This is it!
This is your last letter blog for 2018! Next time I'll regale you with letter facts for the past year. I bet you're excited about that!
Let's start this time with road pictures.
We'd made a trip to Dushore for deer corn and I talked Mike into taking the back roads even though he hates to go that way.
The train tracks ran through here when a train used to come to Dushore.
On the way home, we came back the normal way which is through the small town of New Albany.
We took a side street and I took pictures of all the old buildings there. This town is an old town; founded in 1819.
The old school.
Feed mill.
The town isn't as prosperous as it once was.
We've started another project. We're putting a ceiling in the garage.
When we were doing our heating runs, we ran one into the cat room and one into the garage. The only time there is any heat in either of those places is when our furnace runs and that isn't very often. Not that it isn't cold here, it is, but because our Mitsubishi ductless system is our primary heat source and the furnace is the backup. Even so, the cat room is insulated and has been staying between 48 and 52 degrees.
We had to make a run for the 1x4 purlins and went to C.C. Allis for that. C.C. Allis is a lumber company out in the middle of nowhere.
More road pictures anyone?
We came around a curve and I was expecting to see the barn where the front wall was bulging out, curious to see if it had fallen yet.
"It burned!"
"Yup," Mike says.
"Do you think it was intentional?"
"I don't know. If there was any power in there at all, something could've fallen and broken a wire."
I didn't see the second horse in this one until I looked at it on the computer.
♫Someone's getting a new fridge.♪
I only like this picture for one reason. It shows the distant hills.
The purlins loaded in the back of the Jeep. We rode home with the window up and the heat blasting.
Check out the name of the well. Ugliuzza.
I was shooting pictures of the fence and never saw the 'chain' box thing in the foreground. What do you think it is?
One of the many stone quarries.
I took pictures of this place when it was still standing.
Mike says he doesn't need anything to mow around in our yard.
I've only taken a few pictures here at the house this past week. Here a Jay is waiting for a Red Bellied woodpecker to get off the suet cake. It seems that Jays are afraid of one bird after all.
Speaking of suet cakes, I ran out of grease to make my homemade suet cakes so I bought some. Suet cakes, not grease. Whereas the homemade ones would be gone in a day or two, these store-bought ones can hang there for four or five days before it's gone. Do you think they like homemade better?
I still have a few milkweed pods opening up.
This seed didn't go more than a foot before he got tangled in the thorns of a nearby Black Locust Tree.
I'm disappointed in my efforts to help the milkweed plant propagate. Last year I took pod after pod into the upper field and spread the seeds on the wind. I did not get one single milkweed plant in the field.
"Peg, why didn't you bury them?" you ask.
I figured it was easiest to do it the way mother nature does it. But maybe next year I'll scratch the dirt up a little and cover them.
Speaking of flowers... well, we're almost speaking of flowers. Milkweed seeds turn into flowers. I saw the most beautiful bouquet of flowers the other day and took several pictures of them. The one with the yellow rose is my current desktop photo.
"Peg, where did you see them?" you ask.
I'm so glad you asked! I saw them on the table of our friends and neighbors Rosie and Lamar Kipp. "Where'd you get the flowers?" I asked.
"From Lamar," Rosie answered.
"What's the occasion?"
"Our anniversary."
December 26th was Rosie and Lamar's 48th wedding anniversary. "I was teaching school so I thought it was best to get married while I was out for the Christmas break," Rosie told me.
48 years! How awesome is that!
Here's a picture of them today, opening their anniversary gift from their daughter, Jenn.
Thursday morning, Mike and I went for breakfast. The sun was coming up over the trees and shining on the rail cars.
And I spotted Santa!
Saturday, I picked up yet another one of these from my floor.
"What is it?" you ask.
It's a tuft of hair from this guy. Rascal is our only yellow cat and he's also the only long-haired cat. He leaves these things all over the house! Since we've never had any other long-haired cat, I didn't know they shed tufts of hair like that. I know he sometimes gets matted and I have to cut them out. But what's the deal with these things? Do they drop off as he walks around? Rub off on the rug? Or is he losing them when he scratches? I've never seen the things getting born, I've only ever seen them once they've been deposited on my floor — and I find several every day!
"Peg, is he really that big or did you Photoshop him?" you wonder.
Nope. He's really that big. However, I was tempted to Photoshop myself thinner and less wrinkly, but I didn't. I'll own it. This is me, wrinkles, fat, and all!
Speaking of cats, they like my rug. It's an old rug and been washed so many times the backing is almost gone, but it was given to me by a special lady and I think of her when I see it so I can't bear to part with it yet.
Smudge played with it for a while, grabbing it, pulling it up, crawling underneath. He got it all messed up then Spitfire took over. Once they were done playing, I straightened the rug so no one would trip over it.
One of our wild girls likes to come in the house once in a while. Anon gets a bite to eat, prowls around for a bit then she wants to go back outside.
Here she's claiming all of the dog food as hers by sitting right on the plate while she eats. Smudge, the black and white one to the left in the photo, is her son, but I don't think that cats care anything about that once the kittens are grown. I say that only because these two don't really seem to know each other or interact in any way other than as strangers.
We had a beautiful sunset the other night. It seems like I was taking sunset pictures quite a lot there for a while then nothing until now.
In the morning, as I sat in front of my computer, the driveway beeper goes off. I know what it is but I look up at the monitor and watch the deer walk up the driveway.
"Your deer are here!" I yell to Mike who's sitting in the recliner watching the morning news program. He doesn't always hear the driveway beeper. It seems to be a frequency that he can't hear anymore. My voice must be close to that frequency too because he's always saying...
"What?"
"YOUR DEER ARE HERE!" I repeat louder.
He would have seen them in his monitor if he looked.
I heard the recliner squeak as he put the footrest down and got up. I hear him scoop a bowl of corn from the hundred-pound bag that sits just inside the front door. I hear the door open and I watch the monitor as he sprinkles the food around the yard. The deer are getting used to Mike and don't run as far as they used to. He no sooner turns his back to come in than they come running back. Now Mike has taken to stopping and watching them for a few moments before he comes in.
"If you talk to them they'll get used to your voice," I told him but I don't know if he talks to them or not.
Boy, I don't know what goes on with my little alarm clocks. I was up before 6 Saturday morning because Ginger wanted to go out. We had a beautiful sunrise so I'm doubly glad I was up early enough to capture it for you.
But the morning before, I woke up on my own a little before 8. Neither one of the girls asked to go out — and they didn't pee it on the floor either!
I had a nightmare last night. When I woke up my limbs were all tingly and I couldn't move. I remembered the dream when I woke up but now I haven't a clue what it was that I was nightmaring about. It's been like forever since I've had a nightmare, and I'm glad for that, but how often do you have nightmares? How often is it normal to have a nightmare? Is it normal to have nightmares?
We got an invitation to have breakfast with friends of ours. How about some more road pictures?
Another building I took pictures of while it was still standing.
This is part of the original road that went into Dushore.
There's a spring here where travelers would stop for a drink. The first time Momma took me here, I found a film canister tucked into a crevice. I opened it, much to Momma's chagrin, and found a note saying to sign it, say where you were from, and put it back. It had a whole list of names and locations but I didn't add mine to it.
I looked. It's not there anymore. I half expected it to be despite that it's been many years since that first experience.
Sunday, my little alarm clock Ginger got me up just before six. I let her out, made a cup of coffee, and settled in front of my computer.
"Who peed on the floor?" Mike asked when he got up.
"I didn't know anybody had." I must have walked right past it. No matter. It gave me a chance to use one of the many gifts I was showered with this year. A Bissell Pet Stain Eraser. It's a mini carpet cleaner and it worked really well.
"What else did Santa bring you?" you ask.
"I must have been a very good girl this year," one of my friends told me and I think I must have been a very good girl this year too. I got a new hand mixer, eight sheets of stained glass, and a new lens for my camera.
And Rascal left another big ol' tuft of fur for me to pick up.
Oh well!
Happy New Year!
Let's call this one done!
