In one week, my little Quilt Talk group on MeWe went from a membership of about 1,500 to 4,300 – all because people got fed up with Facebook and exited en masse, then came to MeWe to hunt for a quilting group. We've seen a whole lot of photos of beautiful quilts lately! Makes for a fun and lively group, with so many talented members.
Last Tuesday, after Monday’s ice storm,
it began snowing, and kept it up ’til we had 2 or 3 inches of snow. The front door
stayed frozen shut most of the day.
Shortly before noon, the electricity
went off. Having heard some ominous
cracks from nearby trees, and hearing radio announcers warning people not to
try clearing fallen branches yet, as they were still coming down, I figured the
power might be off for the long haul; but it came back on in about 45 minutes.
I went out to fill the bird feeders,
but they were all iced over and frozen shut.
That whoppyjaw one was iced into the position, and the latch was iced
onto the rebar. I could neither fix nor open
any of them. The little birds were
sitting on the railing and the frame that holds the feeders, looking at the
patio door and making their little up-tilted cheep-cheeps, begging for
food. Knowing that their usual fodder
was totally covered with ice, I strewed a small bucketful of black-oil
sunflower seeds on the deck. They were
soon flocking all around it, gobbling it up, even while the snow was again
coming down hard.
I hoped the
birds would get those seeds eaten before the snow covered them up, or before
the snow under them melted and got the seeds all soggy. I need not have worried. The birds had those seeds gone long before
the snow and ice began melting the next day.
The dark-eyed juncos are so funny to
watch; they know exactly how to get to buried goodies: they make a
quick-as-a-wink forward jump and then, all in the same wink, they jerk both
feet backwards at once, raking up the turf quite satisfactorily.
It was a little dark outside, but I got some good shots of a red-bellied woodpecker on the suet feeder.
I didn’t
realize how aggressive those things are! He didn’t want to share that
feeder for anything, and when the English sparrows tried, he
pecked them good and proper, and even jerked tail feathers out of one hapless
female English sparrow. She screeched loudly, poor
little thing. I got photos of
her, after the fact. Poor little thing. She will recover, I imagine, since it was
just feathers pulled loose. But it did hurt her.
Birds
at the feeding station that day included Eurasian collared doves, American
goldfinches, English sparrows, Northern cardinals, and blue jays.
That afternoon, I took Loren deer
steak, a baked potato, baked carrots, a cranberry-orange muffin, applesauce,
and orange juice.
Everything
looked so beautiful, I drove down a nearby country road to get some pictures of
the glittering ice and the snow sparkling in the sun. The ice is pretty, but it was hard on the trees.
Home again, I paid some bills, then started
ordering Christmas presents for the family. I got an eBay order of
several men’s sweaters a week or so ago, but they all look quite a lot smaller
than they are marked. I had not noticed they were made in Taiwan; evidently
size large Taiwan men are a whole lot smaller than size large Nebraska
men.
Female
red-winged blackbirds are so different from the males, I didn’t know what they
were for a long time.
Some years
back, there was a story in the Birds & Blooms magazine about a couple who
went to Africa with a bird-watching group. They had a lovely place to stay... a
knowledgeable guide... and nice people in their tour group. One after another, they were marking down
birds in their birding notebooks. One
morning, the guide pointed out several elbeebees. The birders, straining to see, dutifully wrote
it down in their books.
Back at the
villa, one of them remarked to their host and hostess, “We have never heard of
the elbeebee, and we cannot find it in our birdbooks.”
The host and
hostess looked at each other and laughed. “The guide says that when he cannot identify
the bird. It’s LBB – Little Brown Bird.” hee hee
A friend sent
this page out of the book, Bird Identification for Dummies. This will be very helpful, I think.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAA -----
speaking of birds, one just smacked into the living room window!!!
Here are The
Mrs. & The Mr. English R. Sparrow.
Wednesday, I went on scanning old photos, including some from the Fourth of July,
1999. It was a hot, hot day for our
annual church picnic. Victoria was 2. Noting that her father was hot, she offered
him a drink. Then, quick as a wink,
before he could blink, she dipped her little hand into the cup of water,
scooped up a handful, and ka-splatted it right on his face. 😂
Loren’s
supper was baked chicken breast filet, scalloped potatoes, asparagus, pink
grapes (well, they weren’t red grapes), and
orange-banana-strawberry juice.
After church that evening, we visited
with several of the children, then headed to the grocery store for a few items
from the dairy department, and an ice scraper for Victoria. Her Yukon had been totally covered with ice
that day, and she had no ice scraper, and couldn’t start the vehicle and turn
on the defroster, since the battery was dead.
She couldn’t open the hood to hook up the charger, because she couldn’t
open the door to pull the latch on account of the ice.
Fortunately, the sun shined warmly
enough that the entire ice casing finally slid off the SUV all in one giant piece,
and she was able to bring her vehicle back to life again.
We dropped off the scraper before
coming home.
A quilting
friend of mine lives in New York City. A
while back, she sent me a Google Street View link that showed her apartment
building, and I happily ‘walked’ around her neighborhood, looking at various
places she has mentioned.
I get all tangled up with Street View,
and can’t manage to stop until I’ve spent an hour or more exploring!
Maybe exploring runs in my veins. After all, John Rolfe, husband of
Pocahontas, was my 13th-great-grandfather, and he came all the way
from Heacham, Norfolk, England, to Jamestown in 1610.
Do I look like them, do you think? ((...snerk...))
I was planning to scan more photos that
night after we got home, but arthritic joints were being quite vocal. So
I ensconced myself in my recliner with a fleece blanket, a heating pad behind
my neck, the infrared space heater at my feet, and Teensy all squished in
between laptop and my stomach. 😊
Thursday, the
sun was shining, and it was warm enough that ice was melting from the trees and
the roof. There was so much ice, and it
was melting so fast, it was downright noisy. I took a video: https://www.facebook.com/sarahlynn.jackson2/videos/10218064217101243
This is the General Store in Tincup,
Colorado, elevation 10,157 feet. The
only way to this little town is via the gravel – and sometimes dirt – road
called Cottonwood Pass.
See the tin cups in the window? We got one for each of the children. You can see part of our pickup’s reflection
in the window.
Here I am walking alongside Taylor
River. I’m not sure which of the
children took the shot; several of them had cameras.
A
friend asked, “Are all those pictures of vacations? It must have taken
quite some doing to get all those kids packed and ready to go.”
We could get ready to go in three or
four hours. I had lists prepared on my Word Processor (and later, my
computer), so I could just print them out and hand a list to each child who was
old enough to tell a sock from a shirt (and who was old enough to read – and
they were all reading pretty well by the age of 5). I would pack Larry’s things, the baby’s and
the toddler’s things, and my own.
I kept a lot of necessities in the
camper. I found light-weight pots and
pans, plastic plates, mismatched silverware, and linens at the Goodwill and
Salvation Army, so there was not much more than the food and clothes to put in
it.
The only snafus occurred when someone ‘needed’
to use something they’d already packed and marked off their list – and forgot
to put it back in their bag. Sometimes
it was Larry’s fault, because he decided to revamp something on the vehicle or
camper, and we wound up staying home another night.
That right there was the reason for a
stop at a Thrift store in Cañon City, where we purchased pajamas and/or
nightgowns for every kid in the tribe except Victoria – because I
remembered to put her little sleeper back in her bag. The others ‘forgot’, even though I reminded
them that very morning.
Another time we stopped at a secondhand
store in Gunnison, because Lydia, who was about 7, had nothing but long-sleeved
dresses, shirts, and sweaters – and it was August. This time it
was my fault, because I told everyone they should bring along a sweater,
coat, hat, and gloves, as we would be going way above tree level, and it was cold
up there. I neglected to specifically
say, “Bring summer clothes too.”
So there was poor Lydia, all red of
face in a winter sweater, playing alongside Spring Creek in a valley north of
Almont, in 85° weather.
“Lydia!” I said, concerned, “you’re
getting way too hot in that! Run and put on something cooler!”
She looked at me blankly. “I don’t
have anything cooler.”
! Huh?
So we hopped in the truck and wound our
way back down the mountain to the small secondhand shop in Gunnison, where I
was thankful to find the child a week’s wardrobe of summer clothes. I
chose carefully, so I would not have to buy or sew school clothes for her when
we got home.
She remembers all this well ------
because when we arrived at a big guest ranch near Taylor Reservoir, where we
planned to camp for a few days, she changed clothes in the popup camper – before
Larry popped it up. Tight squeeze, and she’s a bit
claustrophobic! 😂
Here I am at the wildlife viewing area
at Georgetown Lake, Colorado.
Below is Hester fishing one evening at
Taylor Reservoir. That girl loved to
fish!
Once upon a time we headed off on a
trip. It was evening, and getting dark. We would be driving through
the night. This happened fairly often, because Larry would work that
whole day, and then we’d leave, so as not to waste any vacation time. I’d
usually wind up driving most of the way there while Larry slept, when we did
that.
Well, we got 10-15 miles from home, and
suddenly Victoria cried, “I forgot my dolly!”
Now, that’s something one can’t
find and replace en route. One doll cannot, I repeat, cannot, replace
another. Furthermore, how long could the doll survive, lying in some
forsaken corner of the house, wailing her lungs out?!
At the next place big enough to turn
our rig around, we did just that, and went back for the doll.
Little kids never forget it, when you
do things like that for them.
My father once said, “The way to let a
child – or anyone, for that matter – know you love them is to make what’s
important to them, important to you.”
I try never to forget that. As
Paul told the church at Philippi, “Look not every man on his own things, but
every man also on the things of others.” ❤
I figured, if we forgot something vital
on our lists, we could usually find another one. We didn’t have a lot of money to spare, but
there are usually secondhand stores, ... somewhere. The important things that we wouldn’t be able
to find and replace en route (such as the children’s asthma medicine and
inhalers), I personally made sure we had with us.
There’s the six-door pickup Larry
built, along with the hard-size camper.
It was actually quite nice and roomy inside.
Here’s Hester at Georgetown Lake,
Colorado, August 3, 1999. She was 10.
Friday evening found me standing in my
upstairs office scanning photos. I heard
Larry come in the back door. Then I
heard him coming up the stairs, followed by Tiger kitty, who loves him so much,
he dogs his every footstep.
Or at least that’s what I thought
I heard.
Around the corner of the banister, on
the landing that runs from the door of my quilting studio past the library room
to the little office, a plump, fluffy raccoon came trottity-trotting, not in
too big of a hurry, really, just all business-like and
I-know-where-I’m-going-ish.
I, being prepared for Tiger, and having
my craft glasses on, which focus at my fingertips and not much farther, looked
at the critter and thought vaguely, That’s the wrong color for Tiger,
and immediately thereafter, That’s a raccoon.
I stood quite still to see what would
happen next.
He trotted right over my feet, brushing
against my legs, feeling all warm and pudgy and cuddly, just like Tiger
does. He was heading for the door that goes into the addition, probably
getting a whiff of the cold breeze out there, since my door doesn’t seal well.
I thought, He’s liable to get scared, when he realizes he can’t get out that way, and with that, since I didn’t really want a raccoon panic-climbing up my leg, I quietly exited my office stage right and headed for the stairs.
I met Tiger at the top of the steps, looking
about with some degree of interest. I considered picking him up and
carrying him downstairs, on the chance the raccoon might take exception to a
cat being in his road when he retraced his path; but Tiger weighs 20 pounds,
and he’s not accustomed to being carried, and it seemed an imprudent line of
action.
So I left him to his own resources and
went downstairs. Larry was just walking into the kitchen. The
raccoon had probably been right inside the kitchen door eating cat food, and
when Larry started coming in, it ran for cover – and chose to go up the stairs,
since raccoons are comfortable going up for safety.
I no sooner started telling Larry a
raccoon was upstairs, than it... wasn’t.
There was suddenly such a commotion on
the stairs, and then so much thuddity-thud-thud-thudding, I thought Tiger and
the ’coon had gotten into a fight, and poor ol’ clumsy Tiger had gotten the
worst end of the deal and was tumbling down the steps.
It wasn’t Tiger.
It was the raccoon coming down head
over heels, evidently unaccustomed to staircases. By the time he got to the bottom of the
steps, he really was in a panic.
He came peeling through the kitchen
despite the fact that Larry and I were both standing right there, spinning and
slipping as he hotfooted it past us. He rounded the corner at too fast of
a clip, skidded, landed on his side, scrambled on, tripped over a saucer that
had held Tiger’s food, kicked it, and sent it flying ahead of him, where
it bashed into the doorjamb just as he was rushing through it. The saucer
broke in an explosion of stoneware, causing the raccoon to turn on the
afterburner.
But he needed to turn and go out the
pet door, and he was going too fast to turn on linoleum. Again he landed
on his side, feet still churning. Somehow making it back onto his feet,
he ran headlong into and through the pet door, and then tumbled down the garage
steps, too.
I hurried upstairs to see if Tiger had
come to harm.
He was lying on the big rag rug in my
quilting studio, a little bug-eyed, but none the worse for wear.
The wire trap we have for wild animals
is too small for a full-grown raccoon. We’ll have to get another one
somewhere, since I don’t particularly like raccoons wandering over the tops of
my feet, warm and cuddly though they might seem.
The rest of the night passed in
somewhat calmer fashion.
Here is Teensy, having found the
perfect place to nap while I’m scanning pictures: atop my rolltop desk.
Saturday, we went to Atkinson to get a
couple of UTVs for Teddy; Larry found them on Big Iron Auctions. It was an overcast day, not so great for
taking pictures.
But
around 5:00 p.m., the sun, low in the sky, began peeping through the clouds. We were traveling beside the Elkhorn River,
and the sun shone on the water and turned it into a silver ribbon.
Shortly after dark, we turned onto a
narrow, tree-lined road that took us over steep hills before dropping abruptly
into deep valleys. I wished we could
see! There is some beautiful country out
there in the Sandhills. Someday, we’ll
have to give that road another try in the daytime.
Finally
we arrived at the farmplace where were the UTVs Teddy had bought. Larry loaded them onto the trailer, and we
retraced our route back toward home.
We
ate supper in at the Westside Restaurant in O’Neill. They make everything from scratch there, and
the food is always scrumptious. Even their coffee is extra good. But
their prices have gone way up, doubtless because it’s the only way they can
survive in this pandemic madness.
I
had a BLT, chicken and rice soup, and part of a slice of strawberry-rhubarb
pie. I was too, too full to eat the whole thing, so I gave it to Larry.
We eat out seldom, but more often now
than when we had several of the children in tow. We couldn’t have afforded
it, back then. The kids fondly remember all the times we cooked our meals
outside at parks or in campers here and there. One of my favorite places
where we once ate supper was right up on the Great Divide in the Rockies of
British Columbia. We could’ve eaten in the camper (a 1966 Holiday
Rambler, all fixed up like new), but we decided to eat at a picnic table under
the tall, tall pines.
Now for an
Ice Storm Story from 1991:
Friday, November 29, 1991, the day
after Thanksgiving, the Ice Storm hit. I
had never seen such a storm in my entire life.
It began with a hard, cold rain, and then it turned to sleet – a very
wet sleet that stuck to the trees, accumulated, and kept on accumulating. By
midafternoon, it sounded like the Fourth of July around the town of Columbus,
on account of all the tree branches that kept breaking with resounding crAAAAAckckcks!!! The electricity went off with a
reverberating ka-BOOOM! at one-thirty in the afternoon, and we knew that,
somewhere nearby, a branch had fallen on an electrical wire. Very shortly thereafter, there was a loud crAAAAshshsh!
in our back yard. We ran to look
out the back window, and discovered that a branch from a big tree had fallen on
the wire leading from our house to the main cable in the alleyway.
“Well,” I said to the children, “looks
like we’ll be out of electricity even longer than the neighbors!”
And that was exactly right.
We went out for a drive that Friday
night, just to see how widespread the power outages were. We did not find a place in town where there
were lights, except for the hospital and those few businesses that had backup
generators. There were tree branches
down all over town, some entirely blocking the streets. Several fell as we drove past, and we were
careful not to pass under any overhanging limbs.
When we walked back into the dark
house, Hester, 2, no doubt wondering whatever was wrong with us, that we didn’t
turn the lights on, queried, “Me can’t see?!
Oh, deeuh! Po’
baby.”
There was no Christmas Program practice
that evening, the night we usually had our first rehearsal, which was of some
concern to me, since it hardly seemed that there were enough practices to get
everything shipshape, the way it was.
But we would worry about that later.
(And at least I could still practice the piano, electricity or no
electricity.)
We were ever so thankful for our
fireplace, and we were glad we had plenty of wood to burn, for the temperature
began falling fast, and continued to fall until it hit zero. Candles and kerosene lanterns were pressed
into service, and we cooked supper on the kerosene campstove.
Everybody except the two little girls
had waterbeds, and the beds were still warm that night, so all but Hester and
Lydia slept in their own rooms. For
Hester and Lydia, 5 months, we fixed beds – piles of soft blankets – in the living
room, where the fire would keep them warm.
This was considered High Excitement and
Entertainment, and Teddy, 8, and Joseph, 6 ½,
were quite sorry that their beds were still warm, for they wanted to ‘camp
out’ in the living room, too.
“You’ll probably be able to, tomorrow
night,” I told them, and they were content to go off to bed, grinning in
anticipation. Hester, understanding that
she held the coveted position of Camper,
lay under her quilts giggling, hardly able to sleep for glee. Lydia, on the other hand, fell asleep while I
was feeding her, and didn’t even notice when I laid her down in a place other
than her crib. She slept until late the
next morning with hardly a wiggle. Larry
and I put a thick pad on our waterbed, then slept on top of it, piling plenty
of blankets on us. As long as Larry was
there, I stayed toasty warm; but after he got up and went to work early
Saturday morning, I nearly froze to death.
I gave up trying to sleep and got up.
That morning, I discovered that it is
not pleasant to take a bath and wash one’s hair in ice water – and that was the
only kind of water left in our water heater.
Anyway, it is a definite incentive not to dawdle! By late afternoon, we were running low on
kerosene – and that’s when we learned that there was no more kerosene to be
found in the entire town.
Larry called our friend Harry.
Why, yes, Harry had kerosene; why,
certainly, he had plenty for us; nosirree, huh-uh, we were not going to pay for it. So
Larry went to get some kerosene. True to
his word, Harry accepted nothing but thanks.
Within twenty-four hours, all the
neighbors were back in heating and lights.
We were not.
At five-thirty Saturday evening, we
were beginning to wonder just how in the world we would manage to get ourselves
and the children ready for church the next morning. Then my nephew Robert offered to help string
a big cord from our house to John H. and Lura Kay’s house (my brother-in-law
and sister’s house was just north of ours), so that we would at least have a few lights, and perhaps the use of the
microwave. Larry got his longest cord,
and within minutes several lights came on in our house.
It wasn’t long before we learned what
we could not do, if we didn’t want to
throw the main breaker for my sister’s entire house, leaving them and us both in darkness: we could not use two blow dryers at the same
time. We could not run the microwave
concurrently with the refrigerator. We
could not use a blow dryer and the microwave simultaneously. Furthermore, when we accidentally did use a couple of appliances at once,
the lights in our houses did not quietly go out, oh, no. They went off with a booming ker-BLOOEY!!,
making more than a few members of either household jump completely out of their
skins.
We also found that most of the lights
and outlets did not work, so those who needed to use a blow dryer were
compelled to use outlets in strange, out-of-the-way areas of the house,
generally where it was most inconvenient to reach, due to large furniture being
directly in front of the outlets. The
water heater was one of those appliances not
on that particular circuit that was now hot. We therefore learnt that it takes numerous
pots of water – heated in the fireplace and on the cookstove – to fill a
bathtub. But we managed to get everyone all
squeaky clean and ready for bed.
By this time, all the waterbeds felt
like ice; so the children gathered blankets, quilts, and pillows, and moved
into the living room. We kept a hot fire
blazing away in the fireplace, so that the living room and kitchen were warm
and cozy.
Sunday morning after church, in talking
with some of our friends, we found that we were in a better way than some. Our friends Jerry and Karen, who like us had
seven children, not only didn’t have electricity, but also had no water, by reason of their water coming
from a well, and needing an electric pump to pull the water up. However, their gas stove still worked, so
they scooped snow from their yard into pans, and melted it on the stove for
water for their bathtub. They had bought
one of the town’s grocery stores out of all their bottled water, and were
hoping it would last until power was restored.
Once again that night, there was a Big
Camp-Out in the living room. And then,
finally, Monday afternoon at four o’clock, the linemen came to reconnect our
line, three-and-a-half days after it had fallen.
Hester, excited because everyone else
was excited, skipped up and down the hallway sing-songing, “They’re hooking us
up! They’re hooking us up!”
That evening, I luxuriated in a long,
hot bath. Living by kerosene and
candlelight I could cope with. Cooking
on a campstove wasn’t difficult at all.
But to be denied a steaming bath when I want it is, in my opinion, cruel
and unusual punishment.
From then on, I determined, hot baths
would be appreciated.
There’s a
little red-breasted nuthatch that comes flitting down to the feeders right
while I’m filling them. It will land
just inches from my hand, tilting its head and looking at me, watching what I’m
doing,
making its funny little ‘honk-honk’ noise (really! That’s exactly what it
sounds like!), encouraging me to hurry. It really wouldn’t take any trouble at all to
have it eating from my hand.
A few days
ago, there was a white-breasted nuthatch on the suet feeder.
But I’ve run out of suet, and though I've ordered more, it has not yet arrived.
A friend on an online quilting group
was telling about an acquaintance who made a quilt that afterwards she did not
like, not one little bit. So... she took
it to a nearby gun range and pressed it into duty as a target. hee hee
Speaking of ugly quilts...
When I was a little girl, we had a
neighbor lady who made quilts for charity. She was a frugal person, and
she used what she had – and that rarely included what we call ‘quilting cottons’.
She used polyester, nylon, cheap satins, cotton/poly mixes, denim, and stuff
that looked to me like tent-grade canvas.
And she used all this stuff... together.
In one quilt.
Furthermore, in the interested of ‘not
wasting it’, she didn’t cut the fabric into squares or rectangles; she just
sewed it together as best it fitted, in whatever shape it was in after she had
cut her family’s clothing pieces from it.
Then, once it was big enough to be
called a ‘quilt’, she washed it and hung it on the line. (That was the
quilt top only; her church quilting group provided the backing and batting, and
the ladies would get together to sandwich and hand-quilt the quilts.)
Washing such a variety of fabrics after
sewing them together of course resulted in some fabric shrinking more than
others, and some of it fraying extensively. It was an interesting sight,
to say the least.
In our back yard helping my mother hang
clothes on the line, I pointed at the object on our neighbor’s line some
distance away and asked, “What is that?”
Mama explained, in her nonjudgmental
way.
I stood and stared at the thing.
Then I queried very quietly, “Why do poor people like ugly quilts?”
And my mother, who rarely said anything
critical about anybody, said just as quietly, “They don’t. That’s why
they blow out their candles when they go to bed.”
I, being only about 5 years old or so,
looked on soberly. But nowadays, I laugh every time I remember what Mama
said.
Mama was frugal with her money,
too. But if she gave something to someone less fortunate than herself, it
was in a quality equivalent to that which she would’ve gotten for herself.
The neighbor lady herself was quite
poor; maybe that was the best she could do. Judging by the clothes she
wore, I think she probably thought she was making fine and dandy quilts.
She and her husband always had a large
garden, and that was their primary source of food. They kept that garden
even when they were not well able to walk, and had to crawl along the rows to
weed it and pick vegetables. In spite of being poor, that lady always
brought my mother a few things from her garden.
Did you know
blue jays often gulp down gobs (definition:
oodles and caboodles) of whole sunflower seeds, hold them in their gular
pouch (a sac which opens underneath the bird’s tongue and reaches down into the
throat and upper esophagus), then go cache them somewhere, or upchuck one or
two at a time in order to hull and eat them?
Sometimes they sound quite like a woodpecker as they hold seeds with a foot
and pound them open with their beaks.
Most of the Christmas gifts I ordered
last Tuesday for the children and grandchildren have arrived. I need to get started wrapping and bagging
them. But... my gift-wrapping room is quite full of Norma’s photo albums,
where they’ve been ever since Hannah and I went through them in June, choosing
pictures to display on the photo boards at her funeral. I need to pack
them in boxes and store them on shelves. I will scan all the very old family
photos when I’m done scanning my own photos; but I don’t think I’ll scan all of her many newer snapshots.
Then... what do I do with all those
albums? There are a couple dozen, I’d say.
As for my scanning project... I have 32
½ albums scanned – 7,852 photos.
I’ll be quilting again soon; a customer
quilt is on the way, and two more will be in the queue in a couple of days.
You know, I wouldn’t need to be in such
a rush about everything, if I could just live as long as Methuselah did!
((... considering ...))
On the other hand, I’ll get to Glory a
lot quicker than he did; there is that.
So far today, I have seen at our
feeders the following:
1.
English
sparrows
2.
House
finches
3.
American
goldfinches
4.
Eurasian
collared doves
5.
Mourning
doves
6.
Northern
cardinal
7.
Red-breasted
nuthatch
8.
White-breasted
nuthatch
9.
Hairy
woodpecker
10.
Red-bellied
woodpecker
11.
Dark-eyed
juncos
12.
Blue
jays
13.
Red-winged
blackbird
14.
Downy
woodpecker
15.
...
and one fat fox squirrel who posed nicely for the camera.
I took Loren some supper – deer meatloaf, baked potato, orange/strawberry/banana juice, red grapes, yogurt.
He took the lid off a covered dish,
looked at everything, and then told me, as he has before, that I bring him too
much food, and he’s ‘getting fat’. I suggested he go weigh himself and
tell me just how fat he is.
He did. 164 pounds.
“That’s exactly what’s on your file at
the doctor’s office – you’re exactly the same weight as you were five months
ago,” I told him.
This causes a funny look on his face, for
he clearly understands he’s been proven wrong.
😅 He started to explain
that if he ‘kept gaining weight’, he’d be... uh, ... he sometimes has trouble
finishing a thought, so I helpfully jumped in and said, “If you gain a pound a
year, and live 20 more years, you’ll weigh 184 pounds!”
He has to write these things down now
to figure it out, make sure I’m not feeding him a line of baloney... but he did
finally laugh about it.
On
the way home, I dropped off a birthday present for Leroy, who is now 9 years
old. His gift was a car that flips over
and keeps going. Saturday was Elsie’s 4th
birthday; we gave her a big mat to spread on the floor and color on with
wipe-off markers.
And now, I’d
better get those albums taken out of my gift-wrapping room!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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