Last Monday, Memorial Day, Loren planted a
few hundred ranunculus bulbs he got from the Netherlands. The postman had brought the box to him a
couple of days earlier, puzzling over the return address. “Oh, my bulbs!” exclaimed Loren happily, and
the postman looked even more puzzled than ever, wondering why on earth anyone
would order light bulbs all the way from the Netherlands. “No, they’re flower bulbs!” explained Loren, laughing.
Today he got several dozen more – tulips,
this time. He got them all planted this
morning – good thing, too, as it got quite hot this afternoon.
A friend, noticing the teacup-and-saucer set
in one of the pictures of the coffeepot cozy last week, commented that it was
clever to make the flowers on the cozy match the flowers on the teacup. I hadn’t even noticed... but they do match, don’t they? However, the matching teacups are
incidental. They are very old; they were my mother’s. When my
sister and I were dividing things up after my mother passed away, she gave me a
whole lot of Mama’s extensive teacup/saucer/dessert-plate collection. This particular set was one of 12 such sets,
and each cup and saucer has a month stamped on the bottom. I gave some of
the others to my daughters and daughters-in-law, but kept this one, since it’s the
set for October, and that’s my birth month – plus, it was my favorite, and I
got greedy! I convinced Lura Kay that I
didn’t need all of them, so she gave some to her daughter and
daughters-in-law, too.
If I acted the slightest bit interested in anything
of Mama’s, I wound up with it in my car. Lura Kay was willing
to keep the things she had given Mama herself, though she’d be likely to hand
most any item to me if I oohed and ahhed over it too much.
As our grandchildren (and her
great-grandchildren) have gotten older, we have now and then given them items
of our parents’ that we’d saved. Just recently, I gave one of my
grandsons a tie tac that belonged to my father. He was pleased.
And that’s how we fussed over our parents’
things.
Some friends and I were exchanging recipes
the other day. One lady mentioned a cake
she’d made that had fallen... and that reminded me of a cake story of my own.
(I have stories about most everything, don’t I?)
Here it is, from my journal of March 4, 2013:
Victoria had invited a flock of girls over Friday evening
for cake and ice cream – a belated birthday party.
She brought her cousin Danica (1st cousin once
removed, actually) home after school so they could together make the angelfood
cake and slice the strawberries. Danica is a little less than three years
younger than Victoria, but they are a lot alike, and have been good friends for
a long time.
Earlier, Caleb had come home from work and gone upstairs
to take a nap. About this time, he came
wandering down the stairs in a bit of a daze, and nearly blundered right into
Danica, thinking it was Victoria (same height, same size, same hairstyles, and
the color of their hair is very close). Then, startled, he jumped back
and said, “OH! I thought you were Victoria!”
Danica of course thought this was a scream.
By 5:30 p.m., the cake was in the oven. Every time
Caleb or I went near the kitchen, the girls look alarmed and hissed, “Don’t
bump anything! The cake will fall!”
Victoria got a little overly excited once, and cried, “Look
out, the oven is in the cake!” which reduced Danica to a convulsed heap of
mirth. A good deal of the time, I could hear them marching around as if
there was a Great State of Urgency – but now and then they tiptoed over to the
oven, verrrry cautiously pulled open the door, and then debated with
each other in whispers.
As I headed back downstairs to continue the
pillow-making, they instructed me to tell Caleb, who was in the downstairs
bathroom showering and getting ready for his date, to ‘not slam anything’.
I duly told him, and he laughed because right in the middle of my telling,
there was a bang overhead, followed by rushing footsteps, and laughter.
I heard Victoria tell Danica, “Oh, well, if it falls, we’ll
just have Devil’s Food, instead,” which made Danica screech. Danica
sliced up all the strawberries – the round way, rather than the long way,
surprising Victoria. (But they tasted the same.)
While the cake baked, they snacked on crab meat Victoria
had bought when they got the strawberries. They both love seafood.
Caleb headed upstairs shortly, the smell of soap and
aftershave creating a large, luminous aura around him (let us hope Maria is not
overly sensitive to overly good-smelling boyfriends), and soon I heard the
girls giggling. He’d no doubt had a few choice comments to spout off as
he passed them.
At 6:30 p.m., both girls came ka-lump ka-lumping down the
stairs, Victoria bearing The Cake on a platter to show me their Great Success.
“We’re Cake Masters!” she announced gaily, with
Danica peering over her shoulder, grinning. I duly admired the cake, then
showed them the pillows I’d just finished.
“I’m a Pillow Master!” I informed them. They giggled and
trot-trotted back upstairs.
Here is the cake, not yet frosted:
Hester once made a cake called “Million-Dollar
Pound Cake.” I’d made it before, and we liked it. It was
particularly good with homemade vanilla pudding.
Well, I’m not sure what happened, but her
cake fell. It tasted all right, other than being much too dense and
heavy – and not quite done in the middle.
Hester proceeded to call it “Million-Pounds
Cake” after that.
Larry posted videos on Instagram of himself
starting to work on his Dodge Ram pickup that he finally managed to get into
our garage after clearing a lot of things out of the way. He panned his camera around the engine,
explaining what he was doing... and then at the end, he said, “I’m making this
tutorial so my wife can put the motor back together for me after I get it fixed!”
Hannah wrote, “She’d look like Mistress Mouse
in Richard Scarry’s “All About Cars and Trucks” book. 🐭 🔨
Victoria contributed a funny face – 😂 – and Lydia then threw in her
2¢: “😁😁 Sounds like Jonathan telling me “I’m going to lay some bricks (on
the fireplace) and then I’ll have my wife clean up the mess and then I’ll lay
some more bricks!”
“Who’s teaching that boy??!”
I demanded, “His Mama, or his Daddy??”
Tuesday, I loaded a customer’s quilt on my
frame – and then decided I didn’t like the thread I’d chosen for it. The
blues I had just weren’t right. So, after making sure my customer could
wait for the thread to arrive, I ordered cones of thread for the top (40#) and
the bobbin (60#) in a light turquoise color.
Then I pored over favorite quilting photos
and designs before beginning to measure and mark the quilt, so I’ll be ready to
start when the thread arrives. My new
swag rulers – a set of four in graduated sizes – is going to be just the ticket. A lady sold them to me at half price – and
she’d never even taken them out of the package.
For supper Tuesday evening, Larry smoked
salmon in the Traeger grill, and I fixed steamed asparagus spears, brown rice,
and gingerbread cake. We had applesauce
with the cake. A filling, tasty, and
healthy supper.
Wednesday morning, I came out of the bathroom
all nice and squeaky clean, headed into the kitchen for coffee – and found Teensy
erping his socks under the piano. 😝
I put the cat outside, cleaned up after him, scrubbed
thoroughly, made coffee, and opened my laptop to read email, devotions, news,
and funnies, not necessarily in that order.
The nice thing about devotions on my computer, as opposed to in a book,
is that I can make the print bigger and easier to read. The downside is that it doesn’t come in the
Scofield form I prefer. I know which
side of the page certain passages are on, in the Scofield!
And then, aaaarrgghh, I received a notice
that the thread for the longarm had been backordered and would be delayed 3 to 5
days. I wrote to my customer, asking if that
was too long, and if I should order it from another company.
She assured me she wasn’t in a big hurry, so
I let it be. I would start a quick
project in the meanwhile – potholders for a wedding gift for a cousin of Larry’s
(1st cousin once removed, to be precise). As a plus, this will
give me something else to enter in the County Fair. I decided to make Folded-Star Hotpads again.
I put a couple of loads of clothes away... tossed
another load into the dryer... hung some things on the line... and put another load
into the washer. I scrubbed the bathtub... washed the dishes... edited
some pictures and posted them online... and still had enough time to make a
good start on the potholders before church.
Our lilacs are blooming. They are on
the north side of the house, and bloom later than others in the vicinity. More pictures are on my blog: Cemetery, Front Yard
I
decided to wash the flannel quilt after hanging the last load out, even though it
was supposed to rain that night and the next morning, and I like to hang quilts
outside. But... I could throw it in the dryer until it was nearly dry,
and hang it outside Thursday afternoon when the sun came out. When I want to do something, I want to do it...
now!
 |
| Wild Prairie Rose |
I
cut foundation fabric for seven hotpads, marked them, picked out fabrics, and start
cutting. Each hotpad has 33 pieces,
counting the batting. Well, a couple of them had more, since I was
running out of a certain fabric and had to piece it.
Soon
it was time for church.
We
went to the grocery store afterwards to get some of those things I can’t order
online: milk, yogurt, cottage cheese,
orange juice (Tropicana with Lots of Pulp), cheese curds, sliced Pepper Jack
cheese, butter croissants, apples, lettuce, a bag of chopped vegetable salad,
bananas, green and red peppers, organic on-the-vine tomatoes (allllmost as good
as fresh-from-the-garden), tangerines – and a big carton of strawberries.
Mmmmm... they were perfect.
One
time we poured glasses of juice for the little kiddos – the kind with lots of
pulp, the way we like it best. It had been a little while since we’d
found the ‘lots of pulp’ variety in the store.
Caleb, who was about two, gladly took a big drink – then wrinkled his
nose and went to picking things from his teeth.
“What’s
the matter?” asked Larry, trying not to laugh.
“My
juice has germs in it!” announced Caleb.
And
then Larry did laugh, while I tried to explain that it was pulp –
those yummy little pieces that make up an orange slice. Actually, those little pieces are called ‘juice
vesicles’, did you know that?
We
called that Tropicana juice ‘orange juice with germs’ for a long while after
that. Still do, now and then.
Thursday, I washed sheets and went on working
on the hotpads for our cousin’s August wedding. They go fairly fast; it’s
a fun project to do.
Sure enough, the sun came out that afternoon
right on schedule. So out on the deck
went the flannel quilt.
Then I somehow got sidetracked from the
hotpads and wound up in EQ7 designing a pattern for the vintage Sunbonnet Sue
blocks my sister gave me 2 ½ years ago (how time flies).
Here’s one of the ‘in-between’ blocks: ß I wasn’t entirely happy with it,
and wanted it designed so that those three little squares of like colors on
each side were just one strip. But there
wasn’t a ready-made block like that in the program. Well, I’d fix it later. Back to the hotpads!
The Phalaenopsis orchid is blooming like
anything. Since I took this picture,
that big bud there on the right has opened, and now there are five big blooms
on the stalk. So pretty!
That day, the first of June, I discovered a
photo Victoria had posted on Instagram of a scrumptious-looking Mexican omelet
with the caption, “An omelet for Kurt’s birthday breakfast – one of his
favorites.”
! It
was Kurt’s birthday?! “Why don’t I know
this?!” I inquired.
“Now you do,” responded Victoria.
I sent Larry a note, asking what we could
give this newest son-in-law of ours.
Larry, after some thought, decided we would give him Larry’s mountain
bike, as it’s still in excellent shape, and Larry doesn’t ride it anymore since
he got his road bike and his off-road
bike. Larry asked Kurt if he’d like the
bike; Kurt said he would. We took the
bike to him Friday evening.
The other day Nathanael commented about his piano lesson, “I have a song
that I don’t want to play.”
Joanna replied with sisterly encouragement, “It’s actually kind of
neat... when you stop listening to it.”
Hee hee That’s a
variation on the old “They’re clapping because you’re done” shtick.
Thursday evening it occurred to me that the
air conditioner wasn’t doing a real bang-up job of cooling the house down. By Friday morning, there wasn’t any
doubt: the compressor – the brand-new compressor – wasn’t working. I went downstairs and
looked in the breaker box, but couldn’t find any breakers blown.
I sent Larry a note. He wrote back, “Out on the left side of the heat pump where
the lines go into the unit is a round button.
Push it in and see if that works.”
The button is an on-unit breaker switch. I trotted out and did as bidden – and was
relieved when the compressor came on. I
sent another note to Larry, letting him know it was working. “What would’ve made it blow?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” responded Larry, “but you fixed it! 🙂”
“Yeah, I’m as good as Franny! (name changed)”
She’d jubilantly told me that she had ‘fixed’ her
computer – but it turned out that her husband had merely plugged the mouse back
in for her.
“You’re better,”
Larry told me. “You pushed the button.”
That breaker probably blew last Saturday when Larry was using
his welder, making all the lights flicker and causing problems with my sewing
machine (which has been behaving just fine, thankfully). Until Friday, the weather hadn’t been hot
enough for us to notice that the compressor wasn’t coming on.
“It was your fault for turning on the air conditioner
while I was welding,” Larry informed me.
“No, it was your
fault for welding while I was turning on the air conditioner!” I retorted.
Victoria made pie, French bread, and giant
soft pretzels that day for the Farmer’s Market, which is held on Saturdays in Franklin
Square uptown. She sent me a picture of an
apple streusel pie she’d just pulled from the oven, wondering how to tell for
sure if it was done. “How tender is a
tender apple??” she asked.
“Nice and soft,” I told her.
“You
have to destroy the topping to poke an apple!” she protested.
“Better a messed-top top than an undone
apple, that’s my philosophy,” I replied.
“Besides, with the streusel topping, you can move some of the crumbles,
sample the apple, and spread the topping back without anybody ever being the
wiser.”
Thought for the Day:
Talking/texting/emailing with my husband and
several of our offspring simultaneously can get a bit confusing, not only because
I can’t remember to whom I said what, but also because they’re so much
alike, it’s like conversing with quadruplets/quintuplets/sextuplets/etc.
ha
With the little excitement over the
compressor finished, I got back to potholdering (as Victoria called it when she
was about 7 or 8, crocheting a potholder).
The set of hotpads I’m doing has more of an Ohio star shape than a
Lemoyne star shape – more square than octagonal. Doing it this way made them an inch and a
half wider than that first set. But... I like the shape of the first ones
better. Oh, well. It was time to
pull out some batting!
When we delivered the bike to Kurt, Victoria
gave us slices of her yummy pie (yep, it was done, and exactly right, too), and
let us taste one of the soft pretzels.
Mmm, good.
Later that
night, we heard the foxes yelping and barking and calling again. We stepped out on the front porch, the better
to hear one up in the woods to the northeast – and the little critter must’ve
seen or heard us, because his barks were a whole lot farther away, in nothing
flat.
Wondering where the cats were, I went to the
back deck. Just before I opened the
screen, I heard another fox – this one, right in our back yard! It sounded like it was inside or near Larry’s
big garage, by the way it echoed. But
sliding the patio door open must’ve scared it, because we heard nary a peep
from it thereafter.
Tabby keeps sleeping up on the railing, which
makes my hair stand up on end. He’s so
old and frail... I’m afraid he’ll wobble, fall right off, and land one whole
story down! He’d get hurt, if that
happened.
When I chose the fabrics for the Folded Star
potholders, I thought I’d just do a variety... not really try to match them,
just make each one pretty on its own.
Well, I wound up with five hotpads that coordinate
perfectly – and two others that coordinate with each other, but not with
the other five. Not at all. Sooo... Saturday I cut more
fabric and made one more hotpad to go with those first five. One more
week until my great-nephew’s wedding! The ‘Josie’ brand coffee arrived;
I’ll tuck that in with the coffeepot and cozy. (The bride’s name is Josie
– hence, the idea for the entire gift.) I’ll wait until next Sunday afternoon
to pack the pot, cozy, and coffee, so as to reduce Squishing Time. Isn’t that an old song? ♫ ♪ And it
won’t be long ♪ ♫ until it’s ♫ ♪ Squishing Time! ♪ ♫
A friend was talking about all the things
she’s planted in her garden. “One of the
reasons I planted so many strawberries,” she said, “was so I could share them with
our friends. Isn’t that what gardens are
for? 😊”
That reminded me of what my father always
said his father used to say. I never knew my Grandpa; he died in
1938 just before my oldest brother was born. He was only 48; the doctors
thought he had appendicitis, and removed his appendix – but it was a perforated
ulcer, probably brought on by losing his farm during the Depression, and then
working day and night to get it back. He did it – but it doubtless cost
him his life.
Anyway, they used to make ice cream on Saturday
nights, using milk from their own cows, and Grandpa would call in a whole lot
of friends from neighboring farms, saying, “Ice cream doesn’t taste nearly
so good until you share it with the neighbors!”
Daddy told so many stories about my Grandpa
that I grew up feeling like I really knew him.
I have a ‘when to garden’ dilemma. The
best time would of course be early in the morning, before it gets hot. But the trouble is, rheumatoid arthritis
makes me stiff and creaky the first couple of hours after getting up. The
first thing I want to do is have a hot bath... wash my hair...
And once I’m all polished and scrubbed, why
would I want to go out and get all dirty and sweaty in the garden? If I
go out later, I’ll have to have another bath... and there are so many things to
do, I hate to waste time like that...
But I really do need to work in
the flower gardens. Really, I do! Siggghhhh... I just have to do it,
creakiness notwithstanding. As soon as I
get my customer’s quilt done, I will.
We
have a cherry tree that produces nicely each year – but the birds eat all the
cherries before they’re quite ripe enough to pick. One year I found one lonesome cherry near the bottom
that the birds had overlooked. I grabbed it, polished it on my shirt, and
crammed it in my mouth just as a robin flew over, scolding at me.
“Ha!”
I retorted. “I beat you to it!”
(Good
thing we live out in the country, and no neighbors witnessed my ‘bird talk’.)
We
tried covering a small mulberry tree one year, but a little bird got caught in
the netting and perished. I do get quite a lot of mulberries each year.
We have a dark purple and a white variety. I just noticed that the
mulberries are getting ripe!
I
decided to quit worrying about the cherry tree, and just consider it a large,
self-replenishing, springtime bird feeder. 😃 I really enjoy all the birds and animals we
see out here.
Sunday, it occurred to me that I had totally
forgotten to pick up the flowers from the cemetery. I figured they’d be long gone by then – they
usually clear everything out by the Saturday after Memorial Day, at the
latest. But after church we went to the
cemetery anyway – and gathered up our own flowers plus several others at our
relatives’ graves, in case they belonged to Loren or Lura Kay. One year, having read in the paper that the
flowers would be cleared away in six days, I went to pick them up on the
following Friday – and everyone’s flowers were already gone. Furthermore, I had
some nice flowers there, and they weren’t cheap. Whataya bet John Q. Public threw fits and
tantrums about that, and they’ve since extended the time for a day or two?
Last night, I redid those Irish Chain blocks
for the Sunbonnet Sue quilt using Easy Draw in EQ7, then added all the colors
back in. They should put in an option where you can just throw all the
colors you previously used back into a new block in the same general areas, and
whoosh-kabloosh, there they’d be, then.
I’m probably just touching the tip of the
iceberg, in my knowledge of this program. I imagine I take the hard way
around at times, when they’ve already made a much easier way to go about it.
I’ll match the background as closely as
possible to the background of the Sunbonnet Sue blocks. Often when I add
my own photos to EQ7, the background turns out looking darker than it really is.
I lightened the photos enough that po’ li’l Sue was starting to look anemic –
and still the background looks a bit gray. In actuality, the fabric is a
cream color – a natural muslin, with some blocks boasting better quality fabric
than others.
When I took photos of the blocks, I cropped
them. The real blocks won’t be quite
that cropped, and Sunbonnet Sue will look smaller inside the square. I’ll adjust the block size in EQ7 as soon as
I get the Sunbonnet Sue blocks trimmed to a uniform size.
Now I’m excited to get started! A few
other things first, though...
And now that I’ve done it – drawn a
new block, that is – I figured out how to edit the original block.
See what I mean about always doing things the hard way first??
I’m going to keep this quilt, since it’s a
family keepsake. I’m going to write to
some of my cousins and ask for any stories they might know about the ladies who
made these vintage blocks, and then I’ll type it up and keep the information with
the quilt.
Earlier this
afternoon, I picked up Larry’s check at Walkers’, took it to the bank, and
dropped off clothes at the cleaners. Whew,
it was 97° out there.
My blind friend Penny has always been
intrigued with pictures, printed or digital, and she saves a few, if someone
tells her it’s especially pretty, or if it has special significance. She
likes to get family pictures at Christmas time from friends. I was so
surprised to learn this, way back when our older children were babies, when she
asked if I might have a family picture left from all those I had given everyone
else. I did, and handed it to her.
She stood holding it, passing her fingers
over it, then said to me, “I just can’t get over how there can be several faces
on this little piece of paper, and people can look at it, see the faces, little
though they must be, and know exactly who it is they’re looking at!”
She likes to display pictures around her
house, so visitors can see them.
Last night she emailed a picture of a double
rainbow and asked what it looked like, and if it was pretty. I wrote the following:
Yes, it’s a beautiful photo. The view is from up
high – maybe a drone, maybe a second story of a house – and there is a double
rainbow against a slate gray sky. The first one is bright, and all the
colors are shimmering and distinct: lavender, purple, plum, indigo, blue,
teal, green, mint, yellow, salmon, orange, red, and then a touch of purple as
it tries to start over again. The outer rainbow is a mirror image of the
first, paler, all soft and hazy against the multi-colored gray clouds.
And below, just to add to the drama, there are two snow-white
houses with equally snowy white garages and a white fence, along with one
cream-colored house, and all the buildings are shining so brightly in the
sunlight, it’s almost like they are translucent and lit from within. The
sun is also shining on tall green trees... emerald green lawns... and a big
garden of white and yellow irises. The sun is obviously low in the sky,
because the shadows are long.
Then, for the final touch, there is a brilliant red
minivan in the driveway of the cream-colored house. It’s so very shiny in
the sun, it surely must still be wet from the rain that has passed over.
And now you know what the picture looks like.
Lots of love,
Sarah Lynn, who loves describing stuff.
In the middle of the night, Penny wrote back:
Well, now, THAT WAS BEAUTIFUL!
I had tears running out of my eyes and down into my hair,
because I’m writing to you from my room; the braille device is resting nicely
atop yours-truly, and I’m supposed to be sleeping, but I’m not doing it now. Esther (Bobby’s sister) took the picture. I don’t know where she was.
THANK YOU for the amazing description. The description has to be better than the
great picture!
Love, Penny
Yes, perhaps the description was a wee
bit better than the picture, but it was a
pretty picture, and besides, I knew what that rainbow looked like, from having
seen it myself. Penny’s reply got to me,
as I considered how fortunate I am to be blessed with sight.
Speaking of being blessed with sight... as I
type on one side of my screen, I’m watching a beautiful live-streaming cam from Turtle Bay West, in
Hawaii, on the other side of the screen:
The sun is right at the horizon... and
everything has turned to gold. A helicopter has just flown in front of
the searing white sun... and now it’s gone again. The brilliant sinking sun is beginning to
shoot white-hot rays across the tossing, golden waves of the sea. Someone has set up torches amongst the palms
along the shore. Now the clouds are
starting to darken...
Screen shot!
Screen shot! ... There we go. In
a few minutes, it will be dark.
Okay, let’s look at an Alaskan streaming camera;
it’ll still be light there.
Yep! I
found a beach full of walruses! The sun is shining brightly on
them, turning the rocky cliffs orange, the walruses red-orange, and the sea
pink.
Now to get back to the potholders! I want them done before my customer’s thread
arrives. My To-Do List is not shrinking
very well.
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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