Photos: Baby Squirrels, Papa House Finch, & A Blue Jay

 

Journal: Tornadoes in the Tumbleweeds

 

Last Tuesday morning, I awoke early (for me, anyway), even though I didn’t have the alarm set, and thought, Go outside and make the flowerbeds pretty.

So I popped up, made the bed, dressed, brushed my teeth, grabbed camera and phone, and headed outside.  After refilling and hanging the bird feeders, I got busy in the big tiered garden south of the house.  It’s a large garden, and I figured I’d only get one tier done; but somehow I found myself two-thirds done and couldn’t stand to quit there.

It took an hour and forty-five minutes, and then it was done.  There are daylilies, hostas, Autumn Joy sedum, tall lavender phlox, irises – and the obligatory milkweed – in that big flower garden.  The irises are finished blooming, but the lilies and milkweed have buds on them.

It was pleasant but a bit hot out there in the sun pulling weeds. 

By the time I showered, made coffee, and was curling my hair, it was a quarter after 11, 77°, and the heat index was 83°.  The high was 86° that day.

I had an appointment with the lawyer for Loren’s estate that afternoon.  I got there a few minutes early, and sat in the waiting room staring at the carpet, pondering those feathery shapes and outlines and connecting swirls, and wondering if I could somehow incorporate it into a quilting design.  😅

I signed a bunch of papers; final documents will soon be sent to the court.  I then went to the bank, had all the money in the checking account transferred to the estate account, closed the checking account, and ordered some checks.

There were a few cases of wild weather across the States that evening.  Here’s a screenshot from a video Storm Chaser Adam Lucio took near Hayden, New Mexico.  “Straight off the phone with zero editing!” he commented.

A friend from New Zealand, upon seeing pictures of Hester’s flowers, wrote, “What a stunning garden.  It never ceases to amaze me how you have feet of snow, then these wonderful gardens pop up in the spring.”

We do have quite the variations in the weather!  The Stella d’Oro lilies have begun blossoming.

By 10:00 a.m. Wednesday morning, another backyard flowerbed was all nice and neat, after an hour’s work.  The temperature was on its way up to 91°.

After getting all shined up, I headed upstairs to my quilting studio, and worked on the Wolves’ Dream Catcher quilt until time for church that evening.

Afterwards, I picked up a load of groceries at Walmart before coming home and putting them all away.  I warmed up some Marketside broccoli cheddar soup for our supper, but it was waaay too salty and waaaay too cheesy.  So we saved half of it to use with something else the next evening.

I’d ordered Panera Bread broccoli cheddar soup, but Walmart sent me a notification saying they were out, and had substituted Marketside.  I could’ve probably walked right into the store and picked up the Panera Bread soup I wanted.  Some of those order-fillers aren’t very workified.  (Larry’s late Uncle Clyde’s word.)

The Marketside chicken and noodle soup is pretty good, but not as good as Panera Bread’s chicken noodle soup.

Marketside products are produced by a number of private brand suppliers that sell everything from bags of fresh spinach to fresh guacamole dips and salsas to sub sandwiches and wraps assembled daily in the retailer’s deli department.

Reckon they got the water for their soups directly out of Little Salt Springs and the Saline Wetlands north of Lincoln?  Photo from NebraskaLand Magazine.

The first bat of the year got in the basement that night.  It greeted Larry by flapping circles around his head when he sleepily went down there to take a bath.  He came rushing back up the stairs to grab the tennis racket, a lot less sleepy than he’d been just moments before.  Flapping bats, it seems, are better than caffeine for speeding up the ol’ cardiovascular system!

Thursday morning, I worked in a couple of the front gardens on the north side of the house, even though I have yet to get to all the gardens on the south and east side.  But one must put one’s best foot, uh, flower, forward, right?

Some of the bright pink Asiatic lilies were beginning to blossom, and there are little green apples all over the apple tree.

The buds on the milkweed were turning pink, and I found a red milkweed beetle (Tetraopes tetrophthalmus) on one of the milkweed leaves.

If you pick up a red milkweed beetle, you might hear it make a shrill squeaking sound by rubbing together structures on the front and back of the thorax.  It makes this sound when it is stuck in a milkweed blossom, is fighting, falls on its back, or is in other sorts of distress.  When it crawls or feeds, it may make a soft purring sound.

In early summer, the female beetle lays eggs at the base of a milkweed stem.  The larvae or grubs travel down the stem to the soil, feeding on the milkweed’s roots until fall.  They overwinter in the root and form a pupal case/chrysalis in the soil the following spring.  Adult red milkweed beetles emerge in early summer when the milkweed begins to flower.

This native long-horned beetle is an herbivore that eats only milkweed.  It is not harmful to Monarchs, nor does it harm Monarch eggs or larvae.  The two species can and do coexist peacefully.  The beetle is sometimes called ‘four eyes’ because each antenna bisects an eye, literally giving it four.

(Photo above by Chris Helzer, The Prairie Ecologist.)

After a shower and some breakfast, I edited a few pictures and then went to my quilting studio.

A Northern flicker in the front yard was screeching his head off.  (Photo from All About Birds.)  Either a neighbor cat was encroaching upon his territory, or squirrels were digging up his acorns and walnuts somewhere.

I sent a note to Hester:  “In case you are wondering, those mushrooms in your road verge are Shaggy Mane mushrooms.  Quite edible, if used quickly, before they turn ‘inky’, as it’s called.”  

I sent a link:  http://mushroom-collecting.com/mushroomshaggy.html

She soon replied, “Mushrooms are so fun.  But I’m nervous to eat any that I don’t buy in a store.  😅”

I agreed, “I’m nervous about mushrooms, altogether.  After all, there’s a reason they call them toadSTOOLS?!!!  😝😜😛😬”

Google tells me the mushrooms in my yard are Lion’s Mane.  But when I look up Lion’s Mane, I only find fuzzy and hairy-looking things!  🤷🏻‍♀️

And then there’s this:  ⇩  😬

If you think that’s poison ivy, you’re right.

Maybe tomorrow morning when and if I head outdoors, I’ll take along some plastic bags to collect it in and try to get it pulled up without getting it on myself.  😕🫤😐

For the last three or four years, I’ve tried to irradicate that stuff from the spot where it decided to grow.

Look what else I found on the ground – a bright blue robin’s egg.  A mother robin was down there beside it, but flew when I got closer.  I wonder what happened?  Maybe she was hunting for worms, and I startled her, and she accidentally laid an egg before getting back to her nest?

Chickens will sometimes lay an egg if startled.  Maybe other birds do, too?  Surely the egg would’ve broken, had it fallen from the nest.

“Maybe you can toss the egg back up into its nest ⛹️ ,” suggested Hester.

“Don’t scrambled eggs make mother birds cry?” I queried.

“I think I have some milkweed back by my shed,” said Hester.  “We’ll have to go look at it, because Oliver wants your bug ‘for a pet.’😄”

He’s such a funny little boy.

As you know, I let the milkweed grow for the Monarch butterflies.  It’s their only host plant, where they lay eggs, and where the larvae grow and become caterpillars.

That night, I fixed rib-eye steaks and baked potatoes in the Instant Pot, and then warmed up the rest of the broccoli-cheddar soup and poured it over the steaks and potatoes.  Now, that was yummy.

Later, Victoria sent me a note:  “Northern lights tonight!”

“Do I have to get out of my recliner and go look out the door?” I asked.

But... just in case... I scrambled out of the recliner, grabbed my tablet, set the camera to ‘Night’, opened the door, walked out onto the porch, and looked to the north.

A minute or two later, I sent Victoria this picture and wrote, “I found 3!  Northern lights, that is.”  😄

Every day after working in the gardens, I quilted on the Wolves’ Dream Catcher quilt for Lyle.  Quilting doesn’t use up all that many calories, even if I am standing all day.  So I try hard to be careful of the calories.  After a late breakfast, I usually don’t get hungry until late afternoon; but if I was up early working in the flowerbeds, it’s midafternoon when the hunger hits. 

At 3:30 p.m., I trotted downstairs and got myself a typical snack:  a slice of Colby Jack cheese, three big strawberries, and a drink of mango peach juice.  And that was enough to hold me until suppertime.

Savoring the strawberries, I stood at the window and watched the birds – and noticed a barn swallow swooping around over the yard.  That might be the first one I’ve seen this year.  They generally arrive after the mosquitoes start to repopulate the area.

By 7:30 p.m., the last load of clothes was in the washing machine, and I was almost ready to roll the quilt forward to the next row.

But Larry would be home soon, and my snack had worn off.  I decided on an easy supper:  Campbell’s Creamy Chicken Noodle Soup with FlipSides Pretzel crackers, Black Cherry Oui yogurt, Thompson grapes, cheese, and mango peach juice.  And pistachio ice cream for dessert.

Saturday morning, I heard a coach on the radio trying to compliment his pitcher, though they lost the game, resoundingly:  “He made the other team work really hard to overcome him.” 

Yeah, they got trounced.  😅

Victoria brought a meal for Father’s Day that afternoon:  chicken, carrots, potatoes, onions, celery, and sourdough biscuits.  There was enough for supper that night and for Sunday, too.  It was delicious.

Later, she sent an audio clip wherein she and Willie discussed the matter of being out of milk, then little Arnold jabbering about his Daddy. 

“Where did Daddy go?” Victoria asked him, and he promptly parroted back to her, “Daddy go?”

And in the midst of this, Carolyn asked, “Do butterflies ever sleep?”

I texted, “Tell her, yes indeedy, they do!”

Victoria laughed, “I knew you’d answer her.”

I continued, “They like the undersides of leaves.  Their wings sometimes get all dewy overnight, and when the sun comes up, they climb on top of the leaf where they’ve slept, and spread their pretty wings out so the sun can dry all the tiny feathery bits that make up those wings.  If you’re up at daybreak, you can sometimes see that.”

Victoria wrote back, “She’s silently pondering all this.”

“She’ll be up before sunrise and outside peering at undersides of leaves, one of these mornings,” I said.

“That would be like her!” answered Victoria.  “The early bird.”

I sent pictures of the dew on a butterfly’s wings, and then close, closer, and closest pictures of the feathery scales on those wings.

“This is why it harms them when we catch them,” I told her.  “Those tiny feathery scales come off fairly easily with friction.  I think God enjoyed Himself, making the birds and the butterflies!”  I added.  “After all, He said, ‘It is good!’ when He finished, that day!”

It was hot that day – 87° with a heat index of 94°.  I stayed indoors most of the day; but upon discovering that quite a number of Asiatic lilies had bloomed, I grabbed my camera, put on the Tamron macro lens, pulled the crystal photography ball out of the case, and headed outside to take some pictures.

Those big lilies are showstoppers, but let us not forget the notch-leaf scorpion weed!  Each blossom is smaller than my littlest fingernail.

I take pictures of it – and then pull it straight out of the earth.  ‘Weed.’

I spent the day quilting – and rolled the quilt forward to start thread-painting the top of the large wolf’s head.

I hadn’t gotten very far when my machine started making an odd noise.  I’m pretty sure it’s the hook bumping the needle just before the needle starts back up.  Sigghhhh...  Why can’t the tech get this machine fixed?!!!  Nothing happened that should’ve thrown the thing out of whack.  I was quilting on the central panel; there were no seams on the top or the backing.  I was not using rulers, only moving the machine back and forth to ‘paint with thread’, as it were.  I was doing my best to handle it gently and not jerk it from one point to another.  Disheartening, ’tis.

Just in case, I changed needles (even though the needle felt perfectly smooth, no barb on the end), changed bobbins (though it, too, had nothing visibly wrong with it), cleaned and oil the bobbin race.

None of this changed anything.  But... the machine kept stitching, and the stitches looked all right; so I kept quilting.

Right there on the wolf’s nose is where the trouble started.

The printing of the large wolf looked a little washed out, so I used black thread in abundance.  That helped considerably.

The sunset was pretty that evening.

Sunday morning at 8:00 a.m., Hannah mistakenly sent me a text intended for Joanna:

“Good morning.  It’s time to wake up.”

I, knowing full well that text wasn’t for me, responded, “I’m awake!  I’m awake!  I’ve been awake for an hour and 25 minutes.  (You intended this for someone else, maybe?)”

Hannah:  “Oops.  My glasses were off, haha.”  Then, “Well, I’ll have to wake up the right person.  😅”

I answered, “At least you now know I’m awake.”  😄

During last night’s song service, Bobby and Joanna sang One Moment in Heaven.  It was beautiful.  I love the song, and they sang it with such feeling.  ‘One moment in heaven will pay for it all!’

It was hot and muggy by 10:30 a.m. today, 81° with a heat index of 90°.  The humidity was 62% and climbing.  The temperature got to around 90° this afternoon, but it felt more like 100°.    The air conditioner was working away... and the sump pump – isn’t.  Larry has fixed it multiple times.  If last night’s fix doesn’t take, we’ll have to get a new one.

I refilled and rehung the bird feeders a little after 9:00 a.m., and the birds were soon enjoying the buffet.  There were House finches, English sparrows, American goldfinches, Common grackles, Blue jays, and Red-winged blackbirds at the feeders; and down the ground were Mourning doves, Eurasian collared doves, and a Northern flicker.  Out in the lawn I could see American robins, and somewhere in the trees I heard the high-pitched metallic chirp of a newly-fledged Northern cardinal.  Barn swallows were swooping over the lawn, snatching insects. 

Swallows love the insects that pester us the most, especially mosquitoes, gnats, and flying termites.  A single swallow can consume 60 insects per hour, or 850 per day.  “A whopping amount!” proclaims Bird Note .org.

But that doesn’t even get them close to the little brown bat, which is what we have here in Nebraska.  Little brown bats are particularly efficient mosquito-eaters.  One bat can consume up to 1,000-1,200 mosquitoes and other insects per hour, which means they may eat over 9,000 mosquitoes in a single night.

Yep, the ugly little critters are good for something!  I just want them to stay out of my house.  😬

On hot mornings, I like drinking iced coffee, as opposed to hot coffee, as I blow-dry and curl my hair.  Cold brew is even better.  (Do you know the difference?  Iced coffee is made with hot water and then poured over ice.  Cold brew is made by pouring cool water over coarsely-ground coffee beans, and then it’s allowed to steep for several hours.)

I recently got a box of cold brew from Christopher Bean, and it’s really good.  It’s really strong, and I dilute it a lot; so it’s lasted quite a while.  But it’s allllmost gone. 

Instead of ordering more cold brew, I ordered a thick glass gallon just with a diffuser and a spigot.  I’ll make it myself!

The coming days will also be hot and muggy.  If I want to continue to work outside in the morning, I’d better plan on going to bed an hour or two sooner, and getting up an hour or two earlier!  You know, if I lived in Alaska and couldn’t sleep in the middle of the night, I could go outside and work in the gardens, because it would be light out!  (At least in the summer.)  I kinda like that notion.

It is now a quarter after 7, and look what’s happening out in Lincoln County, Nebraska, about 240 miles to our west, right now:

Raindrops were starting to come down when I went out to get the bird feeders at 8:15 p.m.  Larry helped me.  We barely got the door shut before it poured.

Electricity went out for a few seconds.

Looks like it will rain intermittently through the night, then again in the morning from about 6-9 a.m.  That means no gardening.

(Just look at my sad face.)  >>...snerk...<<

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