Last Tuesday morning, two bunnies and
one squirrel were in the neighbor’s yard just across the lane. One bunny ran at the other; the other jumped
straight up three feet in the air, in usual bunny fashion. The squirrel, not expecting this, proceeded to
also leap straight up, tail twirling, quite as if he hoped to turn into a
helicopter and whip-whip-whip himself right outa there. He reached approximately the same altitude the
bunny had before gravity regained its grip and brought him back down to earth. (Photo by Will Nicholls)
He landed closer than expected to the
bunnies, and they, probably in the throes of mirth, pretended to be startled,
each hopping straight upwards again, one after the other, which in turn
re-startled the squirrel. He, not
pretending, bounded upwards and outwards, and this time when he landed, he was
running as he hit. He was through the
fence and up a tall maple tree in five seconds flat, scampering out onto an
overhanging branch to chatter and scold the bunnies with a good degree of
ferocity. (Photo of bunnies from
National Geographic Kids)
A handful of Common grackles who’d
been displaced by the squirrel scolded and fussed, too.
The bunnies nibbled grass and ignored
them. ‘We di’nt do nuttin’; they’re a-not hollerin’ at us.’
Having spent enough time laughing at
the local fauna, I went off to blow-dry and curl my hair, eat some breakfast,
start another load of clothes, and head upstairs to work on the Constellation
quilt.
That afternoon as I put the last load of
clothes away, I noticed that our trees are just starting to show little buds on
them, and the grass is starting to turn green.
For supper that evening, I made hamburger
vegetable stew. I browned and seasoned
the hamburger, and started potatoes, baby carrots, and onions cooking in a big
pot. After adding the hamburger, I
poured in frozen corn, peas, green beans, and diced carrots. While the soup simmered, I removed newsprint
paper from the back of the final quilt block.
The stew was done about the time Larry came
home. Did the aroma bring him in??
Mmmm, it was scrumptious. After having some the following night (stew
is almost always better on Day 2, ever notice that?), I divided and froze the
rest. It would be enough for three more
meals.
By 10:00 p.m., the central part of the
Constellation quilt was done, and the newsprint all removed from those
paper-pieced blocks. It was now big
enough that it didn’t fit in the floor space in the little library anymore
without being rumpled.
Wednesday morning at 10:30 a.m., it was cold,
37°. But, wonder of wonders, it started raining that
afternoon and kept at it for several hours.
We needed it so badly, I didn’t even protest (much, heh) when I had to
grab an umbrella as I headed out to the Mercedes at church time that evening.
I spent 5 ½ hours that day working on the
first couple of borders for the Constellation quilt. I attached the one with the brown squares and
the blue star points, then cut all the cream-colored squares and triangles for
the next border – 108 pieces all together.
I got all the star points in that border sewn to the middle triangle. I would be ready to start sewing those to the
cream-colored squares the next day.
Ladies on my quilting group were talking
about the hummingbirds that would soon be coming their way. We have very few hummingbirds here. Once in a blue moon I see one or two, but
only as they migrate through. They do
like the gazillions of big white hosta blossoms in the front yard in late
summer and early autumn. I have a
hummingbird feeder that I put out now and then, but it rarely attracts
hummingbirds these days.
Several years ago, for a couple of years in a
row, there were half a dozen Ruby-throated hummingbirds having rip-roaring
fights over that feeder. I once saw one
attack another with that French cuirassier saber on the front of his wee head,
bringing him right down to the porch, where they rolled around in a flutter of
feathers and teeny tiny toenails before tumbling right over the edge and into
the flowers in a twittering fluff.
Fearing a cat or two might be lurking in one
of the hosta plants, I scurried out to prevent any carnage. There were no cats around, fortunately, and
the hummingbirds eventually let loose of each other and zipped off to do battle
elsewhere.
One sat still long enough that I managed to
get a picture of him. This one with the
telltale extra-large patch of white feathers behind his left eye showed up two
years in a row, unless it was his identical twin, Year 2.
A few days ago, I listened to “Driven From Home: A Converted
Jewess – Jeanette Gedalius”, a Scroll Reader link Robert
sent me. Some people follow God even
through great persecution! Some people
won’t follow God, even though they have it easy.
It was a rainy day again Thursday, 39°
at 10:00 a.m., on the way up to 44°. My
weather app said it was only cloudy – but the sidewalk, porch, and deck were
all wet, and there were water drops all over the windows. Sure looked like rain to me!
I did some necessary housecleaning
(who messed up the kitchen?!), and then I returned to my quilting studio to
continue putting borders on the Constellation quilt. That day, I began listening to the book, They
Who Comforted: Fanny Crosby & Agnes Weston.
Fanny Crosby’s beautiful poems sometimes make
me cry, they are so touching. I can
never read the first dear little poem she wrote when she was just 8 years old
without shedding tears over it. Here it
is:
Oh, what a happy child I am
Although I cannot see;
I am resolved that in this world
Contented I will be!
How many blessings I enjoy
That other people don’t;
To weep or sigh because I’m blind,
I cannot, nor I won’t!
I smiled when I heard the beloved
singer-songwriter Al Smith say to an audience to whom he’d been singing and
quoting Fanny Crosby songs, “I can’t read that one to you; I cry!”
As I washed dishes later, I watched a video
of a pretty stroll in
Ireland.
And then my smartwatch
thoroughly insulted me. I’d been rushing
around cleaning the kitchen, including more dishes than two people should’ve
dirtied, at top speed... then made a jug of cold-brew coffee with Aroma Ridge’s
Chocolate Trilogy beans... made myself a thermal mug of Strawberry Coconut
Celsius and another tall mug of Starbucks Madagascar Vanilla cold-brew coffee
with Italian Sweet Crème CoffeeMate to take back upstairs with me – and
suddenly my watch vibrated with the message, ‘Sitting Too Long, You Lazy Couch
Bum.’
Where’s my hammer?
That evening as I sewed, my seam ripper fell
off the sewing table and landed point first right into the pinewood plank
floor. If I was like some idgets I see on YouTube and other social media
platforms, I’d scream and leap up and down like something extraordinarily
monumental just happened. (Not that I would scream and leap up and down
even if something extraordinarily monumental did happen.) (And in any case, the ripper would probably
then extract itself from the floor and turn itself pointed end up, and I’d step
on it with a bare foot.)
Friday, it was cloudy and damp
again, and the high would only be 40°. But look, my crocuses are blooming!
The Chocolate Trilogy cold-brew coffee
had steeped for nearly 18 hours, so I poured myself a mugful. (Well, actually, I pour a third of a mugful
and fill it the rest of the way with water, as it’s fairly concentrated.)
It’s a new flavor. I don’t usually care for chocolate flavors in
my coffee; but most of Aroma Ridge’s chocolate flavors are good, and this one
is no exception: it’s scrumptious. Not too chocolatey, it’s just right, with hints
of dark chocolate, milk chocolate, and white chocolate. Perfect.
Back in my sewing room, I started to
pin the narrow dark brown border on the Constellation quilt – and discovered
the strips I’d prepared were too long. Knowing
they were precisely the length shown in EQ8, I thought, Did I miss a border?
A look at EQ8 confirmed: Yep, I’d skipped the cream-colored narrow
border. So I cut it, pieced it,
attached it – and then the narrow brown border fit. Next, the wider blue border... and then the
quilt top was done.
When I finished working on quilt borders and
went downstairs to fix supper that evening, I had done 6 ½ hours of sewing that
day. That makes a total of 155 ½ hours
that I’ve spent on this quilt so far. The quilt is
108¼” x 108¼”. This image is from EQ8, as I
don’t have any place big enough to spread the quilt top out and get a picture
of it, and the back deck was damp. The
‘real’ top is more random and scrappy than this image.
A lady on
Facebook asked, “How long have you been at it?”
“Do you mean,
this quilt specifically, or quilting in general?” I asked. “This quilt has about 155 ½ hours in it. As for quilting, I’ve been sewing and quilting
for about 56 years, as I started when I was 9. And now I’ve gone and told you my age. 😄”
“Never was quick
with math!” she responded.
“Let me help,”
said I. “Those numbers all add up to 220
½. I must be 220 years old!”
She seemed quite
unimpressed.
Here’s a picture from the Artemis II
spacecraft:
See the Aurora Australis
(curved sliver of green) about 15 degrees from top center? The Aurora
Borealis is visible at the bottom. Venus is at 5:00. The Sahara
dominates the lower left of the image. You
can see the Strait of Gibraltar and Spain below it (the South Pole is near the
top of the globe). Amazing, isn’t it?
As it says in Job 26:7, “He stretcheth
out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.” We have a wonderful, all-powerful God! And yet He cares for me.
Saturday, bag-packing was on my agenda,
because we were planning to leave for eastern Wisconsin Monday morning, in
order to pick up a couple of small scissor lifts, a walk-behind sweeper, and,
uhhhh, ... ? ... some other smallish steel motorized thing Larry bought on
Purple Wave auctions.
Larry said he thought we could make
this trip in two days, whereupon I announced that I was staying home. He then allowed as how we could take as long
as we wished, whereupon I threw my hat back into the ring.
It’s going to be cold in eastern
Wisconsin until Wednesday (a high of 39° Tuesday, a high of 64° on Wednesday).
By a quarter after 2, packing had
begun.
Witness:
1) I printed a list
of Stuff ’n Things
2) I put one of my
business cards (for quilting) in the tag holder on one of the rolling
suitcases.
A couple of hours later, four bags were
packed, and camera paraphernalia was ready. All my stuff was as ready as
it could be; I would pack the rest Monday morning after I finished using
it.
Next, I gathered up Larry’s things. (If
I don’t, he’ll only take one shirt, one pair of britches, one pair of socks –
and then we’d have to stop and buy more.)
There were Harris’ sparrows and White-crowned
sparrows out in the front lawn, hopping around and pecking up seeds and the few
insects that might’ve been out and about.
It was 48°, with a windchill of 38°, as the wind was blowing at 33 mph;
not many insects brave weather like that.
The little White-crowned sparrows look like tiny skunks as they hop my
way, with their cute little striped heads.
The almost-white Eurasian collared dove that
I’ve been noticing was there, too. It’s not
albino. I learned from Birds @ Outdoor
Nebraska that it’s called a ‘pale Eurasian collared dove’.
How ’bout that.
When I had as much packed as I could
pack that day, I looked online at various State Parks, points of interest,
and places to stay near Lake Michigan.
Since our Easter Sunrise Service was
at 7:00 a.m. and I planned to get up before 4:30 a.m., I went to bed at the
very early hour (for me) of 10:30 a.m., expecting to sleep quite well, since I
hadn’t slept much the previous night.
No such luck. After a short but violent bout with the bed
linens, I fell asleep – only to awaken at a quarter after two. Sleep evaded me after that, though, as usual,
I was just becoming a bit fuzzy and thinking I could possibly drop off
to sleep again, when the alarm went off.
Years ago, a preacher friend gave Daddy a
small card – business-card sized – on which was printed a black cat. It
said, under a heading of ‘For All Parishioners’, “When you think you are
too sick to go to church, breathe on the cat. If it turns purple, you are
sick enough to stay home.” (Of course it was just plain black ink, and
never changed color. 😅)
One time when Daddy first started in the
ministry, years before my time, he asked the congregation if anyone would like
to give a testimony.
Up popped, uh... let’s call him the ‘I’ve
Been Everywhere’ guy.
He puffed out his chest and launched in: “I’ve been all over these 48 states and part
of Philadelphia...”
I don’t know the rest of the story, because
that’s all Daddy ever told. 😄
We’ve all said that ever since I can remember
– “I’ve been all over these 48 states and part of Philadelphia!” Mr. Everywhere Guy had no idea that he would live on in infamy from that
one ‘testimony’ alone.
Shortly after 5:00 a.m. Sunday morning, it was 31°, on the way up to 67°.
I was blow-drying and curling my hair,
getting ready for our Sunrise Service. We
would have breakfast in the Fellowship Hall after the service, at 8:00 a.m.
The robins were singing like anything when we
stepped out of the house this morning at 6:40 a.m. I remember being delighted to step outside on
Easter morning when I was a little girl, and walk the short distance from the
parsonage to the church while the birds serenaded us.
I always look forward with much anticipation to the beautiful music, and
the wonderful resurrection story, old yet ever new. ♫ ♪ He
Lives! ♪ ♫
I remember how amazed I was once, as a
wee little girl, when my father said, “Nobody needed to roll
that stone away in order for the Lord to arise; the angel did that as one more
proof that He was indeed alive!”
We came back home a little after nine, Larry
to take a nap and me to don a different set of glad rags. As usual after our Easter breakfast, I was too
full, even though I’d passed up the dinner rolls and the doughnuts. I had a hard-boiled egg (by accident – because
I thought my great-niece who was waiting on our table was asking me if she
could hand me a big bowl of hard-boiled eggs to pass along the table, and when
I said yes, she just handed me an egg, to my surprise! hee hee), a small scoop of cheesy scrambled
eggs (yummy), a bowl of fruit (mandarin oranges, grapes, honeydew, cantaloupe, blueberries,
and strawberries), a miniature banana muffin with a swirl of cream cheese on
top, one piece of sausage, a sliver of ham, a glass of chocolate milk, and a
cup of tea.
Wow.
No wonder I was too full.
I’m used to eating half a bagel, toasted, with peanut butter and honey,
or a bowl of oatmeal, with a glass of milk, and that’s it!
Here I am all decked out in my church
finery. The navy and white was for the
Sunrise Service, the peach and white for the 11:00 a.m. service, and the pink
and white for the evening service.
Taking
selfies in the mirror with my tablet makes me look moonfaced and walleyed and
cross-eyed, all at once.
Our men’s choir sang during our the Sunrise
Service. In that group is one grandson
(Aaron), two sons-in-law (Kurt and Bobby), one nephew-in-law (Charles), two
great-nephews, five great-nephews-in-law, and one first cousin once removed. I find such things amazing, since, as I grew
up, very few of our parishioners were related to me. The older we get, the more offspring and
relations we have, that’s a fact!
The brass band played at the start of
the 11:00 a.m. service, and the mixed choir sang just before the message. Bobby is the band director. Aaron and Levi play French horns.
The string orchestra played before the
evening service. The young girl who
plays the harp does it so beautifully.
Granddaughter Emma plays the cello.
A girls’ group sang before the
message. Afterwards, we had a luncheon in
our Fellowship Hall.
We took the long way home after church last night – and came upon a beaver mucking along in an arroyo beside a country road.
When we stopped, he stared at us, then
lumbered right up onto the road toward our car! This generally makes me think, Rabies! –
but he was just wanting to cross the road to a wooded creek in a shallow canyon
on the other side. Since we were
stopped, he paused, sized things up – and went trundling right underneath
the Mercedes.
We then drove around Lake North on our way
home. The sun had already gone down, and
the sky was dark orange at the horizon, turning lighter orange as it blended
into the blue of the sky above.
Wouldn’t you know, we only had Larry’s phone
cam, and not my good Canon.
It’s
chilly today, with a high of 44°. An
inch of snow could fall later tonight around the area. But we won’t be here; we’re just about ready
to head to Wisconsin.
Or at
least I keep hoping we are. It is
now 2:30 p.m., and I’ve been ready for several hours, waiting for Larry to
finish getting his pickup and enclosed trailer ready. He just went up to the unfinished addition to
get his shop vac in order to clean out the pickup – and got stalled out up
there looking at damage caused by raccoons.
Siggghhhh...
We
really need to get that part of the house finished, and actually move into
it. Then we’d be right there on hand
anytime raccoons or squirrels or bats or suchlike try to get in, and we could
yell “BOO!!!” at them and thus discourage them from trying to inhabit the
place. (That’s the correct modus operandi, right?)
Well,
anyway, I’m glad I slept another hour after first waking up. I had plenty of time to wash the dishes and
clean the kitchen, and I got the trash ready to be taken out as we’re
leaving. In one trashcan is the skin
from the salmon we had for supper the other night. It certainly wouldn’t be nice to leave that
in the house until we get home again!
🤪😜
Time to start hauling bags out to the pickup,
I think, I hope!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
.jpg)
%20-%20Copy.jpg)
.jpg)
