Last
week, the Aurora Borealis was once again visible in our area. (Photo taken by Brandon Hammons, a local
photographer.)
Last
Monday, even though it was a nice day, weathermen on the radio were warning
people to be careful of fully-snow-covered roads a little ways to our north,
where a foot of snow still covered the fields, and the wind had blown it across
the roads.
Meanwhile,
about 60 miles to our west, there are around a million Sandhill cranes
migrating through.
On a calm day, the rattling call of a single
crane can be heard up to 5 miles away. You should hear the cacophony when a giant
flock, several hundred thousand strong, leaves the Platte River in the morning,
or arrives in the evening to settle back onto the sandbars and the water.
The geese are migrating through,
too. We often see long V’s of them
overhead. I don’t even need to look up
to tell whether it’s Canada geese or snow geese, as the snow geese have a
high-pitched call.
I have a ‘Birders Life-List’ notebook
that I got about 35 years ago in which I can list all the kinds of birds I’ve
seen. I have hundreds listed. Wish I’d have had the book when I was very
young, traveling hither and yon with my parents! Mama used to point out all kinds of birds to
me.
When I was in 11th-grade
biology class, we had a chapter or two on birds. One of our tests was to name the birds
pictured on the pages we were given. I
didn’t even have to study; my mother had long before taught me all those birds
and hundreds more besides.
One year I got my mother a big,
beautiful hardcover book full of gorgeous photos of birds. I could hardly wait to give it to her for
Christmas.
She got me the identical book.
After opening mine, I said, “I’m
delighted you gave me this book, because I could hardly bear to wrap that one
up (pointing at hers) and give it away!” 😆 She laughed and laughed.
This photo was taken by Anthony Hixon
Photography. He captioned it, “If you’re the short one in the crowd, you might have to
hop into the air to see what everyone is looking at!”
Tuesday, the temperature rose into the mid 60s, and no more snow could be
seen from my upstairs windows.
There were a lot of birds at my feeders. The female red-winged blackbirds were there
with the males, too, which probably meant they had not yet started
nesting. When they are nesting, I don’t
see them. I wonder if the males bring
food to the females like some other birds do?
I should look that up.
Annnd... here’s the answer to that:
While the female incubates the eggs,
the male may bring food to her on the nest. Once
the chicks hatch, both parents, including the male, feed the young insects,
seeds, and fruits until they are able to fledge and feed themselves.
The female red-winged blackbird is
responsible for building the nest and incubating the eggs. The male, in addition to helping with food
provisioning, aggressively defends the territory.
Their diet consists mainly of
insects, especially in summer, and seeds, including those of grasses, weeds,
and waste grain, as well as some berries and small fruits.
So now we know.
A friend posted a picture of a shiny blue
Jeep Wrangler that belongs to her grandson.
I oohed and ahhed over it, for I am quite partial to Jeeps. We’ve had Cherokees and Commanders, and they’ve
been excellent vehicles. We sold my
brother Loren’s bright red Jeep Wrangler to my great-nephew when we were
cleaning out Loren’s house and garages back in 2022, after he went to Prairie
Meadows. We gave him a good price, as I
know Loren himself would’ve done, had he understood. I’m happy every time I see him driving that
vehicle.
Another friend who likes Jeeps told
about renting a Cherokee. The rental
agent pronounced it “Cha-row-kee” instead of “Chair-o-kee”.
My father used to have Peugeots in the
1970s. That’s Peugeot as in “poo·zhow”
– but we didn’t know better back then, and pronounced it “POO-jo”. But that’s better than the man at our favorite
gas station, who would say “PEW-jo”, no matter how often we told
him how to say it (or at least how we thought it should be said).
When I was little, I called it “Pee-yoo-gee
(hard g)-ott” until my father was no longer amused. (I had a tendency to run things into the
ground, heh heh.)
I finished my friend’s Anne of Green
Gables quilt that evening.
My longarm isn’t behaving quite right.
I keep getting ‘motor stall’
notifications popping up on the screen. So
far, I just press ‘Start’ again, and it continues. But it won’t work forever, I don’t imagine. It sounds sorta clanky, too. Tension changes in the middle of a row for no
good reason. Frustrating.
I posted pictures and description of the
quilt on Facebook, and got this response from somebody:
“That sounds like an absolutely stunning quilt! The mix of free-motion and rulerwork must have
added such beautiful detail, and those thread choices sound perfect for
complementing the design. Your recipient
is so lucky to receive such a thoughtful and heirloom-worthy quilt.”
Ummmm... Okay. Did that person even look at the
pictures?? I have so many questions
about a remark like that. 😅
We had corn on the cob for supper that
night, with yogurt, grapes, and pecan sandies to go with it.
Wednesday afternoon while in the laundry
room, I happened to look out onto the back deck, and there was a whistlepig (aka
woodchuck) on the back deck! He was roly-poly, with glistening fur and
muscles (or fat) that ripple as he waddles along, sniffing all over the place
for tidbits of seeds and suet that the birds have dropped. He had a
suspicion that someone was at the back patio door, but I held bolt still, and
he just wasn’t quite sure. So he went on
sniffing and snuffling, and then headed for the stairs.
However, the sun was shining down warmly at
the top of those stairs, and as soon as the piggy’s paws came in contact with
that warm wood, he paused, then plopped himself right down on the planks and
sprawled out, the better to feel the warmth on his tummy.
After a bit, he regathered himself and headed
down the steps, which he navigates with more skill than the raccoons, oddly
enough. (Photo from the University of
Maryland Extension.)
I washed all our bedding that day – sheets,
pillowcases, the fleece blanket, and the quilt, too. I even washed our robes and nightclothes.
It was really nice to climb into bed that
night with clean sheets, blanket, and quilt.
While the washer and dryer worked away,
I worked on Jeffrey’s ‘Safari Animals’ quilt.
By 6:00 p.m., I was all ready for
church, an hour and 15 minutes early, so as to be out of Larry’s way when he came
skidding in to get ready. I was wearing
a brown paisley rayon skirt, a cream-colored knit vest with paisley designs
hand embroidered in burgundy, gold-brown, and olive green down the front, and a
thin long-sleeved sweater in light brown. The sweater has a rouched collar with three
little brown buttons, rouched shoulder seams, and it’s 67% silk and 33% poly
knit. I totally forgot I had it, so that
was the first time I wore it. It’s soooo
soft and nice. It’s a Ralph Lauren
brand, and I got it really cheap on eBay a couple of years ago.
Larry came driving up at a quarter
after six, a good half an hour earlier than usual, giving me hope that maybe we
wouldn’t be late after all.
But, as usual, we got there with no time to spare – because Larry took a
nap in the tub.
After church, we picked up a grocery
order from Walmart. Among other things, I
had ordered both green and red seedless grapes. They substituted (or made a mistake) and gave
me seeded red grapes. Larry
unsuspectingly took a baggie full of them to work with him the next day – and
then brought them home again, because he can’t drive a big truck and cope with
grape seeds at the same time. But,
worse, he can’t manage grape seeds with his dentures.
This meant that I had an entire bag of
sweet red globe grapes all to myself. Just look at my sad face.
I’m munching on them right now. Mmmm, they’re good.
Thursday, I went to Loren’s bank to make a deposit, and then to the tax
accountant. The accountant fee was so
high, there will be barely anything left of the refund. It was quite a bit more than they’d charged
before, even for that year where we sold Loren’s home and vehicles and he
entered the nursing home. Siggghhhh...
But it had to be done, and I couldn’t
do it myself. And this will be the very
last time, thankfully.
As I stood at the front desk signing
one paper after another, who should come walking down the hall but my
son-in-law Andrew, who works there.
“You look familiar!” he greeted me,
and then invited me back to see his office when I finished signing papers.
It’s a
very nice office, with leather chairs, pale pearl grey walls, and a big wooden
desk. I could clearly see the touch of
daughter Hester’s décor here and there. Andrew even has a hand-crafted, antique ‘granddaughter
clock’ in his office.
As I
looked at it, he laughed, “I didn’t even know a ‘granddaughter clock’ was a
thing!”
After arriving home, I texted him and asked if
he would please send me a picture of it.
Here it is. That’s the
original finish. And it’s right on time,
too.
See the leather briefcase/satchel
hanging on the coat hook there on the left?
Hester found that at a consignment store somewhere. It’s like new, and a high-dollar brand; but
she got it for just a few dollars.
I needed
to take the tax returns to the post office (they can’t e-file Federal tax
papers when there’s a Personal Representative paper attached, which is silly; it
could be sent digitally, just like everything else, but... 🙄); however, it was
3:30, right when school gets out, and I knew downtown would be a melee; so I
came home instead. Traffic doesn’t
bother me. But traffic plus Benign
Essential Blepharospasm does bother me. I like to leave plenty of space between my
car and other cars, in case my eyes do a long blink right when somebody
suddenly slams on the brakes. ‘Plenty of
space between cars’ is not to be had, though, at 3:30 p.m. in downtown
Columbus.
It was a
good thing I came home, because in putting papers into envelopes, I found a
page they’d neglected to have me sign. I
signed it, and then, since my eyes were still behaving fairly well, and the
3:30 rush would be over, I hopped back into the car, returned to town, and
mailed the papers.
It was a pretty day – 71°, sunny, not
too breezy, and on its way up to 79°, a nice day for doing errands, if errands
had to be done.
When I got
home, I headed straight upstairs to my quilting studio to work on Jeffrey’s
quilt. I turned on my multitude of
lights, my iron, and my sewing machine, setting everything the way I wanted it
for the paper-piecing I would be doing.
The electricity went off.
What in the world?
It came back on in less than a minute. I turned the iron and sewing machine back on
and reset everything. This time, the
lights stayed on.
Maybe it was caused by repair work on the
lines throughout the eastern part of the state.
It was only today that the last of the customers who’d lost power during
the March 19 blizzard got it back.
I sewed for five hours, and got 32 of these three-piece
units put together for the Safari Animals quilt. That made a total of 74, with 106 to go.
Friday, the temperature got up to 89°.
Quite high, for mid-Nebraska in late
March. And the weatherman was telling us
to expect snow by the early-morning hours on Sunday. 😄
I got 61 of those three-piece units
done Friday. It took 7 hours. There were 45 left.
Saturday was daughter-in-law Maria’s
31st birthday. We gave her a quilt-block apron I made some time
ago, and some Wild Cherry hand soap . The blocks on the apron are called
‘Autumn Seaside’.
That morning, a friend happened to
mention something about the song Standing on the Promises, and I was reminded of when
Joseph was a little guy, about four years old, boisterously singing that song
as he came hop-bounce-trotting down the hall.
He walked into our bedroom, where I was folding clothes, singing away.
He got to the chorus: “Standing,
standing! ♪ ♫ Standing on the promises of God, my Savior! ♫ ♪ ”
He paused and looked down.
“Except right now, I’m standing on Daddy’s
socks,” he said.
He looked surprised when his mother and
several of his siblings burst out laughing.
The European starlings are back! The maple trees are full of them, all making
their funny squawky, squeaky, metallic calls.
Listening to them, one just has to wonder: In view of the lovely, melodious tunes many
(maybe even most) of our native birds warble, why did Eugene
Schieffelin think we needed these birds?
Well, we know why; but it sure wasn’t
a very good reason:
On March 6, 1890, a wealthy socialite named Eugene Schieffelin released one hundred common starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) into
Central Park in New York City. The
release was part of Schieffelin’s decidedly eccentric effort to introduce to
the United States all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare’s works.
Some people take zealous ignorance to whole new levels.
It had rained all night, and the rain
continued most of the day, while the temperature dropped.
In texting with my friend and distant
cousin-by-marriage who lives in a nursing home in another state, she remarked
regretfully, “In spite of being as careful as I could, I got a drop of tomato
soup on my clean blue top.”
“Tomato soup is like baby pabulum,” I
told her. “One drip can spread all over
an entire person! haha”
If you knew how many times I thought
the baby was opening his mouth to take a bite — but in actuality, Baby was
opening his mouth to get a nice big breath in order to sneeze!
And of course babies think that all
your yelping and diving and dodging is done specifically for their
entertainment.
I finished the last 45 three-piece
units for this block. The name of the
block (minus sashing and cornerstones) is ‘Cock’s Comb’. Good thing I switched to red, ay?
Next, I add the three larger triangles
to those units, after which four units will be combined to make one block. There are 45 blocks. Then the sashing and cornerstones... borders
around the animal prints... It’ll be a while. I have 28 hours in the cutting and piecing so
far.
Early Sunday morning, I looked out the window and saw sleet and snow on the
back deck, just as the weatherman had said would happen.
When we left for church at 9:25 a.m., it was 26° with a windchill of
19°. The calendar says it’s Springtime;
but I dressed for Winter.
This morning I cleaned the bathroom,
filled the bird feeders, made some Cinnamon Hazelnut Crème coffee, and then curled
my hair while I sipped coffee, read email, posts, and news. I kept getting delayed, because as I curl my
hair, I stand right beside a window that looks out onto the back deck, and the
birds were putting on a show. There were
a couple of male red-winged blackbirds, a common grackle, American goldfinches,
a red-bellied woodpecker, English sparrows, house finches, and a robin or two. The
grackle and the woodpecker were sharing the suet feeder, one on either side;
but they were extremely leery of each other, and kept craning their necks to
peer around the other side and peek at one another.
The pine siskins are long gone, and
there aren’t as many juncos as there were just last week; they’ve headed north
to their nesting grounds. Somewhere in
the far fir trees, I heard Eurasian collared doves – oh! I just heard a bobwhite quail! First one this year.
Hmmm... I think that may have been a
song sparrow I heard next; it was a little too far away to be sure, and the
red-wingers were nearly drowning it out. Since many of the female birds are MIA, I’m
sure they’re nesting now. It won’t be
long, and they’ll be bringing fledglings to the feeders. 🐣🐥🐦
I barely got that note posted, and a pine
siskin landed on one of the feeders! I
guess they haven’t all headed north, after all.
I’ve always loved Geography and World
Studies. When I was in school,
particularly grade school and Jr. High, if we studied a country or a certain
area of the world, I’d go to the public library and check out more books on
that country, because I needed to know more, more, more! I loved the big picture books on various
countries that could be found at our library, too.
Nowadays, I like to ‘go traveling’ via
Google Maps now and then. If I spot
something in the news about a location I know little about, I promptly check it
out. A few minutes ago, upon noting that
Denali Park, Alaska, had been issued a Winter Weather Advisory, I took a quick
survey of weather in other mountain ranges throughout the world.
Once I get started, it’s down the rabbit
hole I go, with one thing leading to another... and then another... and another.
I wound up in Jodhpur, the second
largest city of the western Indian state of Rajasthan. This, because of the Aravalli Range, a
mountain range that stretches from southwest to northeast across the state. In Jodhpur is the historic Mehrangarh Fort.
Looking at the many beautiful pictures
of the Fort, the Jaswant Thada Mausoleum in the foreground, and other locations
where tourists often go, I thought, Yes, but I’ll bet the greater part of
this city, with its population of nearly 2 million, is not that pretty.
I pulled up Google Maps, chose a spot
that looked densely populated, zoomed in, clicked Street View – and lookie
there!! A quilt hangs from an upper balcony
on 4th A Road!
I switched from admiring mountains to
admiring handmade quilts, and learned that “Jaipuri Razai” is a type of quilt
made in this part of India, and it’s “known for its lightweight feel, intricate
stitching, fine cotton fabric, wool batting, and vibrant, traditional
Rajasthani patterns,” so they say.
How ’bout that. As they say, “All mountain ranges lead to
quilts!” Or something like that.
Addendum: Okay, having now done larnt
how they print beautiful bed sheets in Sanganer Jaipur, 200 miles to the east,
and having seen some of those sheets and compared them to the Jaipuri Razai
quilts, I’ve come to the opinion that what’s hanging on that balustrade is
probably a sheet, rather than a quilt.
Video:
Making printed
bed sheets in Sanganer Jaipur
And there’s your rabbit hole for the
day.
You’re welcome! 😂😆😄
Here’s a handmade Jaipuri Razai quilt. (Why is the edge so messy?)
Here’s a funny: As I was ‘strolling’ my way down the street
in Jodhpur, turning onto side streets at various whims, I suddenly spotted a cow! I clicked my way closer... found yet
another... and then one more. I’d
forgotten that India holds cows sacred, lets them roam whithersoever they will,
and does not kill them or, for the most part, eat beef. (Or pork, for that matter.)
The problem with this is that once
cows get old and stop producing milk, they are nothing but a draw on a farmer’s
finances, and he will often abandon his cow any ol’ where. Furthermore, bull calves, since they don’t
produce milk and farmers are generally restricted from butchering them for
meat, are sometimes just abandoned and left to die.
So much for being ‘sacred’.
If you think a wandering cow in the
middle of a city with a multi-million population can find enough food, well,
you’d do well to zoom in on pictures of those animals and start counting ribs
and vertebrae.
Beliefs that don’t honor God sure do
take people far askew from anything reasonable.
This seems to be one of the nicer
residential areas of the city, the skinny streets notwithstanding.
Thinking those pretty India sheets
might work for quilt backings, I looked on eBay, and found some. Look at this description:
Package
Set Contents: Bedsheet Combo - 1
Bedsheet with 2 Pillow Cover,
Material:
Cotton, Thread Count: 144
Size:
Bed sheets: 93 inch x 84 inch (Popularly known as 90*100)
or 232 cm x 218 cm, Pillow Cover: 17
inch x 27 inch or 42 cm x 68 cm
Fast
colours - No fading of color on washing, Skin friendly fabric with vibrant
colors
Bedsheets
king size bed cotton for double bed / queen bed
Rajasthani
Jaipuri bedsheets for double bed king size gets smoother with every wash.
Allll righty then. A thread count of 144 ... not very high
quality. But at least it’s ‘skin
friendly’. So is it for a double
bed, or a king-sized bed?! There’s
a difference. 🙄 A double bed is 54 inches wide by 75
inches long. A king is 76 inches wide by 80 inches long.
And what do you think of this description:
“93 inch x 84 inch (Popularly known as
90*100)” ?
I’m 5’2”, popularly known as
5’10”. >>...snerk...<<
I checked Amazon. Found some, and clicked on one after another
that had no reviews. Finally found one
with a small number of reviews, all of them bad. The sheets are shorter and narrower than
advertised; they shrink; they lose their color and the color ‘intermixes’. The fabric is poor quality, and the seams
ravel out.
Guess I’ll continue buying fabric
locally, or from Marshall Dry Goods, or from various other fabric stores where
I like to shop online.
When I was a wee little girl, my father would
tease me by suddenly popping into my route as I went rushing from one place to
another (I never have thought there was any time to spare, hee hee),
then brace himself firmly and announce, “I’m the Rock of Gibraltar!” while I
shoved on him with all my might and main. Before long, he’d pretend that I had tipped
him right over, and off I’d go again, pell-mell, giggling as I went. (And of course it wasn’t long before I asked
my mother to take me to the library, because I had learned, to my surprise,
that this ‘Rock of Gibraltar’ was indeed real, and I needed to know
exactly what and where it was. 😂 )
I like to play my piano for a little while
each day. I play old favorites I’ve
known for years – and a few new ones, besides.
New to me, that is.
They’re not really new, as they’re in an old hymnbook Hester gave
me. Many were written by favorite
hymnwriters and lyricists. I wonder why
some songs made it into the big hymnbooks many churches use all the time, while
other songs that are every bit as lovely, and maybe even better, are scarcely
known at all?
One that
I played this morning sounded a lot like a tune I made up at age 3 or 4 with my
little train that went around a track filled with metal ‘notes’. The train had a plastic mallet on the back of
it, and it would bonk each ‘note’ as it went along. The ‘notes’ could be rearranged and put onto
the track however you liked. There was a
paper showing note placement for simple children’s songs, but I often made up
my own tunes. You would skip a slot in
the track in order to create a ‘hold’.
It bothered me a lot that I couldn’t make eighth notes!
I used to love it in grade school when
our music teacher brought in various instruments for us to play. Once she let us play her autoharp. I loved it so much, my parents got me one for
Christmas one year.
Larry brought home taco pizza from Pizza Hut
tonight. Mmmmm... we haven’t had that
for a long time, and it’s one of our favorites.
After supper, he headed outside to
work on something. I keep an ear out,
and an eye on the clock, in case whatever he’s doing entails noise. His hearing aids are most likely in the
charging case at this time of day, and he’ll have no idea he’s rousing the
dead.
Yes, we live in the country; but we do
have a few neighbors not too awfully far away, and we prefer not to alienate
them.
When Larry makes lots of noise, I
start complaining, “Noise pollution! Noise
pollution!” haha
Contrariwise, when he’s wearing his hearing
aids, he often speaks so quietly, none of us can hear him. We say, “Huh?” and “What?” so often, he
finally exclaims, “You all need hearing aids!”
😂
My eyes are being troublesome, and it’s
still a week and two days until my next Botox treatment. Time to put them to bed!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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