I Got...

 

I got...

Nothing.

Or at least not much.

But we shall persevere!

 

          Bondi’s wheelchair came.

“It’s a bigger box than I thought it was going to be,” my handsome mountain man said as he carried it in.

“I know, right.”

Mike opened the box and pulled out an already assembled doggie wheelchair.

“I thought we’d have to put it together. Didn’t the reviews online say it was easy to assemble?” I asked.

“Yeah, it did.”

 We were trying to adjust the width across the back and discovered it was already as small as it would go.

“It’s too big,” I said. “What size did you order?"

          “Small.”

          We left it as small as it would go.

There were two straps on the back, one on each side. “Where do you think these go?” I asked and while trying to figure it out I found a small white tag hanging on the front that had a capitol M on it. “It’s a medium,” I said and showed him the tag.

          Returning stuff is a pain and we almost never return things but in this case it was expensive enough it merited return.

          “I think it’s one somebody else already returned,” Mike speculated. “That’s why it came put together and no instructions. I think whoever filled our order just grabbed it off the shelf and didn’t check the size.”

          The first and only other time we returned something to Amazon we had to drive down to a drop off center in North Abington. This time, when I checked for locations that accepted Amazon returns, I found the UPS store in Sayre takes them. That makes it a lot closer for us. Hopefully it doesn’t mean more returns, because we don’t order stuff to return it, don’cha know.

          And talking about Bondi, I don’t see any improvement in her this week, but I don’t think she’s any worse either.

 

          Speaking of ordering expensive stuff...

          I had enough money in my craft account to buy a very expensive set of high-quality, professional watercolors. So I ordered them.

This company has been producing watercolor paint in Erkrath, Germany for over a century. They’re known for a level of craftsmanship that even other professional paints don’t match. The pigments are milled incredibly fine, each pan is poured in multiple layers for maximum density, and the colors are consistent from batch to batch. If I was going to spend this amount of money on paint, I wanted the best.

And they didn’t come from Amazon. I ordered from Blick Art Supply and it was free shipping.

          I have a commission here ready to paint as soon as they come in.

          In the meantime, I painted a birthday card and a couple of practice pieces.

          The black blob on the left-hand page is the drop of ink from last week’s oopsie that bled through the paper.

There are two colors in watercolor you’re never supposed to use. White and black. White because you’re supposed to let the white of the paper be your white. And black because it’s “dark and dull.” Many artists say you can achieve a better, richer black by mixing your primaries together. That would be red, yellow, and blue.

          As you can see, I broke both those rules.

       

          In this other one her little face gets lost in the words on the page.

          It’s practice, folks.

          In both of these I outlined with a liner brush and paint. Not perfect but, again, practice.   

          For the birthday card I searched Pinterest for ideas for my mentor, California Susan. She seems to really like my paintings and she’s been with me from the beginning of this journey. She saves even the most silliest of cards I’ve painted for her.

          When I think of California Susan I think of a sophisticated and elegant woman. I found an image that made me think of her but it looked hard. Complicated.

          It’s not that I thought I couldn’t do it as much as I was in a time crunch. I didn’t remember her birthday was coming in time to paint a card and get it to her on time.

          I needed something simpler. I considered this one because it had a cute message.

          “Isn’t it weird being the same age as old people,” it says.

          I know I can paint this one in a short amount of time!

          But I really wanted the other one.

          I can throw it away if I mess it up. Sometimes I have to encourage myself to at least try.

          And I almost did throw it away.

          I wasn’t happy with her face.

 I “erased” it and went looking for a different brush in my brush drawer. There I found one made to apply designs on fingernails. It’s a really fine, long-hair brush with like three hairs in it but it doesn’t hold much paint.

That’s okay. Her face is no bigger than a dime anyway.

          Just for comparison, here’s the first brush I used, which is one of my smallest brushes, and the brush for nail art.

     

           I was much happier with my second face, then I softened some of the background elements. I thought they stood out too much.

          “You don’t look a day over fabulous!” I wrote on the back.

          I hope she likes it.

          Speaking of my brush drawer...

          All of my brushes rolled around in a jumble.

          I didn’t like that.

          I found a couple of pieces of wood in the way back and measured them. Mike cut and put ‘em together with brads.

          “My pieces are too short,” I told him when I put it in the drawer. “I should’ve let you measure them.”

          It doesn’t matter anyway. It does the job it was designed to do.

          All that’s left are photos.

          I took this one from the internet. It was photographed at the Wyalusing Rocks and shows you the smoke from the Canadian wildfires that have drifted into our area.

          I love that our electric co-op has a native pollinator habitat.

          This guy sauntered across the road like he owned it.

         “It has two driver's seats. Does that mean it needs two operators?” I asked.

          “No. It’s so he can sit on whichever side he needs to sit on to see where he’s going and not hit things,” Mike said.

          Three the same!

          Take some inspiration from this knapweed. You can’t always choose where you’re planted, so bloom where you’re planted.

          Crows getting a drink from our creek. We really need a good, soaking rain.

          “And not in November either,” farmer Randy says. “It’s doesn’t do us any good then.” He was referring to his hay crop.

          The sun through the smoke.

          Queen Anne’s Lace.

          This hawk sat for me. We had just left our road and not gone far when I see him.

          “There’s a hawk! He’s sitting on the hay wagon.”

          I was on my morning love call to Miss Rosie and I made her wait while I took several photos.

          We were on a section of road where there was good visibility in both directions. There wasn’t any traffic coming either way so Mike stopped and backed up so I could get my pictures. A truck came into Mike’s rearview mirror. He stopped and moved as far to the side as he could and waved the truck around.

          I caught a bee, a skipper, and a Tiger Swallowtail on a bull thistle.

          Two views of the same unused mailbox. I would normally pick just one or the other to show you but I’ll have lots of room this week so you get to see both. Which view do you like best? You can even say neither if it’s not your jam.

          Bergamot is blooming.

          Look at all the fluff! It’s a veritable finch buffet!

          “What’s that?” Mike asked.

          “Snapdragon,” was the first name that came to mind. “Toadflax,” was the next. “Butter-and-eggs,” I ended. Apparently my mental filing cabinet needed a minute to locate the most common name for this pretty wildflower.

          “That’s the one,” Mike said.

          A dusty nettle growing beside the road.

          A couple of shots of a deep red day lily.

      Let’s call this one done!

      Done!

Invasion!

 

          We’re going to start this week a little differently.

          “How so?” you ask.

          This week, instead of starting with the title story, we’re gonna start with a wildflower picture.

          “Okay... Why?” I know you’re curious.

          We’re starting this week with a wildflower photo because when I post the link on Facebook, my lead photo shows up and I don’t want it to be my invasion photo.

          “How do you have a photo of ‘invasion’?”

          We know two people who have recently been “invaded” by the surgeon’s scalpel and both of them gave me permission to show you their battle scars.

          Now, if you’re squeamish, consider this your warning to do a fast scroll past the lead story.

          Life’s messy.

We butchered chickens one year when I was growing up. Is that the reason my older brother would never eat chicken? I often wonder.

We’ve butchered deer.

And honestly, you can’t change baby diapers, clean up the hairballs the cat leaves behind —

Oh cats! They’re the source of so many wonderful and nose-pinching events! Uneaten bits of critters they leave on the rug, an indigestible glob of mouse hair they kindly puked up for you. Or a bird they caught and only ate the head! Eww! Cats! And let’s not forget to mention litter boxes here.

Or the sad and unpleasant job of picking your ‘tired’ cats up off the road.

How about wiping the dog’s butt, or walking into the bathroom after someone has had an especially heroic, and odiferous, elimination — you can’t do all that stuff and still be squeamish!

          Our handsome neighbor, Lamar Kipp, had heart valve replacement surgery and is now home from the hospital.

          “Does it hurt?” I asked. I had heard that he wasn’t experiencing any pain and I just can’t imagine it doesn’t hurt.

          “Nope. No pain at all. It baffles the doctors,” Lamar said.

          It baffles all of us, too, Lamar!

          “Can I show your scar?” I asked.

          “Yep.”

          He sat back, opened his shirt, and flashed a victory smile.

          The other person who tangled with the surgeon’s knife is my handsome Irish twin, David. He’s not technically my Irish twin, but he decided to repeat first grade to wait for me. We went through school together and everyone thought we were twins. David and I are 14 months apart in age, whereas Kat’s daughters Jessica and Rachel are only 9 months apart, so they’re true Irish twins.

          “Lamar is letting me show his big ol' honkin' incision in my blog this week,” I told David. “Can I show yours, too? I can title this week SCARS! or CUTS! or OPERATIONS! No. Not operations. Let me know!”

“You can show mine. How about Invasion for a title?”

“I love that! It truly is an invasion, isn’t it.”

“It sure feels like one,” David said.

“What did your brother have done?” you ask.

David had back surgery.

          “The doctor opened up the hole in my vertebrae and shaved the bulging disc,” he told us in our morning love note where he shared this picture.

          “Wait. What? He opened the vertebrae?” I asked David. I needed clarification!

          “Yep. In a nutshell, he enlarged the spinal canal and shaved the bulging disk that was pressing on the sciatic nerve. They didn’t put anything in.”

          I didn’t know they did that.

          Unlike Lamar, David is in pain. Once he heals from the surgery, we’re hoping his debilitating back pain will be resolved as well.

          “Speaking of backs, how’s Bondi?” you ask.

          You beat me to it! I’m usually the one saying, “Speaking of”!

          Bondi had another laser treatment and in this picture we’re heading off to the vet’s office. Have you ever seen a sadder face?!

          I’ve been doing range-of-motion exercises with her and I think I see a tiny bit of improvement. Instead of dragging her legs behind her, she’s actually used her knees a couple of times. She’s trying.

          Her doggie wheelchair will be here Monday.

          Let’s go to the kitchen next, shall we?

          Mike and I don’t eat a lot of hamburger and a pound will last us a couple of meals. We were running low on our freezer stock so we bought a ten-pound roll. The outside of the package has one-pound marks on it. The first one and the last one are not a full pound, but I thought if I cut it on the marks the first and last one together would give me a pound.

          Confident in Walmart’s marking abilities, I cut on the marks. I ended up with eight one-pounds and two partials. Added together that gives me nine pounds of hamburger.

          How does that happen? I wondered. I counted the lines. There are ten lines, but as I’ve said, the first and last are not full pounds.

          Don’t fall for it! Don’t trust the marks!

          I got my kitchen scale out and some of those “pounds” were nineteen ounces. I did get my ten pounds of hamburger, it just wasn’t as easy as I thought it was going to be.

          How about a little kitchen tip?

          You may already know this but if you don’t, let me tell you.

          After you put the hamburger in the freezer bag, flatten it out. It stacks better in the freezer and doesn’t take nearly as long to thaw out.

          I remember when my beautiful little sister Phyllis had a wound that was healing. She’s on the left in the photo with our oldest and much-adored sister Patti. Phyllis was having a problem getting protein in her diet because she just wasn’t eating very much.

          “Why is that important?” I asked.

          “Protein is one of the main building blocks your body uses to repair wounds — without enough of it, healing slows down,” she explained.

          I know, right! Sometimes it’s the obvious stuff that escapes me.

          Phyllis found a yogurt she really liked that was high protein and she shared the information with me.

          Do you know what else is high protein?

          Eggs!

          I found a recipe for high-protein pudding that uses six hard-boiled eggs, 3/4 cup whole milk, 1/3 cup sugar, 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, and 1 teaspoon vanilla. I make it with Stevia for Mike to have a no-sugar dessert and he likes the flavor of the cocoa.

          “I should make it for Lamar,” I told Mike and that’s just what I did. The recipe makes just a bit over two cups of pudding so I doubled it and got five one-cup servings.

          “Are you gonna get tired of it?” I asked Lamar.

          “Nope.”

          “What other flavor would you like if you do?”

          “Butterscotch,” he answered without hesitation.

          When I got home I asked Copilot, my artificial intelligence helper, to find me a version of this pudding in butterscotch.

          Seconds later a recipe appears on my screen.

          I wanted to go to the website and check out the other flavors listed in the answer Copilot gave me, but I couldn’t find it.

          “It didn’t come from a website,” Copilot said. “I made that recipe for you. It’s not anywhere on the web.”

          How cool is that!?

          “What if I want to make a graham cracker crust for my pudding?” I asked. I was thinking it would be something like those pudding pies Momma made us for dessert after Sunday dinners sometimes. Make the pudding a little thicker than the package directions and pour it into a graham cracker shell.

          “You can absolutely do that,” he — it said. “And it’ll be delicious.”

          I followed the instructions and had soooo many problems! You wouldn’t believe!

          “What kind of problems?” you ask.

          First off, I was to make a butterscotch base using butter and brown sugar. “Stir over medium heat until it becomes glossy, 1-2 minutes.”

          I kept at it a good five minutes and all matte, no gloss.

          “Your heat isn’t high enough to melt the brown sugar,” Copilot said.

          I boosted the heat and it worked. I set it aside to cool a little before adding it to my egg, milk, and vanilla mixture I already had done.

          “It set up!” I complained. “It’s hard as a rock!”

          “You cooked it too long. Just re-melt it with a little water,” it advised.

          I did that and after it cooled a little, I used my hand mixer and mixed it with the pudding base. It sorta worked. Most of the butterscotch mixed in but there were a few hard nuggets on the bottom. I strained ‘em out and ate them. They were butterscotchy and crunchy.

          “It’s pretty thin,” I went back to the computer chat I was having with AI. “I don’t think it’ll set up.”

          “With all those eggs in there, it’ll set up after a few hours in the refrigerator. Even overnight can make a big difference.”

          I trusted. But AI can only work with the information I give it.

          The next morning I checked. It was still soupy.

          “You can add butterscotch chips,” Copilot said. “That’ll boost the flavor and help to thicken it.”

          It did boost the flavor but it was still more like a drink than a pudding. I wonder if it’ll freeze into ice cream. I did indeed wonder that.

          “You can cook it,” Copilot said.

          “My eggs are already cooked.”

          “It should still work.”

          I tried that but it didn’t work. It wasn’t thickening at all and I saw a burn flake come off the bottom, despite my constant stirring. I didn’t want to burn it any more so I took it off the heat. Maybe I just had it too high and it would’ve worked if I’d’ve lowered the heat and kept at it, I don’t know. But I remembered when my kids were little and I would make them different flavors of pudding using cornstarch.

          “Cornstarch is absolutely your easiest, most reliable rescue right now,” it said.

          Yeah. Why didn’t you suggest that in the first place? I wondered but didn’t bother asking. You can’t hurt AI’s feelings, even if you get snarky on it.

          I finally had a pudding-like pudding. I put it together in single serving cups with graham cracker base and sprinkle on top to look pretty.

          I’ve been making the pudding in my blender. It’s a pain in the patootie to scrape the pudding out from around the blades in the bottom of the blender jar. This time I decided to make it in my food processor.

          Mike came out and got a cup. “What did you do to this?” he asked after a bite. “It’s like... really grainy — and it tastes different! I don’t even want to eat it.”

          “The graininess is because you used the food processor,” AI said. “But you can save it by putting it in the blender and blending again.”

          It was worth a shot and if it didn’t work I’d throw it away then. But it did work! I really was surprised.

          “It’s a little different,” was Mike’s verdict, “but I can eat it. Next time do it like you did the first time.”

          Duly noted.

          If Mike’s was grainy that meant Lamar’s was too since I used the food processor to make his butterscotch.

          Even though the butterscotch had a graham cracker base, I dumped the whole thing in the blender and gave them a whirl.

          With the graham cracker crumbs in there, it was still grainy.

Don’t you even laugh!

          Maybe I should’ve known but I always have to try! I should’ve saved myself the hassle and cleanup and just left it like it was.

          Live and learn.

          I took a cup down to Lamar.

          “If you don’t like it, it’s okay.”

          He took a bite and his eyes lit up. It did have an intense butterscotch flavor. “Bring the rest of them!”

          “Next time I make it, it’ll be better,” I told him.

          “There’s nothing wrong with it this time,” he said.

          I guess the texture didn’t bother him.

          This pudding can be frozen and thaws beautifully! I know, I tried.

 

          Pudding wasn’t the only thing I messed up this week.

          “What did you do now?” you ask?

          In my practice book, I outline my watercolors. I could practice my outlining skills and use a liner brush and black paint. I’ve done that. But for my practice book I wanted something easier and faster.

I’ve tried all kinds of pens, regular ballpoint pens, cheap acrylic liner pens from Temu, Micron, Signo from Uni-ball, and my latest purchase of Grabie acrylic markers. The tips always clog.

I decided to get out my ink and dip pen. It sorta worked. The ink spread on these old pages, but not too bad, and it still clogged.

Suddenly, a big blob appeared on my page! And I was almost done, too!

          Aye-yi-yi!

          “Just turn it into another bee,” my best old friend said. I always show Trish my art ahead of my letter blog.

          “That is such a great idea!”

          Will I do that?

          I don’t know. Maybe. I might just turn the page. It’s my practice book after all.

          I also painted this little cutie patootie.

          “OH MYLANTA!! She's so adorable! Reminds me of my granddaughter when she was little!” Trish said.

          I’ll tear it out of my book and send it to her.

          Lastly, I painted this guy.

          “He looks angry,” she said.

          “Just like Mike looked when he saw I painted a snake.” He wasn’t really angry but he doesn’t like snakes.

          “You should name him Mike.”

          So here you have Mike.

          The only pictures left in my file of this week’s photos are road pictures and wildflower photos.

The leaves of the Teasel wrap around the stem and make these little cups that catch rainwater.

“Is there a reason for it?” you ask.

I’m so glad you asked! There is! And it’s very interesting, too! The water-filled cups make it harder for ants and other nectar thieves to climb the stem and reach the flowers. This protects the plant’s nectar from insects that would take it without pollinating. Rainwater gathers dust, pollen, and even tiny dead insects. As these decay, they create a nutrient-rich “broth” the plant can absorb through leaf pores. This helps teasel survive in poor, dry soil. A 2024 study found that teasels given extra dead insects produced 30% more seed weight. 

 

A burn-off at a gas well site. I was snapping pictures as we drove down the highway at 55 or 60 miles an hour.

I thought this was a squirrel sitting on the fence in the back of the yard so I grabbed my camera. A squirrel here would be an oddity. The dogs would kill any that ventured into the yard if they caught it.

Once I saw what it actually was, I remembered the gnarly old root Mike brought home for me and propped up against the fence.

          This is a squirrel, as I’m sure you know. I just don’t see many of them.

A Kingfisher on his usual log in our creek.

          Black-eyed Susans. 

          After a rain.

Bittersweet.

Vervain.

          A Hummingbird Moth and Pickerelweed in my pond.

     

          Heal-all’s one of those wildflowers that can be found just about everywhere. Roadsides, yards, fields. It goes by a whole handful of names: Self‑heal, Woundwort, Heart‑of‑the‑Earth, Carpenter’s Herb, and even Blue Curls in some places.

In folk medicine, people used it for cuts, scrapes, sore throats, fevers, mouth ulcers, and stomach troubles. The leaves were made into poultices for wounds, brewed into teas, and even chewed fresh for toothaches. Medieval herbalists swore it could “restore the body to wholeness,” which is probably how it earned that confident name. Modern studies say it does have anti‑inflammatory and antimicrobial properties, so the old‑timers weren’t completely off the mark.

          I have a little room left so I’m going to reach back and talk about something I’ve mentioned before.

          I read a schoolbook from the Childhood of Famous Americans series. I only have the one book and it’s about Frances Willard. The story itself was okay, I’ve read books with worse storytelling, but what it did was make me want to find out more about this gal.

          This lady had some amazing accomplishments for a woman of her era. She was born in 1839 and died in 1898. She was a teacher first, then the first dean of women at Northwestern University, president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and she used that platform to help women get a vote. She believed women needed a vote to protect their families, their homes, and themselves from the damage caused by alcohol. She also championed labor rights, prison reform, and education. She also helped raise the age of consent in many states.

          Francis never married, although she turned down several proposals. She grew up in a time when marriage meant giving up almost everything — your job, your independence, your ability to travel, even control over your own money. She watched other women lose their freedom the moment they said “I do,” and she wanted no part of that!

          She did have a “Boston marriage” with Anna Adams Gordon. That’s a term meaning a committed partnership between two women. Men, however, were not given such a tidy little title like that. They might be called a bachelor household, bachelor companions, or even just roommates.

Anna was Francis’s secretary, companion, and chosen heir. They lived together, traveled together, worked together, and cared for each other for decades.

          I’m going to guess that not many of you ever heard about this woman. I never did, at least not that I remember. School was a very long time ago. 

          Let’s call this one done!

          Done!