Last Tuesday, it rained again. This is creating many problems for farmers
all across the state and for people in the Nebraska lowlands, but for us, it’s
giving our yard a good watering. The
crabgrass that insists on growing in the middle of my flowerbeds is growing
even faster than the flowers, though.
Some friends were recently
discussing the dilemma of running into someone who knows you – and you simply cannot remember his or her name.
“Well,” I remarked, “forgetting
names might be better than ‘remembering’ people whom you didn’t know in the
first place.”
I once walked up to a lady
who worked at our local Wal-Mart, and greeted her with a happy, friendly, “Hi!!!”
When she stared at me
blankly, I prompted, “We worked together at Nebraska Public Power!”
She looked me over from head
to toe, curled up the corner of her lips in a commendable Elvis sneer, and
sniffed, “I don’t think so.” Then
she lifted her chin, turned, and went mincing off in High Dudgeon.
I looked at a couple of the
kids who were standing there beside me, and remarked, “I’m glad I didn’t work
with her, too.”
They, of course, went on
giggling for several more aisles.
My sister-in-law, Annette, who has been
suffering from cancer for a couple of years, is not doing well. But here’s a pretty picture of her with her
daughter-in-law, Abbi. The quilt is the wholecloth one I made for her a year
and a half ago. Abbi and our nephew
Nathan are expecting their fourth child soon, and Annette hosted a ‘baby sprinkle’
for Abbi and the new baby.
In between the rolling booms of thunder and
the noise of the rain late that afternoon, I could hear newly-fledged baby
birds cheeping and peeping loudly for food.
It was kind of cold for baby birds out there: 48°... and with winds of 44 mph, the wind
chill was 41°.
After supper, Larry finished off a corner in
the addition. And I went on sewing
pearls onto the New York Beauty quilt. When
I quit for the night, there were three more blocks of pearl-sewing, and the
pearls would be all sewn on the quilt itself. The pillow shams add four more
blocks. I need to put the backs on the shams before I sew the pearls on,
so I don’t accidentally sew over a pearl.
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| Papa house finch with two fledglings |
Wednesday afternoon, the male house finches brought
their newly-fledged babies to the sunflower-seed feeders. The babies know there’s food inside those
sunflower-seed shells, so they peck them up and work and work... but rarely can
they get them open. So they drop the
seed they’re working on, and flap and squawk and beg for seeds from their
parent. He makes quick work of cracking
the shells, and then stuffs seed after seed into gaping yellow craws.
After our midweek church
service, we ate a late supper – Schwan’s Supreme pizza. We had fresh raspberries with Activia
Probiotic yogurt drink poured over them for dessert, and some Chilean red
seedless grapes, too. Yummy.
Larry went up to
check on the neighbors’ goats and chickens before he went to bed, as they were
still on vacation (the neighbors, not the goats and chickens). He usually
brings home four eggs each time.
Remember
the freezer snafu of last week? Well, a
week ago last Thursday, after finding it unplugged, Larry plugged the thing
back in, so that the next week before the garbage man came, we could put more
of the freezer contents into the garbage frozen,
thereby reducing the unpleasantness as much as possible. Early Thursday morning, Larry put several
bags of frozen, bagged stuff into the trashcan, then pulled it, about 2/3 full,
up the slope to the road. He put a
couple of stacked, empty boxes beside the can.
At 9:30
a.m., I watched as the garbage truck backed down the lane. The driver crawled out in his unambitious
way... looked at the can... gave it a slight little tug toward the truck...
shook his head... threw the boxes into the truck... and then left the can without emptying it, and drove away. It was a sunny day, and the stuff in the
can thawed by afternoon. 😝
When I
called early on to tell the people at the office in Fremont, 55 miles to our
east, what the man had done, and to ask that they please pick the garbage up
soon, the lady told me she would contact the driver.
She
emailed me at a quarter ’til five, when it was almost time for them to close,
and informed me that the driver said the can was too heavy for him. She said we needed to divide the can’s
contents into three cans, and they would pick it up – the next week!
Mind you,
that lazy oaf didn’t have to lift the
trashcan; the truck’s hydraulic arms do that for him. He only needed to
turn it enough that the hooks could slide into the can’s handles.
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| Teensy |
This
would never do. Larry would have to
bring the excavator home, dig a hole, and bury the stuff. Meanwhile, the neighbors’ worthy schnoz’s would
be mighty unhappy if they got too close to that garbage can!
We decided we’d had enough of those trash collectors. We’ll ask for service from a local
company. They used to pick up our
garbage, but they required us to take our cans several blocks over to Old
Highway 81, because their driver thought he couldn’t safely back down our
lane.
But they evidently now have a more confident
driver, because he backs all the way down the lane to the neighbors’ cattle
guard, picking up trash from two of our neighbors as he goes.
Larry called the Fremont company the next
morning to tell them we would no longer need their services, and they could
pick up their empty can this coming week.
And then the woman in the office informed him
that we hadn’t paid our bill since February, and owed them $86! I sent them a screen print of our payments, which
are sent through our bank. They have not
yet responded. I found their last paper
bill, too; it shows the bill was paid each and every month.
I was glad I had worked in the flower gardens
Thursday morning, because by noon AccuWeather was showing thunderstorms moving
our way. It was a good day for a catnap, as you can see! In looking at the weather, I also saw that
three people had been killed in tornadoes in Golden City, Missouri, the
previous night, and twenty people had been injured.
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| Brown thrasher in lilac bush |
Right then, it was snowing in Colorado,
Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Idaho, and even Arizona.
But here in our yard, a brown thrasher was
singing in the lilac bush, and its mate was answering from the depths of the
cedar tree.
The brown thrashers around our area often
imitate the local cardinals, blue jays, English sparrows, and goldfinches.
That evening, Larry took out the supporting
pillar he’d put in place under the big center beam in the addition – and
everything stayed perfectly in place. No
settling or sagging. So the walls and
dormers are giving plenty of stability.
Larry kept telling me this would be the case – and I kept telling him to
be prepared to run, should everything
start crashing down. 😏
Late that night, I finished sewing the pearls
on the New York Beauty quilt, then sewed a lace medallion circle onto the
center of the quilt and added more pearls to it. That done, I proceeded to remove the binding,
because the quilt wasn’t lying quite flat. It was flat and square before the binding; but in
trying to get the binding very, very close to the beaded piping, I believe I
pulled it a bit too tight as I sewed it on by machine, using the zipper foot. I’ll get it right, I’ll get it right, I’ll get
it right, I’ll get it right, I’ll get it right!
I’m putting the binding back on by hand,
since the zipper foot doesn’t let the needle stitch close enough to the piping
to suit me. I’ll make that quilt flat if
it’s the last thing I ever do!
The king-sized pillows arrived the other day. I ordered some inexpensive ones, since
they’ll be only for decoration, and was pleasantly surprised to find them good
quality pillows.
Friday, snow was
still falling – in the mountains of Montana, Utah, Wyoming, and British
Columbia. Oh, and it was also snowing in Iceland. I knew you’d want to know. 😃
That afternoon, taking a
little break from sewing on binding, I picked up my coffee mug and walked over
to the front dormer window.
!!! I looked out just in time to see one of the
neighbors dump a huge bag of grass clippings over his back fence right onto his
neighbor’s upcoming beans! He didn’t
even bother to spread out the clippings, just dumped them in a huge, smothering
pile. Good grief.
I should’ve taken a picture,
and used it for blackmail.
I returned to the binding. It’s
going back on nicely, and I’m fairly certain that a quick spray with starch and
a good steaming will make this quilt nice and flat. It’s slow going, though, doing binding all by
hand.
That evening as I was
sewing away, Victoria and Carolyn walked into my quilting studio. Victoria had brought a few more items to go
with my Mother's Day gift: some empty
glass bottles, complete with roller tops, in which to mix various oils, with
coconut oil as a carrier. I’m going to
try mixing lavender, lemon, and citrus, and see if it helps with allergies/hay
fever, as advertised.
Here’s our front yard. The flowers are growing like
gangbusters. See the board on the
roof? Larry was using it when he put the
new ridge cap on. He’ll be power-washing
and staining the dormers before long. The eaves
need to be finished, too, and trim put around the windows and doors.
By Saturday night,
the binding was three-quarters of the way on – that is, the top side was. After it’s sewn onto the top, I’ll fold it
around to the back and stitch it down.
After our morning
church service yesterday, we took some flowers to the cemetery.
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| Orchard oriole |
Late Sunday
afternoon, as we were getting ready to go to our evening service, an orchard
oriole landed on the new bird bath, and proceeded to have himself a bath in the
center tier! I didn’t even know there were any orchard orioles around the area. It’s probably only migrating through, and the
weather has delayed migration a month or more.
Shortly thereafter, the bird bath fountain
quit. Bah, humbug.
Late last night, it began thundering...
lightninging... and then raining. We’ve
had over 2” of rain since then, and Highway 81 to our north is closed, because
Shell Creek is flowing over the roadway.
I smelled the distinct odor of skunk, and
looked around for the cats. They were
nowhere to be found. Why must they
always go outside when it’s raining, thundering, and lightninging??!
It was a great relief when they came
sauntering in half an hour later, nonskunked (should be a word) and not even
too awfully wet.
 |
| American robin |
It was too rainy to work in the yard this
morning. The tares and the wheat can
grow up together until tomorrow or the next day.
Larry is working on our old pop-up camper, which
has been residing in our garage. The
mechanism that makes it go up and down needed to be repaired. He plans to sell it when it’s fixed. As soon as it’s out of the way, he can haul
off the chest freezer. It doesn’t work
right, and even if it did, it’s old and uneconomical. Maybe the metal recyclers will give us a few
pennies for it. ’Course, they’re closed
today... and when they’re open, Larry is working. That’s always the way.
 |
| Male house finch |
The last load of clothes is in the dryer. The sun actually came out this
afternoon. I filled the bird feeders... then
tried the bird bath fountain, just for the fun of it – and it works again! Last night’s rain must’ve fixed it; it
probably had debris in the motor or something.
I just found a nest of newly-hatched English
sparrows tucked up inside the tongue/hitch area of the fifth-wheel camper. I can’t see the birds themselves, only the
nest; but I can sho’ ’nuff hear them! I
discovered it when the mother sparrow flew from the hitch, scolding as she
went, and then I heard the babies.
Time for supper! We’re having Black Angus burgers on
fresh-baked ciabatta rolls, with cheese, lettuce, onions, tomatoes, ketchup,
mustard, and relish. For dessert,
strawberries with yogurt drink poured over them.
I hope you had a nice Memorial Day.
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
