A Quiet Week

         Not too much happening around the Luby household this past week.

         "What about the eclipse, Peg? Did you take any pictures?" you ask.

         Well, yes I did. But here's the thing. You can't just take pictures of the sun with your camera unprotected or you risk damaging it. Solar filters can be expensive and for a one-time use, I didn't want to spend the money. Besides, I justified, it'll be broadcast all over the TV anyway. There'll be tons of photos out there.

         A week or so before the eclipse I Googled 'homemade solar filters' and found out I could have sent for a sheet of the solar filter and made one to fit over the end of my camera, which wouldn't have been very much money, but now I'd waited too long.

         On the day of the eclipse, I fit my solar glasses over the end of my camera and took pictures that way. I couldn't use my zoom so I cropped the photos.

         Here in Pennsylvania, we only had 70 some percent coverage and we had clouds. Because of that and what I had to work with, this was the best I got.

  

       Like I said, it was quiet around here. Mike and I worked most days, went shopping one...

         Boy-oh-boy!

         Shopping, around here, is an all day trip. Especially if we need to go to both Lowe's and Home Depot. We left here at eight o'clock in the morning, stopped for breakfast, then went to Walmart and Lowe's in Athens, jumped on the highway and drove to Vestal, New York for Home Depot, Aldi's, gas, and a pizza lunch. On the way home we stopped at the Cabin Country Store.

  

       Betsy, the owner, remembered me — remembered my name even! — from four or five years ago when I sold her a few pieces.

         "Are you interested in buying any suncatchers?" I asked.

         "I can't right now," she told me. "We just put in a bakery and that's got us tapped out. I'd love to though."

         We chatted with Betsy for a while and bought a few cookies. "I never use shortening in my baking," she said as she bagged our cookies. "I use butter, sometimes lard, but never shortening."

         Before we left, Betsy had a thought. "Give me your phone number. Maybe I can buy a few pieces just before Christmastime."

         I am pleased with that. It gives me a reason to go out into my shop and make some pretties.

         That doesn't sound like so much shopping does it?

         Well, it's a 125 mile round trip and it was after four when we drove in our driveway. That's an eight-hour shopping trip. It makes me miss the old days, when we lived in Missouri and we had a Lowe's, Home Depot, and Walmart all within a five mile radius, as well as plenty of eating places and gas stations.

<<<<<>>>>> 

         Mike and I had gone to the Robinsons one evening this past week and I noticed they had some pretty pink flowers growing at the edge of the pond.

         "What are they?" I asked Jon Robinson.

         He thought for a moment, "I forget right now. But we can go look at them."

         I never got close enough to the pink ones to take a picture but there were lots of other pretty flowers down there.

         "A cardinal flower!" I exclaimed when I saw the bright red peeking from the tall grasses at the pond's edge.

         Cardinal flowers depend on hummingbirds for pollination because the long necks of the trumpet-shaped flowers are more than most insects can navigate.

         The finely ground roots of this Native American wildflower 

were once traditionally used as aphrodisiacs and love potions, but the plant is toxic if eaten in large quantities.

         "Look at these pods!" I was so excited finding new things to photograph and explore.

         Stephanie Robinson picked one and broke it open. The seeds were flat and all lined up.

         "What is it?" you ask.

         This is the seedpod of the yellow water iris.

          This plant is both harmful and beneficial. In some places it can take over and crowd out the other plants, which makes it invasive, but it is useful in that it can take up heavy metals and clean the water.

         "My mother planted all kinds of flowers," Jon Robinson told me.

         I think this one is a beardtongue.

         This one? I don't know. A yellow coneflower maybe?

         Even plain old pinecones capture my attention.

         Back at our place I see the Wild Cucumber has set its pods.

         They hang all in a row like Christmas tree lights. Once they dry I'll show you what they look like on the inside.

>>>>><<<<< 

         Michael was mowing on Friday. I thought to get a little quiet reading done. I got my Bible, a cup of coffee, a folding lawn chair, Itsy and Ginger, and I'd no sooner gotten set up in the sunshine when the mower stops. I glance down to where Mike had been mowing at the pond and he waves for me to, "Come here." I put the girls on the golf cart and we went to his rescue.

         "Stuck?" I asked.

         "I don't know. It won't go."

         He hooked the tow strap to the mower (the other end is always left hooked to the golf cart) and I pulled. I hadn't gone very far when I hear, "Whoa, whoa, whoa!"

         I stopped.

         "I think it's broke," Mike said. "Either that or there's something caught up under it, keeping it from going."

         We both got down on the ground. "There's a belt off," I said.

         "I see it too." Mike thought about it for a moment. "Let's go get the ramps and pull the mower up on it."

         We left the mower in the middle of the yard and got the ramps. "You have to do it," I told Mike. No way was I going to. My luck, I wouldn't stop and I'd pull the mower right up and over them!

         Once the back wheels of the mower were on the ramps, and the mower securely tied to the golf cart, Mike got down on the ground and checked it out. "I'm going to need some tools," he says and starts rattling off a list. "...and get that two by four to block the front tires with," he ends.

         "You better come with me and help get all that stuff." I knew I wasn't going to remember everything he wanted and I certainly couldn't carry it all by myself.

         "Yeah, I will."

         He crawls out from under the mower and we head for the garage. "I don't know why a belt being off would have anything to do with the driving gears."

         I was quiet, not having any insights into the situation.

         "Unless the belt drives the hydraulics... that could be it," he adds.

         We gather everything Mike thinks he'll need and walk back out across the yard to where we left the golf cart anchoring the mower up on the ramps. Mike got down on the ground and scooted under the mower. He takes the pulley off and hands me the screw and washers to keep safe, then he figures out how the belt should run and when he tries to put the pulley back on, he can't get it.

         "There isn't enough room under here," he says. He comes back out from underneath it and thinks for a moment. "Let's get the floor jack."

         Back up to the garage we go, get the floor jack and drag it down through the yard.

         "You watch the back wheels and make sure they aren't coming off the ramps," Mike says, then adds a warning. "But don't stand too close in case it comes off there."

         Mike jacked it up while I watched the back like he told me to.

         "They didn't move," I reported when he had the jack the whole way up.

         We stood back.

         "That looks safe," I said sarcastically.

         Mike went around to the side and rocked the mower. It really was pretty solid. "It's not going anywhere," he said.

         Back down on the ground Mike went, scooting up under the mower again. "Where's that pulley?" he asks and I hand it to him.

         "Oh my gosh. I feel like I'm going to be sick," Mike says and in the next instant he comes shooting out from under the mower and he sits up. "I don't know what's wrong. I felt like I was going to throw up."

         "Yeah. That's your better sense keeping you safe. Maybe you shouldn't be under there."

         After a minute or so Mike tried again, but he'd no sooner gotten in position when he came back out. "I can't do it." He had to wait a few minutes for his innards to settle back down and in the meantime, he was thinking, not buying my "keeping you safe" story at all. "I think it's because my head is going downhill." He paused and I could tell he was thinking it out. "There's not room for me to come from the other direction with that jack there...."

         "We could put blocks under the tires and take the jack out," I suggested.

         "What kind of blocks?" he asked.

         "Cement blocks, or we have lots of two by sixes."

         So we unhooked the golf cart and went to get blocks.

         It took some doing but we did get the mower blocked up and with Mike going in from the other direction, he was able to get the belt on the pulley and the pulley put back on. Then we had to reverse the process and take the blocks out.

         Once back on the ground Mike started the mower and I held my breath as he engaged the forward gears.

         And it worked! He was back in the lawn mowing business.

         "You'd do anything to give me something to write about," I joked with Mike as we cleaned up the tools.

         Really and truly guys, it was a quiet week around here. So with that let's call this one done and end it with a sunset picture.

         This was the sunset the night of the eclipse.

         Done!

Flea Battle

         This is a picture of my heart. Our grandson Andrew. It's been over a year since we've seen him and kids do a lot of growing in a short amount of time when they are his age. Andrew  will be five in December and is starting school this year.

         Sigh.

         Wait! I mean, SIGH!

         I sure do miss him and I know Pop-pop misses him too.

         Last week I showed you a photo of a plant that I didn't know the name of. It has an unusual seedpod but I wasn't sure how to go about Googling it.

         This week I saw the flower this plant produces and since I have more success finding plants this way, I Googled it. This, my dears, is a 'weed' called Velvetleaf, also known as Velvetweed, Chinese jute, China jute, Buttonweed, Butterprint, Pie-maker, and Indian mallow.

         As the name implies it has velvet-like leaves and they're heart-shaped. The flowers can be yellow or orange and mature into button-shaped capsules which split lengthwise to release the seed.

         The seeds are edible and nutty tasting. The leaves, according to Wikipedia, are edible, but I don't always trust their information and I haven't been able to verify it anywhere else.

         Velvetleaf has been grown in China since 2000 BC and used as a fiber crop to make ropes, coarse cloth, nets, paper, and caulk for boats.

         Velvetleaf arrived in North America probably before 1700 and became widespread along the East Coast by the early 1700's. Because the colonies desperately needed fiber for rope and cloth, velvetleaf was widely cultivated in the mid 1700's. Although attempts to process velvetleaf never succeeded economically, farmers continued to cultivate it for more than a 100 years. —Common Sense Homesteading.

         Sometimes, when I see places like this, one thought comes to mind.....

         Nature reclaims.

         I have these little red mushrooms coming up in the yard.

         Smudge jumped up in my lap one day last week and I noticed he had a big ole knot with a red spot in the middle on his neck. When the Kipps stopped on their morning walk, I asked Lamar to look at it.

         "I don't know. Could be a botfly. If it is, put some Vaseline on it and it'll back out."

         I fetched the Vaseline and Lamar put some on. Smudge, doing what cats do, rolled around in the dirt to dust himself, a trick they use to keep fleas down, and of course the Vaseline attracted the dirt. The red spot turned to a scab and the hair fell off and Smudge really likes it when you put Vaseline on it and pick at it. I'm guessing it's itchy. The bump is a lot smaller now. I'm guessing if it was a botfly, it died, and Smudge's body is taking care of it.

         I went out early and captured dewy web photos, something I haven't done in a while.

         This one has a spider in the middle, can you see it?

         "What the heck kinda spider is that!" you exclaim.

         I know, right! They do look really scary. This is a Spined Micrathena. They are in the family of orb-weavers and the female is the only web-building member of the species. Males can produce silk, mostly they use it in the mating ritual, which frequently also proves fatal.

         These spiders live about a year.

         And one more.

         On the same morning I took a photo of this grass all covered in webs and dew.

         And Purple Loosestrife.

          I watched the little sparrows picking and eating the berries from this shrub.

         And a White Admiral butterfly eating the leftovers from the cat food dish.

         This is a Great Black Wasp.

         They eat pollen? I wondered as he stuck his nose down in the flower.

         Nope, would be the answer. He has a little spider in his mouth, barely more than a snack since they usually prefer larger pray like grasshoppers and caterpillars.

         These wasps are solitary and with no colony to defend, they are not aggressive. Only the female can sting and will only do so if provoked or her nest is threatened.

         Now, you definitely do not want to be her pray during baby season. She'll sting you to paralyze you, a state you can live in for weeks, then carry you to the tunnel she carefully dug, put you and four or five other unlucky fellows into an egg chamber, lay an egg, and seal you up in there to be food for her baby.

         Yeah. I know, right! The stuff of nightmares! Unless you're the wasp.

  

         A Viceroy butterfly, a Monarch look-alike.

         Another in the category of I Don't Know.

        

         The Calico Asters, a late summer flower, are starting to appear.

        

         And so is a little color along our pretty little creek.

         This one was in the I Don't Know category until this week. This is Silky Dogwood.

         All of these upright white flowers belong to the Bur Cucumber.  

 

         You can tell the difference between Bur Cucumber and Wild Cucumber because Bur Cucumber has a hairy stem, I read. I jumped up from my comfortable seat here in front of my puter, trotted outside in my bare feet, and checked. What I have is the Wild Cucumber. No hairy stems here!

         My favorite, Bergamot, is starting to set its seeds.

   

      A Ruby Meadowhawk dragonfly.

         And making babies.

         As with most critters in the critter world, the male is the more colorful and females can be identified by the company they keep. Dragonflies mate, often in mid-air, in a maneuver reminiscent of passing a baton. The male bends his abdomen forward and deposits a sperm packet in a chamber under his abdomen, just to the rear of his thorax. Then, as he uses th

e claspers on the tip of his abdomen to hold his mate around her neck, she uses the tip of her abdomen to retrieve the sperm packet. Some dragonflies accomplish this while in flight. According to Karl Legler in Common Dragonflies of Wisconsin, two Meadowhawks of different species may be in tandem, but they will not be able to mate because the “lock and key” mechanisms of their genitalia do not fit.

         While at the pond I saw a Humbee (Humingbird Moth) on Pickerel.

  

         Hmmmm.

         Must be something in the air.

  

         The pretty little Fleabane Daisys.

         And the Tickseed Coreopsis.

  

       Fleas and ticks, oh my!

         We will let that lead us into the next story.

         For about a year now, every since we moved to Pennyslvania, we have been having issues with fleas. Not ticks. Everyone said what a bad year this has been for ticks, but I've only seen a couple of ticks on me and none on the dogs, but anyway, fleas are another story.

         I've used Frontline Plus on Itsy and Ginger from the very first day we got them and I keep them on it twelve months a year. By the end of the month, they are loaded with fleas again. It's like the Frontline isn't even working and if you buy Frontline, you know it's expensive.

         "The fleas seem to be building an immunity to it," our vet told us so we switched to K9 Advantix. It hasn't helped.

         I've gotten in the habit of combing the dogs a couple of times everyday. Ginger loves it, Itsy hates it. I smash the the fleas between my thumbnails and put them on a paper towel. Some nights I bet I crush at least a hundred of those blood-sucking little parasites.

         Oddly, it appeals to my slightly obsessive-compulsive nature, and I find it satisfing to find and kill them. Once they're dead, and even though they're dead, I'll wrap the paper towel up, and waterboard the little — BLEEP!

         Sorry. I don't like fleas.

         I wet the papertowel and squish all the water out of it and when it dries, it's like glued toghter. Nothing will get out of there.

         Frontline isn't working.

         K9 Advantix isn't working.

         So what's a body to do?

         "Make a flea trap," you say.

         I did. I set a shallow dish of water with Dawn dishsoap in the middle of the floor, added a tea light, darkened the room, and left. A couple of hours later I came back in and there wasn't one single flea!

         "Let's try it overnight," I said to Mike. "Fleas are supposed to be more active at night." We put the dish in the middle of the room, set a student-type light to shine down on it, turned off the rest of the lights and went to bed. The next morning.... no drowned fleas! I have no idea what I did wrong, but the trap didn't work.

         Back to the internet I went.

         I found a chat room with people that where having the same problem as me and I read down through the conversation. Someone brought up that they were having great results with two drugs, lufenuron and nitenpyram. Other people agreed; it was working for them too. The drugs are best used togehter, and they were 'cheap', way cheaper than Frontline and Advantix.

         I went to work researching it, checking many websites. The lufenuron is a once a month pill that keeps 98% of the eggs from hatching and the nitenpyram kills all the fleas on your pet for 24 hours, is extremly safe, and can be used up to five days in a row. They say if you use it longer the fleas may build an immunity to it.

         Cost wise?

         The lufenuron is the more expensive with 12 pills costing $25.

         The nitenpyram I got 100 pills for $35.

         This is the first month I've given them the lufenuron and they say you will need to use it for several months before you see a difference because of the lifecycle of the flea. But the nitenpyram I've given them several times. At thirty-five cents a dose, I've given it to all the cats too, inside and out.

         "How did you get the wild cats to eat it?" you wonder.

         Good question and I've got a good answer.

         In one word, liverwurst. I wrapped the pills in liverwurst and tossed it to Sugar and Callie. Not Anon. She's been coming right in and jumping up on the stand in the cat room and waiting for me to feed her in the mornings so she was no problem at all. And now, after Callie has gotten a taste of liverwurst, she's my buddy. She doesn't run from me anymore, and in fact, she'll come right up to me now and let me pet her. Amazing, the affect liverwurst has had on her. Sugar? Well, she still runs from me most times, but she occasionally lets me pet her.

         Now? I'm still combing the girls a couple of times a day and I've seen a lot fewer fleas, some nights only finding three or four. Which is not good for my compulsion to find and kill them but it is good for the girls. The fleas don't seem to bother Itsy much but Ginger must be more sensitive to the bites and scratches herself raw.

         When I start to see quite a few, I give them another dose of the nitenpyram. Between that, changing their bedding every couple days, and vacuuming several times a week, I think we're gaining on it.

         You know something?

         I almost — ALMOST — ran out of dish soap. I normally buy the economy size of Dawn, which gives me a couple of three refills of my counter top glass container, and plenty of time to put it on the grocery list and get another bottle. But the last time I bought it, I only got a regular size bottle, so when I refilled my counter top bottle, it was less than a third full.

         Not a complete disaster. If I run out of soap, I don't have to do dishes, right? Well, I happen to like washing dishes — I know, I'm weird —and I like using lots of soap so I have lots of bubbles. Town is only four miles away so I can always make a quick trip if I have to. But I've gotten to where I like to stay home — I'm always so busy! — and we would be making a trip to town sooner or later for supplies anyway, so I thought to make what dish soap I had left stretch until then.

         Then Mike was out mowing one afternoon this past week and a thought occurs to me. Maybe I left a bottle in the RV. I went down to the RV and checked under the sink. Nope. None there. I turned off the lights and locked the garage door on my way back up to the house. I'm almost in the house when I hear the mower stop. I waited a minute for it to start back up and when it didn't, I thought I'd better go and check on him. I got on the golf cart and headed down the driveway. I didn't know exactly where he was mowing but I thought the sound had been coming from either the lower end of the pond or the driveway. Halfway down, who do I see? Mike. Walking up the driveway. He stopped, put his hands on his hips and gave me the look.

         I pull up and stop. "What did you do?"

         "I got it stuck. Will you pull me out?"

         "Only if you get back on so I can take your picture," I told him.

         And as you can see, Mike was a good sport and did as I asked.

         

         

             And my dish soap?

         Yeah, I didn't need to make a special trip. Turns out we had to run an errand in town the next day, so I stopped and got some then.

         Here is one of the antique quilts hanging on my clothesline. This is the inside and if you look close you can see where the mouse urine spots were...are.

         They are lighter and it looks better than it did...

         Did I take a before picture?

         No!

         Maybe, with the next quilt I'll take a before and after picture.

         Speaking of before and after pictures, I should have taken before pictures of my kitchen. I didn't think about it until I was talking to Momma on the phone and told her the drywall was going up. She mentioned she'd like to see it, so here it is.

        

         We had a heck of a storm come through here on Saturday night. After the rain, we had a pretty sunset.

  

          And with that, let's call this one done!