Journal: ♫ ♪ Oh, the Birds ♫ ♪ & the Bees ♫ ♪ & the Mulberry Trees! ♫ ♪

Some of the insects I’ve been finding in the yard, and, in particular, on my flowers, aren’t good bugs.  But many of them are brightly colored, fun to watch and photograph, and interesting to read about. 

Here are a couple of Red Milkweed Beetles (Tetraopes tetraophthalmus) on (of course) milkweed buds.

The Cerambycidae, or longhorned beetles, get their common name from their antennae.  Characteristic of this family is the antennae are inserted in close proximity to the eyes, so that most have an indentation of the eye.  Tetraopes carries this to the extreme, so that the antennae base actually splits each eye in two, hence its Latin name:  Tetraopes tetraophthalmus – meaning ‘four-eyed four-eye’.

Tetraopes is one of the few insects that can safely feed on milkweed.  Others include the Monarch butterfly caterpillar and the milkweed leaf beetle, Labidomera clivicollis.  Plant chemical defenses can be eaten by herbivores, stored, and used in defense against predators. 

Here’s some ground cover that was given to me by a former neighbor.  I have it in one of my front flower gardens, under the hostas and the lilac bushes.  It bloomed!  I didn’t know it did that.  The pretty little yellow blossoms are about the size of my thumbnail.  It puts out vines and sends down roots as it goes along.  I looked it up and learned that it’s called ‘Creeping Jenny’.  I hadn’t know that, either, since I hadn’t known to look for a blooming ground cover.

Last Tuesday, June 25^th, was Lydia’s 28^th birthday – and also Bobby and Hannah’s 19^th anniversary.  I sent Hannah the following note, along with the accompanying picture:

Happy Anniversary!

I have a gift for you; I’ll bring it to church tomorrow evening, and you can get it after the service.  Did you know that the traditional gift for a 19^th anniversary is bronze?

I hope you have a nice place to display this; we’ll have it strapped on top of the Jeep.

Love,

  Mama

She soon responded:

🤣 Thank you so much! 😂

Love,

  Hannah

Here’s what I really got them:  

The frame is brass-colored; I figured that was close enough.

Next, I wrote to Victoria:  “Do you want your bamboo chimes?  They’re fixed, and I could bring them to church tomorrow.”

She soon replied, “They were a gift for you originally 😊 ”

“!  They were?!” I answered.  “Why don’t I know these things, and did I ever say thank you?”

Then, “(And are you just saying that because you could tell I was coveting them? – hung them up outside an’ ever’thang.)”

I added one more thing:  “Also, if you want your bird bath back, you’ll have to arm wrestle me for it, because it matches the wind spinner Aunt Lura Kay gave me.”

I soon repented:  “Well... when you want it, I’ll just get another.  Or get you another.”

Victoria wrote back in regard to the bamboo wind chimes:  “No, I actually gave them to you when I redid the front garden!  It was for some occasion.”

Well, how ’bout that?!  I have me some pretty, and pretty-sounding, bamboo wind chimes.

So now when big winds and bad storms come up, I dash out and bring in not one, but two sets of chimes.  And three big porch plants.  I did that last Sunday night, when we were threatened with 60 mph winds and a hard downpour.  The worst of it went north of us, though, and I don’t think we got so much as a drop of rain.

Wednesday evening by 6:45 p.m., I was ready for church – and Larry still wasn’t home from work.  I dislike being late... but I accuse him of loving to be like the debutante of the ball, sweeping elegantly down the staircase, fashionably late so everyone will see him/her.  haha

I got the rest of Lydia’s birthday gift at Hobby Lobby that afternoon – a big book of pretty scrapbooking/card-making paper and a Sizzix dye for her Big Shot.  Then I repaired the quilting on the bunny quilt.

After church, I doled out the gifts and gave Malinda the bunny quilt.  She hugged it and grinned at me.  So that was a hit.  😊

A visiting friend was introducing his young daughter to Larry and me after the service, and then he surprised her by telling her that we had nine children. 

That reminded me of the time we were in Sam’s Club warehouse with eight of the kids when Caleb was baby.  We walked past a young father and mother with their little boy, who was about four, I suppose. 

The boy stared, then grabbed his father’s sleeve and cried, “Look, Dad!!  It’s a family!!!”

I wonder how many individuals it took, to that little guy’s thinking, to constitute a ‘family’?  😂

One time when I was 5 or 6, my father asked me if I thought he looked older than the other men in our church.  He would have been 49 or 50, and back then was the oldest man in our church except for one man who was 2 years older.  (Daddy was our pastor.)

“Oh, no!” I said emphatically.

“Who do you think looks older?” he asked.

I began naming them off:  “Oh, Clyde, -----”  (That was Larry’s uncle.  I didn’t know Larry yet; he and his family still lived in Trinidad, Colorado.)

Daddy burst out laughing.  “You can stop right there; that’s good enough for me!”

Clyde was 18 years younger than Daddy.  He would have only been 31 or 32.  But he was going bald!  That, in my little head, equated with old.

Daddy didn’t just tell Clyde about this; he told the whole church.  I was vaguely embarrassed... but everybody laughed so hard, including Clyde, I soon got over it.  Daddy never let Clyde forget that.

Oh! – there’s a little gray tree frog working his way up the glass on the front door, taking out a swath of small insects as he goes.

There’s a lightning bug on the door, too.  I think he’s a little too big for the frog to contend with.  You don’t want to take a big ol’ bite of supper, only to have ‘supper’ fly away with you!

I worked in the yard Thursday morning for about an hour.  After pulling weeds in front, I pulled a bunch of poison ivy by the cottonwood tree.  I put a wheelbarrow-load of mulch in the garden on the northeast side of the porch and around the newly-planted hostas just in front of the porch.  Then I hurried inside to wash gloves and clothes and to scrub good from head to toe, in case any of the oil (urushiol) that’s in the leaves, stems, and roots of poison ivy had gotten on me. 

I washed a couple loads of clothes, and put away three loads.  Then I cleaned out the refrigerator and freezer, taking out all the trays and shelves and drawers to scrub them good.  Next, I swept and mopped the kitchen floor... refreshed the birdbaths... took pictures around the yard and from my quilting studio window of the last baby dove still loitering in and around the nest. 

The mulberries are getting ripe, and I found another white mulberry tree.  Some years those mulberries are bland or bitter; but this year they’re totally scrumptious.  The purple ones are good, too.  In the morning I should go out and pick some.  I’ll have to thoroughly douse myself with bug spray before I do.

I once got one lonesome, almost-ripe cherry off our tree before the birds got it (though a robin squawked loudly at me as I popped it in my mouth).  I tried covering the tree with netting, but a bird got caught in it and perished, and I didn’t like that, at all.  I decided to just look at the tree as a giant bird feeder.  😑

Then it was time for supper.  We had baked Alaskan salmon with a red/green pepper and onion mixture we like, along with some fat Bavarian pretzel sticks, green beans, tomato basil soup, yogurt, and orange juice to drink.  We had Black Cherry frozen yogurt for dessert.  That was a yummy supper.

I set about editing pictures.  But my eyes were causing troubles, partly because I was just plain tired.  Larry went out to work on his mower... came in for a drink of water... found me sitting in the recliner trying to see the pictures I was trying to edit... and remarked that I must ‘need a project’.  (For months, you’ll recall, nearly every moment I could squeeze out of every day, my project was the New York Beauty quilt.)

“I hope the mosquitoes bite you up real good and proper!” I retorted with no small degree of indignation, which made him laugh, of course.

Larry has poison ivy.  Most likely he got into it while mowing somewhere on the south end of our property amongst all the trees.  It’s on his arm and his upper leg – even though he would’ve had fairly heavy jeans on whenever it was he came in contact with it.

Victoria had a yard sale Friday and Saturday.  They made enough to complete their vacation funds, and cleared a whole lot of things out of their house.

Friday, I packed up a gift for Dorcas – the fabric nesting bowls and some sunflower stationery – and took the box to the post office.  She’ll be 37 on the 4^th of July.

That day I cleaned several of the windows inside and out, and Larry came home that evening in time to help me with the kitchen window over the sink.  It doesn’t swing open like our newer windows, so I couldn’t get the outside clean.

Problem:  the window over the sink looks out into the garage.  Now that the window is sparkling clean, it’s glaringly noticeable that ... the garage isn’t.  😏

“I just knew you were going to say that,” said Larry, when I stated this fact.

I made spaghetti and meatballs for supper.  I usually make enough for two days.  It’s like stew – it often tastes better on Day Two, when all those spices in the sauce are better absorbed into the meat and the pasta.  The meatballs were the turkey and pork variety from Schwan’s.  I like lots of crushed red pepper on mine, but Larry can’t handle it anymore (it hurts his mouth), so I have to remember not to be kind and generous and give him the rest of mine if I get full.  

While I was outside that evening, I got some rare (for me) shots of a female Jewel Ebonywing:

It got up to 95° Saturday, with a heat index of 107°.  I went outside to water the flowers, refresh the birdbaths, and then hang a quilt out to dry on the back deck.  I walked on the deck barefoot – and discovered the wood was hot, hot, HOT!

I replaced the thin fleece blanket with a new satiny cotton top sheet on our bed, and put on the summer quilt with all its matching pillows.

Then I began pulling all the pictures and decorations off the wall in the middle living room.  I’m going to paint the walls.  And! – Larry found a new, never-opened five-gallon bucket of white satin paint in the basement, so we don’t have to buy any!  That’s always good news. 😃

By suppertime, I had pictures and shelves and knickknacks off of three walls and was working on another.  I dusted and cleaned and wiped the walls down as I went, so it will be an easy matter to put everything back.  The main floor smells like lavender-vanilla dusting spray and almond oil wood cleaner. 

I don’t like lemon cleaners.  I love the smell of real lemons, and I swoon over real lemonade; but faux lemon, whether in scent or flavor, ... ugh.

I made strawberry jello for supper; lacking a cream cheese/powdered sugar topping, we like to put cottage cheese on jello.  We had leftover spaghetti, and chocolate chunk/peanut butter chip cookies and Strawberry Cheesecake ice cream for dessert.

After the dishes were washed, I swept both sets of stairs, then wrapped a gift for a young couple whose wedding we would attend Sunday evening.  It’s a clock similar to the one I got for Bobby and Hannah:

I retrieved the flannel quilt from the deck.  It had been long dry, but I love the way it smells after being out in the sunshine for several hours.  It’s now folded up tightly and stored in the fabric closet downstairs.

When I pulled out the Harvest Sun quilt that morning, I was happy to find, when I unfolded it, that it had retained that sunshiny scent from way back late last fall when I had it out on the deck drying.

It was quite nice to slide into bed under a brand new silky-soft top sheet and a favorite, yummy-smelling quilt that night.  But I have to remember to leave the air conditioner one or two degrees higher than I set it when the flannel quilt and the fleece blanket are on the bed, if we don’t want to freeze to death in the middle of the night. 

There are buds on one of the succulents.  I wish it would bloom before I give it to a friend for her birthday in a couple of days; but they don’t seem to be in any hurry to blossom.  I’d like to know what those flowers are going to look like!

Here’s an airplane story my sister Lura Kay told us after church Sunday morning, about Charles and Susan (her son-in-law and daughter) and their three younger children’s plane ride home from their Washington, D.C., vacation.

It was quite turbulent, and people were frightened.  Other than the noise of the plane, they were mostly dead silent.

The pilot got on the speaker and tried to reassure the passengers that all was well.  “This is not an emergency,” he said ----- but unfortunately, there was a lot of static and plane noise in the middle of his statement that totally obliterated the word ‘not’.

People were looking at each other, fearing for their lives.

Up front sat a mother, father, and baby.

Every time the plane shot upwards, the baby, despite his parents trying to shush him, said, “Uh-oh.”  When the plane shot back down, the baby screeched, “Wheeeeeee!”  

And so it went:  “Uh-oh.”  “Wheeeeeee!”  “Uh-oh.”  “Wheeeeeee!”  “Uh-oh.”  “Wheeeeeee!”  ---- until finally everyone was getting struck really funny and many were laughing.

They were all glad and thankful when the plane landed safely at Omaha’s Eppley Airfield.

Here’s a Wandering Glider, perched on the leaves of a coneflower.  He has good fashion sense, don’t you think, combining those big maroon eyes with that gold body!

This pretty flower is purple poppy mallow, a Nebraska wildflower.

After we got home from the wedding last night (and for once, neither the bride nor the groom are related to us), I went out on the front porch to take pictures of that little gray tree frog that likes to lurk on the glass of the front door.  I walked back into the house after getting a few photos – and there was an even smaller tree frog in the middle of the kitchen floor!  They can hop like anything – three feet in one easy go. 

How’d he get in here, for cryin’ out loud?!  Through the pet door?  He just swung it up, and walked right in?

Or Teensy carried him in by the nap of his neck?  Or he rode in on Teensy’s back?  But surely he’d have gotten brushed off on the pet door.  Maybe he rode in under Teensy’s chin?

When I walked stealthily toward him, he took a leap that carried him well over three feet.  Knowing I’d never get him that way, and not wanting him to get lost in the house, I grabbed a tea towel and dropped in on him. 

The towel then jumped up and down a few times, bop-bop-boppity-bop-bop-bop. 

I carefully wrapped it over and under, gathered it up, hoping the frog wouldn’t escape through a wrinkle or fold, and took it out to the front porch, where I let him go. 

Uncovered, Froggy looked around the porch.  Huh?  Where am I, and how’d I get here?  So now there are two tree frogs on the front porch.  Let’s hope they aren’t archenemies.

Levi has been very sick the last few days.  He caught a cold, and that brought on an asthma attack.  He caught a stomach bug at the same time, and couldn’t keep a thing down.

He has medicine now, and a new nebulizer is on the way.  New regulation caused a delay in shipping; they had to get a written prescription from their doctor.

It’s not quite as hot today as it’s been – either 83° with a heat index of 87°, or 86° with a heat index of 93°, depending on which weather module one looks at.  The one saying 83° is located about 9 miles closer to our house.

Here’s a Eurasian collared dove, eating spilled birdseed off the back deck.  She just chased off a smaller mourning dove, and is feeling quite brave and valiant and dauntless.  Can’t you just see it in her eye and in her posture?

I’ve refreshed the birdbaths and watered the porch flowers, and then I had to grab my camera, put on the big lens (which is also a macro), and hurry outside to get pictures of the various butterflies that were flitting around drinking from the water I’d splashed about.  There were Eastern Tailed-Blues, Pearl Crescents, Painted Ladies, and a Blue mud dauber.  I saw a Cabbage White flitting about, but it never alit on anything and held still long enough for me to take a shot of it.

This is a male Eastern Tailed-Blue.  It’s only an inch wide when it spreads its wings.  Isn’t it pretty?

I paid bills, then ordered a bunch of necessities from Wal-Mart.  In the last few months, they’ve changed things with online orders so that with many of their products, one must order a quantity, rather than just one, if one wants it shipped to one’s door.  Maybe they were losing money on too many smaller items?

But you know, if they’d have only taught the warehouse idgets to pack things efficiently, they might very well not have had this problem.  I once ordered five small jars of Carmex lip balm, along with several other things.

One jar arrived alone via Fed-Ex in a box the size of a Kleenex box, wrapped in bubble wrap (so the plastic jar wouldn’t break, presumably).  Another jar also arrived alone, this one via USPS in a padded envelope.

The other three jars were tossed willy-nilly into a humongous box containing boxes of cereal, cans of soup, and big jugs of juice.  This mistreated box was delivered by UPS.

The cereal boxes were crushed, and the Carmex was nearly lost in the mounds of wadded brown paper packing.

I would like to be a mouse hidden in the corner in that warehouse, so I could see exactly how and why packing perplexities like that happen. 

Above is a Pearl Crescent, and to the left is a Painted Lady.

Over the weekend, yet another young father drowned while keeping his small sons from being taken down the river.  That’s the Platte, and they were at Two Rivers State Park.  The Platte is usually a shallow, innocuous river – but not this year!  Several people have drowned in Nebraska rivers since March – at least two were fathers saving their children.

Here are the pictures I posted during the last week, if you’d like to see them:

Spiders, Insects, Lilies, Roses, Cats, and an Airplane

A Cat, A Frog, and An Isabella Tiger Moth

Baby Doves Growing Up... Peaches... Mulberries

Clematis, Ebony Jewelwing, and Empty Nest Syndrome

Black Swallowtail, Teensy, and Wild Prairie Roses

Eastern Tailed-Blues, Pearl Crescents, Painted Ladies, Etc.

Gray Tree Frog and a Lightning Bug

Or, if you prefer Facebook’s format:  https://www.facebook.com/sarahlynn.jackson2

Here’s a Red-Spotted Purple butterfly, a rarity in our area.  They are more often seen in the eastern half of the United States.  It seems to have had a rough life so far.  It found a little puddle of water on the sidewalk from when I watered the flowers, and is refreshing itself.

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