February Photos

Monday, March 21, 2022

Journal: Coons & Birds & Motorcycles & Sticky Notes, Oh, My

 


Is it an English sparrow?  A black-capped chickadee??  A rock pigeon???

No!  It’s a Masked Bandit! 

Yep, he’s back again.  And he’s having a midnight snack of black-oil sunflower seeds, shells and all.

When I pointed the business end of my big lens at him, he first attempted to look inconspicuous and innocent; next he tried to lie flat enough on the railing to blend into it;



and finally, giving up on blending, he curled up in a small ball.  



But after a few minutes of that, hunger got the better of him.  He gave me another good look, decided I was harmless, and poked his nose right back into the sunflower seed feeder.

Tuesday morning, a red-winged blackbird was chirruping away for the first time this year.  That afternoon, I heard a bird I didn’t recognize... looked out the window... and spotted a dark-eyed junco sitting on the flowerpot on the porch, singing his heart out.  Since the juncos are usually here only during the winter and migrate back north in the spring, we generally only hear their chip-chip noises as they keep track of their mates while hopping along on the ground hunting for seeds.  But this tune was his mating song!  Junco Sounds

There’s a long list of various recordings of different varieties of juncos on that page.  The ones that sound most like the juncos I’ve been hearing are those that were recorded in Colorado and Wyoming.

Query of the Day:  Why do I have a Sticky Note (on my computer) that says, “Haircut Practice” and nothing else??  I do not remember writing that at all, nor do I have the slightest clue what it’s about.  Exactly whose hair was I planning to practice on, I wonder?  I already know how to cut my own hair; I’ve been doing it for 48 years, after all, since I was 13 years old.

I took some groovy boards (really, that’s what they’re called) to my favorite little sewing store, Sew What.  It’s owned by a lady, Jo, who was a good friend of mine in high school.  Groovy boards are heavy plastic or Plexiglas boards with grooves in them.  A stylus on a longarm machine slides through the grooves as one guides the machine along, and thus the machine quilts the design on the groovy board onto a quilt.  I got them with my first HQ16.  I tried using them once, but the table for that machine was made of fiberboard, so the boards wouldn’t stay put, and it was an exercise in frustration that I quickly abandoned.  Now, though the rubber pieces on the backs of the boards would grip the table of my studio frame just fine, I prefer freehand for my own quilts, or the pantographs most of my customers request.  Jo will put the boards up for sale in her shop, and I won’t have to post them online and then spend an arm and a leg shipping the big, heavy things.

Here’s a video of a man using groovy boards:  Groovy Quilting

Before coming home, I took some things to the Goodwill, including the big, heavy footlocker that used to be Norma’s mother’s, and maybe her mother’s before that.  It’s probably over 100 years old, and probably worth something.  The man who took it out of the Mercedes for me seemed highly impressed, and thanked me several times.  Did I unknowingly give them something worth half a gazillion dollars?!  😅

I put away another boxful of stuff from Loren’s house, and hung a painting by one of Larry’s late Aunt Lois that I found in that trunk.  



There was also a handful of old photos.  I’ll scan some of them; too bad I didn’t find them in time to add them to the thumb drives full of Norma’s old photos that I gave all the family members at Christmas time.

I continued scanning pictures that day.  Here I am in 3rd grade at age 7, almost 8.



That evening, my nephew Kelvin wrote, “Five years ago I went on a helicopter ride to Omaha.”

That was the day he had a frightening, severe health crisis and was transported via LifeFlight to an Omaha hospital – where he learned he had colon cancer.  It’s been a rough road for him since then.  But he’s likely to say, if we ask him how he is, that he ‘gets tired’, rather than that he’s in pain.  And he is in pain, most all the time.  One wouldn’t know how sick he really is, just by having a conversation with him.  He’s a strong person, cheery and upbeat.  I was six years old when he was born, and I loved that little boy so very much.

He recently had Covid, and has been ‘a little weak’ (his words) ever since.

“I thought of your helicopter ride the other day when I saw Mitchell (his grandson) wearing the little helicopter tie tac you gave him,” I answered Kelvin.  “I’d like to go on a helicopter ride someday, but I’d rather go over, oh, say, the Grand Canyon, than to Omaha!”

“Yes,” agreed Kelvin.  “I tried sitting up to look out the window, but they kept wanting me to stay laying down.”

“Well, that’s a bummer,” I said.  “A helicopter ride, and they won’t let you look out.”

Since I’d just scanned these photos, I sent them to Kelvin.  In the first one, he’s holding Sharon, his second daughter.  It was Easter of 1992.  In the next shot, he’s holding Jamie, the fourth of their five children, and it was Christmas of 1997.  Sharon is Lydia’s age; Jamie is Victoria’s age.




Sharon is the child who once said to me, when she was about three years old, “I know what yo-uh name is, and I know how to say it, too!”

“Do you?” I asked, and she replied happily, “Uh-huh!”  ((...pause...))  “It’s Shar Winn.”

Kelvin sent me a picture of a Kawasaki motorcycle he was trying out – a 50th-anniversary model like the 900 Loren used to have, of which Kelvin was particularly fond. 



“They let me test-ride the motorcycle,” said Kelvin.  “When he asked for my insurance card, I accidentally gave him my handicap card... but he still let me ride it.”  😄

He asked if I had seen pictures of his newest grandchild, Greyson.  Greyson is his oldest daughter Jodie’s sixth child, and Kelvin and Rachel’s 13th grandchild.  I had seen a few, but Kelvin sent me one I hadn’t seen:  a picture of older brother Jackson holding his baby brother.  Kelvin entitled it, “When Jackson isn’t done with his turn.”  Jackson has one arm around his baby brother, and is holding up the other hand in a traffic-cop stop-sign impersonation, whilst scowling ferociously at his older sister Kenzie, who mistakenly thought it was her turn.  haha

Wednesday I had planned to go to Lincoln with Larry to retrieve his truck.  I was all ready to go when Larry texted, “I won’t  need you to go with me to Lincoln.  I  figured  out how I can lift my motorcycle onto my truck.”

He sent a picture of the motorcycle suspended by several sets of straps to prove it.  He would ride the motorcycle there, load it on his truck, and drive the truck home.



So... I paid bills, and went back upstairs to scan photos.  It was a lovely day – 70° and sunny – and I had the windows open.  I could hear the Eurasian collared doves cooing... the American goldfinches and house finches warbling... and the English sparrows chirping.  Now and then a Northern cardinal sang, and a blue jay whistled.  The American robins, of course, are downright noisy.  The little junco was in the lilac bush, singing his spring song again.  Such pretty little things they are in their dapper tuxedos.  I pulled up the All About Birds website and played some sound clips of juncos near the open window, and brought the little singer right up next to the screen, tipping his head and looking all over the place, trying to find this competing warbler.

Wednesday evening after church, we again went to Loren’s house to gather up some trash, this time planning to take it to our house, since our trashmen come on Thursday mornings.  However, since the stuff we wanted to throw away consisted mainly of half-full bottles and jugs of weed killer, bug killer, oil, car wax, etc., we decided it would be better to take it to the big dumpster where Larry works.  The men who collect those dumpsters from construction companies know to expect things like that; whereas, while garbage trucks can cope just fine with a few bottles of this and that, they might not expect a whole volley of large totes full of such stuff.

Why are there gazillions of identical bottles and jugs, and why are they all half full?!

A week and a half ago while working in Loren’s garage, Larry moved some tall toolboxes and shelves and discovered that the wall behind them was all wet, soggy, and moldy.  On the other side of this wall is the laundry room.  A man had just finished drywalling in there, and had not reported any leaks.  Larry didn’t see anything amiss in that room, either. 

He and Robert continued on upstairs to the bathroom directly above the laundry room – and there, under the sink, they found a loose pipe or hose from which water was dripping so steadily, it was almost a small stream.  It must’ve been going on for a good long while, judging by the probable age of the mold inside the wall.  I had cleaned things out under that sink, and hadn’t seen any dampness, because the majority of the water was going straight down the inside of the wall.

Larry tore off all the wet Sheetrock and pulled out the ruined insulation.  He set up fans to blow directly into the area, and turned the heat up inside the garage, as it was still very cold outside.

When everything was dry a few days later, he put new insulation in place, cut new waterproof Sheetrock to put in place, and then I helped by leaning on it to keep it from sliding down while he trimmed it to fit and put in the screws.  He taped it and put on the joint compound, and planned to paint it that Wednesday night.

But... when we got there, we noticed a small puddle of water at the base of the newly redone wall.  We took a good look at the pipes in the laundry room on the other side of the wall, went upstairs and checked the hoses and pipes under the bathroom sink, but we couldn’t see exactly where the leak was.  It wasn’t damp at all in the bathroom, but was a bit wet in the laundry room around some of the pipes going to the water pressure tank.  We hoped it would be an easy fix of replacing a pipe or resealing a joint.  But it was too late to worry about it right then, so we set up a fan to try to keep damage minimal until Larry could find the leak and fix it after work the next day.

Thursday was a cloudy day, with rain now and then.  Days like that make the birds sing like anything, especially in the early springtime. 

I finished an album that afternoon, pulled out two more big ones from my hope chest – and realized that they were albums I had given my mother, and thus held duplicate pictures of my own.  So that’s two more albums down without raising a sweat. 😄

Robert went to Loren’s house that day to clear out a whole lot of overgrown brush.  When he got there and saw a fan set up in the garage and blowing on the redone wall, he thought, Uh, oh, and, as we had done, went to see where the leak might be.  He was relieved to find nothing leaking in the upstairs bathroom – and then he realized what it was from:  it wasn’t a leak after all; just water seeping under the wall from when Robert was painting the laundry room and had disconnected a pipe or two.  A small amount of water spilled onto the floor, and some made its way under the wall.  But it dried quickly with that fan blowing on it, and everything is fine.

Robert called me to find out what bushes I might want to keep, and I told him about the burning bush near the mailbox that is always so beautiful in the autumn.  I love the lilac bushes, too.  Lilacs shouldn’t be trimmed this time of year, or they won’t bloom. 

I told him, “But if you go by everything I think, you’ll still have a jungle!” 

I like the wild English gardens around the old-fashioned cottages in the Olde Country.  I dislike really structured landscaping, and bushes that are squared off or trimmed into fantastical shapes.  But I know a lot of people like things small and neat; and our goal is to sell this place! 

Loren didn’t do much weeding at all last year, and he did little the year before; so bindweed took over a lot of the flower gardens.  Some odd bush or volunteer tree grew into the burning bush; it had pods on it in the autumn, almost like the Black Locust tree has. 

When Aaron was about three years old, he said with some degree of concern, “The beans are all falling off of Grandma’s June Bug tree!” 

He was close, very close; he just got the wrong bug, is all.  We call it a ‘June Bug tree’ often enough that sometimes its real name, ‘Black Locust’, escapes me.  😄

Here are Victoria, 1 ½, and Dorcas, 16, on September 2, 1998. 





The little one is always the dramatic photo ham.  

I have a total of 26,850 pictures scanned.  I look forward to completing this task and getting back to quilting – but, in the meanwhile, pictures like these are fun to find, and keep me happily scanning away.

Below is Hannah, 17, at the piano, on August 28, 1998.



Robert put up two new lights in the basement at Loren’s house, and the one old light that was still in good shape is now in the laundry room, making it brighter in there.

We’ve ordered the new carpet and flooring that will be put in the kitchen, dining area, living room, and hallway.  We’d thought the wood flooring in kitchen and dining room was okay, but once the rugs were removed, we discovered that the sun had faded it out where there were no rugs, and it’s cheap 3/8” stuff, not worth refinishing.

I haven’t been too worried about doing a thorough cleaning yet, as Larry still has quite a bit to do in the garages.  I really don’t want to dust and polish everything, and then have to do it again! – but I think it’s about time now.

Later that afternoon, Robert sent Larry a couple of pictures of the front yard after he cleared it out.  He did a lot of work!  I don’t have any good ‘before’ pictures, except those taken by the Moultrie camera, and they don’t show much of the brush that was there.

Before:

After:




If we don’t get the place sold soon, we will have to start watering the lawn, and it may very well become apparent that a lot of it has died for lack of watering last year.  Larry would set up the sprinklers (because Loren no longer remembered how to use the irrigation system)... turn on the water... tell Loren to leave it on until dark ------ and we’d see by the camera that he’d turn it off 15 minutes or so after we left.  Then he’d mow it two or three times a week, quite scalping it – and sometimes we’d see him mowing when it was so dry, there would be a huge cloud of dust all around him and his mower.

So we might have to overseed the lawn, if everything starts turning green and the lawn doesn’t.

Friday, I got 91 photos scanned – not as many as I would’ve liked, but I did get something else done that I’ve been hoping to do for a long time:  I found a place to enter the Atlantic Beach Path quilt where they have no size restrictions.  I’d thought to enter it in the Houston International quilt show – but learned that the maximum size they accept is 96” in width.  That’s barely wide enough for a queen-sized bed!  The Atlantic Beach Path quilt is 123” x 124”.  There were a handful of quilt shows where I could’ve entered it.  I narrowed it down to two:  the BBQ quilt show (no, no, not ‘Barbecue’; it stands for Boise (Idaho) Basin Quilters!) and the Ozark Piecemakers quilt show in Springfield, Missouri.

I chose the Boise Basin Quilters quilt show, because... mountains!  We wanna go there.

The next few pictures were taken in early September, 1998, on a trip to Yellowstone National Park.

Victoria & Larry


Saturday, Amy wrote to wish me Happy National Quilting Day.  I wrote back, “Huh, how ’bout that.  And I just entered a quilt in a quilt show in Boise, Idaho!  The show will be at the end of September.  I wonder why they don’t have National Photo Scanning Day?”

Joseph


Larry went to Oklahoma that day to get a pickup, so we didn’t go see Loren.  As usual, he told me this – after I was ready to go.  Larry has had a bad cold, so it was just as well that we didn’t go.  He drove the BMW, then put it on a flatbed U-Haul and pulled it home behind the pickup he’d purchased.

I was glad to learn that Judy’s daughter Sara and her husband Ernest and their four boys visited Loren that afternoon.  It was such a nice day, they were able to sit out in the courtyard.

Loren still recognizes and knows friends and family, and he remembers days later that they have visited him.

The Mercedes was deader’n a doornail Sunday morning, so we drove the BMW to church.  Good thing we’ve got an extra, hmmm?

Kurt and Victoria invited us for dinner.  On the way, we stopped and filled the Beemer, as it was nearly empty.  It cost $99.24.  😲

I remember Daddy driving clear to the other side of town (only a mile, back then; the town has grown since then) to get gas, because it was only 28¢ instead of the 29¢ they were charging at the gas station nearby.

Victoria fed us a tender, scrumptious roast, baked potatoes, carrots, and onions; and frozen Maine blueberries and raspberries for dessert.  Mmmmm, everything was so good.

When we got home, Larry charged the battery on the Mercedes.  The dash lights came on as soon as he hooked up his charger, with a notice still reading ‘Don’t forget your key.’  So, when we leave the key fob in the vehicle, is that what runs down the battery?  Because as soon as he took the key out and walked away with it, the dash reminder went away and the lights went off.

Caleb & Lydia


Yep.  I just researched the matter, and have learned that leaving the key fob – one of those that doesn’t have to be inserted in the ignition; the car starts with a push of a button – inside the car, or even too close to the car, will drain the battery.  It can also drain the battery of the fob itself.  Siggghhhhh...  Why don’t they tell us these things when we purchase such a vehicle?!  Maybe they don’t know, themselves.

Hester


After church last night, I showed Rachel several new and nearly-new Bibles that I’d brought from Loren’s house, as I wanted to give Kelvin one of them.  He was at church in the morning, but didn’t feel well enough to attend the evening service. 

I had earlier asked him, “Would you prefer large print, or regular size?”

“Regular,” he answered.  “I ain’t that old... yet.”  😄

Rachel started to choose a dark blue Bible Loren had given to Janice not long before she passed away; but I had saved a brand-new looseleaf Bible for last.  I was glad when she chose that one.

Since we’d already had a big meal that day, and I had not had breakfast in the morning, we decided a late breakfast was just the ticket.  So we had the last of the Blueberry Corn Chex with the last of the Almond Milk and one egg apiece (because there were only two left) on the last half-slice and heel of bread, and drank the last of the orange juice – half a cup for each of us.  It was just enough.

Larry, Caleb, Joseph, & Victoria


We then went to Loren’s house to put the trash out, and Larry put more drywall on the garage wall.  It’s all dry at the bottom of that wall, and ready to be painted now.

I cleaned out the cupboard under the sink.  I hadn’t done that yet, because there were cleaning products in there that we needed to use.

Whataya know, I unearthed two bottles of Rust Out, or something similar.

Now, the shower off the master bedroom has been baaaaaad.  Larry worked on it for a couple of hours back when he was staying there with Loren, but he only succeeded in getting the top layer of soap scum off.

What was left behind in the shower after the soap scum was gone was dirty pinkish orange.  Larry thought maybe the solution was just to tear that shower out and put in a new one, but Robert convinced him that that wasn’t a good idea.  The bathroom is very small, and the only way the builders got that shower in there in the first place was by putting it in before the walls were up.

Top of Snowy Range Pass, Medicine Bow Mts., Wyoming

 

The orange-pink color of the shower told me it was discolored from iron and minerals in the water.  So, armed with Rust Out and a good brush, I marched off to do battle.

It worked; the shower looks much, much better.  It won’t take much more work and it’ll look almost like new.  Larry finished the drywalling before I entirely finished the shower; but I did empty both of those bottles of Rust Out.  I rinsed the shower walls before we left.  I need to find more Rust Out (there’s surely some product on that order in the garage), and then use something that will shine that shower ’til it sparkles.

Joseph

Teddy

Keith


Yeah, yeah; I can hear you all now:  “Use vinegar!  Use vinegar!”

I might.  I just might.  😜

And yes, we went to the grocery store before coming home.  😉

Here are Hester and Joseph with a string of 14 fish we caught at Sherman Reservoir September 7th:



It started raining this afternoon, and will continue through the night, changing to snow if it gets cold enough.  We plan to visit Loren tomorrow, since it will still be raining and/or snowing.  You wonder why we do it on a day like that?  Well, because Walkers’ work gets curtailed by the weather.  So, quite often, our excursions are made on bad-weather days.

Lydia


“‘There has to be a better way,’ he said, as he bumped down the stairs on the back of his head.  But here he is at the bottom, and ready to be introduced to you:  Winnie the Pooh.”

(But I digress.)

It’s bedtime! 

 


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



P.S.:  I have figured out what that ‘Haircut Practice’ Sticky Note was all about:  it’s the name of a comic on Go Comics dot com.  Some time back, I was looking through the funnies in alphabetical order to see if there were any I might like to add to the list of funnies I read each morning while I’m curling my hair, and that’s how far I got:  I got to the comic called ‘Haircut Practice’.  It’s been so long, I totally forgot. 

 

Caleb

P.S.S.:  Now I got curious, and had to look at this ‘Haircut Practice’ comic.  Nope.  I will not be wasting my time reading that.  The next one in the list is ‘Half Full’, which I accordingly wrote on a Sticky Note.  And because three months from now when I notice that Sticky Note again I will wonder, Why on earth did I write ‘Half Full’ on a Sticky Note??, I also wrote, ‘Go Comics’.

Let’s see if that rings a bell.

It was bedtime ten minutes ago.

It’s still bedtime.

Goodnight! 

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