My Week In Pictures

         Did you miss me last week?

         I missed you and I thought about you every day right up until Thursday, at which point I decided a letter blog just wasn't going to happen, then I set my sights on the weekend to come, which is here. Now. This weekend.

         As you know, or maybe you don't, I usually take Saturday and Sunday to visit with you, which is a change from what it used to be. Used to be I only wrote on Sunday's, but with the evolution of my letter blogs, I needed more time and now it's a two-day event.

         We had a dinner date last Saturday with our neighbors the Robinson's, Jon and Steph. They invited us up for dinner and a game night, something we haven't done in a long time.

         "What about your letter?" Mike asked me.

         "I don't have any big stories to tell. I think it's just going to be mostly pictures this week and I can probably do that on Sunday," I told him. Oh the best laid plans! 

         Steph made the best chili for our dinner and game night. I made Kat's No-Kneed Bread. I love the bread recipe that Kat gave me, it's so easy! I love the flavor and texture and leftovers make the best toast! I love homemade bread toast with all its nooks and crannies to hold the butter! And something else I love is game nights. We always have so much fun.

         And then Saturday was gone.

         Sunday's I go to church, come home, make lunch, and then sit and write for a few hours.

         This is My Week In Pictures, last week's letter blog.

  

         I still take pictures of graffiti on the train cars and I still don't have any idea what they say, but this one sparkles!

         I went out early for dew-covered photos and found a Garden Spider. It looks like he has his supper all wrapped up.

         I saw this guy too.

         "What is that!" you say.

         I'm so glad you asked. This crazy looking spider is an Arrowshaped Micrathena and completely harmless to us, and she's a girl. Boys don't have the pretty yellow color.

         Check this out.

         Wasps eat spiders and this one could barely fly away from me because his dinner was as big as he was! And he wasn't letting it go.

         How about a couple of bird pictures?

         I have lots of these down at the pond. Is it a female yellow finch? The wings don't have the characteristic stripes that they should have to be a finch, so I don't think it is. Maybe it's something like a Yellow Throat Warbler?

         How about this one that ran across the road in front of us the other day?

         A young or female pheasant?

         This one I know! A male Cardinal. The female was around too but I didn't get a photo of her.

                Asters.

         All kinds of asters are blooming at this time of year. 

          Bush Asters.

         These deep purple ones are New England Asters.

         These little one are Calico Asters.

         The winter flowers are coming on.

         Burdock.

         Milkweed.

         Bergamot.

         Look what I found on a blanket I had hanging on the clothesline.

         Yep. It's a Calligraphy Beetle. Only the second one I've ever seen. He was very cooperative and let me take lots of pictures of him before he spread his elytra and took off.

         "Elytra?" you ask.

         Elytra. That is what the hard outer set of wings are called.

         "I thought it was just a shell," you say.

         It looks like a shell but they are wings and they protect the thin wings underneath that are used for flying.

         Three Crane Flies in one shot! The one that is leaving was the one who caught my attention and he landed on the other two who are.... well, you know what they're doing. But there are tons and tons of these guys all over the place right now. I'll be walking through the grass and scare them up in droves!

         A sundog!

         "What's a sundog?" Rosie asked when I pointed it out to her.

         "It's like a little piece of rainbow in the sky," I told her but here is more info I got from the internet.

             

          I was working on these two photos. Which one of these should I pick? I hadn't decided when I ran out of Sunday. It just zipped right past me. Somehow, someway, Sunday got away from me too and I'd only gotten five pages done. I'll finish it up Monday evening.... Tuesday at the latest, I told myself.

         And here we are. Saturday.

         So onward!

          I still can't decide which one to keep and which one to delete so you've got them both.

         Mike and I had an errand to run and it took us on roads I've never been on before as well as roads I seldom travel. Here are your road pictures.

         "Did you see that guy beside the road?" Mike asked as I snapped away at landscapes for you.

         "What guy?"

         "Right back there. He's crossing the road now."

         I glanced in the side mirror and saw him. Through the eye piece of my camera? I never saw him.

         "Look at that," Mike said with disgust in his voice. "Why do people do stuff like that?"

         "I think they don't have the money to get rid of it or they don't want to spend it, so they take it out in the country and dump it off." It's such a shame though. You can really upcycle this kind of stuff into some really cute projects.

         Do y'all know what mudding is?

         "Yeah! It's when you take your truck out with a couple of buddies and a six pack and you race around a wet field or creek or some other muddy spot, spinning your tires and throwing mud all over the place!" my handsome youngest son replies.

         Not that kind of mudding! Drywall mudding!

         "Yeah, I know what that is too," Kevin says.

         "I don't," Momma says.

         So, here's what it is. When you put up new drywall you have screw heads and joints to deal with. You buy a bucket of drywall compound, also called mud, that has the consistency of frosting. You use a pan and drywall knife and spread it over the screw heads and on the joints....

 ...then you take a piece of drywall tape and place it across the joint.

         Press it in with your drywall knife.

         Add another layer of mud on the top and taper it out.

         "You do it three or four times, using a wider knife each time, until you have a smooth transition between the pieces," Mike says.

         And that's how you drywall.

         "I'm not a drywaller," Mike complains when it doesn't come out perfect.

         "It's fine!" I tell him. "It's character!" And that's what Mike has been working on.

         Then this past week has been consumed with a couple of projects. Let me tell you about what I've been up to.

         My ladies exercise class has fallen into a bit of a rut. We really like the Slim in Six series by Debbie Siebers and we do one of her routines at least once a week and sometimes twice. We like some of the Richard Simmons workouts too. We've tried a few other things but nothing else has stuck like those two have. 

         On our days off I do aerobic stepping at home. I really like stepping but only one of my seven faithful participants has a stepper and I hated to ask everyone else to go out and buy a $30 piece of equipment.

         "Mike would you make me a few steppers?" I asked.

         Mike let it rattle around in his head for a few days and came up with a design using scrap lumber we have around here.

         "We can use 2x12's for the top," he says to me.

         I didn't have to think about it. "No!"

         "Why not? It's good and strong."

         "It makes them too heavy! Besides we don't need them that heavy duty. We've got some boards around here, why can't we use those?"

         "Because they're rough sawn," he answered.

         "I can sand them."

         "We'll just buy a 1x12x12 and a couple of 2x4's."

         And that's what we did.

         We used some scrap 2x6's for the side and the overall step height is 6 1/4 inches, which is the mid-step height. Except for one that we made 4 1/4 inches. When you buy steppers they are usually adjustable between 4, 6, and 8, inches in height.

         It didn't take Mike long to cut the lumber to the length we needed or to screw them together for me. But sanding, even with an electric sander, took me about half an hour to forty-five minutes and several pieces of sandpaper each. Then I painted them.

         I only used a wash to color the steppers because I don't want them to be slippery with a coat of paint. I used stencils and transfer paper where I could and the rest of it is all me.

         I took the steppers to class with me as I finished them, hoping to create a little excitement in my ladies.

         "I need a sunny yellow one with a beach scene on mine," Joanie told me. "To remind me of why I want to lose weight."

         So I did a beach scene for Joanie, my little ray of sunshine. She brightens any room she walks into.

         After I finished it I wondered if I should have taken the sky the whole way across but it's done now and it is what it is.

         I never intended this to cost us much more than our time. But I should have known better. I should have known it wouldn't be good enough for Mike. If his name is attached to it, he wants it to be as good as it can be. We made the short trip to Laceyville to buy the 1x12x12 and it cost just under $20. All things considered we've probably got about $10 in each stepper. Not counting my artistic talents that is. But I'm not complaining. And Mike didn't complain either when I asked him if we could make four more steppers.

         "I need at least six," I told him. We got four steppers out of a 1x12x12 and since we were planning a shopping trip to Lowe's, we would buy another one from them. After all, "Lowe's has got to be cheaper than Laceyville Lumber, don't you think?"

         "I'd think so," I agreed.

         Imagine our shock and surprise when we get to Lowe's and find their 1x12x12's are over $27!

         "It's prime lumber," I was told when I complained. "We don't carry it in a grade two but if we did, it would have a lot more knots in it."

         Well, I'm here to tell you, and I told her, that Laceyville Lumber's grade two lumber is way better than Lowe's prime grade lumber!

         "I'm only supposed to match prices on grade for grade but since I don't carry it in a number two grade, I'll match their price — this one time only!"

         One of the ladies requested I leave one 'all natural' for her, which made it easy for me. I don't have to paint it. And that just leaves me with two more steppers to sand and paint. Tomorrow. Tomorrow night will be our first aerobic stepping class.

         And I want you to know that the ladies do appreciate what Mike and I are doing for them. They think the steppers are beautiful, awesome, cute, and a testimony to my devotion to helping all of us lose weight and get in shape. We'll see what they say when I work their butts off tomorrow night.

        

         A Great Spangled Fritillary butterfly on asters.

         A teeny tiny little spider.

         A skipper butterfly.

         A Cloudless Sulphur Butterfly.

          Another job we did this past week was to put an awning over our generator.

         "They're made to be outside!" I protested.

         "I paid a lot of money for that generator and I want to take as good a care of it as I can," Mike justified.

         S'okay. Up early, before the fog has burned off, one cup of coffee under my belt, and out to work we went. It didn't really take us very long. We only had the material to frame it up then we'd have to make a run to get the lumber for the purlins.

         Smudge helped.

         I'd taken my camera to work with me. Somebody has sewn himself up in a leaf. I wonder what he'll be when he comes out.

         There's kind of a big paper wasp nest back where we were working.

         "I gotta get rid of that," Mike says.

         "No you don't," I stick up for the wasps. "They're way back here not hurting anything," and did I mention they eat spiders?

         "It'll just keep getting bigger and bigger," Mike says.

         I did a little research online and did you know, Mike didn't, that the bees die off in the winter. All except for the queen. She'll overwinter in this nest and in the spring she'll take off and start a new nest somewhere else. Not only that, but another colony of bees won't make a nest anywhere near this one. I read that people even buy these old nests to put up to discourage other bees from making their home in the same area.

         Another early morning walk and I spy a garden spider repairing his web. See the silk coming from his spinneret?

         A Crane Fly caught in a web. I left him to his fate.

         This picture of a New England Aster is my current desktop photo.

         Dew covered webs on a Goldenrod.

        

         More road pictures. It seems like we've had lots of errands to run in the past two weeks.

          I don't mind though. I love taking photos for you guys.

         You could own this one for a measly $6,000.

         I think someone is living in this house. Look. There's a sumac growing out the side of it.

         Once we'd bought the rest of the lumber to finish the awning over the generator, it was out to work early in the morning again, before it got too hot for Mike. Ginger came to work with us on this morning. She didn't lay down and rest, she just kept her ears tuned to us and all I could see was her ears.

         There she is.

         "I should turn the cart around for her, so she can see us," Mike said, and he did.

We finished our job using reclaimed steel roofing. It has holes in it but it will keep most of the weather off.

         I've been seeing lots of Monarch butterflies, I wonder if they're migrating.

         I'm trying to trap my whistle pigs again. All I got was this guy — twice.

Bouncing Bet or Soapwort. As the name implies you can use this plant to make a very gentle soap.

         I did it! I finally did it! I've got a reflection of the flower in the dew drops. I've wanted to get a picture like this for years and I finally got one! Accidently of course, but I still got it!

This one is the Viceroy butterfly.

         Little Miss Feisty laying in a dish of bird seed.

         Spitfire is a mighty hunter. A rabbit last week, which I had to clean up after he puked it up, and this week a chipmunk or ground squirrel as some people call them. He meowed as he brought it up onto the patio and dropped it. It was dead. He batted it around for a little while before he let his brother Rascal have a turn at it.

         It wasn't long after that that the Kipps stopped by on their morning walk. We visited for a little while and I notice no one was interested in the chipmunk anymore.

         "I think I'll take it around to Callie and Sugar," I told Lamar and got up, picked the poor little guy up by his tail, and carried him around the house to where our wild girls live. No one was home so I threw it up in the weeds.

         The Kipps were leaving, walking down the driveway, Mike walking along chatting, when Lamar yells back at me. "Hey Peg! Feisty has something."

         "Is it the chipmunk I threw up in the weeds?" I yelled back.

         "No, this one's alive."

         "Grab your camera," Mike yelled.

         I walked out there and Feisty had a young chipmunk she was keeping corralled.

         I was taking pictures and this little guy came running over to me and climbed right up my leg! I shook my leg and he fell to the ground where Feisty got him again.

         Spitfire was drawn by all the commotion and he got in on the game with Feisty.

         "She caught it, I guess I'll let her have it," I told the Kipps as they took their leave.

         "That a girl," Lamar said. He knows how hard it is for me.

         I walked away, leaving the cats to their game.

         A while later, I don't know how long it was, but a while later Mike and I were heading out to do a job and I see they are still tormenting that poor little guy. If the first chipmunk was any indication, they wouldn't eat this one either.

         I'll fix you, I thought. Let's make this game more fun and give him a head start. "Here kitty-kitty," I said and picked up Spitfire. The chipmunk took off for the weeds and I nabbed Feisty as she took off, hot on his tail. But two squirming, meowing, clawing, cats couldn't be held on to for very long so I'm afraid I only gave him about a five second head start. Was it enough? I wondered as Spitfire and Feisty took off, wheels spinning, clumps of grass and dirt flying, and they were gone. A few minutes later Feisty came out of the weeds, nose to the ground, trying to pick up his trail, I assume.

         I don't know if they ever caught him again or not because I had other things to do. Speaking of which, I'm sure I've kept you long enough.

         So let's call this one done and end it with a sunset photo I took last week.