Photos: Common Grackle in the Birdbath

"Where are the faucets on this thing?"

"Ah, well; I might as well step in..."

Photos: ♫ ♪ Splish, splash, I was takin' a b------------- "Hey, pull the shower curtain, wouldja?!!"

Photos: Hibiscus & Clematis

 

Hibiscus from Todd & Dorcas & family for Mother's Day

Journal: Goats in Galoshes

 

Late last Monday evening, storms fired up again in the Plains, and there was even a tornado or two in Nebraska.  One was near Bellevue, not too far from where our son Joseph and his family, wife Jocelyn and children Justin and Juliana, live.  Another was near Gretna, where Larry’s sister Rhonda lives.  But although at least one home and some outbuildings were damaged, the worst of the storms moved farther east.  It wasn’t very bad here at our house, at all.  We got about ½” of rain.

The next morning, in listening to news of the previous night’s storms, I learned that a nursing home in Barnsdall, Oklahoma, was hit by the tornado that ravaged their town.  More bad weather was expected across the Plains states that day.  It sure seems to be an exceptionally active storm season this spring, doesn’t it?

Here’s a little male American goldfinch at the bird feeder – and look, he has a dandelion seed on his back.

This is the female goldfinch. 

And here is someone who is probably singing, “♫ ♪ I’m just a little house finch, ♪ ♫ a house finch am I... ♫ ♪ Tweedle-dee-dee-dee-dee ♪ ♫ ”

Upon seeing me at the window with my camera, he crammed a few more sunflower seeds into his mouth, and then skedaddled. 

Did you know that tree squirrels do not have cheek pouches like ground squirrels, chipmunks, and woodchucks do?  But tree squirrels like this little fox squirrel can shell a peanut in 15 seconds, and they can shell 25 sunflower seeds a minute or about one every two seconds.

But birds are every bit as fast.  Cardinals and finches can also shell a sunflower seed in a couple of seconds.  They use their sharp, agile tongues and hollow beaks to crack the seed coat in half and remove the contents.  The upper half of their beaks has a groove that runs along the cutting edge, and the lower half slides into it.  Their tongues position the seed in the groove and onto the lower bill’s sharp edge.  They then press down and move the lower bill back and forth slightly to crack the seed coat.  Their tongues deftly extract the seed while they simultaneously discard the hulls.

Some birds, such as blue jays, pigeons, mourning doves, and Eurasian collared doves, swallow sunflower seeds whole.  Pigeons and doves leave it to their powerful, grit-filled gizzards to pulverize both the shell and inner seed before it reaches the intestines, where the nourishing elements are extracted and enter the birds’ bloodstreams, and the rest are eliminated as waste.  Blue jays, however, are actually filling their crops (aka throat pouches or gular pouches) with the seeds, which they will eat later.  They often fill their throat pouch until it bulges, and then fly away to hide the seeds in a safe place, like a hollow tree or log.  They can gulp down a dozen seeds in about ten seconds.

Blue jays are able to crack open seeds and even hard acorns with their bills.  Just like the much smaller chickadees, they will hold sunflower seeds with their feet to hack a hole into the shell with the tip of their beak.  They know exactly where to drill this hole so that the pressure will pop the hull right open, whereupon they scoop up the seed with their tongues.

Tuesday morning, I spent an hour and a half working in a couple of the front flower gardens.  Feeling a few aches and pains afterwards, I decided it was the perfect time to use the jar of bath salts Victoria had made for me.  “Soothing blend of essential oils to melt away aches and pains.  Add entire jar to a hot bath,” it said on the little card she had affixed to the jar with twine.  “Tension Relief Bath Salts with Peppermint, Basil, & Spearmint,” read the other side. 

I did as it said, and poured whole works in.

After breakfast, I launched into spring cleaning.  I dusted, swept, mopped, and vacuumed on the main floor, and cleared out a couple of cubbyholes.  When Larry got home, he washed one of the kitchen windows that I cannot reach. 

I polished up several lead crystal, china, and ceramic pieces, packed them in boxes, and carried them down to my gift-wrapping room.  I’ll give them to some of my granddaughters one of these days.  Here’s a crystal egg from Avon; it has the words “Mother’s Day 1977” etched into the glass in the bottom.  I gave it to my own mother years ago.  I texted Andrew and asked if he would like to let Keira and Oliver give it to their Mama, our daughter Hester.  It quite closely matches some bowls and pedestaled glasses that used to be my mother’s, which I gave Hester several years ago.

“Sure!” he answered, “—if we can wrap it in multiple layers of bubble wrap before we let them carry it.”  hee hee

I assured him that after putting half a dozen pretty seashells in it, I had taped it shut, wrapped it in tissue paper, and put it into a sturdy little box.

A little while after 8:00 that evening, I realized I was starved, and it occurred to me that all I’d had since eating a piece of toast, peanut butter, and honey for breakfast was a banana and half a cup of orange juice.  It was time to sit me down and eat.

One time years ago, in 1989, to be exact, we were in the doctor’s office – Larry, me, and the six older kids.  Several were getting their school checkups, and Baby Hester was getting her two-month checkup.  I walked over and stood looking at a chart on the wall.

Then, “Larry, you’re exactly the right weight!” I said.  ((...pause...))  “Are you 7 foot 4?”

What I didn’t know was that the doctor was right out in the hallway, and the door was ajar, and he’d heard everything I said.

He came bursting into the room like he always did, laughing and asking Larry, “Well, are you?!”  hee hee

I went on cleaning – and I found Lydia’s violin chinrest, rosin, several of her CDs and DVDs – and two teeth, including the long roots, in a little tooth-shaped holder.  I texted her, asking if she wanted these things, adding, “I didn’t want to throw away body parts, in case someone needed them.  🤣”

“lol, I would take all that,” she answered.  “My kids would love to see my teeth.” 

“Okay,” I answered.  “I have some of your report cards, too.  You were a smart little kid!”

Wednesday morning, I again spent an hour and a half in another of the flower gardens; now most of the front looks nice (other than Larry’s Big Equipment in the middle of the lawn [yes, it has long ago killed the grass], waiting patiently for him to use them in putting on the new metal roof).

That afternoon, I picked up a Singer sewing machine from a former coworker, LaVonne, who was selling it for $10, as Maria said she would be able to use it. 

While in town, I dropped off some things at the Salvation Army and the cleaners.

Home again, I took down and washed all the chandelier lamps and globes, and used my long-handled duster that slides over the fan blades to clean them. 

Even standing on my tiptoes on my stepstool, it was hard for me to reach the screws for the globes, and I had to take the light bulbs out, too.  Arrgghh, that was a whole lot of work.  I ain’t no spring chicken, ya know!  Long before I was done, my neck, shoulders, back, and arms hurt, and I was all shaky.  And soon I needed to shake my trembly way to church!

I hoped my hair didn’t have lint and fluff and fuzz and dust and dirt in it; fluff and fuzz and lint and dirt is noticeable, in snow-white hair!

After donning my glad rags, I sipped some icy cold strawberry-coconut Celsius.  It has caffeine in it, and I’ve been avoiding caffeine, on account of it hindering the homeopathic pills I’ve been taking, which I hope will help the blepharospasm; but I needed something cold and perk-me-up!  However, the caffeine was probably making me shakier than I already was.  Such a time!  Ah, well.  It sure tasted good and refreshing.

A friend posted this picture, taken at her mother-in-law’s farm.

“What a beautiful photo!” I commented.  “When Caleb was wee little, not quite two, he called that very windmill a ‘whirl-a-round-a-round’.”  😄

The sun was shining brightly at 6:00 that evening, and there was a lot of blue sky; but directly up and to the east, there was a big, dark gray cloud, and thunder was rumbling loudly in that cloud.  To the north, I could see thunderheads rising over the hill. 

At Teddy’s house, a mile to the east, it rained.  The wind was evidently just strong enough to blow the rain from the dark cloud in the east right onto Teddy’s place, though the sky was bright blue overhead.  He sent me this picture.  Can you see the raindrops?

The chokecherries are in blossom.  They make the whole yard smell fragrant and good. 

Purple irises are blooming, and there are a lot of buds.  Other colors will come later.  The purples smell like grape Kool-Aid, only better.

Here’s the little fox squirrel making his escape after chowing down on the sunflower seeds.

After all the work that day, I was very glad for the interruption of our midweek church service that night.

Thursday morning, I woke up at a quarter after 6 and couldn’t get back to sleep; so I went out and worked in the gardens for 2 ½ hours, weeding and taking down a big, wayward rosebush that sends its thorny tendrils out into the driveway, trying to snag us as we walk to our vehicles.  Now maybe Larry can dig up what remains of it.  We can transplant it, or perhaps split it and give it to some of the girls.  It’s one of the old-fashioned rosebushes that was my mother’s, which in turn came from her mother’s rosebush in North Dakota.  The roses smell lovely, but the bush always winds up looking unkempt.  If I trim it back at the wrong time, it curtails its flowering.

I must be a wee bit allergic to something out there, as I have to be sure to put kleenexes in my gardening basket.  Or it could just be the wind causing the troubles; and it was chilly that morning.  I put on a jacket, then had to come back in the house for leggings and a soft knitted headband.  I get earaches if it’s very windy.

But it was the perfect day for working on that big rosebush, because I have rose-pruning gloves with long forearm-protection cuffs and thick, thorn-proof palms and fingers.  My sister gave them to me.  They’re very nice, but get hot quickly on warm days.

When I came inside after that job, I poured a bag of Dr. Teal’s Epsom Salts with Lavender Soaking Solution (from Hester? Lydia? Amy? Maria? Hannah?) into the tub.  I have no idea if the stuff actually ‘helped’, but it sure did smell good.  I like showers best, with the showerhead set on ‘peel-off-your-skin pulse’; but a tub full of good-smelling Epsom salts has its place, particularly if I need to use up the good-smelling Epsom salts someone gave me.  😊

Soon bedding – sheets, blanket, and even the quilt – were in various stages of laundry.  It looked a bit stormy by noon that day, but we weren’t expecting any rain, according to my weather app; so I cleaned several of the downstairs windows, the front doors, and the two windows that are upstairs in my quilting studio.

The parrot tulips are in bloom!  

The lily-of-the-valley, however, is just about spent.  

And the dandelions, of course, have already bloomed and gone to seed.

Levi texted me.  When I told him I was washing windows, and having some trouble getting to a few of them on account of large furniture being in the way, or the windows being too high, he helpfully gave me a little piece of advice:  “Break the glass and buy new, clean windows.”  Haha, that kid.

I vacuumed my quilting room, started up an essential oil diffuser to make the room smell good – and looked at Warren’s quilt top and backing, which were looking back at me.

Guess what happened next?!

Yep, the quilt got itself loaded on the frame, ready to be quilted.  I had done enough housecleaning for the moment!

Meanwhile, both the fleece blanket, with the sheets and pillow cases all inside it, and this quilt in the next wash, wound up like this after the spin cycle.  What in the world?  I’ve never seen anything like that before.  Looks like the washing machine was trying to make bread.

My dryer has a ‘bulky items’ setting, wherein it plays its chiming little tune every now and then, asking me to go rearrange things so they get dry.  That helps; but for as much as we paid for that dryer, I really think it ought to have some robotic hands reach out and do that itself.

Meanwhile, just look what was going on in Westcliffe, Colorado.  They got over a foot of snow.  Of course, they are at 7,867 feet of elevation.

Supper that night was corn on the cob and pork spare ribs from one of Teddy’s hogs.  I cooked the ribs in the Instant Pot.  We had yogurt and applesauce, too, with watermelon and peach Alō Aloe Vera juice to drink.  It has aloe vera pulp in it, and is soooo good.

The corn on the cob got done quite a while before the ribs were done cooking.  I was half starved half to death, so I just hauled off and ate it.

“Did you leave Larry some corn on the cob?” asked one of Larry’s cousins.  “If not, it is best not to leave evidence.”  hee hee

“I cooked enough for both of us,” I assured her, “and left his share in the pan.  😄”

Still hungry, I went on a search for more food, and found a forgotten bag of those little ‘Cutie’ oranges in the refrigerator drawer.  Mmmm, it was juicy and sweet.  I had half a cup of cottage cheese... a few bites of a banana... and a slice of Colby Jack cheese.  I was going to be plumb full before the ribs were done!  Or maybe I’d be hungry again by then.

(I didn’t eat the whole bag of oranges, in case you were wondering.  Just one.  One little orange.)

I got a note from one of my weather apps telling me that there have been over 670 tornadoes so far in 2024.  That’s close to the record, for these first 4 ½ months of the year.

Friday, I went to visit Loren.  I woke him from a nap when I got there, and he had a hard time staying awake thereafter.  He was really pleased with a new cap I took him with the Walker Foundation emblem on the front, but he kept trying to put it on over the knit hat he was already wearing.  It took a lot of explanation and directives on my part to get him to remove the hat before donning the cap.  He fell asleep good and proper after about half an hour of visiting.  I roused him enough to tell him goodbye, and then headed for home.  

Here’s what the tornado of April 26 did to the big trees along one of the roads I like to drive northwest of Omaha.  And look, right behind that row of big, sturdy trees is a thin row of much younger trees that were left unscathed.  Though I’m so sorry for people whose homes were destroyed, I’m thankful that the tornado veered north and did not hit the nursing home where Loren is.  The second picture was taken immediately north of the home, as I was leaving.

When I got home, I made stew with leftover pork spare ribs (it took forever to pick the meat off the bones and pull off the fat and gristle), potatoes (which I cooked in the Instant Pot before adding to the pot of stew), Normandy vegetables (yellow squash, zucchini, broccoli, and cauliflower), and diced tomatoes with their accompanying tomato juice.

I released the pressure from the Instant Pot as soon as cooking time was over in order to add the potatoes to the stew, and created Steamboat Geyser.

The stew was too tomatoey, so I added an entire bag of peas, green beans, and corn, and more water.  Still too tomatoey, so I added a pinch of baking soda, and about 3 tablespoons of brown sugar.  Still too tomatoey.  I added three bay leaves.  A little more water.  Now it was almost good.  I should’ve cooked one more potato.  But maybe a dab more salt and more simmering would be the fix.

Tomato-based stew, except for chili, is never my favorite.  And I’m not too fond of Normandy-blend vegetables.  So what did I expect would happen when I threw all this stuff into a pot?!  As I’ve often told the girls, your dish will only be as good as the worst-tasting ingredient.  Make each ingredient so good you want to eat it by itself, and then when you put it all together, it will be totally scrumptious.

Ah, well.  I was pretty sure Larry would like it.  But I didn’t want three days’-worth of leftovers of something I didn’t like all that much!

After an hour of simmering, I tasted the soup. 

Ahhh.  It was highly improved!

I dished it out, added Colby Jack cheese – annnd we had a winner.  It was good.  Now I was actually hoping there would be leftovers! – stew is unfailingly better on Day Two, when all the ingredients and spices have amalgamated.

Hannah and Joanna came visiting that evening, bringing me Mother’s Day gifts. 

This bouquet of peonies is from Bobby and Hannah and family.  But... would you believe, those are fresh-cut... paper?  It’s a card, and was folded flat in a big envelope!  I unfolded it, and slid the flowers into place.  Now, that’s a bouquet that won’t make Larry sneeze!

Joanna gave me a coffee mug that looks like a little terra cotta planting pot on a saucer (which can be used as a lid; upside down, it fits the top of the cup perfectly), and a spoon shaped like a gardening spade, with the phrase “Let your heart rejoice,” from I Chronicles 18:10, engraved into the ‘blade’.

Well after dark, I got a text from Teddy:  “Did you see the Northern Lights?”  He attached a photo showing a purple sky with the moon to the west.

Aaaaaa!  We were so busy visiting, we had forgotten all about the Aurora Borealis! 

“We’re heading northwest nowww!” I answered Teddy.

“It might be light by the time you get to Alaska, though,” he advised.

Bratty kid.

Hannah and Joanna scurried off to their vehicle, while I dashed for shoes, purse, jacket, and camera.  Larry grabbed his coat, and off we went.

My pictures didn’t hold a candle to some I saw posted online.  After I saw this one (below) from Alaska, I asked Larry, “Why did I even bother?!”

Hannah and Joanna also headed northwest from our house.  We were in the same vicinity, but probably a mile or two apart.

“I just heard a bird sleep tweeting,” Hannah texted me.

Probably all the odd traffic and people on foot wandering the hillsides awoke the poor birdie, and he was questioning everyone’s sanity.

I got too cold to stay out there very long; I should’ve put on a headband.

Looking south, we could see nothing but total darkness in the sky; but both Hannah’s and Joanna’s cameras picked up a deep burgundy hue.

Even looking northward, only a dim green belt could be seen with the naked eye; but with cameras set to lengthy exposures, purples, reds, and greens could be seen.

I’m spoiled, I think, from seeing the Aurora Borealis one time when I was with my parents, way up near Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada.  The Lights seemed to come billowing and rolling down from the sky like huge velvet curtains, rippling from high in the atmosphere right down to the horizon in brilliant shades of scarlet, indigo blue, teal and turquoise, bright purple and lavender, vibrant green, gold, and brilliant orange.  Daddy pulled our vehicle and camper over to the side of the road, and we got out and stood there for maybe half an hour, just gazing at that amazing sight.  It was awestriking, it really was.

There was no traffic at all, the whole time we were parked there.

Here’s a shot someone got on their ranch near Bradshaw, Nebraska.

The photo below was taken somewhere in Norway.  I sent it to Joanna, and she replied, “All we have is flat landscape and the occasional stop sign to make things look fancy on the ground; they get a whole mountain.  No fair.  😂”

“I’ve said that ever since I was wee little!” I told her.  “I tried my bestest to get my father to move us all, church, kit, and caboodle, to the mountains.”  (Didn’t want to leave the church out; it was full of family and friends.)

Daddy, of course, tried to explain the impracticality of such a thing.  But no matter what he said, I thought the whole drawback was that we couldn’t move the church, the building itself.  

I informed him, “They make helicopters that can do it, and they use big seatbelts to go all the way around the church!”

Joanna laughed and told me, “When I was 7 or so, after we went to Estes Park, I used to imagine running away from home.  Not because I didn’t like my parents; I just wanted to go see the mountains.  I figured maybe a day or two of walking through cornfields would probably get me right up to the bottom of the mountains, and then I could walk back home before anyone got too worried about me.  😅”

Before going to bed, I did one more thing:  I cleaned out the weather stripping and lower casing of the two big windows in the kitchen.  The windows now slide up and down much smoother.  Astonishing.  😏

Saturday, Levi, who has been learning German, wrote to me, “Ich habe den Regenschirm gegessen.”  He included the meaning:  “I ate the umbrella.”

“A very useful phrase,” I assured him, “in case you are ever in Germany and mistake an umbrella for Käsespätzle.”

Speaking of other languages...

One time Joseph came out of the shower (sauna, more like – he’d crank up the heat, and stay in there long enough to make a London fog), and he’d forgotten to comb his hair after exiting the shower and rubbing the towel over his head, and his hair, which was quite thick, was standing up on end and every which way.

Caleb, who was barely 2, turned and looked at him, and then said soberly, “Doeshuph!  You has a tookey on you head!” 

His sisters had told Caleb often enough that he had a rooster tail.  Either he got roosters and turkeys mixed up, or he thought Joseph’s hairdo was way worse than a mere rooster tail.

Anyway, everyone burst out laughing, and from then on, if someone had a rooster tail, we informed them, “You has a tookey on you head!”

Then Victoria came along... got old enough to talk... and said the same thing to a brother or two with a giggle, “You has a tookey!” (she often abbreviated her sentences) (Teddy once told her that he was going to lead his around on a leash) – and it didn’t occur to us that she actually didn’t know what the saying was supposed to be. 

So one day when she was in kindergarten, she came home laughing her head off, because one of the girls in her class had told one of the boys, “You have a rooster tail!”

“Hahahahaha!” laughed Victoria, “a rooster tail, hee hee hee!  A rooster tail.”

She looked so amazed when I informed her that that was the real way to say it.

That morning, I filled the bird feeders, added water to the birdbaths, shined up the bathroom, and then, as soon as I ate breakfast, I headed upstairs to start quilting the Farmall Scenes quilt.

Some time around 8:30 p.m., I happened to glance at the window.  I was missing a beautiful sunset!  I dashed for my camera, and got one good shot.  Just one.  Here it is.

We had leftover stew for supper.  As expected, it had improved with age.  It wasn’t too tomatoey at all; it was exactly right.

I’ve been worrying about those cute pictures I took of Hester when she was 2 or 3 years old, playing in the toddler-sized little kitchen under the stairs in our other house, ever since I tried to find them last week and couldn’t.  I can usually quickly find any old picture I set out to find, because I’ve labeled them all carefully!  On the off-chance I didn’t have it labeled properly, I went through all the albums (on my external hard drive) from the proper timeframe – twice.  Thrice.  And didn’t find them.

Well, what happened to them?!  Did that folder get deleted???  Good grief, if I had to find that album again, out of all my 130 albums... and I did not put them in order when I scanned the pictures; I don’t have space to do that upstairs in my little office.  I was just scanning albums as I came to them in one bin after another, then putting them back in the bins and restacking the bins.

But then I happened to think, What about those three short, fat albums in that old headboard in the basement that I found after I was all done scanning pictures and giving hard drives to the kids for Christmas of 2022??

I promptly stopped what I was doing and trotted right down there to look.

And there they were.  All the pictures of Hester playing in the little kitchen I’d set up under the stairs – and more, all the six-month pictures of Lydia!  They weren’t the best pictures, and I wound up having more taken of her at K-Mart (which weren’t much better), because she had a tear duct in her left eye that was not draining properly, and her eye was a little bit swollen for two or three weeks right at that time.  But I sure wouldn’t want to lose those pictures! 

Anyway, now I’m glad I have not yet scanned those few old Swiney family pictures I found with some of Loren and Janice’s things.  They are in an album that surely must’ve been intended for me, since there were two identical ones.  Mama probably gave it to them to give to me when she finished putting them together, and it somehow got put away with theirs.  So now I have three more small albums to scan.  I probably should scan some of the pictures we got for Christmas from the kids, too; but I’ll only do that if I’m feeling really, really ambitious the day I scan these others.  I’ll do it as soon as I finish Warren’s quilt. 

I’m so very glad I found those pictures of Hester!  She was about 2 ½.

Here’s a photo from about the same year, from an album I did scan.  Hester is just past 2 ½, and Lydia is about 8 months.

This ruler that I am using for one of the borders on Warren’s quilt is called ‘Ninja Star’, and was designed by Julia Quiltoff.  It’s a fun ruler, and can make some really beautiful designs.  But I think I just used it to make a series of gnome hats marching along the border.  🤣

Sunday morning between our Sunday School and church services, Andrew came to tell me how excited Keira had been to have something (the crystal egg) to give her Mama for Mother’s Day.  Andrew had opened the box so she could see what it was, then taped it shut again and helped her put it into a gift bag.  She then secretly ‘hid’ it under her bed – and instructed Hester not to look under there.  😄

Later, Hester told me she really liked it.  (I’ll bet Keira likes it more, whataya bet?)

After church, Hester gave me a lily-of-the-valley candle.  It smells so good.  Lily-of-the-valley might very well be my favorite flower.  For sure, my favorite scent!

Lydia asked us to stop by and pick up a plant.  It was a hibiscus from Todd and Dorcas, who live in eastern Tennessee, and Lydia, who works in Hy-Vee’s pharmacy, had gotten it from the Hy-Vee floral department at Dorcas’ request.

Jeremy and Lydia gave me a Dipladenia, along with a set of hammered copper mugs and a pair of Sherpa-lined slipper socks.

Keith asked if I had received the gift they had sent me.  I had not, though it was supposed to have already arrived.  I looked it up, and discovered that the package had gotten to Omaha May 9^th – and then there was no more information about it until the 11^th, when it had unfathomably arrived at JFK Airport in Bethpage, New York!  “Arrived late at next facility,” it said on the USPS tracking site.  “ETA Wednesday thru Friday.”

“Well, I hope it’s not manna, then,” I remarked to Keith.

“No,” he laughed.

I texted Lydia to inquire about the plant from Todd and Dorcas.  “This is a beautiful hibiscus!  Is it tropical, or a hardy perennial that will overwinter if planted in Nebraska?”

“I’ll have to ask them at Hy-Vee,” Lydia answered, “but I don’t know if they’ll know that.  The man who ordered them probably doesn’t even know what they’re called.  Does it have a tag?” 

I went out onto the front porch and lifted it from the pot in which we’d placed it – and “Yep, there’s a tag,” I answered Lydia.  “It says... are you ready?  ‘Hibiscus bush’.”

“Perfect, lol,” she responded.

One time I needed to know what kind of a flower I’d given my late sister-in-law Janice.  I’d gotten it at a nursery somewhere.  She’d lost the plastic label, and needed to know how to care for it, and if she could plant it outside.  I could not remember the name of the plant.  One night soon thereafter, we were leaving Hy-Vee, and I was delighted to spot the very same plant there in the Floral Department.  I picked it up, looked at the tag – and it said, and I quote, “Blooming plant.”

Yeah, thanks.  I knew that.

We were almost ready to leave for last evening’s church service when we heard thunder, and noticed a few raindrops landing on the porch.  We grabbed Bibles and purse and coffee mug and rushed out the door.

Halfway to town, a deluge hit.  It was pouring so hard, we could barely see the road, despite the fact that the windshield wipers were on full blast.  A blinding lightning bolt zigzagged its way to the ground, and thunder crashed.

By the time church was over, the rain had mostly stopped.  Only a few sprinkles fell now and then.

Kurt and Victoria invited us over for lunch.  Victoria cooked a big panful of mixed vegetables with little sausages and eggs, and gave us slices of her sourdough bread.  We gave them a big jug of Tropicana orange juice.  Violet must’ve really liked it, because she gulped down a glassful and asked for more.  I poured her glass only a third full this time, warning her that if she had too much, she’d get a stomachache.  I read what it said on the jug to the girls, including the words, ‘with more pulp,’ and explained what ‘pulp’ is.  Carolyn began calling it ‘pulps’. 

“Just ‘pulp’,” I said, “without an ‘s’ at the end.”

Then I told them the story of Caleb and the orange juice ‘with lots of pulp’, which, sadly, we can’t find in any local stores these days.  Caleb was about 4, so it would’ve been in about 1997, when Victoria was a baby.  We came home from the grocery store, and could hardly wait until all the groceries were put away before we poured cups of orange juice for everyone.  We had found a jug ‘with lots of pulp’!

Caleb had never had ‘lots of pulp’ before.

Larry handed him a cupful.

He got a drink – and immediately went to making all sorts of funny faces.

“What’s the matter?” asked Larry, trying to keep a straight face.

Caleb, nose a-wrinkle, picking at something on his teeth, said distastefully, “I have germs all over my teeth!”

Larry (and several of the rest of us) gave up on keeping straight faces.

Carolyn and Violet, who are terribly fond of their Uncle Caleb, were delighted with this story about him.

Inexplicably, the package from Keith and Korrine that was supposedly delayed until Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday arrived today.  It’s a tall, insulated mug, with each of the children’s names written on it, all the way around.  At the bottom, it says, “Mama’s love grows here.”

I wrote them a thank-you note:  “I really like it, and have been needing a new mug to take with me in the car.  The one I’ve been using has a button one must push each time one gets a drink, and my fingers don’t much like that job.  😃”

The mug has two metal straws, one curved, and one straight; and there’s a little cleaning brush with it, too.  Sometimes I make a drink from powdered Celsius or Crystal Lite, so the straws will be perfect.

“The box looks like they used it for a chock for their airplane wheels,” I told Keith.  “So when there was a slight ‘tinkle’ as I was opening it, I thought, Uh, oh... – but it was just the metal straws.”

Korrine said she didn’t realize it was coming from China.

“Via Timbuktu,” I added. 

That has happened a handful of times, with things I ordered or that someone was sending me – it got to Omaha, then headed off to the east coast.

Once it was a ‘memory quilt’ a lady wanted me to quilt for her, and the fabrics she had used in that quilt were clothing items that had belonged to a little girl who had drowned, and therefore irreplaceable.  We sure were biting our nails for a while – and there was absolutely no record of its progress for 3-4 days.

This morning Lydia told me that she’d asked the people in the Floral Department, and they said the hibiscus is tropical.  So I will keep it in the big pot on the porch.

I got one more big flowerbed weeded and neatened this morning, and transplanted four large hostas.  The many hostas I have all around the yard (hundreds of them!) are all from the half a dozen hostas a farm lady gave me when we first moved out here 21 years ago.  The same with the daylilies and Asiatic lilies, and the Autumn Joy sedum.

I have two different kinds of hostas.  One has large, plain green leaves, and the large lavender flowers bloom in late summer.  The other has white-edged leaves, and the smaller white flowers bloom in early to midsummer.  The lavender flowers smell a lot like lilacs, and the white flowers smell a lot like lily-of-the-valley.  Hummingbirds are usually not around when the lavender flowers are blooming; but they love the white flowers.  Sphinx moths love both kinds.

Last night’s downpour was hard on the hibiscus blossoms, but there are many buds that will be opening soon.  It looked slightly bedraggled this morning.

After an hour and fifteen minutes of weeding and transplanting, I tried out Dr. Teal’s lavender bubble bath with Epsom salt.  Good-smelling stuff!

For breakfast, I had some scrumptious banana bread with walnuts which Hester gave me yesterday, along with the lily-of-the-valley scented candle.  Uh, that is, I did not eat the candle; I mean, Hester gave me both things yesterday.  English, tsk.  I added one of those ‘Cutie’ oranges to the menu, and thereby had a perfectly fine and dandy breakfast.  (It was lunchtime by then, but I had breakfast!)

By afternoon, some of those hibiscus buds had opened, and the plant looked hale and hearty again.  The rain was good for it, despite the fact that it messed up the previous blossoms.  I wrote to thank Dorcas and to send her a picture of the flower. 

She sent me a picture of one of her hens that’s sitting on eggs.  Two have hatched so far.  Eight others have hatched from Dorcas’ incubator.

“You need this plaque!” I told Dorcas.

“That fits me,” she laughed.  “It just needs something about goats, too.  😆”

I hunted around, but couldn’t find one that mentioned all three things on one plaque.

Maybe I’ll have to make one up and special-order it!

“I had to feed the animals fast today,” said Dorcas.  “It started raining on me while I was out there.  I had no idea it was going to rain today!”

I promptly sent these pictures:

Larry went to town for a belt for his mower a little while ago – and came home with Royal New York Cheesecake Blizzards.  Yummy.

And now it is bedtime.  Tomorrow I shall quilt!  Lord willing, that is.  As James wrote, “Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain:  Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow.  For what is your life?  It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.  For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.”

I have loved those two little words, “Go to!”, in Bible stories ever since I can remember. 

In the story of Babel, when those people supposed they could get themselves to heaven on their own steam, they said, “Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly.”  And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.  And they said, “Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven.”

They had forgotten all about God – but He hadn’t forgotten about them.  Here’s the part I particularly liked: 

And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.  And the Lord said, “Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.  Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.”  So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

The Lord’s “go to” had a whole lot more power behind it than those wicked people’s “go to”, didn’t it! 

I wonder what that tower looked like, and how high it got?  The people in that day and age were more advanced than we might imagine.  But no matter how sophisticated it was, it was pretty laughable that they actually thought they could build it ‘to heaven’.

I remember how the small children in my Sunday School class laughed when I told them, “Imagine someone asking for a hammer, holding out his hand – and winding up with a crowbar in it.”  😆

And now, “Go to!”  To bed, that is.

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