper, ironed those onto more freezer paper to make them thicker, labeled them, then carefully cut out each template.  That particular step is of importance, as the final appliqué piece can be no neater than the edge of the template.  I spent seven hours on that step.

This is an old picture; I have since gotten a large square light that fits under and fills the lightbox frame much better.

This step in the procedure invariably takes longer than I expect it to.  In fact, the entire appliqué process always takes longer than I think it will, partly because I use the starch and press method.  I’ve tried a number of methods, and like this way by far the best, because it produces edges that are crisp and neat, and they stay that way as I glue them down and then stitch them onto the background.

Late that afternoon, I looked out the window and saw at least two dozen Northern Flickers in the neighbor’s yard pecking industriously at the ground, unearthing all manner of tasty insects and worms.  Some were following hot on the heels of others with food-expectant attitudes – these were obviously juveniles and fledglings.  I’ve never seen so many Flickers congregated in one spot before.  (Or did I say that last year, right about this time, too?)  Photo is from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

For supper that evening, I made a big pot of ground venison vegetable soup, with a whole lot of different vegetables in it:  potatoes, carrots, asparagus, corn, green beans, peas, watercress, zucchini, squash, and lots of spices.  After putting it in our bowls, we added a dollop of sour cream and some shredded cheese.  We had peach-mango juice to drink, and strawberries for dessert.

After having leftovers for supper the next night, I froze the rest.  There will be enough for four more suppers.  Soups such as this are often even better on Day 2 than on Day 1, as the spices have permeated all the ingredients.  This soup was no exception.

It was sunny Friday morning, and it would be sunny all day.  Astonishing.  😅  It was 57° by 11:00 a.m., on the way up to 65°.  There was even a heat index! – it felt like 69°, and would feel like at least 75° that afternoon.

That day, I continued working on the butterflies for Keira’s quilt.  I chose the fabrics, ironed the freezer-paper templates to them, and then cut all the pieces – 87 of them, to be exact.  Next, I started cutting the freezer paper for the center circles for the flowers – and then I ran plumb out of steam, when there were still about 15 circles to go.

Levi has been tuning pianos free of charge at the local nursing homes.  The staff and residents are so pleased.  And Levi is getting in some good practice.

A quilting friend was telling about the electricity blinking, fading, and then going off at their house, while she rushed about unplugging her expensive machines, hoping to get it done before they were ruined by the electrical surges.

It’s scary when that happens – electricity having some sort of epileptic seizure, making everything flicker, going off and on.  We’ve had it happen, and I, too, raced around unplugging things like a chicken with my head cut off.  One time something was going wrong with electricity right in our house – an overload, somewhere – and the main breaker blew. 

Dorcas happened to be downstairs near the breaker box, so she helpfully flipped the breaker back to ‘ON’.  It blew again.  She flipped it back on.  It blew.  She flipped it on.  It blew. 

I was yelping and running for plugs (I knew what was going on) – but Dorcas was in the basement, and I was on the second floor, and she couldn’t at all hear me.  I was sooo afraid my sewing machine, serger, and desktop computer I had back then, to say nothing of the iron and various appliances in the kitchen, would be totally fried. 

After determining what had caused the overload (it was Larry’s new-to-him humongous air compressor, out in the garage – I heard it fire up just before the trouble began), we shot holes in it (er, not really, though I did make some impolite threats), then started plugging things back in, with a good deal of trepidation.  Everything was all right, amazingly.

Dorcas was duly advised not to play chicken with the breaker switch again, and life went on, a little more wide-eyed than usual.

A lady I don’t know from Adam (or Eve) saw the picture I’d posted online of the tentative layout of Dresden Plates on the background of Maple Leaf blocks.  She offered a compliment – “Very pretty!!” and then added, “Remember that the patterned background will distract from your dresdens!”

I very badly wanted to tell her that distractions never bothe------SQUIRREL!!!!!!  😂  (I didn’t; I just said ‘thank you’.)

This picture of Victoria at about age 4 showed up in my Facebook Memories.  We were camping in western Nebraska in August, and it was a steaming hot morning, already 100° by 9:00 a.m.  And of all things, the switch on the thermoelectric cooler had somehow gotten set to ‘heat’.  The juice the kids were drinking after breakfast that morning was hot! 

They were unfazed.  They thought it was nifty, never mind the prevailing temperatures.  It was like being all grown up and having coffee for breakfast!

I sent the picture to Victoria.  She soon reciprocated by sending me a picture of Arnold asleep on a big pillow in Baby Russell’s nursery, arms behind his head, feet crossed at the ankles.

“He could be Little Boy Blue,” I told her, “if that was a haystack he was sleeping in.”

Victoria did not disappoint.  Within minutes, she sent another picture: 

Arnold, turned into the perfect Little Boy Blue, courtesy of AI.

“I just knew you’d do that,” said I.

“Well, naturally,” answered Victoria.  “It was too cute to resist!”

“Now you have to enlarge it and hang it on his wall!” I said, then suggested, “Show the picture to him, saying, ‘This is what you looked like, a little while ago,’ when he wakes up.”  After a moment’s thought, I added, “Way to mess with a little kids’ dream remembery!”

“He will smile very sweetly,” predicted Victoria.

“Explain quickly, before you confuse his imagination for life,” I recommended.

“The little people of today are going to have a whole skewed perception of reality because of AI,” said Victoria.  “Or they just won’t believe anybody even when things are true.”

“Well,” I answered, “I was equipped with that sort of skepticism long before AI (or modern computers) came around, so...”  After considering, I told her, “I done larnt it from me mother:  ‘Don’t be gullible.’  And my father:  ‘Have a little gumption.’  And my brother:  ‘Don’t be a dupe.’  And my sister:  ‘That’s ridiculous.’” 

I can just hear their voices, as I type those remarks.

That afternoon, I heard a baby cardinal.  I peeked out the patio door – and discovered there were two baby cardinals on the back deck railing.  The mother cardinal was feeding them sunflower seeds.  One was younger than the other, and still all fluffy with baby feathers.  Sooo cute.  Photo is from an Instagram page called ‘Whispering Mystic Forest’.

The older one, which is probably the one I’ve been seeing for the last week, is redder than ever, definitely a young male.

It was chilly Saturday morning just after sunrise, in the high 40s or low 50s, but it wasn’t raining, so I put on a sweater and a fleece headband and went out to work in two of my big flower gardens for a couple of hours.  They were totally overgrown with all the weeds that have been loving these weeks of rain.

I filled the big bird feeder and took down the other two – and discovered that the few stray seeds left in them had sprouted.  I need to wash and disinfect them before I refill them.  I haven’t been filling them, because the birds weren’t eating sunflower seeds; there are plenty of other seeds and insects around.  But it’s getting chilly enough overnight that there will be fewer and fewer insects.  I put a couple of suet cakes in the suet feeder and filled the small Nyjer seed feeder, too.  I think I won’t use the large one for expensive Nyjer seed, as it gets wasted if it gets damp, or if the wind blows the feeder hard enough to tilt it and spill seed.

I heaped my big Gorilla wagon high with weeds twice.  There was still a lot of work to do out there, but by 9:30 a.m., my back said that was enough.  It’ll be nice in the mornings this week, too.

The Autumn Joy sedum is turning maroon.  The few insects on them were still damp and sluggish from overnight dew, but they would soon be warming and buzzing about.

A pair of Canada geese flew over, low, craning their necks to look down and greet me, “Honk!  Honk!” 

The neighbor cat, ‘Kitty Chaplin’, came to see me, meowing his head off, clearly expecting me to get him a wee bit of cheese, as I often do.  I complied. 

He gobbled down the cheese, then stood up on his hind legs and put his front paws on me, purring, and begging me to pet him, or, better yet, give him more cheese.

Larry came out – with cheese.  He’d give the cat an entire slice if I wasn’t looking. 

All of our cats liked cheese, but I never let them have more than little tidbits, partly because cheese is expensive, and partly because I didn’t want to make them sick.

I showered and shined the bathroom back up, made myself a tall tumbler of Salted Caramel cold-brew coffee, played the piano, and then blow-dried my hair.  My fingers were sore from pulling weeds, and I couldn’t play the piano with as much gusto as usual.

After eating breakfast, I headed upstairs to my quilting studio.  Once I finished cutting freezer paper for the center circles of the flowers and pressing them to the fabric, I began ‘painting’ the seam allowances, then used my miniature iron to press the edges under on those 105 appliqué pieces.

Finally, that part was done, and I quit for the day.  My fingers had gotten over the weed-pulling soreness, and progressed to a Stuff-It tool soreness!  😄  I spent approximately 7 ½ hours with that thing in my left hand holding the folded seam allowances in place, while my miniature Clover iron was in my right hand, pressing the edges down flat.

They’re all done now and ready to be put in place on the quilt, as soon as I sew skinny piping around the ‘picket fenceposts’.

The butterflies are in various colors of purple, blue, orange, and yellow butterflies.  This is going to be a colorful quilt!

This is a Purple Emperor butterfly.  They’re found in the forests of England, Europe, and Asia.  Aren’t they beautiful?

Their wingspan can be up to 3.6 inches.  It’s the second-largest butterfly in the UK, with the Swallowtail being the biggest.

Looking at the underside of their wings, you’d never know it was the same butterfly.

Here’s one that looks a bit more purple.  Sometimes the lighting makes them look quite bluish in color.  His wings are spread completely out, so you can see those orange and black dots.  It’s hard to get a picture of them like this, as they rarely open their wings out all the way.

The Purple Emperor butterfly (Apatura iris) is known for its ‘flashing’ neon color, an intense, electric violet-blue.

Remarkably, this color is not caused by any purple pigment at all.  Instead, it is a structural color generated by the microscopic physical architecture of the male butterfly’s wing scales.  The uppermost wing scales are tilted and covered in microscopic ridges and plates that bend and reflect light.  This intense neon sheen is highly directional and only reflects toward a viewer within a narrow 18-degree angle.

At first glance or from a straight-on perspective, the butterfly’s wings appear to be a dark, dull brown or almost black.  However, as the male banks, turns, and flies through the forest canopy, the light strikes the wings at just the right angle, causing the brilliant violet-blue to suddenly flood the wing and instantly vanish a second later.  This rapid optical shifting makes the butterfly look like it is flashing on and off mid-air.

The flashing neon effect is strictly a male trait.  Females are slightly larger but entirely lack these iridescent structures, remaining a well-camouflaged dark brown with white bands.

Sunday morning just before the sun came over the horizon, I hung out the bird feeders.  Fifteen minutes later, a Blue Jay was already enjoying the suet.  I could hear the Northern Cardinal family out in the yard somewhere, the fledglings keeping up their constant metallic cheeping as they begged for ‘Food, food!’

The babies go right on chirping even when their mouths are plumb full.  It sounds like they’re yelling through a muffler, until they get the bites swallowed.  😅

Northern Cardinals often have nests quite late in the season.  These babies would be from either a second or a third clutch.  They stay around during the winter; they don’t migrate.

It was 45°; the high would be 71° that sunny day.

It was Violet’s eighth birthday.  As soon as it was 8:00 a.m. and I figured most of the family would be awake, I sent her a bunch of animated birthday eCards.  She later sent me a sweet audio recording thanking me and finishing with, “I love you!”

Before the evening service, Victoria sent pics of Violet.  She was holding her new Kirsten American Girl doll, and she was wearing a matching dress that her other grandmother had made for her.  Victoria had braided her hair into looped pigtails just like Kirsten’s.

Shortly before we headed out the door to go to church, Kitty Chaplin (so named because of the black ‘mustache’ and ‘goatee’) jumped up on the big package bin on our porch, peered in the window, and squalled, “More cheese!  More cheese!”  

We obliged.

After the service, we took Violet her birthday gift – the Crinoline Ladies quilt.

Victoria gave us each a large biscuit when we got there.  Larry ate his, but I was busy taking pictures (with his phone, since I hadn’t brought my camera), while he held my biscuit.  Risky, but the biscuit made it through the ordeal.  😂

I ate it after we left their house, then texted Victoria:  “The biscuit is scrumptious.  What’s the flavor I’m tasting?”

“Garlic,” she answered.  “Glad you like it!”

“I guessed that and ‘something Italian’,” I told her.  “I was close!”

“Oh!” she remembered, “Italian seasoning, too.  I forgot that one.”

I was glad to know my tastebuds were still functioning properly.

“We’re going to have pizza when we get home,” I said.  “So these made the perfect appetizers.”  😋

Here’s Violet, just starting to get her quilt out of the box.  As soon as she saw it, she said, “Oh, it’s sooo pretty!”

“And that’s just the back of it!” I told her, which made Carolyn laugh.

“It’s a new blanket!” cried Arnold in delight.

Willie stayed on the couch; the poor little boy has a fever.  Baby Russell was tucked in bed.

Momentary pause in operations to read the label...

And now Victoria and Larry are holding up the quilt while Violet and Carolyn give it a good inspection.

In the next shot, Victoria is pointing out the quilting, and following is the quilt folded on the wooden quilt rack that I’m letting them borrow until next year, in order to keep the quilt nice for the County and State Fairs, if Violet agrees to let me enter it.  I assured her she doesn’t have to leave the quilt on the rack and just tiptoe past it, which made her laugh.

Larry added helpfully, “Just don’t blow your nose on the hankies,” which made everybody laugh, even two-year-old Arnold.  

Kurt and Victoria and a few other members of Kurt’s family gave Violet the Kirsten American Girl doll for her birthday, and her other grandma made her the matching dress and bonnet.

It’s a sunny, pretty day today, with a high of 75°.

Larry is in Hastings, where he’s been all day, trying to make his scissor lift work.  It worked here at home.  He hauled it there to rent out to some man – and evidently the hard jarring ride on that awful road north of Hastings messed up sensors and wiring and stuff.

Some of the items I ordered from Walmart just arrived.  I placed this order yesterday and would’ve picked it up after church, but there were no reservations for that timeframe left.  So I had as much shipped as possible; I’ll pick up the rest after church Wednesday evening.

Some things came this afternoon, and they were not ‘shipped’, they were ‘delivered’ straight from the store, in plastic store bags.  They say they won’t ‘deliver’ orders out here, 7 miles west of Columbus; but they do.  I just can’t request it as such.

Ooookay... I went to get these other items from the porch – and they, too, are a delivery straight from the store, not a ‘shipment’ from a warehouse somewhere.  So they say they can’t ‘deliver’ from the store to my house; but they’ve wasted time and money doing it twice today, with relatively small things each time.  They could’ve just brought the rest of my things, and saved themselves some money! 

When I looked through the pictures I took last night, I discovered that most of them are ‘motion photos’ – that is, brief video clips lasting about three seconds.

I was glad I wound up with these Live Photos, even though I turned that function off on Larry’s phone some months ago.  Apparently, he accidentally turned it back on.  He has lots of ‘accidents’ with his phone, because he falls asleep with his fingers on the screen.  He switched his keyboard to the French and Belgium layout somehow, and several of the letters were scrambled into odd places.  I set it back to default.

Let’s hope he doesn’t accidentally buy himself a Lamborghini one of these days.

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