Just a Few Pics

I have decided I probably should start watermarking the photos that I put on my blog.  Not that they are all that wonderful, but they are all taken by me rather than 'borrowed' or used from some other source, and once in a while some come out really good.  Which is totally a fluke, I assure you, as I don't really know what I'm doing when it come to professional type photography.  Nevertheless, it's those dang good ones that I don't really want someone else stealing and claiming as their own (and possibly printing out for sale).  This all started a few months ago when I saw, online, a picture that looked amazingly identical to one DD2 had taken a few years ago of one of our barn cats.  That got me to thinking how easily the things we put online can be 'taken' from us and used maybe in a manner we wouldn't want them to be.  So, from here on out my readers will have to put up with watermarks.

Here are a couple of pictures I took in the last week that I like, and have attempted to watermark.

I don't know, I'm thinking the watermark needs to be bigger to be effective (and not easily cropped off), but I don't really want to detract from the picture, because then I'm less apt to post pictures at all.  I personally hate looking through large watermarks on photos, because my eye (and brain) is then drawn more to the words than the image.

blossoms on the flowering crabapple by the garden

Song sparrow taking a mouthful of caterpillars to its nest

Challenge #21: Mend Something

I confess, my mending basket is overflowing, and some of the items in there one or the other of my daughters has outgrown since the day she put it into the basket to be repaired.  Oops.  Definitely time for me to grab that basket, my needles and thread, the button jar, and actually make those items in the basket wearable again.  Not to mention the fact that DS2 brought me a flannel shirt down from the U.P. that needs two buttons sewn back on, before August, when his summer internship in Detroit ends and he gladly heads back to the semi-wilderness of the Keweenaw Peninsula for his last year of college.

How about you?  Do you have a mending basket?  Or just a shirt that is missing a button?  A pair of shorts from last summer that needs a button or zipper replaced before you can wear them this season?  A skirt with a slight tear that you can fix, that will be hidden in the fullness of the skirt thus making it wearable to work or church again?

Maybe you don't have any clothing in need of mending. (How jealous am I!!) What about a broken knick-knack or a mug that lost it's handle and is awaiting some super glue?  Or a favorite book with loose pages in need of some book tape?  A toy that needs a minor repair before being chucked back into the toy box?

Whatever it is, now's the time to give it a little attention and TLC to return it to serviceable condition.  Shouldn't take you very long.  Well, unless it's a big basket like mine, that has a few year's worth of accumulation of 'quick fixes' to deal with.

What are you waiting for? (What am I waiting for?) Mend something!

Like a Duck to Water

The weather really warmed up in the past week.  Feels like summer now (as a side note, this is the reason I wait until Memorial Day to wash and put away all our winter gear--any time prior to the last week of May there is still the possibility of frost and cold, chilly days).  

Since the ducklings and goslings are getting so big, with the warm hot weather, DD2 was begging me to let her put them in some water so they could go for their first swim.

She found an empty plastic tote that she thought would be big enough, and begged me some more.  Being as the outdoor temperature was above eighty degrees, I gave in, as long as she dried the birds and put them back in the brooder where they could get under the heat lamp if they were chilly.

First were the ducklings.  They loved it, paddling around and dipping their beaks in the water.

happy wet face

Next were the goslings, who filled the tote a bit more than the ducklings did.  Their lack of space didn't stop them from diving under the water repeatedly, getting themselves all wet.

I guess once our new waterfowl are old enough to move out of the brooder, we will have to buy a wading pool for their pen.

They also liked walking around in the grass and the flowerbed.

"which way do we go?"

running to follow DD2 across the yard

 

preening to fluff up their damp down

A Quilt For Toad

Some of my readers might remember back in March when I announced that I am expecting a new grandbaby and had recently found out that it is a boy.  Ever since late October, when DS1 called me with the news that he and K2 were expecting again, I had planned to make a quilt for the baby.  As early as November, I started picking up fabrics (tractor, camo, Jesus fish) to use in the quilt no matter what gender the baby turned out to be.  As soon as I got confirmation that he is a him, not a her, I finished my fabric shopping (blue, the mudder trucks, the blaze orange) so that I could get cracking on that quilt.

Well, it took a bit longer to finish than I expected, but the quilt is now done. Toad, as I have taken to thinking of him, has a quilt awaiting his impending arrival in the next six weeks or so.

He also has his official moniker for this blog :0), which involves a long story about the name his parents have chosen for him and how his father--DS1--was unable to make the hard 'C'/'K' ("kkk") sound for most of the first four years of life, instead saying "ttt" as the first sound of his first name and that of DS2.

Anyway, to recap, here are the fabrics I had chosen for Toad's quilt:

And here is the newly completed quilt:

For the backing, I used the blaze orange that is the thin inner border on the front of the quilt.  In this next picture, the wind caught a corner of the quilt and flipped it, showing the backing.

Now I anxiously await the day that dear little baby boy arrives, when I can wrap him in his quilt, and hold him in my arms.

Reclaimed Wood

At this little place here, we have quite a few things that are made from wood we have "reclaimed".  That is the current catch-phrase, anyway.  Used to be we just called it making stuff from things that were still useful.

Like the deck my parents removed from their house ten or so years ago.  I had helped my dad build that deck in my middle school years, and it had given my parents a good twenty years of service when they decided to replace it.  Some of the deck boards were warped, but with the exception of the pilings and some of the joists, just about all of the lumber was still solid.  So, when it was offered to us, we gladly drove our trailer over, loaded up all the pieces of a 24'x12' deck, and hauled it home.

Once home, the lumber was sorted and stacked by size, and through the next couple of years it became several useful items:

a 'two-seater' chair that sits by our fire ring

a 'single' chair that sits by the fire

the picnic table that resides on our deck

cellar shelves

more cellar shelves

All those useful items!  And our only cost was the time and gas it took to go get the wood, plus a few nails and/or screws that DH all ready had leftover from previous projects (like building the house and barn at this little place here). The picnic table was built about 2005, both chairs were built by DS1 and DS2 in the spring of 2007.  Twenty-some years as a deck, several years stacked up waiting to be reused, and seven to nine more years of sitting outside year round, and the wood is still nice and solid.  I can see that picnic table and those chairs still being in use a decade from now. (Plus, that table is so heavy the only way it is ever coming down off our deck is in pieces!)

Some of our reclaimed wood was delivered to us, saving us even the cost of gas to bring it to this little place here.  Many of my garden stakes had former lives as door or window trim in the home of a family we go to church with.  The trim was replaced when they remodeled their home, and knowing we heat with wood, the husband brought a truckload of old trim work over one summer evening.  DH instantly recognized it's potential as sturdy garden stakes, and cut it into appropriate lengths for it's new assignment rather than burning it.

Another batch of garden stakes arrived to this little place here in the form of deck railing from a golf course clubhouse that our friend the junk man was hired to haul off.  DH took apart the railing, removed the balusters, used the long boards for some other project, and put all the balusters in my bin of garden stakes.

Still more stakes, all my extra long ones (6'+) were sticker boards from when we had some oak logs milled into boards to make the trim work for our own house.  They served several years holding the layers of oak boards apart for good airflow while drying, then once the boards were used, the 1"x 1" dimension sticker boards became extra tall stakes that are mostly used for marking the seedling trees we have planted all around this little place here.  The weeds and grass (or field crops) can grow and grow, three, four, six feet high, and we can still see the stakes marking the little trees, keeping those trees safe from the mower, or the combine.  Being oak, they last for years and years out in the elements, until the trees have grown tall enough to be easily visible no matter what grows up around them.

Back in the garden, the posts that DH set a few weeks ago for my new grape trellis are also wood we got for free.  They were, I believe, part of the golf course decking delivery from the junk man.  Or maybe a different load he brought us that year.  Anyway, they came from lumber that was otherwise destined for the landfill, and instead ended up neatly sorted and stacked at this little place here, ready for reuse.

DH's latest project using reclaimed wood (some more of that golf course decking from a few years ago), was to build a pergola for the entrance to the garden.  Really, he needed a trellis for the hops vine that is planted to one side of the entrance (that last summer completely engulfed a nearby young sugar maple).  So he decided to kill two birds with one stone: give the hops something to climb, while dressing up the opening in the rock wall where we enter the garden.

It's kind of funny.  That pergola went up on Sunday.  In the first 24 hours of it's existence, it received compliments from three different people, two of which wanted to know where we got it!  They never would have guessed it was made from wood someone else threw away if we hadn't told them.

Old wood doesn't have to take up space in a landfill.  It doesn't have to rot away in some junk pile stuffed in the corner of someone's acreage.  It can be quite useful if in the right hands.  Hands that are willing to take the time to inspect it, save out the solid pieces, sort and stack them by dimension, and dream up a new purpose for a pre-used hunk of wood.

Challenge #20: Cook With Fire

This should be an easy one, since it is Memorial Day weekend, typically one of the great cooking out weekends of the year.

Your challenge is to cook something outside.  Not in your kitchen.  On a grill, either gas or charcoal, or over coals made with real wood.  It can be as easy as roasting a few hot dogs, or as fancy as making grilled pizza or grilling some sort of dessert.  That is up to you.

The possibilities are endless.  At this little place here we will be eating lots of stuff cooked with fire in the next few days.  Hot dogs, hamburgers, some grilled potatoes, possibly some other veggies on the grill (onions, mushrooms, etc), maybe some venison shish kebabs; my menu for the next three days is still coming together.

Be creative.  If you don't have a grill of your own, do you live where you could make a small campfire and cook on that?  What about going to a park that has those cast iron grills up on stands?  We've used those many times through the years while traveling with the kids; we've grilled in parks in Florida, South Dakota, Illinois, Montana, Kentucky . . . Don't automatically say you can't cook with fire just because you live in an apartment, or don't own a grill.

I am a Chicken Racist

I have never in my life claimed to be politically correct.  I try not to purposely make comments that are in attack of other people, or their beliefs.  But that doesn't mean I am PC.  Far from it.  I was just taught that if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.  So as to not be hurtful, I often just keep my mouth shut.  I do have opinions on pretty much every issue under the sun, and those opinions are often strong.

But this post isn't about abortion, or gay rights, or women's rights, or animal rights, or equal opportunity employment, or equal opportunity education, or any of that stuff.

This post is about a realization I had this week.  I realized that I am a Chicken Racist.

It's true.  I am.  I am unabashedly a Chicken Racist.

I have had many different breeds of chickens in the last eleven years.  After the first year or two, I purposely started getting chicks of breeds I currently didn't have in my flock, to make it easier at culling time to tell the old hens from the young ones.  I have had Leghorns, and Rocks of every color, Buff Orpingtons, Brahmas, Easter Eggers, Dominiques, Speckled Sussex, Hamburgs, Silver Penciled Wyandottes and Gold Penciled Wyandottes, Lakenvelders, Anconas, ISA Browns, New Hampshire Reds and breeds I cannot even recall at the moment.

Some of those breeds I vowed I would never own again, due to their stupidity.  They were the flightiest damn chickens, constantly nervous and panicking at the slightest little thing.  Sometimes doing themselves bodily harm flying into walls in a blind panic just because I entered the coop to refill their waterer.

Other breeds could have cared less if a tornado came and whipped them up into the sky, coop and all.  In fact, one time a big storm did blow over my portable shelter that the chicks live in between leaving the brooder and moving into the big coop with the grown ups.  That particular batch of chicks happily wandered around the vicinity of their upside down home until I came and righted it, rounded them up (fairly easily, as herding chickens goes), and closed them safely behind chicken wire again.

Anyway, the revelation I had which led me to confessing my bigotry towards certain chickens, is that all the white egg laying chickens I've had (as opposed to those that lay brown eggs or green/blue eggs) have been the dumb-ass neurotic ones.  It didn't matter which breed they were, be it Leghorn or Ancona or Lakenvelder or. . . whatever else I've had.  If it laid white eggs, it was inferior in common sense to a chicken that laid eggs with colored shells.

So, there you have it.  I don't like chickens that lay white eggs.  I'm a Chicken Racist.  A hater.  Now the PC society can brand me as a horrible person.