Changes

          Many changes have happened in my house this past week. Some you may like and some you may shake your head and wonder, "What the hey were you thinking!"

          We put LED track lighting in the kitchen for when I need lots of light. Over my sink is a single pendant light.

          Smudge helped.

          Mike ran a bead of Great Stuff around the edges of all our ceilings to keep the heat in and the bugs out.

          See how good it works!

          In case you can't tell, this is a wasp on the inside of my kitchen window. He kept wandering into my shot as I was trying to capture the pretty iridescent colors of the Common Grackle at my feeder.

          Speaking of my feeders, while we're on that subject, let's just keep going for a minute.

          Mike and I had stopped at Tractor Supply while out shopping this past week — road pictures to follow. I'm looking for their brand of scoopable cat litter to be on sale. It's normally $5.99 for 25 pounds but they often run it on sale 2 for $10. I only use it in the outside cat boxes so the fact that it's not the best at keeping odor down is way okay with me.

          "Look at that Mike! They have 20 suet cakes on sale for $10!" Actually, it was $10.99. Isn't it funny how advertising works. It's all but $11 and I chose to see $10.

          "Want one?" he asked.

          "No. I like to make my own."

          "Peg, you can't make it that cheap."

          He's right. I can't. We bought one along with four bags of cat litter that were on sale. I'll start stocking up for next winter. The outside cats won't use the litter boxes much in the summertime and I only have one bag left from last year's stock up.

          I took the suet cakes home and put one in my suet feeder. That left me with a problem. What am I going to do with the hamburger grease I was saving to make suet cakes with? I only have one suet feeder.

          Oh wait! I have to tell you something! Remember how I took the cup, added my homemade suet and a piece of dowel rod for a perch?

          I was watching the birds on it one day and got to wondering what happens when the suet doesn't hold the dowel rod anymore. Well, let me tell you. It falls out.

          "Well, duh, Peg!" you say.

          I know, right! I hear you laughing. But sometimes the most obvious of things escape me. So it falls out and now the birds can't get the rest of the suet from the cup. It doesn't seem like a good design to me. I let it rattle around in my head along with my other problem of having only one suet feeder.

          What am I going to put it in, what am I going to put it in, chased pictures around in my head as I mentally inventoried old cookware sitting on the shelves of my pantry. I dismissed them one after the other as being impractical or unmountable. Finally I got to bread pans. I have a bunch of them as I spent one year trying to match the bread pans of my youth. 

         If I remember correctly, one of them had holes on each side of the handle. I went and sifted through the stack until I found it. Perfect! I could use string and hang it from the branch, I thought. I worried a little about tying the string and having it stay so I decided to use wire instead. It would just be easier to wrap the wire around the branch.

          One problem solved. For the other one, the cup with no perch, I decided to glue the saucer to the cup.

          I made homemade suet, filled the bread pan and the cup and hung them both out. Who says you have to have commercially manufactured suet feeders! The birds don't care and get right down on top of the suet.  

          I'm not the only one in this house who enjoys watching the birds. Ginger spent a couple of hours sitting by the fence watching and occasionally barking, at the birds.

          Right smack in the middle of me telling you all the changes in my house this week, I get sidetracked. Off on a tangent I go, talking about the birds. So let's get back to changes.

          Michael doesn't like steps. He thinks steps are a trip hazard. When we put the bathroom in we had to make it higher to accommodate the plumbing. Rather than have a step Mike put in a ramp. The ramp has a wall with a big mirror on one side and a mirrored linen closet on the other. After almost stumbling into the mirror during a midnight wobble to the bathroom, Mike put a handrail up. This week we finished the linen closet. We put the last few pieces of cedar in and four shelves. It'll give me lots of room for towels and extra blankets and pillows — and the moths won't get them either!

          Another job we did this week was to put a door on the half-bath just off the pantry. For Mike and me it wasn't a big deal for there to be no door. But when we have guests in it meant they had to use the master bath. Still not a big deal.

          I was sitting there, letting my water down, so to speak, thinking about summer barbeques and how I would tell people where the bathroom was.

          We need a sign, I thought, then I remembered we had one. Would Mike remember? I wondered.

          "Mike!" I called before I ever got into the living room where he was sitting in his recliner. "We need a restroom sign. We could hang it right here," and I pointed to a spot on the ceiling just outside the pantry area, "and it could have an arrow pointing that way," and I pointed toward the half-bath.

          "We have one." Mike did remember! And the idea of hanging it appealed to him. "It's history, it's nostalgia," he says.

          This sign was on our Missouri property when we bought it so no telling how old it is. We took out the old heavy ballast and light bulbs and replaced it with a single LED light.

          Corny, I know.

          Not everyone's cup o' sunshine, I know.

          But I also know that people pay big money for lit signs. I don't know what they do with them but for us, this is crazy and kooky and suits us just fine — and the energy efficient LED makes for a great nightlight!

          So, I promised you road pictures from our shopping trip early in the week.

           

          "What is all over the road?" I asked Mike as we headed for Scranton to do our shopping.

          "I don't know. Maybe one of the water trucks left his valves open."

          The thought of arriving on site with an empty truck was the butt of a few jokes as we followed this trail for miles and miles and miles! Coming home we saw that both sides of the road now had stripes on them and we wondered if maybe they were pre-treating the roads for the storm that was in our forecast — and we never got.

          This place looks like it's been here for a long time. It might be interesting to go in and walk around it sometime.

          Between us and Scranton is a town named Dalton. The highway goes around the town but this sprawling building is right on the highway.

          "It's a huge building," I told Mike once as we sailed past. "And it looks like there's a bunch of old buildings down there too. Maybe sometime we can drive down and look..." And this trip we did.

          This is the other side of the building. Like an iceberg, only the tip is visible from the highway. There's all this building underneath it.

     Another old building in Dalton.

          Lackawanna Dairy Co. 1908. It's now a butchering company.

          Our spring taxes came in the mail. "Let's just drive over to the county building and pay them," Mike said.

          I'm always up for a photo op. I happen to know that this dog's name is Ace. When I was interval running I would go past this place and Ace would bark at me. He's tied. Not so his owners yappy little Yorkie that would nip at my heels if he was out when I went past.

          There's a huge old farm out here. It's fallen into disrepair. The machines sit in the fields rusting away.

          It looks like he's trying to recycle and repurpose some of the old stuff. What do you think of his homemade wagon? It's for sale.

  

  

        The barns and other buildings are falling down.

          We get out to the township building and there, big as day, the signage on the front says Terry Township Building. "Mike, didn't it say to pay at the Wilmot Township building?" I asked as we pulled into the parking lot.

          "Oh," he says surprised. "Does it?"

          Mike put the Jeep in park and pulled out the tax papers. I leaned over and looked with him. "Right there," I pointed out.

          "Yep," he says. "It does."

          "So where's the Wilmot Township Building?" I asked.

          "I know where it is. It's down past Sugar Run."

          On the way back out I spotted these two Red-tailed Hawks sitting in a tree. As long as we kept moving it didn't bother them. As soon as we stopped one of them took flight.

          Not the best picture of a hawk in flight, but the best one I got.

          More road pictures.

         Friday night.

         My Moxie Ladies exercise class has dwindled to...

         Dwindled to...

         Sigh.

         I guess I can't avoid the truth. My class has only been four strong, at the most! — these last few months. It takes patience and time to take off the weight, much the same way as we put it on. Slowly. It doesn't happen fast enough for some ladies and they lose interest. But if there is even one woman showing up to workout with me — I'll be there.

         With the time change I've gotten to see a couple of really beautiful sunsets. I skipped out on the last few minutes, the cooldown portion, of the video we were doing so I could go out and take pictures.

         Two weeks ago I got this one.

         Last week I got this one.

         After I dropped Rosie at her house, I stopped on my road and took this one.

         I pulled into the driveway and Spitfire was on the roof.

         We had breakfast with my handsome cousin. We always enjoy our visits with Justin.

         After breakfast, Mike and I made a run on up to the Lowe's store in Sayre so I got a few more pictures for you. I took this one of someone's yard while at a stop light.

         In the small town of Ulster, the state has been acquiring properties and tearing down the buildings to improve the intersection.

         The houses that sat in the foreground of this picture have been gone for a couple of years now. The small blue building is — was a barber shop. The corner of the building extended over the creek bank. I don't know what the next building was but the one after it was a bank in the early 1900's. I've got pictures somewhere but with the volume of photos I have, it would take me hours to find it.

         The buildings are gone now and it makes the town look different.

         You can see the blue rail in both these photos.

          We stopped at the Milan Hirst Nursery and Treasures on the way home. You may remember that I wrote a story about this place last July. Keith remembered me and one of the first things he said as we got out of the car was, "We've got a new baby! Cricket was born three days ago."

         Needless to say, I was excited to see the new baby donkey.

         "We've got baby goats too," he said and pointed out the newest twins to me.

         "Do they always have twins?" I asked.

         Becky, his partner, answered. "The first time they'll have just one. After that, they almost always have twins and sometimes triplets."

         "That's like deer," I told her.

         "Goats and deer are closely related," she told me.

         I'm taking her at her word. I'm not going to Google it.

         Keith told me they also lost a couple of baby donkeys. He thought at least one of them had been stillborn.

         They sell the animals. I asked about the prices and was told it depends on the age and sex of the animal. The goats start around $75 dollars and the donkeys at $300.

         "I deliver all the animals myself," Keith told me. "If I don't like where they're going, I won't unload them. 'Here's your money back,'" he says and pretends to be handing money back to an unsatisfactory buyer. "We're pretty paticular where we let our animals go."

         We didn't stay too long but I looked around the store before we left and didn't find anything I thought I had to have.

         On the way home I see an old school bus where there didn't use to be one.

         "Why would they buy an old bus like that?" I inquired of Mike.

         "I don't know," he said but thought about it for a minute. "It would be pretty cool to fix one of those things up."

         "You mean like with stacks and straight pipes and stuff? Maybe shoot flames out the rear?"

         "Yeah!" Mike was all for that.

                 With spring comes spring flowers. I bought a mini potted daffie from Relay For Life, a fundraiser for cancer. All the blooms were closed when I got it but just a couple of days later they all burst forth.

         I love the daffies!

         "Peg, is that a beer bottle?" you ask.

         It is, or rather it was in a past life. Now it's a salt shaker. His buddy, Pepper is right next to him. We were in a Mexican Restaurant and they had these on all the tables. The waitress was kind enough to give me a couple of tops when I asked if I could buy them. "We go through a ton of them," she told me. "People steal them right off the tables."

         I see, doing a fast search, you can buy them online.

         Let's call this one done!

          Until next time remember — you are all in my heart.