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          ,,,>^..^<,,,

Journal: Foggy Days of Fall

 

Last Monday night, Larry went downstairs to take a bath.  I heard some commotion – and then he was coming back upstairs with his phone to show me a picture of a big wolf spider that he’d found in the tub.

He wasn’t the only one coping with the local creepy-crawlies.  I found one lurking near my feet one morning in the shower!  I didn’t even worry about dripping all over the floor as I hurriedly stepped out to grab a flyswatter.

No, we don’t do R&R (Rescue and Relocate) when spiders brazenly march into our house.  Nope.

The salmon run on Brooks River in Katmai National Park peaks in mid-to-late June, but it continues through September and October.  I like to watch the live streaming cameras when the big brown bears (grizzlies) are at Brooks Falls having a feast, catching salmon right and left.

I happened to look at the camera at 2:30 a.m., and found this big ol’ bruiser sittin’ all comfy on a big rock in the middle of the river, looking waaay too calm and laid back to actually catch anything.

Looks can be deceiving.

He suddenly lunged forward, swiped a giant paw through the water, and came up with a nice-sized flapping fish for his midnight snack.

(Well, a midnight snack 30 minutes early, to be precise, as it’s 11:30 p.m. there in Alaska when it’s 2:30 a.m. here.)

He happily enjoyed his meal, and then rested his head on his paws and took a short snooze, never mind the fact that his fuzzy rump was still in that icy water.

Tuesday afternoon, I quilted a small quilt for a customer.  That meant I had to clear off my quilting frame, as I use it for a cutting table.  I have a 36”-long cutting mat cut to the exact width of the quilting table (between the machine’s carriage rails), which is about 18 ½”.

The high that day, the first day of Autumn, was 63°.  It was cloudy, but bright, and no rain was expected until Thursday – wouldn’t you know it, the day I had an appointment with my eye doctor in Lincoln.

In the middle of the afternoon, hearing birds, I peered out the patio door. 

Oooohhhhh...  there was the baby cardinal I’ve been hearing for days now!  He was on the back rail, fluttering and begging, and both parents were there getting sunflower seeds from the feeder, then hopping down to the railing to feed their baby.  He’s already redder than his mother, so he’s a young male.  He’s so cute!

Welp, I worked hard to get Nano Banana 2 (officially known as Gemini 3.1 Flash Image), Google’s high-speed AI image generation and photo editing model, to recreate what I saw on my deck, since I didn’t get a photo.  

This is close, but when I told it to tilt the father cardinal’s head as papa birds do when inserting food into their babies’ beaks, Nano Banana gave me a bird that looked more like Avon’s glass cardinal perfume decanter with the lid askew.

Look at him.  He’s not feeding his offspring; he’s thinking, Say what now, kid?! while the kid apparently chirps in Italian.  (Kid’s tail is too long, too, and he should be taller, overall, with redder feathers.)

In the first oh-so-close picture, Nano Banana forgot to dehull the sunflower seed.  Baby isn’t going to get much nutrition from that seed!  Some birds such as doves and jays swallow them whole, shell and all, relying entirely on a grit-filled muscular gizzard to hull seeds for them.

Being so pleased with the AI mouse Canva created for me last week, I first gave that platform a try.  Good grief, it’s obvious that nobody with any birdbrains has been working with Canva at all!  They churned out a picture of identical father and son Northern Cardinals, except the male was about two feet tall (to go by size comparison with the feeder), and sonny was about the size of a field cricket.

Cardinals rely on their thick, conical beaks and jaw muscles to do the work of removing shells from seeds.  They crush the sunflower seed, peel off the hull with their tongue, and spit it out.  Because their gizzard only needs to process soft, pre-hulled seed kernels, it does not require the muscular density needed to grind down jagged seed husks.

Birds such as doves lack the beak structure and strength to crack hulls.  But their strong, thick-walled gizzards function like an internal stone mill to grind whole, uncracked shells down to a digestible pulp.  They therefore must regularly swallow large quantities of stones, coarse sand, and grit.  These pebbles sit in the gizzard permanently to smash the hard hulls apart.  Without grit, a dove cannot break down a whole sunflower seed.

The cardinal fledging makes constant high-pitched, metallic peeping noises; I knew it was a baby cardinal, but couldn’t spot him for several days, as the trees are thick around here.  He goes right on chirping even when his mouth is plumb full!  Sounds like he’s chirping through a dampening mute, until he gets the bite swallowed.  😄

Cardinals often have babies quite late in the season here.  This baby would likely be from either a second or a third clutch – and there’s a possibility it could even be from a fourth brood.  Northern Cardinals stay here during the winter; they don’t migrate.

I paused with the quilting to fix supper – salmon and broccoli.  (Did watching the bears’ banquet make me hungry for salmon?  😅)

Deciding that wasn’t quite enough, I made some blueberry muffins for dessert.  They were from a Martha White mix, and the blueberries are fake.  Next time, I’ll get the Blueberry Streusel Duncan Hines mix with the big tin of blueberries in the box!

Wednesday was another cloudy day.  The temperature got up to 67°.  I made another Dresden Plate flower and cut the ‘picket fence posts’ I plan to add along the bottom of the quilt.  I laid the quilt, flowers, and posts out on my bed to see how it looked, and to decide how many more Dresden Plates to make.  A bunch more flowers and butterflies, and it’ll be just right.  It’ll be a few more days before I’m ready to start appliquéing. 

Since I started drinking cold-brew coffee instead of hot coffee, I’m a lot less likely to pick up a mug of coffee and discover it has gone room temperature.

Lukewarm coffee or tea is the worst, I think.  Plus, when it’s about the same temperature as your face, you don’t notice when it gets to your lips as you tip up the cup, and you wind up pouring it right down your front.

I only had time to get this Dresden Plate partially ironed before it was time to go to church.  After the service, we had a late supper of Detroit Pizza.  Yummy!

That night, Hannah sent me this picture (below) of all the school children.  It makes me laugh.  Hannah wrote, “I took this in between whistles for attention, so they are doing whatever enters their heads.”

Yep, they are definitely doing whatever enters their heads.  One big kid in the back row is telling a fish tale (the fish was evidently standing on it tail, and is therefore measured by height rather than length), a little one in the front is stargazing, and several are turned completely backwards.

“I hope the kids looked at the actual photographer better than they looked at you!” I remarked to Hannah.

“Yes,” she assured me, “When the whistle sounded, they looked at the camera and smiled.”

Thursday morning, I got up early, preparing to go to Lincoln for the appointment with my eye doctor.  By a quarter ’til 8, it was 59°; the high would be just 61°.  It was already raining, both here and in Lincoln.  I was glad there were a couple of new tires on the front of the Mercedes to help with traction.  It rained almost all the way there and all the way home, stopping just long enough for me to walk into the clinic and not look like a drowned rat.

I sipped Raspberry White Chocolate cold-brew coffee (good stuff!) and blow-dried my hair while reading posts from quilting friends and a few news articles.  My appointment was at 11:30 a.m.  I left home at 9:40 a.m., and barely made it in time, since I had to stop and put gas in the Mercedes.

On the way home, I stopped at my customer’s house to drop off the quilt I had quilted for her and to pick up another small quilt she had finished. 

Before quilting the next little quilt, I finished pressing the Dresden Plate I’d put together Wednesday, and cleared off the quilting frame table.  A few hours later, I completed the quilting for my customer.

That evening, Victoria sent a video of Baby Russell smiling and cooing, followed by a sweet picture of Carolyn holding him.

“He has a Gerber Baby mouth, ❤️” I said.

Victoria then proceeded to change his picture to a pencil version, which made him look even more like the Gerber Baby.

Having done that, she soon followed it by switching pictures of each of the other children to pencil sketches, too.

“These could go into frames and be put on a wall,” I said – and now Victoria is thinking of doing exactly that.

She’s always loved black and white photos.  As for me, when I was little, a lot of people were still using black and white film, because it was cheaper.  And good-quality color film was only starting to be used more often.  I loved it sooo much better than black and white – and I still do.

But every now and then an old photo I took years ago was ruined, almost, by bad coloring; but when I scanned all my pictures, I was glad I had saved it, because turning it to black and white or sepia salvaged it completely.

Dorcas, 3; Hannah, 4; Keith, 5; and Teddy, 2
Denver, Colorado, 1983

Shortly after we first got a computer, I discovered PaintBox.  I immediately put our family picture into it and started playing.  I put a big sombrero on Keith... curly orange Afro on Caleb, age 5 – and he, standing there watching, had been giggling at all the others up until I disfigured him.  

Then he said very quietly, “I wish I had a computer, so I could draw on Mama.”

Several of the older kids laughed ’til they cried.

“Now you need a frame with five oval slots,” I told Victoria – and soon found one online and sent her the picture.

“I can give you small prints if you want them in that frame!!” offered Victoria.

The problem, though:  “It’s on Craigslist,” I told her, “for pick-up only, and it’s in West Covina, California. 🤣  It’s vintage, and the only one I saw.  I did see two others with five oval frames in the mat, but one frame was big and the other four were small.  You’d have to decide which kid you liked best.”

“Oh! 😂” she responded.  “We have one just like that with Kurt’s baby pictures in it.”

“Anyway, it’s okay,” I assured her.  “I can be perfectly happy with them in digital form.”

She’s thinking to get enlarged prints and put them in her 8x10 oval frames in the hallway.

Friday, it was about 12:45 p.m. when I happened to look out the window and discover that there was a thick fog outside.  I couldn’t at all see the highway off down the hill a quarter of a mile.  It wasn’t so dense one couldn’t drive in it, though; and I prepared to do exactly that.  Soon I was driving over to the little Daniels Produce store, about 12 miles to the west, to get some corn on the cob and big red tomatoes for ourselves and for some of the kids.

A little later, I took some corn and tomatoes to the kids, and dropped off my customer’s quilt while I was at it.

Baby Russell smiled at me for the first time while I was there, and made the cutest little cooing noises.

Hannah sent me home with some peach cobbler she’d made.  We had some for dessert after our Detroit Pizza that evening.

Saturday morning, I had a peanut butter/tomato sandwich for breakfast.  I love those things.

The high that day was 71°, and once again it was foggy and damp.  I spent a good part of the day making three more Dresden Plates, bringing the total to 12.  I have just about enough big ones (12-15”); I need more little ones (6”-11”).

For supper, I cooked our corn on the cob.  Amazingly, Larry got home in time that his corn was still nice and hot.  We had fresh tomatoes and cottage cheese, too.

Sunday was a repeat of the last few days, weather-wise.  As I sipped Blueberry White Chocolate cold-brew coffee and blow-dried my hair, getting ready for church, I listened to the Chicago news station.  Do weather reports in random places make you want to be there?  When they described the sun coming up over Lake Michigan, I wanted to be right there, camera in hand!

Ah, well. I’d be late for church.

Larry fixed waffles for our lunch after we got home from church.  He makes scrumptious waffles.

After the service last night, we visited with family and friends, then went to pick up groceries at Walmart.  Next, we stopped at the Speedy Gonzales Mexican food truck, and I got chicken quesadillas, and Larry got a burrito.  They fix authentic Mexican food, and it’s quite likely the best in town.

I ate half of my quesadillas, while Larry ate his entire humongous burrito – and promptly regretted it. 

“I’ll have the other half of my enchiladas for supper tomorrow night,” I told him.  “What will you have?” 

He held his stomach.  “I won’t need to eat breakfast or lunch tomorrow; maybe not even supper!”  Then he changed his mind.  “Maybe I’ll have a peanut butter/tomato sandwich.” 

After thinking they were horrid for years, he finally tried one – and liked it, last year.  Dorcas tried one once when she was a teenager; but she didn’t toast the bread – and then wondered how anyone could possibly like such a yucky sandwich.  🙄 

Toast it!  You’ve gotta toast it, I tell ya.

It was another damp, cloudy day today, and a slight haze of fog could be seen down the hill toward Shady Lake Road, a mile or so in the distance.  The temperature got up to 69° this afternoon.  You’d think we lived on Grand Banks off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, these last three weeks.  Grand Banks is considered the foggiest place on earth.

I like fall weather.  We don’t have as many varieties of trees as some places to the east do, so we don’t have quite as much color; but over by the Missouri River it’s quite beautiful in the autumn.

The second load of laundry is in the washing machine.  Larry came home for a few minutes and happened to be in the washroom right when I was ready to start the next load, and I coaxed him into extracting the coins from the area between the agitator and the barrel where they get stuck.  They’re his, after all; he forgets to remove the change from his pockets, and I refuse to put my hand into those murky depths.

A deliveryman just dropped off an order I made a couple of days ago:  a collection of ‘biscuits’ (little shortbread cookies) made in the U.K. by the company McVitie’s:  Digestives, The Original; Rich Tea, The Classic One; Hobnob, The Oaty One; and Ginger Nuts, The Fiery One.

I had to try them all (how else do you properly compare flavors and textures?!) – but I didn’t want four entire ‘biscuits’, so I opened each package and took one bite out of one cookie per package.  Larry should not be surprised when he discovers them thus; he knows what happened on those seldom occasions when I received a box of assorted chocolates!

There goes the drier singing its little tune.  I’m off to put away another load of clothes!

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