I sent this to Larry the other day:
Larry has not yet been to the dentist in Lincoln for his appointment,
which was supposed to have been June 1, because their computers are
(supposedly) still out of commission with a virus (supposedly).
Larry and I remarked simultaneously, “Or everyone in the office wanted a
vacation.” heh
When I was little, traveling with my parents, I was always totally
delighted when we crossed a time zone as we were heading west: “It’s one
hour earlier!!!! Yaaaaay!!!” And of course, that meant we were
getting closer... closer... closer! to the mountains! (whether Rockies or
Sierras.)
Some quilting ladies were commiserating with each other over how
put-upon they feel when acquaintances – not even close friends or relatives – arrive
at their homes without warning, and proceed to stay for hours without so much
as a by-your-leave.
Once upon a time an acquaintance of mine
arrived in the middle of one of my very busy days. All nine children were still living at home
at the time; Victoria was a small baby. I
happily(?) welcomed her in, handed her a large pile of freshly-folded clothes,
told her what rooms they went in, and went off to vacuum. (Vacuuming
hampers questions and conversation; ever notice that?)
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| Double Knock-Out rose |
When she was done with that, I cheerfully
(maybe ‘gleefully’ would be a better word) handed her a dust cloth and a can of
spray, and, ignoring her stunned face, said, “You can start in the living room,
then do the music room. I have to put the dishes in the
dishwasher.”
And off I went to do just that.
The children aided the subterfuge by working
diligently at the little tasks I’d earlier given them, though several of the
older ones looked decidedly twinkly-eyed.
Would you like to wager a guess as to how
often that woman showed up unannounced after that, hoping to while away her
time sitting in my parlor sipping tea and gossiping?
Tuesday was the funeral for Annette, our sister-in-law. Her
children – five girls and two boys – sent me home with a heavy white pot
containing four Phalaenopsis orchids. It
has bloomed like anything since I brought it home.
I sat beside Josiah (he’s 9) at the luncheon after the funeral. He
asked me what I’ve been doing lately, so I told him, “Gardening and quilting,
and every now and then someone comes home from work and thinks he needs to eat,
so I fix supper, too!”
He laughed, knowing I meant his Grandpa, and asked, “What’s in your
garden?”
He was quite astonished to learn that I grow only flowers, and no
vegetables! haha
We didn’t get home ’til 6:30 p.m. Then, while Larry mowed the yard, I washed some
dishes and did a bit of computer work.
Some time that afternoon, the body of the
young man
who had the kayaking accident a week and a half earlier was found in the Loup
River.
They never did find the man who was swept away in floodwaters in Norfolk
in mid-March. Sad for families, when that happens.
After the water receded, two separate sets of human remains were found along
a couple of the rivers to our north. Authorities
have so far been unable to identify them. It is possible that they were
from years and years ago.
Here’s a Common grackle grooming and floofing his feathers. Can’t you just hear him singing,
♫ ♪ “You stick your right wing out, ♫ ♪ You stick your
right wing in, ♫ ♪ And you shake it all about; ♫ ♪
You stick your left wing out, ♫ ♪ You stick your left
wing in, ♫ ♪ And you shake it all about!” ♫ ♪
This poor little robin on her nest is hot; she had her beak open all
afternoon.
Wednesday, I filled the bird feeders... rinsed out and refilled the bird
bath (the birds are taking longer to care for than the cats, these days!)...
pulled a weed or two... and then took a few things to the cleaners and dropped
off some items at the Goodwill.
When I got home, I started working on the hanging sleeve for the New
York Beauty quilt. It took seven hours
to cut it, sew it together, and stitch it onto the quilt. I used about 2 ½ widths of fabric sewn
together, as the quilt is 117” x 117”. I
sewed it all on by hand, rather than tucking one edge under the binding, in
case Lydia wants me to remove it after the quilt shows and before giving it to
them.
When that was done, I wrote the label as I wanted to
embroider it. And that was enough for that
day. If I was going to work outside the
next day, I’d have to do it early, because it was going to get hot quickly, and
ever since I had a heat-exhaustion episode a few years ago, I have to be
careful of heat and strong sun.
So... off to the feathers I went.
Thursday morning, I pulled weeds for only an hour and a half or so, and still wound up with a headache. But at least I had a pretty yard to see, any
time I looked out a window.
That afternoon and evening, I machine-embroidered the label for the
quilt and sewed it on. I’m not totally
happy with it, but it might not be any better if I redid it, and I’ve already
spent quite a few hours on it. The
screen on my Bernina 180E Artista is small and in black and white, and I often
have no idea until a design is stitched out that some of it overlaps or is
spaced too widely.
So... here it is, and this is the way it’s going to stay.
Friday, my sister Lura Kay wrote
to tell me that they had to have their kitty put to sleep, and she offered me
the cat food, both dry and wet, and the beds they would no longer need. She refused to take any money for them, as
usual.
It will be nice to have another cat bed or
two. I have to carry ours up to my quilting studio when I go up there,
then back down again when I come downstairs, or the cats bawl and squall. They’re so funny... if their beds are
upstairs and I’m downstairs (or vice versa), they go stare at the place where
their bed is supposed to be, sniff the floor, turn around and give me a
piercing look, and if I don’t do something right then, they say, “MRRRRROOOOOWWWWW!!!”
Teensy and Tiger aren’t usually too
particular about their dry food. Fancy
Feast is the wet food we give them. I mix Teensy’s medicine in it twice a
day – and I can’t treat Tiger like I don’t like him as much as I like Teensy,
so I have to give him a spoonful, too, even if he doesn’t need it.
Lura Kay and I no sooner exchanged these
emails than a quilting friend posted this:
à
No gardening that day, other than screwing hoses onto soaker hoses and
turning on the spigot, and washing out and refilling the bird
bath/fountain.
Suddenly, mosquitoes are really bad here. When
I stepped behind the lilac bush to turn on the water, I got swarmed – and they
rarely bother me!
That afternoon, I actually remembered to go to the cleaners and pick up
our suits. I should get a reward for
that.
I dropped off some things at the Goodwill
while I was at it, too, something I try to do every time I go to town.
Saturday morning as
I pushed a wheelbarrow load of just-pulled weeds down to the south end of the
property, I spotted some poison ivy around the big cottonwood tree. (Hard to believe that tree was just two
itty-bitty leaves on a small stem 13 years ago when I planted it and stuck a
stake in the ground beside it so no one would mow it down.) I stopped, pulled what I thought was a small
sprig – and wound up with a bunch of that ivy, with
underground roots that just kept a-comin’ and a-comin’, leading to more sprigs
I hadn’t seen.
Reckon these gardening gloves are enough to
protect me? I
wondered.
They must’ve been; I have no signs of poison
ivy anywhere. ’Course, I did head
into the house directly, and scrub thoroughly from head to toe with shampoo and
soap.
It was Hester’s birthday that day; she’s now 30. I took her a gift
– a big, fat notebook of scrapbooking paper printed with all sorts of
old-fashioned roses and suchlike, a dye for her Sizzix Big Shot, some stick-on
silk flowers, and a big soft aqua/colorwash metal flower for her wall. I totally forgot about the fabric nesting
bowl set I made for her a few months ago; I gave it to her the next day after
church.
While I was there, Keira held up her arms for me to take her for the
first time! So I did, of course, and she cuddled all up and rested her
face against mine. She’s such a dear little sweetheart.
She was quite sure all the gifts were for her – it wasn’t very long ago
that it was her birthday, after all, and she remembers! She was all excited, arms and legs flying –
just like her Mama used to do, when she was that age. So Hester
showed her all the pretties, and she was happy as a lark.
A friend and I were discussing the making of food... and the various
gadgets and appliances we use in making it.
This caused me to recall the time Victoria got all enthused about making
butter, after doing it at school.
So... I got her an old-fashioned glass butter churn, molds, a couple of
fancy butter knives, and one of those ceramic ‘butter keeps’ that holds cold water
under the butter bowl, in order to keep it fresh even if it’s left out for a
while.
Then I downloaded instructions and recipes from the Internet and put
them on a CD. And I made sure there
would be cream in the refrigerator when she found all of her stuff.
She was soooooo delighted. The
churn worked much better than when she’d tried making butter with skim
milk in the Thermos. Her arms got tired
of shaking that heavy thing, so she decided to run up and down the stairs with
it.
The jingle-jangle of the Thermos handle, along with those stomp-stomping
little feet, woke me from a sound sleep early (very early) that Saturday
morning.
It was after that that I concocted the idea for the surprise gift.
When Levi was little, he was helping Hannah cook. He loved
breaking the eggs in to the bowl – but one time, the egg slipped out of the
shell and landed on the floor.
He scrambled down from his chair to get it, rubber spatula in hand – and
then exclaimed in astonishment, “Mama, it melted!”
That evening, a band of thunderstorms were
coming our way from the west. Some of
the storms were severe, and some areas got hit with high winds and
ping-pong-sized hail. I, watching the
movement of these storms on AccuWeather’s radar map, wasn’t overly concerned
about it, because the worst of it was tracking north.
And then the winds hit, just about the time
big raindrops started coming down.
The flowers!
The new pots of flowers on the porch!
We dashed out to rescue them – well, I tried, but couldn’t hang onto the door and get flowers, both at the
same time – so Larry got the flowers,
and I manned the door, though he had to help hold it each time. The wind even blew over the heavy iron bench
on the porch.
I ran upstairs to look out at the three birds’
nests shortly before it got completely dark. I watched one robin and the dove through my
binoculars. The branches were whipping
around something fierce, but each little mama bird just sat there in her nest,
tucked in and rarely repositioning herself.
There were too many blowing branches for me to see the other robin.
The lilac bushes were nearly bent in half, and the tall phlox were
almost flat on the ground from that wind.
Then, about fifteen minutes later, it calmed. The rain fell almost gently a good part of
the night. In the morning, the lilacs
and phlox looked quite fine; you’d never have known anything happened to them.
The Double Knock-Out red roses are in bloom,
as are the old-fashioned pink roses.
One time when Keith was two and a half and Hannah was one and a half, I
was teaching a piano lesson to a little girl who was about 7 or 8, sitting
beside her on the piano bench. Lightning struck somewhere very
close. The bolt was wide and bright, and the CRASH! was simultaneous with
the strike.
The little girl at the piano shrieked. Hannah, who’d been standing
looking out the front door, didn’t even flinch. But she turned her
head slowly and stared at the girl (a big girl, to her) on the piano bench, and
then she said, said she, “I fink it funduhed.”
😅
(Fortunately, the child taking the piano lesson had no idea that the toddler
at the door was being sarcastic.)
Sunday afternoon,
Larry looked out the window, then asked, “What kind of bird is in the bird
bath?”
I peered out. After a moment of wondering, the bird turned,
and I was sure: It was a catbird!
I sprayed myself thoroughly with bug spray this morning before I went
out to work in the yard – and had to keep renewing it every 30 minutes or
so. I even had to spray the top of my
head.
And yes, I took a bath and washed my hair afterwards. 😝
But at least I was able to work out there for a couple of hours. If we hadn’t’ve stopped at Dollar General for
bug spray last night after church, I’d’ve thrown in the towel after the first
ten minutes.
I set up another bird bath, this one a heavy
ceramic one that Victoria got cheap from Earl May Gardening Center when she
used to work there before she was married. It had a chip on it somewhere,
so they let her have it for a fraction of the original price.
She told me to go ahead and use it, as she
doesn’t want an added job of caring for a bird bath at the moment. I want
to get a fountain to put in it; the birds love those. Wal-Mart sells them
for a good price.
In the meantime, I set a large rock in it, so
the littler birds have something to perch on, as this bird bath is rather deep.
I finally remembered to look at the three bird nests I can see from my
upstairs window – two robins’ nests, and one mourning dove’s nest. They’re
all still there! I was afraid those bad winds Saturday night might’ve
destroyed the nests; but all the nests still look fine, and one robin and one
dove were sitting on the nests at the moment.
More pictures can be seen on my blog.
(I wonder who came up with the word ‘blog’? What a word. Sounds like what the cat did earlier on the
living room rug.)
Hannah sent me a picture a little while ago,
writing, “Look what we got today!”
It’s a blue Merle Standard Australian Shepherd. His owners are moving to California because they’re
in the Army, and they can’t take him. They
asked $200. He would’ve been over $1,000
when they got him at 8 weeks. He’s ten
months old.
Hannah said he knows practically nothing, and isn’t entirely house
trained. The owners lived in an
apartment, and instead of letting him out, they used puppy pads, and he would
often miss.
I always wonder why people get a dog, when they can’t do better by him
than this!
They called him Chimera because his eyes are two different colors.
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| Mourning dove on her nest |
Australian shepherds are intelligent dogs. Hannah spent about ten minutes working with him,
teaching him some of the basic commands, and already he’s catching on.
Tomorrow I will find out how many pearls I can get sewn on the New York
Beauty pillow shams. They are made up of
four blocks, and will have a total of about 740 pearls. When that’s done, I’ll sew the backs on
them. Or maybe I’ll do it the other way
around.
Bedtime!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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