Journal: Thrashers & Thrushes; Butterflies & Belles

 

My Merlin Bird ID app sometimes hears kingbirds around our place.

We live in an area where Eastern (above) and Western (below) Kingbird territories overlap.  Caleb once thought that all those kingbirds on the east side of the house were Eastern Kingbirds, while all those on the west side were Western Kingbirds.  😆

Tuesday, it was bright and sunny, getting up to 89°.  That morning, a squirrel was feasting on black-oil sunflower seeds, finches and sparrows at other feeders – until several Blue Jays came swooping in to have some suet.  The songbirds scattered, and even the squirrel, a young one, took a hasty departure.

That day, after a bit of housecleaning, and much as I don’t like stopping in the middle of a project to do another (I know, I know, I’m the odd man out), I paused with the photo-editing and started planning Violet’s quilt.  I knew if I didn’t, I’d wish I had’ve, when I was ready to start working on it and didn’t have what I needed.

Larry got to Louisville, Kentucky, that afternoon (not 7:00 a.m., as he’d hoped) to pick up the wrecked vehicles he planned to dismantle just a bit and then unload at a scrapyard, hopefully winding up with a little bit of foldin’ money.

I told him if he ever comes trundling down our lane with a load like that, ----- Well, I’d say it’s nothing a little gas and a match couldn’t fix, but jokes like that aren’t very funny, after the devastating fires to our west a couple of months ago.  He promises he won’t.

Somebody’s knocking...  Just a minute...

!! How ’bout that.  A couple of ladies, a young one and a quite elderly one, from Jehovah’s Witness just came to the door.  That’s only the second time that’s happened in the 23 years we lived out here in the country.  I’m always nice to them, but I don’t engage in discussions and debates.  They weren’t pushy, thankfully.  They complimented me on the landscaping (even though it would look better without Larry’s old trucks and scissor lifts sitting here and there), then started pulling out brochures.  I took a quick look – yep, Jehovah’s Witnesses. 

I smiled at them and said I didn’t wish to discuss the matter, as we have our own beliefs, and hold strongly to them.

“But we all have the same Bible,” pressed the younger one, “and I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s important to read it.”

“Yes, every day!” I said, backing up and starting to shut the door.  “It’s going to be a hot day!” I added. 

Start with the landscaping and end with the weather, and we can all go on acting friendly, right?

They, seeing I was indeed done, started back down the porch.  “Good thing we have air conditioners!” said the younger one, and we all bid each other adieu.

That bit about ‘having the same Bible’ is not true.

Jehovah’s Witnesses use a Bible called the New World Translation.  Published by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, it was translated directly from original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts – that sounds good so far, right?  But listen to this next line:  “...and is tailored to align with their specific theological doctrines and terminology.”  Not good.

Here are just a few of their beliefs that are absolutely false, and will absolutely prevent people who agree with such things from ever being true believers.  By changing the major truths of the Bible, they practically doom themselves.

They think Jesus, God the Son, second in the Trinity, is a created being, and not eternal!  They believe Jesus is inferior to Jehovah, rather than being one with God Himself.  They do not believe in the Trinity – God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

Their Bible completely omits Acts 8:37, where the eunuch asks if he might be baptized, and Philip answers, “If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest.”  The eunuch responds, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”  So Philip baptizes him.

They’ve left out Matthew 18:11:  “For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost.”  They changed John 1:1, “...and the Word was God,” to “...and the Word was a god.”  That’s awful.

What in the world do they do with John 10:30:  “I and my Father are one”??!!  Here’s what they say:  “It’s like a human son having the same goals as his father.”

That’s one of the more important verses in the Bible!  Jesus is absolutely speaking of His divine unity with God the Father.  Even the unbelieving Jewish leaders knew exactly what He meant, for in the very next verse they wanted to stone Him for saying such a thing.

People who refuse to believe Jesus is Lord are like wicked King Jehoiakim, who cut apart the Bible with his penknife and threw it in the fire. 

They also do not believe in hell; they think eternal torment is unjust, and death is merely a state of unconsciousness, and the punishment for sin is simply ceasing to exist.  As for heaven?  Only a select 144,000 will go there, as spirits.  All other faithful ‘Witnesses’ will remain on an earthly paradise.  It took some real skillful twisting of the Word to come up with that!

Maybe some are sincere but deluded; but there’s enough truth left in their own adulterated Bible, along with unexplainable contradictions, that they really ought to realize that something is terribly wrong with their teachings, if they would only ‘search the Scriptures honestly’.

Once upon a time, many years ago, a couple of young men came knocking at my door.  I wouldn’t have opened the door, had I realized who they were, but I was expecting a package.  

I opened the door.

And they wouldn’t leave!  Never mind the fact that I know they could hear a new baby crying, a toddler calling from the bathroom, “Maaaammaaa, I’m doooonne!!!”, and a bigger toddler in the kitchen asking, “Should I pour my own milk?”

One smiling young man said, “Ma’am, we just want to come in and bless your house---” just as I heard “SPLAAATT!!!” from the kitchen, and a small voice saying, “Ooops.”

I, feeling put-upon and harried, exclaimed, “No, sorry, excuse me, I don’t need any,” and shut the door in their faces.

Then I stood there for a split second, took in the chaos, thought about what I had just said, and burst out laughing.  (I’d meant, I didn’t need any of their unbiblical brochures.)

Thinking, Lord, I certainly do need your help and your blessing, I rushed off to care for the toddler, the bigger toddler, and the new baby.

Back in 2008, I worked as an Administrative Assistant at a Keystone office.  We drew up right-of-way easements, land value agreements, and handled property acquisition, eminent domain proceedings, environmental permitting, damage compensation, and negotiating with landowners for access through their properties.

One of our field reps told a story about trying to get an easement signed by a property owner in Upstate New York.  He finally found the property owners – in room 701 in an old seven-story walkup in New York City.

He huffed and puffed his way to the top floor, knocked on 701 – and when they opened the door and gave him admittance, he wheezed, “G’day!  ((pant, pant))  I’ll bet you ((huff, puff)) don’t have much trouble with ((gasp, gulp)) those pesky Jehovah’s Witnesses accosting you, ((wheeze, pant)) way up here!”

Turned out, they were Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Fortunately, they were also friendly, forgiving individuals.  They signed the easement.

Here are half of the 20 handkerchiefs I have for Violet’s quilt.  They are not vintage; they are brand-new, and each one is different.  They measure 10½” square.

I’m going to use embroidery like this Belle, and put handkerchief skirts on top of them.  This design is about 5” x 7”.  That means I need to figure out a way to make hankie butterflies much smaller than most tutorials show.

I looked up ‘how to make a very small hankie butterfly’ and wound up with a tutorial called ‘Make a Small Butterfly from a Vintage Hankie!’ – and the lady proceeded to show how to make a big ol’ honkin’ butterfly to appliqué onto a 12” square.

Butterflies of that size would grab the fancy ladies, and haul right off with them!  Yikes.

It’s hard to find patterns and instructions for anything really fancy.  Everybody wants me to make something “Easy!” and “Quick!”

No, no, no!  “Fancy!” is what we need!

Some of the hankie butterfly patterns look like bomber jets to me.  Surely there’s a better way!  I’ll figure out something; maybe I’ll just make my own pattern.  We can do better!

(Or we can imagine we can do better.)

Every now and then, I have cause to remember those powder puffs I gave my friends when I was 12.  I’d found a picture in a magazine showing pretty faces painted or drawn onto powder puffs, making lovely gifts.  But... artistic, I was not.

I made gargoyles.  The things horror movies are made from.

I don’t know how the girls recovered from that. 

Meanwhile, I tossed the hankies into the washer with enough other things to make a full load.  While they washed, I looked at a few more tutorials on YouTube.

Here’s a pretty handkerchief butterfly quilt.

Now here’s somebody haphazardly folding a hanky into a butterfly.  No measuring, just guesswork as she folds.  Now she’s sewing that big butterfly onto a large fabric square.  She stabs a few pins in at random, and she’s ready to sew.  Her machine is on top of a table – and there’s no extension table of any sort around the open arm of her machine; so, in addition to having hardly any pins in the butterfly, she can’t hold it nice and flat with her hands, either, as the butterfly and fabric square are lopped limply over the machine’s open arm.

When she’s done sewing all the way around the butterfly, lumpity-bumping over the butterfly’s pleat, it (surprise!) lies anything but flat, all lopsy and rumpled and pulling against itself. 

She smooths it happily with her hand.  “There!” she says.  “Now to stitch down the pleats!”

They aren’t at all straight, but she stitches them down anyway, the edges rippling in protest.

“All I have to do now is iron it, and I’m ready to do the next one!”  She irons it, smushing large rumples and wrinkles into the fabric.

Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!  That injured my sensibilities.

OH!  Mercy me!  She grabbed her sewing machine and put it on the floor, dropping it the last 3 or 4 inches, because she can’t quite reach that far.  CRASHSHSH!!!  Aaaiiiiyiiiyiii.

Now my injured sensibilities are permanently scarred.  (But I’m still watching.)

She is now hand-stitching the butterfly’s antennae with embroidery floss.  She pushes the needle through from the back, reaches around on top and pulls it through, pushes it through from the top, reaches around to the back and pulls it through, pushes it through from the back, reaches around on top and pulls it through, ... ... ... 

I repeat myself, but Aaarrrggghhh.

The next butterfly, she decided not to press, because her ironing board is ‘way across the room’.  Her pins are in a plastic Philadelphia Cream Cheese tub, and she reaches in there and fishes out pins with wild abandon.  I haven’t seen any blood just yet; maybe the pins are all going the same direction, by miraculous happenstance.

At the end, she shows us an entire row of sewn-together quilt blocks.  The handkerchief butterflies on those fabric squares are sometimes crowding the top seam, sometimes the bottom seam, and sometimes the seam to the left or the right. 

I personally with me own two eyeballs saw an 18” ruler sitting right there on the lady’s table; but she never measured or marked to get the butterflies centered uniformly on the squares.  Annnd... they are not.

But, “This is very, very beautiful!” she assures us.

Well...  ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,’ they say.  And the infant for whom the quilt is being made will not be in possession of a measuring device for a good long while.

We can always hope the child loves it so much she wears it plumb out before she ever gets old enough to use a tape measure.

As for making a butterfly that’s sized in proportion to the fancy ladies, I guess I could cut my handkerchiefs and use as much of the pretty corners as I need to, shirring the cut edges a bit to give it dimension.

Now here’s a lady making lovely quilts with beautiful hankies, a little nervous because she has never made videos before.  Her husband is helping her with the camera, and they’re doing a fine job.  She first did a cute little quilt of dresses, and then she did one of butterflies.  Her vintage handkerchiefs belonged to her mother, her grandmother, her husband’s grandmother, and even his great-grandmother!

And then ... along comes some rude commentator saying, “Why are you using such a thing as a handkerchief?!  Gross.  Why don’t you just use nice fabric??”

Other commentators take her to task for ironing the creases in the hankies ahead of time.  🙄  This lady is careful and precise, and measures everything to get the little dresses and butterflies well centered.  I’m surprised and glad that she ignored the naysayers and made more videos!

Here's another variation:

Soon my hankies were washed and dried.  They feel sooo soft and nice, much better than before.  A few are rectangles rather than squares; I’ll use those for the butterflies.

I went searching for the printed panel I was thinking would work in the middle of Violet’s quilt, didn’t find it right away – but found this floral panel called ‘Blooming Vase’ with lavender and purple borders and flowers, exactly what Violet likes best.  Furthermore, the color perfectly matches the purple/lavender hankies.

I found the panel I’d actually gone to get in a separate bin with the bird-print fabric Larry gave me 14 years ago.  (I’ll make a quilt with that one of these days; just see if I don’t.)  It has a pale mint background, and there are birds on it.  That one goes much better with the bird fabric than with the fancy ladies and butterflies.  I’m glad I didn’t find it first, and instead found the Blooming Vase panel that I didn’t even remember having.  It measures 23.5” x 42”.

I’ll trim the borders from the top and bottom of the panel and use them in the corners, somehow, so the panel isn’t so long and narrow.

When I go outside in the evenings to get the birdfeeders, the little brown bats, curious creatures that they are, swoop down low, the better to see what I’m doing.  I don’t mind them at all, outdoors (so long as they don’t lay eggs in my hair, heh); but I do not like them in my house.  We haven’t had any in the house for quite a while now.

Wednesday was a hot, sunny day, with a high of 89°.  I edited photos, and popped outside to take pictures of some of the flowers blooming in the yard.  Here’s the Fireworks clematis Bobby and Hannah gave me.  The blooms are almost 8” in diameter.

Early that afternoon, I stepped out on the front porch to see what the Merlin Bird ID app thought of all the birds singing their hearts out, including a Northern House Wren that was doing his best to drown out every other bird in the vicinity.  I stood very still so the birds would go on with their musicale – and suddenly noticed some movement at the very top of our tallest ponderosa tree.  I’d found one of the orioles’ nests! 

I ran upstairs to the window nearest the tree and watched with binoculars.  It’s definitely the type of woven, hanging nests orioles make, and I caught a glimpse of orange, and a black head.  But the branches and thick needles hide all the nest activity almost completely.  I watched until my arms wore out from holding the binoculars, but saw nothing more than that.

Here’s a male Baltimore Oriole feeding babies in a nest in a cottonwood tree.  (Photo from the Iowa Wildlife Federation.)

Victoria sent a picture of Kurt working on flooring in a downstairs room they’ve been preparing for Carolyn and Violet.  I asked about the egress window, and she told me they put it in last fall.

“You can collect frogs and baby bunnies in those things 😜😬,” I informed her, speaking from experience.

“What more could little girls want,” responded Victoria.  😆

Larry left Louisville, Kentucky, that afternoon, heading toward Kansas to pick up something else he’d bought. 

After church that night, I put an Italian Wood-Fired Prosciutto and Arugula pizza in the oven.  It was way too much for just me, but there’s nothin’ wrong with leftover pizza!

At 9:30 a.m. Thursday morning, the temperature was already 73°, but would (supposedly) only get to 81°.  The high was expected to be 82° in Lincoln, and that was where I was going.  I planned to pick up my craft glasses, which had hopefully been redone properly.  It would be mostly overcast, but rain was not expected until 7:00 p.m. there, and 8:00 p.m. here.

While I curled my hair, I watched birds at the feeding station just outside the window.  There was first a female Baltimore Oriole at the suet feeder, then Common Grackles, then Blue Jays.  They left, and a little Downy Woodpecker showed up.  House Finches, American Goldfinches, and English Sparrows were at the black-oil sunflower seed feeders, and Northern Cardinals, Mourning Doves, and Eurasian Collared Doves were down on the ground cleaning up what the other birds dropped.  I could hear Chipping Sparrows, House Wrens, and Eastern Warbling Vireos in the trees.  An American Robin was trotting purposefully through the lawn, snatching up insects and worms – oh! a Brown Thrasher just joined her! 

Brown Thrashers have dozens of different songs, and can warble beautifully.  They’re in the Mimidae family – the same family as mockingbirds.  This family includes New World catbirds, mockingbirds, and other thrashers.  Mimidae is famous for its members’ exceptional vocal mimicry and massive song repertoires.

Some people call Brown Thrashers ‘mimic thrushes’, but thrashers and thrushes are not the same.  Thrushes belong to the family Turdidae.  This family includes a wide variety of birds found worldwide, including robins, bluebirds, and solitaires.  This is a Wood Thrush:

To tell the difference, look for the reddish Brown Thrasher’s long tail, yellow eyes, and streaked chest, versus the cinnamon-brown Wood Thrush’s rounded black spots, dark eyes, and upright posture.  The Brown Thrasher is significantly larger than the Wood Thrush, typically 11 ½ inches long with a 13-inch wingspan, while the smaller Wood Thrush is about 8 inches long, roughly the size of a robin, with a 12-inch wingspan.

Okay... I had to stop bird-watching, finish hair-curling, and get to breakfast-eating.

Victoria is getting the nursery ready for the new baby.  She hung this valance, and stenciled the wall behind the crib.  She knitted the blanket that’s hanging over the crib rail.

Someone on the radio was singing an old gospel hymn – and he’d taken so many liberties with the tune, I didn’t recognize the song until he was nearly done with the first verse!  Furthermore, he can’t grab onto a note and hold it nicely to save his life.  I think he’s changed the tune like that in order to camouflage the fact that he just plain can’t sing worth a hoot.

Here’s a little Bernina music box I saw online.  At the bottom of the webpage it says, “Please understand that these machines are not for sale.  Contact about this will not be answerd [sic].”  Immediately under that, there’s a blue Contact button.  🙄

In a Bernina store a few years ago, I saw a machine like this one (below) on a high display shelf. Scrolling gold letters along one side read “Swiss Made”.  There was also a very fancy letter “G”, which was thought most likely to stand for “Gegauf.”  However, I have never been able to find any documentary about Mr. Gegauf building a machine like this; I think there’s a possibility someone refurbished that antique machine and put their own lettering on it. They may have guessed wrong about the brand, as this one matches the Buckeye model machine, which dates from around 1867.

In 1893, Karl Friedrich Gegauf of Switzerland invented the hemstitch sewing machine (below).  This machine could sew 100 stitches per minute.  It was the world’s first machine of this type, and caused a major sensation abroad.  The mechanical production of hemstitching was subsequently known as “gegaufing”.

After Karl Gegauf died in 1928, his sons Fritz and Gustav Gegauf took over their father’s factory.  Gustav Gegauf left the company in 1947.  Fritz Gegauf was a creative person whose character defined the company for many decades and whose inventions have had an effect to this day.

In 1932, the household sewing machine with the BERNINA brand name left the factory in Steckborn, Switzerland.  The logo contained a rounded “A” and was set off by a background of shiny black lacquer.  The company’s namesake is the Piz Bernina, the highest summit in the eastern Alps.

Isn’t history fun?

About the time I got to LensCrafters, a little after 2:00 p.m., Hannah sent a picture of a couple of Canada goose families in the David City park.  She was also watching a House Finch nest.  

“The female arrives with food,” she said, “while the male lands on the roof just above, offering dinner music.  Then they both fly away again.”

Hee hee, ‘offering dinner music.’

It looks like a couple of the nearer goslings are practicing their hissing, see that?

I got home from Lincoln a little after 4.  My craft glasses are perfect now.  I look in the mirror – and remember my father!  He had glasses almost exactly the same shape.  Not purple, mind you. 😄

The new sunglasses worked pretty well as I drove, too, although the close focus area at the bottom, for seeing things on the dash and suchlike, is too far to the bottom, and I sometimes have to lift the glasses in order to read something.  But for distance, they’re fine.  And the dark sepia at the top and light sepia (brownish color) at the bottom is good.  This is the color I usually get in sunglasses.

Here are my glasses with the progressive lenses (rose gold frames with pink Swarovski crystals on the temples).  

At a quarter at 10, Larry texted:  “I’m going to take a nap.  I’ve made it to Geneva.”

Geneva is 75 miles directly south.

He finally got home at 6:00 a.m.

Part of the delay was because a short nap wasn’t enough; he’d gone too many hours without sleep.  Another part of the delay was because he needed to fix a broken strap on his flatbed and some electrical wiring between pickup and trailer, and it was pouring rain.  He waited awhile... slept... waited a bit more... then checked his weather app. 

The rain was not expected to let up for hours. 

So he went to Walmart, bought a rain slicker, and got to work on strap and wiring.

Despite the slicker, he wound up soaked to the skin, and freezing cold.  He was glad to finally get home, take a hot bath, and cover up with his warm wool quilt.

He’d gotten rid of all but one wrecked vehicle, and he did indeed come trundling right down the lane with it.  At least he trundled back out with it, that afternoon.

It had rained all night, and was still raining at noon, a nice, gentle rain.  I hadn’t hung the bird feeders out, as I didn’t want to get all wet.  At about 8:30 a.m. or so, half a dozen finches of various denomination lined up on a crossbar at the feeding station, faced directly toward the back patio door, and called and whistled loud and long, not their usual pretty warbling songs.  So funny; they were obviously informing me it was high time to get those feeders out there!  The rain paused before too long, and I hung out the feeders.

After cropping this picture, I sent it to Keith with the caption, Things to do, places to go, people to see... 

“You could really make that little Cozy Coupe fly,” I told him.  “You went at it with all your might and main.”

I sent him this animated picture of the Flintstonemobile to prove my point.

Keith wrote back, “It took might and main for a little kid to make that thing go! 😁”

I recently got a box of six bags of Alessi Zuppa Toscana Tuscan White Bean Soup after eating some at The Pasta Barn in Seward.  It was good, but not as good as Zuppa Toscana soup from the Olive Garden.  I decided to look for some dried soup that might be similar to Olive Garden’s, and this is what I found.

On the back of the bag it says, “The taste of this rustic yet elegant Tuscan classic will long be remembered.” 

Uh, ... is that good, or bad?

I washed clothes that day – unplanned, but a matter of necessity, after Larry’s clothes got drenched.

For supper that night, I made the Zuppa Toscana soup.  In another pan, I cooked ground venison, adding a whole lot of spices in an attempt to make it taste like Italian sausage. 

Success!  A rip-roarin’ success, to tell the truth.  Mmmmm, mmm. 

I had researched what to add to ground hamburger to make it taste like Italian sausage.  This is what I found:  “To make ground hamburger taste like Italian sausage, heavily season it with fennel seeds, garlic powder, paprika, and red pepper flakes.  The most crucial ingredient is crushed fennel seed, which provides the distinct flavor of Italian sausage.  For best results, toast and crush the fennel seeds before mixing them into the meat.”

I had no fennel seed, so I used caraway seed instead.  Here are the other spices I used:  parsley, crushed red pepper, garlic pepper, Himalayan pink salt, fresh ground (we bought that salt grinder at a grocery store in Sheboygan, needing salt for the hard-boiled eggs we were getting – and Himalayan pink looked good), ground red pepper, paprika, and McCormick Italian seasoning (a mixture of marjoram, basil, rosemary, thyme, oregano, savory, and sage).

I’ve always enjoyed combining spices for the perfect flavor.  Separate spices mixed for each newly-made dish is so much better than a conglomeration, uh, that is, a ready-made blend of spices.  Those store-bought blends usually have more salt and/or sugar than necessary, for one thing.  The individual spices don’t stand as nicely on their own, so flavors aren’t as savory. 

I feel the same about canned fruit cocktail – everything tastes the same.  Bleah.  If you must buy canned fruit, at least buy it separately (and not in heavy syrup), and then mix it together, if you want a big bowl of mixed fruit.  Also, the bigger the pieces of canned fruit, the more firm and flavorful they’ll be.  For example, get peach halves instead of sliced (or diced) peaches, and slice (or dice) them yourself.

I added the ground venison to the soup during the last four minutes of cooking, then tried a small ladleful.  I tried it by itself... then with a bit of shredded Colby Jack cheese... and then with both the cheese and a little sour cream.  Each way was scrumptious.  I wanted to eat an entire bowlful right then.  But I waited until Larry came in, and ate with him.  I deserve a gold star for being so patient!

I used two bagfuls of soup, eight helpings each, and a pound of ground venison.  My second-largest pot was a little more than half full.  There was enough to freeze for four meals.

That evening, Bobby and Hannah brought us some broccoli cornbread that Hannah had made.  Being quite full, we saved it for the next night.  It would go perfectly with the Zuppa Toscana soup.

As they were leaving, it belatedly occurred to me that I hadn’t even offered them anything to drink!  So I sent a jug of 100% mango juice home with them.

 I also gave Hannah three silver dollars to give the three older children, since I’d given Levi one for his birthday a couple of weeks ago.

They hadn’t been back to their house for long when Aaron, Joanna, and Nathanael started texting.

Aaron:  “Hmm; this feels like it will really be good for the lottery scratchers, thank you for your investment!”  And he sent a picture of the silver dollar in his hand.  (Of course he does not buy lottery tickets; that was a joke.)

I retorted, “I think toenails work for those, also.”

Joanna:  “Thanks for the silver dollar!   I’ve never seen the inscription of the eagle landing on the moon that it has on the back.  On that topic, did you see there was a rocket that exploded during a test last night?”

“You’re welcome!” I answered.  “Yes, I did hear about that rocket, on the news this morning.”

Joanna:  “I saw a news headline that said the rocket ‘experienced an anomaly’.  And then saw the video clip of the gigantic fireball that resulted.  What an understatement that was.”

“The newscaster must’ve been an Englishman,” I suggested.

“I’ve heard Germans are good at understating things too,” said Joanna.  “‘Not bad’ is among the highest compliments you can get. 😆”

Joanna has been taking German, along with her other college courses.

Nathanael wrote next:  “Thanks for the silver dollar!”

“You’re very welcome!” answered I.  “Don’t spend it all in one place.”

Nathanael:  😂

Levi wrote, too:  “Thanks for the flashlight (has been helpful already) and the knife (may eventually be helpful) and the silver dollar!  (The magnitude of my thanking will depend on which mint the silver dollar came from.)”

Then, “I am late for my birthday thankings, 😅” he added.

Hee hee  Those kids make me laugh.  Levi had already looked it up to see what his silver dollar was worth, and had learned, as I had, that values range from its $1 face value to thousands of dollars, depending on its metallic composition, condition, and mint mark.

“You’re very welcome! 😄” I responded.

He then sent me a picture of a bridge over the Missouri River, saying, “Guess where this was!  I drove past here while in transit between jobs on Wednesday.” 

He is working full time for Walkers over the summer.

He sent a screenshot of a map with a loop on it that he and a friend and fellow coworker had driven.  “Can’t believe they paid us for all that,” he wrote, reminding me of Caleb, who, at the same age (16), remarked after a week on the job, “They pay me to have fun!”

It’s always nice when kids (and adults) enjoy their jobs.

I guessed the bridge was near Vermillion, but I was wrong.  It was north of Sioux City.

Saturday was sunny and nice.  It got up to 80°.

I went on editing photos.  Pictures like this one keep me happily working away at it.  This is Dorcas, 7, and Hester, 5 months, in November of 1989.  These were their Thanksgiving Day dresses.

A bearded yellow iris with yellow-edged white falls, the ‘Harvest of Memories’ cultivar, is blooming.

I made a new gallon of cold brew that afternoon – Georgia Peach, this time.

Victoria sent photos of the girls’ new room that evening.  They would be sleeping in it that night.  They had new bedding and new curtains.  The next orders of business will be to finish the closet, hang the door, and decorate the walls.

After our morning church service on Sunday, we went to the cemetery and collected our flowers from the graves.

I had thought to order some new flowers the week after Memorial Day, when they are generally on sale; but even when they were 40% off, they were expensive, and the flowers were sparse.  I’ll look at secondhand stores, instead.

After church last night, I baked some frozen chicken and cheese taquitos.  We put sweet salsa, shredded Monterey Jack cheese, and sour cream on them, and had cottage cheese and kiwi watermelon juice with them.  We had banana splits – made with frozen strawberries and bananas – for dessert.  (Well, we did thaw the strawberries and bananas before we ate them.  😅)

It was 72° by 10:30 a.m. this morning, on the way up to 84° on this pretty day.

Friday evening when I wrote the Saturday Skim for my Quilt Talk group, I mentioned baklava-flavored coffee and tea, and then offered a recipe for homemade baklava.  Look, it’s even cut like a Lone Star quilt!

I decided I had to try it.  I did it the easy way and ordered a tin of Cerez Pazari Turkish Baklava Pastries.

They arrived today, and I tried two.  Yummy.  The package had sat on my front porch for a little while, and it was warm (though overcast) out there, so the pastries were slightly warm.  So good.

Here are a couple more of the pictures I was happy to find in one of those ‘lost’ albums – Joseph, 4, and Hester, 5 months, in November of 1989; and Keith, 8, in his 3^rd grade picture, 1988.

Aaron cut his elbow at a job today and had to go to urgent care to get it stitched up.  I hope he’s feeling better now; he rewarded himself with a new-to-him 2022 crewcab Dodge Ram Laramie!

There, I’ve ordered some coffee beans.  Had to have Baklava coffee, didn’t I?!  I should’ve ordered the coffee and the pastries at the same time.  Now I’ll probably have to order more pastries to go with the coffee, when it gets here.  It’ll be a vicious (but good-tasting) circle, forevermore.  😄

Bedtime!

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