Sarah Lynn's Nature's Splendor: Journal: Swallows & Gulps, Mandevillas & Daffodils

This is the Mandevilla Jeremy and Lydia and their family gave me for Mother’s Day. Quite a few blossoms opened the next morning.

As I was thanking Lydia for the plant, I heard an odd noise and told her, “I really think I hear a baby raccoon in the kitchen wall!”

Then, after hearing it again, I said, “Or maybe it’s a catbird making that noise. We have a pair here, and they can imitate just about anything.” I listened again, then added, “Perhaps it’s a frog?”

Lydia then told me the following story: “The other night at about 11:00 p.m., something kept waking me up. I finally realized it was a couple of raccoons getting into the metal dog food dishes outside. So I got out of bed, leaned out my upstairs window, and, with my hair all on top of my head, whisper-yelled at them to get out of it – but it was our neighbor doing something at his own door.”

I laughed, “Oops! Did you then say, ‘Oh, I thought you were a raccoon!’?”

“No,” replied Lydia; “I ducked back inside and pretended nothing even happened.” 🤣

Here are some pictures I recently scanned. The first one is of Caleb and Victoria at Henry Doorly Zoo, July 23, 2004; the next two were also taken at the zoo, but a couple of years later, on September 4, 2006.

Tuesday night for supper, we had Alaska salmon, frozen green beans (well, I did cook them before we ate them), cornbread stuffing, pudding, and Alo Aloe Vera juice.

Wednesday morning, I worked on my flower gardens for the first time this year. I’m so thankful Loren’s house has sold, and the young people who have purchased it will be caring for the yard and flowers now, so we won’t have to. I also picked up all the shingles that had blown off our roof and gotten scattered all over the yard. A gorilla cart piled high with shingles is heavy!

That evening when we got home from church, Larry was so tired, he was falling asleep before he ever finished eating.

With some coaxing, he managed to get up and make his way to his recliner about six feet away, where he was immediately out like a light.

It wasn’t a restful sleep, however. He was soon talking loud and long in his sleep. The next day when I asked him what he’d been dreaming about, he actually remembered: he had earlier that day watched a video of a lumberjack demonstrating climbing a tall fir tree, using a method that involves wrapping a chain around the trunk, and steadily moving it higher. The feller (aka lumberman, arborist, et al.), got approximately 35-40 feet high, then began the process of coming back down.

And then he let his chain get slack.

The hook came out of the loop, and down came the lumberjack, a whole lot faster than he’d gone up, and louder, too. He yelled all the way down, and kept on yelling after he landed. The camera did not show the man landing on the ground – but he could sure be heard.

At that point, Larry decided the video had been faked. Or at least the falling part had been faked. No one would – or could – go on yelling like that after hitting the ground from that far up.

Still, it was a startling thing to see, even on a ‘fake’ video – especially since our son-in-law Jeremy does tree-removal, and we do worry about him. He rarely climbs trees to cut them down, however, since he has his grapple-saw truck for that job.

And yet Larry dreamed about it. Or, more accurately, had a nightmare about it.

In the middle of his commotion, I suddenly remembered how Teensy used to cope with Larry’s noisy dreams, where he talked in his sleep: he’d sit and watch for a moment, then gather himself together and make a high, arching leap, the better to gain momentum on his descent, calculating his trajectory to send him smack-dab onto Larry’s stomach with a good deal of force, for he was a big cat.

Larry would say, and I quote, “Oooof!!” – and the talking-in-his-sleep dream would come to an abrupt end.

I, however, just let Larry sleep-talk as loud and long as he wished.

Todd and Dorcas sent me a photo card and a gift card for Cracker Barrel for Mother’s Day – and another card, too, from Trevor, age 6. Dorcas said he spotted a cute card with confetti ‘balloons’ on the front at the post office when she went there to mail the photo card. It didn’t matter that it was a birthday card; Trevor was quite positive I needed it.

So Dorcas got it, scribbled out the word ‘Birthday’ and penned in ‘Mother's Day’ instead, and let Trevor draw a picture inside it and sign his name. Look, he drew his entire family, grandparents included!

Thursday morning, I began working on another flowerbed. I started fairly early, because the forecast was for temps in the low 90s by late morning, with winds increasing up to 35 mph in the afternoon, and a high chance of strong thunderstorms and possible tornadoes. (But it would be plumb aggravating to spend a couple of hours making a flowerbed all pretty just to have a tornado come ripping through and tear it to shreds later in the day, now wouldn’t it?!)

The lily-of-the-valley is blooming. I smelled them before I saw them. Several years ago, I planted one or two plants, and now there is quite a nice little patch of them. They smell so good, and are such perfect, delicate little flowers. They’re one of my favorites.

As soon as another big flower garden was shipshape, I came in the house and got myself all shipshape. After eating breakfast, I took the shower curtains down and washed them, along with the towels and washcloths.

When the load was done, I tossed the towels and washcloths into the dryer and rehung the shower curtains. They feel... whatever the opposite of slick is. Shall I spray them down with cooking oil?

At a quarter ’til six, I received simultaneous warnings on my phone, my tablet, and my computer: there was a tornado near Monroe, six miles to the west.

I gathered up all the important things – laptop, coffee, tablet, phone, hard drives – and went to the basement. I pulled up AccuWeather, saw that the worst of the storm was heading northeast and would likely miss our house, and hurried back upstairs to refill and warm my coffee. Then I ran upstairs to the second floor and grabbed the other hard drive before trotting all the way back down to the basement, two flights down.

It occurred to me that I should’ve picked up my purse, too, and maybe the safe deposit box with Loren’s important papers in it. I thought about the New York Beauty quilt... the Atlantic Beach Path quilt... the Americana Eagle quilt... all upstairs in the little library. And the vintage Sunbonnet Sue quilt is on the quilt rack on the upstairs landing. I walked out of my gift-wrapping room at the rear (north side) of the basement, looked toward the walk-out patio door – and saw that the wind was blowing something fierce, and the rain was cascading down. A few quarter-sized hailstones pelted the glass.

I paused, went back in the room, and refreshed the AccuWeather page.

The storm was a wee bit to the northwest.

Hannah texted to say that tornado sirens were sounding in town, and she sent pictures of Levi, Joanna, and Bobby outside watching the sky. It wasn’t raining there yet. Their house is about 6 ½ miles to the east of us.

“The dogs are afraid of the ‘weather that comes out of a nozzle,’ as described by Joanna,” Hannah told me, “so they won’t stay in the bathroom. They’re both panting a lot.”

By then, it was 6:00 p.m. “Okay, it went to the north,” I texted Hannah. “I shall now migrate back upstairs. Why did I take so much stuff down here?!”

I started to pick up an armload of stuff to haul back upstairs – and my phone rang.

It was Victoria, calling to make sure I was safe and sound, that the house was still standing, and that no trees had fallen on it.

Hannah sent pictures someone had posted on a Facebook group. This was taken near York, 60 miles to the south.

Victoria then sent a link to the Columbus, Nebraska, tornado of June 23, 1998, asking, “Do you remember this?”

“I do remember it,” I answered, “but I’ve never seen video of it before. We drove out in the country and took pictures of the aftermath. There were areas on the tops of hills where the nicely growing crops had been turned into nothing but bare ground. Several farm places were demolished. That’s quite the video!”

In Part One of the video, they are talking about the Long Branch. That’s a little bar and grill north of town. A couple came racing up to the place in their pickup seconds before the F3 tornado hit, leaped out, and ran into the bar, where seven or eight people were huddled in the basement.

Problem: the man driving the pickup was closest to the bar’s door, and he went tearing inside, leaving his wife to root, hog, or die. The tornado hit before she made it to the door, but she managed to grab a metal pipe about three feet from the bar’s door and hang on for dear life. She told how she nearly lost her grip several times, as the tornado pulled and tugged at her. She was pelted hard by debris, but she survived without serious injury.

Crabapple blossoms

Meanwhile, the patio was torn off the bar, and the inside of the building was plastered with muddy cornstalks from a nearby field. Power lines were strewn across the property. Behind the building, a ring of trees looked as though someone had chopped off their upper branches with a giant chainsaw.

But the owner, who had been out of town when the tornado hit, was surprised the next day to find a half-filled pitcher and two cups of beer intact on the bar.

Apple blossoms

And people talked about that cad of a husband for months – no, years, as you can see – thereafter.

The 70-mph winds took a few more shingles off the roof. If this keeps up, Larry won’t even have to remove the old shingles before putting on the new metal roof!

A lot of people throughout the state were left with electrical outages; but ours didn’t even blink, except earlier in the morning for some unknown reason, when it was still bright and sunny.

The washer and dryer went on chugging and whirring away obliviously through the storm, and by the time I got all my paraphernalia upstairs and put back into a semblance of order, the last of three loads of clothes was done.

The sky was quite dramatic at sunset.

We learned that the storm had blown over two semis on I80 to our south. It would track northeast, and, in addition to leaving behind a lot of property damage, would cause the deaths of two people in South Dakota and one in Minnesota.

Friday morning, I picked up the wayward shingles and worked on another flowerbed. I made all these flower gardens and planted most of these flowers (perennials) in 2003, when we first moved out here. I was 42. Evidently, I thought I’d be 42 the rest of my life. Whew, it’s a lot of work keeping up with so many garden areas! I think there are almost a dozen fairly large gardens around the house. >>...counting...<< Maybe only 11 now. One has nearly died out, because somebody surrounded it with Junk of the Metallic and Wheeled Sort.

That afternoon, Larry took a long lunch hour and got our yard mowed for the first time this spring. He should’ve left it, and we could’ve had dandelion this and dandelion that, all summer long! The entire plant is edible, you know, from the roots to the leaves to the flowers to the seeds. Looking at our yard, it had appeared that we would not have needed to buy food for months! 😄

That afternoon, Hester sent pictures of her cats with Tiger’s water dish I had given her. “Thank you for the cat things!” she wrote. “The cats are pretty obsessed with the bowl. 😸 Plus, it matches my kitchen. 😄👍”

A friend was telling about looking at a yearbook with her little granddaughter – did you know they make yearbooks for preschoolers?! – and it reminded me of Hannah, and her first days at Sunday School, and again in Kindergarten... and onward. She would come home and tell all about the lesson, then describe the teacher, then each student, and what they all did and said, until a 45-minute Sunday School session took all of Sunday afternoon to tell about. 😅

Cuphea hyssopifolia from Caleb & Maria & Eva

As I type, the birds are singing – though the barn swallows are extremely upset that they no longer have access to the garage. We now shut it up tight, as there’s no cat needing to get in and out. The swallows circle around my head each morning every time I get near one of the garage doors, cheep-cheep-cheeping, begging me to let them in. Sometimes they practically hover in front of my face, tilting their heads and staring at me, making little twittering noises, and I know they’re begging, Let us in! Let us in!

Thursday morning is trash day. I got up early, went out to the garage, and gathered up six old kitchen chairs that I’ve been asking Larry to discard, ever since we got new kitchen chairs – has it been five years ago? He instead stacked them in the garage, because a) we might need them, b) he can repair the wooden spindles, c) I can recover the attached cushions, and d) they are worth something, and one should not throw out things that are worth something.

However, a) we have never needed them, and now we have six cushioned, like-new folding chairs that used to be Norma’s, b) Larry has enough things to repair that he will have to live to age 268 to get them all repaired, c) I make quilts; I do not recover cushions, not if I can help it (yes, I thought about it, and I in fact even mentioned it out loud; but that was before I found those new chairs at a smashing bargain at Wal-Mart), and d) less junk in the garage is worth something, too – worth more than the junk, in my opinion.

Chokecherry blossoms

Anyway, I gathered up those old chairs and hauled them out to the roadside for the garbagemen to pick up. I made the error of leaving the front walk-in garage door open while I was doing this, and, wouldn’t you know it, those little barn swallows went swooping gladly into the garage, twittering and tee-heeing as they went. Siggghhhhh...

I tried to chase them back out the walk-in door. They twittered their way around the garage, leading me on a merry chase. I gave up that endeavor and opened the big overhead garage door on the other side of the garage. The birds swooped out, evidently thinking everything was now back to rights, and they could rush out to gather nesting material, posthaste.

Rembrandt tulip

I pressed the button to lower the door.

The swallows swooped back in, scolding me vociferously.

I pressed the button to stop the door, and went to waving my arms around and yelling.

The swallows whisked back out, doubtless wondering what ailed me. I had never acted like that before!

I pressed the button to lower the door.

The swallows dived back under it.

Hostas & Autumn Joy sedum

I stopped the door and commenced waving and yelling.

The birds flew out.

I lowered the door – and finally, finally, got it all the way down before they flew back in. Whew.

After that, I carefully opened the walk-in door, stepped in or out quickly, chair in hand, and shut the door behind me, every time without fail. The garage is now catless and birdless – and in terrible need of a thorough cleaning.

The butterflies have started flitting about the yard again, mostly Clouded sulphurs, Cabbage whites, and Silver-spotted skippers.

Victoria and Socks

Now there’s a robin scolding loudly, and other birds are joining in – cardinals, blue jays, wrens, and finches. One of the stray neighborhood cats is likely skulking about. There’s a beautiful, one-eyed Siamese that we sometimes see catching mice, and there are the black and tortoiseshell cats that are probably siblings, as they’re the same size, and almost always together, and they never fuss with each other. All three cats are quite wild, but always look well-fed.

That dark tortoiseshell cat reminds me of our cat Socks, aka King Tut. I was recently remembering how upset he was when I got a part-time job at Megavision, our local Internet Service Provider. I worked just two hours each evening, except on Wednesdays and Saturdays, when the two hours were in the mornings. He had gotten into the habit of coming up to my little office when I was doing computer work or sewing, standing up against me and patting on my leg, telling me he wanted up on my lap. If I didn’t turn my chair so he could jump up right away, he’d stand taller than you’d think a cat his size could do and pat my shoulder, while tipping his head and looking soulfully up into my eyes. But after I started that part-time job, he’d stroll haughtily into that room, stare at me until he was sure I noticed him, then turn and walk toward the corner, and sit down with his back to me. One has not been properly snubbed until one has been snubbed by a cat!

Friday night, I went with Larry to pick up his motorcycle where he’d left it at a coworker’s house near Andrew and Hester’s house. He’d loaned the man his pickup and trailer, and – well, I can’t quite figure out how both the pickup and the motorcycle wound up at the man’s house, or how Larry got home after abandoning his transportation there. He’s not here to ask, so I shall assume he traveled via jetpack.

(Actually, Larry has quite a number of MOTs [Modes of Transportation], and — no, I still can’t figure it out.)

As we drove past Andrew and Hester’s house, I saw that the third-story lights were on, and it made me happy to think of their pretty, new-to-them house, with that nifty third-floor playroom for the children. I imagined Keira up there playing with her kitchen set and her dollies, just before bedtime.

Saturday morning, I finished clearing out winter growth from the last of the flowerbeds in the front yard. The north gardens look much better. But recent rains have made not just the flowers grow, but the weeds, too! The crabgrass in one flowerbed is as tall as the hostas and sedum. So... shall I continue on around the house, or go back to that flowerbed where the crabgrass is growing in such profusion?

I showered, curled my hair, washed the dishes, put another load of clothes into the washing machine, and then off I went to Omaha to visit Loren. I went by myself this time, as Larry is swamped with 101 things he needs to do, and he’s been working 12-13-hour days for Walkers, too.

It was a pretty day. I have always loved to drive, but not so much these days, as I struggle with Benign Essential Blepharospasm – where the eyes want to go shut and not open back up again. One day last year while driving, I was having quite a time of it, when it occurred to me, I don’t have trouble with my eyes while I’m singing. I promptly launched into song – and my eyes were soon behaving much better. Therefore, when I drive, I sing. (Or hum, if someone pulls up beside me. Me has me pride!)

I saw several irrigation pivots that had been twisted and flipped by the storm Thursday evening. Anytime you see a pivot with wheels up in the air, be assured that there has been a lot of damage done, and that it’s going to take a whole lot of dollars to replace that pivot.

I took Loren a new Reader's Digest and a Messenger newspaper, and I also took the digital picture frame I got for him when he had that short stay in the nursing home here in our town, before they decided they couldn’t cope with him. I told the staff in Omaha they could put it wherever they liked, in one of the common-use rooms, so that everyone could enjoy it. Their maintenance man will hang it on the wall in a place where they can plug it in and contain the cord so someone doesn’t unplug it and pull the whole frame off the wall.

I wondered if, after last week’s stories about rabbits, razors, woodpiles, tents, and checkbooks, the nurses and Loren’s fellow residents had been subjected to quite the concocted tales over the last few days. 😅

I got there at suppertime, so I visited with Loren in the dining room. They were having curly pasta with tomato sauce and ground beef, and corn. The few times I took Loren a meal that included anything similar to that pasta dish, he proclaimed that he didn’t like it and couldn’t eat it, as it made him sick. However, he was eating it with gusto, polishing it off right down to the last dollop of sauce.

After a little while, everyone was given an Orio cookie in individual packets. Loren gave his to his friend Roslyn. She has a husband, but neither Loren nor Roslyn know this; and Loren thinks she’s yet another ‘Norma’.

After a not-too-long visit, Loren started telling me he needed this and that – his electric razor, for instance (which I suspect they confiscated so he or some other resident wouldn’t hurt themselves with it) (anyway, it disappeared; we got him another; it disappeared, too. I should ask about it).

I said, “Well, you look just fine right now!”

And he did.

He told me, “I had to use a straight-edged razor! And it made my face all red.” He then described a double-bladed razor. “My electric razor is at my other house in the east,” he said.

I assured him that his face was no longer red, and looked okay. I very much doubt that they would give him a straight-edged razor (or a double-bladed one, either). Probably the person who comes in now and then to cut hair and fix the ladies’ hair gave him a shave. Another thing I could ask about.

Roslyn, listening to all this, piped up and offered in a comforting voice, “I can take you to get your razor.”

Loren smiled at her, shaking his head. “Oh, no, you don’t need to do that,” he said. “I’ll just have—”

But then there was a bit of a commotion in another part of the dining room, and he got sidetracked, and forgot what he’d started to say.

When he starts asking for things, I know it’s just a short matter of time before he gets worried about something else that he thinks he needs or wants to do; so I generally skedaddle. A short visit is just as good as a long one, and is often better for some dementia patients. That’s certainly true for Loren. He’s never been one to want to visit for a long while. If he felt like people stayed at his house too long in years gone by, he’d start looking at his watch. If it was getting past his bedtime, he’d get up and say, “Would you please turn off the lights when you go?” haha

Sometimes he was funny... sometimes he was rude. 😅

Anyway, I like to leave after telling a series of stories that I think Loren will find funny and interesting, and before he gets worried about anything.

Before leaving, I told Loren I had brought the digital picture frame, and someone would be hanging it soon. He remembered it. “I’ll be watching for it!” he said happily.

I was home again by 7:00 p.m., just as Larry got home from Genoa, where he had been working on a vehicle. His friend Joe, who owns the shop, had given him several slices of grilled pork and buns to go with them. So that’s what we had for supper.

We then went to Dairy Queen, where Larry got a banana split and I got a Royal New York Cheesecake Blizzard. Larry’s banana split looked good. Next time, that’s what I’ll have!

We sat in Pawnee Park eating our Blizzards, and then we drove to Walkers’ shop to wash the Mercedes.

Hester sent this picture, writing, “Keira loves her doll that you gave her for her birthday. It makes a great patient 😄😄👩‍⚕️.” Sure enough, dolly has purple Band-Aids on both arms.

I have posted pictures of the quilts at the AQS Quilt Show in Paducah, Kentucky: AQS Paducah

I like looking through the pictures, enlarging them and studying the details, after I get home. We were in a bit of a hurry, and there were an awful lot of people at the show, so I didn’t look as closely at the quilts as I might have done.

These photos are from The National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky:

National Quilt Museum

I didn’t have time to read all the information about the quilts when we were there, so I’ve been reading those notes from the pictures I took. This one by George Siciliano of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, makes me laugh:

“In 1997, I was looking for a new hobby and when looking through a quilting magazine, I came across a quilt I really liked and asked my wife Virginia if she could make it for me... perhaps today. While she would do and has done just about anything for me, I fear I may have stepped over that imaginary line with this particular request. Her reply was simple and direct: ‘If you like it so much, make it yourself.’ I did.”

We had spaghetti and meatballs and Oui yogurt for supper last night after church, with half of a French braid and half of a raspberry-filled donut for dessert. Then we headed to Loren’s house to put out the trash.

The moon had already entered Earth’s umbral shadow and the lunar eclipse had begun when we drove down Old Highway 81. Why didn’t we go back for my tripod and camera??!

We got to Loren’s house, then stood and watched the eclipse as it went into totality.

Then we let the moon fend for itself for a while, and headed into the north garage to see what we could find to donate to the local landfill.

We stopped and watched the moon again as it left the umbra, and the penumbral shadow began fading away. The left side began to glow. This is called the ‘Japanese lantern effect’.

Did you know that before the moon enters Earth’s shadow, the temperature on its sunlit surface hovers at 261° Fahrenheit (127° Celsius)? Because the moon lacks an atmosphere, there is no way that this heat can be retained from escaping into space as the shadow sweeps by. In shadow, the temperature on the moon drops to minus 146° F (minus 99° C) – a drop of 407° F (226° C) in just over an hour!

Here’s a photo from National Public Radio:

While we stood there gazing upwards, we heard coyotes yipping and howling. There were several different vocal timbres and pitches; I think the adult coyotes were teaching the youngsters how to hunt. And howl. At least a couple of them sounded like teenagers, with unsteady utterances that periodically cracked and broke in mid-wail.

We wheeled several large garbage cans out to the road, along with a few boxes and big bags. Larry filled his pickup with stuff to bring home, too. Finally, that garage is beginning to look like we’re making a dent in it. It’s an extra-long two-car garage. How does it hold so much stuff?!!!