Mishmash

Would you believe that I haven’t shown you any photographs from my walk-abouts for the last two weeks?
Yeah.
I’m a little behind.
I went through and picked out what I thought were the best from each day plus the things I wanted to talk about and when I was done I had 92 pictures.
Hmmm. That might be too many to put in one weeks letter blog, so I may have to do an extra posting in the middle of the week like I did last week.
But we can clear two photos from the file by showing you what was on my desktop this week.
I had a landscape up for a while. The skies were dark and stormy but the sun broke through to shine on the water tower on the hill. I like the photo because it reminds me of standing there, in the field, with the wind soughing through the trees.

My current desktop photo is trumpet honeysuckle in bloom and I really like the lighting in this photo.

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The weather here in mid-MO is warming nicely, as the blooming flowers will attest to. The girls, Itsy and Ginger, got a spring haircut and I threw the clippings out for the birds to use in their nest building. The annual shaving-of-the-winter-legs ritual has taken place a week ago. Then I dug out my shorts from winter storage. I know I’ve put on weight this winter, but how much — I didn’t know. I’ve not been on speaking terms with my scale for the last four or five months now.
Like many women, my closet contains a range of sizes. I skipped over my size eight shorts; my size ten too. I gazed forlornly at my twelve’s as I put them in the I-don’t-think-so pile, and I pulled out my fourteens. I have no sixteen’s because I vowed to never be a size sixteen again, and I gave them all away to the thrift store a couple of years ago.
I wiggled and shimmied my soft and jiggly bottom into my size fourteen shorts, sucked my gut in, buttoned and zipped them. Then I stood back and admired my muffin top in the mirror.
Sigh. Well, an oversized tee shirt should hide that, I thought. Yeah. Not really. We just kid ourselves when we think it does, but what are you gonna do?
Before the day ended, I had to change into something more comfortable.
Top all of this off with me looking through old photos.
I went from being a normal weight of one thirty in the eighty’s,

to anorexic thin at one sixteen in the late nineties,

to an all time high of a hundred and eighty pounds in twenty-twelve,

to finding Curves and a feel good weight of one thirty-eight two years ago.

LOL.
I was looking at these pictures of me and do you know, I was heavy when I first got my hair cut real short? I had to go to two different hair salons because the lady at the first salon wouldn’t cut my hair as short as I wanted it.
“You’ll look like a tick,” she told me.
LOL.
Thankfully, Curves has given me the tools I need to lose weight and get in shape. It wasn’t easy, but with time, exercise and watching what I ate, I lost forty-two pounds over the course of two years.
Last week, after not fitting into my summer shorts, seeing photos of me when I was thinner —and fatter and thinner — I decided enough was enough. I have to lose this weight.
And I had a conversation with my scale.
“Be kind to me,” I said as I stepped on.
“One sixty,” the scale said. “And don’t blame me, you did it to yourself!”
That’s just twenty-two pounds more of me to love, right?
I started a diet, and by diet I mean I stopped eating candy, cookies, donuts, and Cheetos Crunchy. I measure my portions and I’m drinking my water. I’m not exercising yet, but I will, and for the rest of last week I wore my workout pants; my shorts were too uncomfortable.
Friday I went to a couple of thrift stores looking for shorts. “I only need two pair,” I told Mike. I ended up finding four pairs of jean shorts — size sixteen, thank you very much — for two dollars a pair and that will get me through the summer (or until I lose some weight and fit into my fourteens again).
Saturday morning is my weigh-in morning. I got up and dressed, just like I do every morning. I made the bed and headed for the bathroom. When I came out I remembered I needed to weigh-in.
“Boy, that was a waste of time getting dressed this morning,” I told Mike as I stripped down to my skivvies.
Mike sat in his recliner and amusedly watched as I dropped my clothes in a pile and begged the scale. “One pound!” I pleaded. “Just give me one pound!” And I stepped on.
“One fifty-nine,” my scale told me after thinking about it for a minute.
I got just what I asked for and you would think that I would be grateful, wouldn’t you. “I should have asked for two!” I told Mike.

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Look at these short little fat toes, would ya! Not really. Look at the bites on my foot! One of them is a tick bite. The rest…chiggers, I think.

I was in the shower the other day, scrubbing my feet, when I realized I had bites only on one foot (that’s a shadow by my big toe).
Why is that? I wondered when all of a sudden a picture of my right shoe pops into my head.

Yeah. I bet that’s why.
“Peg, don’t you use bug spray?” you ask.
Yeah, I do. I usually start at my ankle though.
“You need new shoes,” you observe.
I have a new pair. Brand spankin-new, as a matter of fact, but I’m not ready to throw these away yet.

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It’s morel mushroom season here in Missouri. Last year — or was it the year before — time gets away from me — I found false morels around the base of a dead tree on my walking route. A lot of people eat these false morels, but they can be poisonous.
“There’s a guy here at work that wants them,” my youngest and very handsome son, Kevin told me when I sent him a picture of the mushrooms.
When I went back for them there was a couple there, a man and a woman, already picking them.
“Can I see?” I asked as I approached.
“Sure,” she told me.
They had a five gallon bucket full of false morels and another five gallon bucket half full of the morels.
Sometime later on I noticed that the debris had been cleared from the bottom of the dead tree, which is where morals grow.

Maybe it makes them easier to see, I surmised.
I have been watching all spring for the morels to appear, but didn’t find any. Then on a walk-about with my girls, I found eight huge morels around the base of a small tree stump and almost in someone’s yard. I wasn’t even looking for them!

I called Kevin and he wanted them so I picked them for him. Now I’m guessing that by clearing the debris from the base of the dead tree, they have destroyed the mushroom bed.
“Why didn’t you keep them for yourself?” you wonder.
EWWW! Those things are nasty!
Morels, in case you don’t know, can be bought for anywhere from eighty to four hundred dollars a pound; according to Google.

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I saw a great blue heron on the pond. I spied him through the vines and low hanging branches of a tree and took his picture before he could fly away. I’ve learned, over the years, to take pictures as soon as I see a critter because if I try to wait till I’m closer, I might not get a shot at all.

Mr. Heron saw me, and watched me for a bit, then decided I was not a threat. Gingerly he stalks his pray, then dives and I get a shot of heron butt.

He got it!
He came up with a fish!

I took a lot of pictures wanting to catch the moment he tosses his head back and gobbles down his catch, but was surprised to watch as he took his fish to the shallows before eating him.

Old Mr. Heron flipped the fish around in his beak until he had him faced head first down the hatch.

Then the fish was gone.

The heron continued to fish as the girls and I walked on.

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Ginger!
That little rascal!
With the arrival of spring and the waking of the critters, Ginger has taken to snuffling at the banks of the pond in a very excited manner. Dashing here and dashing there, sometimes pulling me in her frenzy to get at whatever she’s tracking, and sometimes going right into the pond. She doesn’t mind getting wet  — enjoys it even — however, she does mind waiting and she whines if I don’t move fast enough to suit her.
She’s after frogs, I think, or maybe mice, and I humor her to a certain degree, following her along as she sniffs out the critters.
This day she pounced, dug her snout deep in the underbrush, then just as quickly she draws back and in the blink of an eye, drops this at my feet.
Yeah. It’s a piece of a shed snake skin.

Ginger dove back in and I let her. I didn’t expect her to find anything else because she’s noisy. She rustles the underbrush with her feet and nose and makes big snorting sounds as she clears her nostrils. I figure that should give any critter time and warning enough to get away.
Boy was I ever surprised when she pulled back and had a fat little snake writhing in her mouth! “GINGER!” I yelled. I don’t know what kind of snake it was, but snakes bite when trapped! I didn’t want her to get bit and I was relieved when she dropped it.
I took a moment to collect my wits, then I thought to see if I could get a picture of Mr. Snake slithering away but he was gone; down into the leaf and weed strewn bank of the pond. And to be honest, I wasn’t all that sad about it either.

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My page number, when I print this, will be six. I like to end with an odd number page because I print double sided for my mailings and I can add a cover, which my on-line readers never get to see,

but I’m telling you this because in light of the number of photos I want to share with you this time, I think I will fill one more page with photos, and that will give me seven! And that’s an odd number.
“Not as odd as you,” you say.
Smart aleck.

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I gave three Butt Snuffers to my friend Linda. She doesn’t smoke anymore but her husband Gene does.
“How did Gene like them?” I asked the next time I saw her.
“He thinks they’re too pretty to use,” she answered and pointed to her shelf were they sat proudly, front and center.

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I found a purple velvet pouch sitting all alone on a bench behind one of the businesses here on the Strip.

I recognized the bag immediately and knew what it was. In the Dog Patch store they have a kiosk (pronounce it kee osk, Conner), an island with pretty colored stones in it. They will sell you the bag and as many stones as you can fit in it for one price.

I picked it up and opened it. Sitting right on top was a pretty bracelet. I pulled it out and saw that it had a heart hanging from it. Written on the heart is the word Mother.

Sigh.
Me thinks some little boy or girl is going to be sad when they see they have lost their treasure. I wish there was some way I could get it back to its rightful owner.

And with that, we shall call this one done!