Intentions

         Intentions.

         I had the best of intentions.

         My best of intentions were to complete last week's letter blog as a midweek edition because all I had left to do was show you the photos I took during the week. Unfortunately, it didn't happen that way.

         Unfortunately-unfortunately, life kept happening all around me and now I have more stories to tell!

         Unfortunately-unfortunately-unfortunately, I took more than 550 new pictures this week.

         Doggone-it! I'm so behind!

         What do I cut... what do I cut?

         "Peg, take a deep breath and relax," you say.

         "The only deadline you have is the one you put on yourself," Rosie said to me. "I can read your letter just as well on Wednesday as I can on Monday."

         Okay, okay! Deep breath taken and with that, let's take a bite out of this elephant.

         Macchiato got into a scrap a couple of weeks back. He was laid up for a couple of days but every since then he's been acting weird. For more than a week he didn't want to go out and he walks like he's sore. We don't know what's going on with him.

         Check out this shot!

         Two humbees at the same time! That's just what Momma and I call them. They are really hummingbird moths. This is the first time this year that I've seen these beautiful and fascinating critters.

         This kind of moth, with peek-a-boo wings, is called a Clearwing Moth. When they first come out of their cocoons the wings are dark red to black. As they begin to fly, the scales fall off and that is why they look like this and are called Clearwings. Once they reach this stage of life, they only live for about a week. Another interesting fact about these moths is, unlike other moths, these guys lack hearing organs.

         This is a Silver-spotted Skipper. He was in the Bergamot patch at the same time as the humbees.

         I think this beautiful red dragonfly is called a Ruby Meadowhawk.

         I know you've seen this one before. He's a Twelve-spotted Skimmer. I just love the dragonflies and will take their picture whenever they sit for me.

         Now this one...

         This one is beautiful but invasive and scares me a little bit.

         This is Purple Loosestrife. So far it only grows in a swampy area up here at the house but the second I see it near my pond, its war!

         This plant will invade marshes, ponds, and lakeshores, replacing cattails and other wetland plants. It forms dense and impenetrable stands that are unsuitable as cover, food, or nesting sites for a wide range of wetland critters. Each plant can produce 2.7 million seeds and is so invasive it is illegal to possess, plant, transport, or even sell, in 24 states. Now that's a bad-ass plant.

  

      

         Look at this little guy. He's just a little crab or flower spider. I can barely see him but he was tickling the hair on my arm, which is why I spotted him. After messing around with him for a few minutes, trying to get a good photo of him, he was getting pretty aggravated, but I bet you could tell that by his fighting stance.

         The Pickerel Weed is getting ready to bloom. These guys are a pond flower. The seeds can be eaten like nuts and the young leaf-stalks can be cooked as greens.

         The bull thistle is blooming.

         After the flowers have gone to seed you can spend a long time watching the beautiful yellow finches feeding on them.

         I discovered two new wildflowers down at my pond!

         This one is called Water Horehound. It's in the mint family but non-aromatic. It's sometimes called bugleweeds because of the resemblance of each flower to a trumpet.

         This tiny little flower is Lobelia Inflata or more commonly known as Indian Tobacco. It has a similar effect upon the nervous system as nicotine. Native Americans used it for respiratory and muscle disorders as well as for ceremonial medicine, and the foliage was burned as a natural insecticide.

         This plant is still used medicinally today but it has some pretty heavy side effects that can possibly lead to death and that limits its use.

 

        I have some pretty good size snails in the pond. I have no idea if they are edible and even if they are — I'm not.

         I bet that without me even telling you what this guy is, you know. He's a red wasp.

         I was looking online for something interesting to say about him when I came across a blog by Larry Dablemont — he's a naturalist, writer, photographer, and outdoorsman. I followed his column in the local newspaper when we lived in Missouri. He had this to say about red wasps: I want to warn all you readers about something… red wasps! The whole month of August and much of September are the days in which they become most aggressive, as their larvae grow closer to maturity in the paper nests they make around nooks and crannies in sheds and around porches.

         I went on to read the rest of the article and he talks about black vultures.

         These birds are devilish. They, along with the armadillos, should be killed anywhere they are found, but, for some idiotic reason they are protected by federal law under the migratory bird act. It would be interesting to know how far north they have come so if you are sure you have seen one anywhere north of Stockton Lake, let me know.

         Lake Ozark, where we lived, was north of Stockton Lake, so I dropped him a line and told him about the herds of black vultures I saw at Bagnell Dam.

         Years ago, I came across a whole bunch of cotton thread in different colors, and although I didn't think I would use it, I picked it up for next to nothing to give to our daughter Kat. She'd been doing a lot of crafty stuff and I thought she would find a use for it. When I asked her if she wanted me to send it to her, she said, "Just keep it until we come out to see you and I'll get it then,"

         The time came and Kat, Jesse, and four girls made the 17-hour trip to visit us here at our mountain home in Pennsylvania. We had a nice visit and when it came time to pack up and go home, there wasn't a lot of extra room in the van. Jesse, bless his heart, sold his motorcycle in order to buy the van specifically to make this trip. "I want Grandma's china and the picture albums," Kat told me. "You'll have to hold onto everything else for now."

         The next few times I saw her, we were in Missouri and the cotton thread was here, in Pennsylvania, which explains why I still have it to this day.

         A couple of weeks ago now, I got the thread out, saw it had gotten damp, and had a little somethin-somethin growin on it. I took a scrub brush and dish soap and tested a few to see if they would clean up and they did. Then I tested them for strength and the thread was still strong. I got the rest of them out, cleaned up, and hung them on the dog lead to dry. 

I think, in my spare time, I'll make a pair of fingerless gloves, which explains why this is all the farther I've gotten in three weeks.

         And that takes care of and finishes up last week's letter blog.

         Monday was an early day for us and I have a story to tell about Monday but it's also about Mike and Mike hasn't given me permission to share his story yet. So I'll work on him and hopefully he'll let me tell the story next time.

         Wednesday.

         Oh, Wednesday.

         What a day you were.

         Wednesday was bad but could have been a much worse day except for the grace and mercy of God.

         Mike needed to run an errand while I was busy with chores around the house. "I'll be back," was all he said to me as he got in the Jeep and backed out of the garage.

         He'd been gone a long time and my chores were pretty well caught up so I decided to take the girls on a walk-about. I was up on the hill when my phone rings. I look at the ID, it was Mike. "Hey babe," I answer.

         "Holy cow," Mike said. "You won't believe what happened."

         I stopped in my tracks. The adrenaline rushes into my blood stream and now I'm scared. "What?"  

         "I was stopped at the stop sign at the end of our road and a motorcycle goes past me. When I get down to the bottom of the mountain a truck had pulled out in front of the motorcycle."

         "Oh no!" I exclaim in horror. Motorcycle verses truck accidents never end well for the motorcyclist, but secretly I was relieved that Mike was okay. "Oh no!" I say again feeling sorry for the motorcyclist and his family.

         "I stopped and helped pick the motorcycle up off the guy, and shut it off — it was still running! There were other people there helping so I directed cars around this poor guy that was laying in the middle of the road. We didn't dare move him."

         "Is he... is he... dead?"

         "No, he's still alive. And the girl was up and yelling and cussing and carrying on..."

         "He had a passenger?"

         "Yep."

         "And she was hysterical?"

         "I guess. There was stuff scattered all over the road and she was going around picking it up."

         "Did he have a helmet on?" I asked.

         "I don't know..."

         "He rode past you and you didn't notice if he had a helmet on or not?"

         "I was looking at the motorcycle..."

         "Was it a Harley?" 

         "Yep and a nice one too! I heard the cops ask the woman if he was wearing a helmet, and I think she said he was. There was one lying on the road. Anyway, I helped to get him on a backboard and in an ambulance that took him over to the school where they Life Flighted him."

         Ginger was straining at the leash so we walked on.

         "I'm on Robinson Road now," Mike said.

         About that time I can hear the rumble of a car going over the open grate of our little bridge. "I just heard you on the bridge."

         A minute later he pulls into the driveway. I rush through the rest of our walk and Mike and I sit on the patio and he tells me all about this adventure that he had without me, including some of the people he met.

         "It's a good thing I wasn't there, I'd have been taking pictures!"

         Mike pulled out his phone. "I didn't take any pictures until it was all over and I was back in the car."

         I was actually surprised that he took any pictures at all.

         About an hour later I get a text message from Joanie, the lady I wrote about last week. Pray for my brother Daniel. He was in a bad motorcycle accident and was Life Flighted to Packer.

         Oh no! Mike was there one or two minutes after it happened. He helped at the scene.

         What can you tell me. How was he? We don't know anything yet.

         At this point I switched from texting to a phone call and I let Mike talk to Joanie and tell her what he saw.

         People from our church were in the long line of stopped traffic, people including Pastor Mike, and everyone started praying for Daniel long before they knew it was Daniel in the accident.

         Daniel was released from the hospital two days later. He was having an issue with dizziness but really wanted to be home, so they let him go. He's on the mend as well as is his girlfriend who was on the bike with him and suffered some road-rash.

         Prayer works!

        

          Another skipper butterfly. This one is a Monk Skipper.

         Look at this little guy. I don't know what he is nor do I know why he appears to be camouflaged in....

         Dust? Is that dust? I was in the house when I felt him on me and I took him out in the sunshine so I could get a better look at him...

         Is my house that dusty?

         Probably, but why is it sticking to him? Maybe it's not dust and he's a bug that just looks like he's covered in dust... or sand.

         I was out early one morning, looking for dew-covered spider webs. I didn't find any but I got a cool photo of the Bergamot covered in dew. This is my current desktop photo.

         The Boneset is getting ready to bloom.

        

         This plant is in the sunflower family. Because of the way the leaves grow around the stem, there was a belief that wrapping the leaves around a broken bone would help it mend.

         This plant is also called feverwort or sweating-plant and was used by the native Americans and the Colonist to break fevers by means of sweating.

         A monarch! You can tell because of the two full rows of white dots on the wings.

         The goldenrod is blooming. I think I called it ragweed when I was talking about this plant last time. But forgive my mistakes. It's goldenrod.

         Did you know that Thomas Edison experimented with making tires out of goldenrod? This plant contains rubber naturally and Edison developed a way to grow it bigger and have a higher rubber content. The tires on the Model T given to him by his friend Henry Ford were made from goldenrod.

         There are several kinds of goldenrod; Rough-stemmed, Sweet, Tall, Stiff and Showy to name a few. I'm not sure which one I have here, it's either the Rough-stemmed or the Sweet. But some of the goldenrods are used in natural medicine.

        

         Between last week and this, the Pickerel Weed has bloomed. 

         I had some honey that sat here and sat here and sat here! It was crystallized. I know honey doesn't go bad, but no one was going to eat it so I warmed it and put it out for the critters.

         Man-oh-man! The bees were all over that! I guess it's easier to haul it home than to make it for themselves. In two days time they had picked up all of the honey.

         Molly, our old calico, is spending time out in the kennel like she's never done before. She's all curled up on a rock in the middle of my kennel-garden. The black cat closest to us is not a real one.

         There have been times, when it was time to lock up for the night, I'd have to go out in the kennel and bring her in.

         This is so unusual for her that I just had to tell you about it.

         Saturday was a sad day.

         My cousin Steven, one of my beloved Aunt Marie's sons, died earlier this year and Saturday was his memorial service.

        I had a chance to get re-acquainted with cousins I don't get to see very often.

         I loved watching the old photos scroll across the monitors placed strategically throughout the room.

       Steve was a member of the VFW and the Legion and just before the service they did a walk through, each one stopping to salute Steven.

         Mike and I went up to the graveside for the service and some dummy hadn't thought ahead.

         Yeah, me!

         I wore my heels and had a heck of a time once I left the blacktop. So much so that I took them off.

         The service included a gun salute. I don't know that it was a 21-gun salute, but they did shoot the rifles several times.

         "I was okay until the taps blew," Lorraine told me. "Then I lost it."

         I felt the tug on my heart too.

         They folded the flag....

         ...and presented it to Rosemary, the eldest of the Soden clan.

         After the service, people drifted away.

         Some paid their respects to those who have gone on ahead of us, some of them way too young.

          "Come on down to Pam's Restaurant and have a bite to eat with us," cousin Lorraine invited.

         "I don't know..." I hesitated. She didn't know that I bribed Mike to come to the service with me. I promised him a hamburger at Mary Beth's Westside Deli.        

         "Oh come on. It'll give you a chance to take more pictures," Lorraine bribed.

         "We'll see," was the best I could do.

         In the Jeep, Mike and I talked about it. "I promised you a hamburger!"

        "That's alright. We can go to Pam's. It isn't often you get to see your family."

         When we got to Pam's all the chairs at the big table were taken. 

        The girls moved to another table so Mike and I could sit with the adults, which was a nice thing to do, and I know the girls had a great time. They sat behind us and giggled the whole time.

         Pam's did a great job getting the food out and it was good too.

         We said our good-byes and took a took a different way home.

         I got cow pictures...

...and a new barn quilt to show you.

         And with that, we will call this one done.