Last Week — This Week

          You would think that after 20 (printed) pages of pictures and jibber-jabber last week that I'd be pictured and jibber-jabbered out, wouldn't you? Truth be known, 20 pages was where I made myself stop. I still had 11 pictures left to show you and stories? You never know about stories. At least I never know about stories. Sometimes I start writing with nothing in mind and end up with a long letter blog for you.

          Last week I missed showing you the pretty red of these willow catkins.

          Last week I missed showing you the henbit that's blooming.

          Last week I missed showing you two pictures of Ginger. I've been letting her come out with us with no leash.

          "What if she takes off?" Mike asked.

          "Then she gets put back on the leash again for a while."

          Here, she's sitting a little ways from where we're working, just watching something in the field.

          In this one I'm teaching her the boundary line when we go out to get the mail. I stood in front of her, just a little past the rocks.

          "Ginger!" I called to get her attention. She turned and looked at me. "You see this right here?" I swung my hand back and forth between the two rocks. "That's it. You don't come any farther. You hear me? Stay up that way. Don't come past these rocks," I ordered then I walked away, occasionally glancing over my shoulder as I went to make sure she was obeying me, and she did. We'll see if she remembers the lesson the next time we go for the mail.

          Last week I was going to show you my Quince Bush that Mike bulldozed over last year. As soon as I saw what he was doing, I made him stop.

          "Do you think it'll live?" he asked.

          "I don't know. We'll have to wait and see."

          Well, I'm here to tell you that the bush not only made it, she's sent up a ton more new growth. I cleaned last year's dead branches and other debris away and took a picture for you.

          "Look at all the flowers coming on!" I would have told you last week.

          Mid-week the flowers started to bloom. What a difference a week makes.

          And it's not the only thing that's burst forth in a week. Last week I would have said, look at the maple with all the catkins tucked up inside of it. 

           And this week, with a little sunshine, warm temps, and rain, look at the catkins now!

          And the Bradford pear trees! In all the years since we've planted them, we've never gotten to see them bloom. Last week I would have shown you this.

          And now, a week later, look at this!

        

 

          Last week I would have shown you Mike getting his mower stuck for the first time this year.

          He called me and waited for me to bring the golf cart and pull him out.

          A little later he called again.

          "I think I broke it," he tells me. "It won't go."

          "You need a tow?"   

          "Yep."

          "Where are you this time?"

          "Up on the hill."

          I'd been writing to you at the time. I saved what I'd written and went to rescue him again.

          "I think I broke a belt."

          We towed it to the patio, chained it to the tractor, and lifted it to check it out.

          Yep. He lost a belt and needed a new one.

          Last week we unloaded more boxes — and found more clowns...

          Wait — do you know about Mike's clown collection? The clown paintings on the walls and tons of figurines all over the house?

          Well, there is. And now we found another box. Poor Kandyce.

          Last week I made a pot of vegetable soup in a pot my mother had given me.

          Yep. It's old.

          Yep. If you saw it in a yard sale you probably wouldn't buy it — unless you needed a water bowl for your outside critters.

          For me, it's a memory. A connection to the past. It's something Momma had and something she used. It's a heavy, well-made pot, not too big, not too small. And when I need a pot just that size, I pull it out and think of my mother's beautiful face, her warm heart, her kind hands and kisses that could soothe away any boo-boo.

          And last week's letter would have ended right there even though last week hadn't ended right there. I got an early start on my letter blog last week because of something else we found while unpacking boxes.

          "What's that, Peg?" you ask.

          Mike found some cool ice cream glasses and my trifle dish. Do you know what a trifle dish is? Maybe you would know the dish if you saw it but not know there is a name for it?

           I got online and searched for trifle recipes until I found one called Reese's Heavenly Peanut Butter Trifle. It looked like a fairly straightforward recipe.

          "Mike, let's invite the Robinson's down for a game night and I'll make dessert. What do you think?"

          "I don't care."

          So we planned it for Sunday night which is why I started and finished my letter blog early last week.

          Sunday, last week, I went out the kitchen door and spot a spot of red on my freshly laid rocks.

          What is that? I wondered.

          And squatted down for a closer look.

          "Oh Peg! Gross!" you say.

          I know, right! But livin' in the country isn't all flowers and rainbows.

          "Mike!" I yelled. "Come and look at this." He was watching TV.

          "What?"

          "I don't know what it is, but come and look at it and tell me what you think."

          Mike came but he didn't spend any more time looking at it than it took to determine that he didn't want to look at it.

          I've seen enough stuff come out of both ends of an animal that I could say this wasn't it. "It doesn't look like vomit and it doesn't look like it came out the other end either," I told him. "What do you think it is?"

          "I don't know," he mumbled and went back to his TV watching.

          "I'll ask Steph when she gets here."

          Stephanie Robinson's a good sport. She looked at the spot for me but didn't have a clue where it might have come from.

          We sat down and played a few rounds of Rack-O then everyone was ready to try the trifle.

          I put it on the table along with the handsome ice cream dishes.

          "You know, there's a lot here. What say we call the Kipp's and see if they'd like to come down and have dessert with us?" I suggested.

          "Good idea," everyone agreed.

          "I've got two more dessert dishes," I said and went to get them while Steph made the call.

          The Kipp's couldn't come.

          We had a dish of Reese's Heavenly Peanut Butter Trifle and I only took a little. "I don't know how I feel about this," I said.

          "It's creamy," Steph said. "I like that."

          "It's good," Jon said.

          Since I didn't quite know what to think of it I decided to have seconds — but just a tiny little dab more.

          Jon Robinson dished up a second helping and pushed it aside to enjoy as we played dominos.

          Mike?

          You be the judge.

          FYI, he had seconds.

          "I still don't know how I feel about it," I said scraping the bottom of the bowl.

          Stephanie didn't have seconds, said she liked it, but added a caveat. "It has a little too much candy in it for my taste."

          That may have been more of a layering issue on my part as I missed putting the peanut butter cup pieces in the bottom layer and that made it a little top heavy with candy pieces. "I should have given you some from the bottom third," I told her.

          Game night ended abruptly when Steph got called away on a family emergency. Mike sat and chatted with Jon while I washed dishes, then took him home. When Mike came back a few minutes later I was ready and we took dessert down to the Kipps.

          Rosie and Lamar had a dish and thought it was good.

          "It's not too sweet," Rosie said. "And the pudding is nice and fluffy."

          Lamar thought it was good and I left them enough so they could have another dishful some other time.

          The next day Mike was sitting in the recliner, watching TV when he called me. "Peg! You better come and look at this!"

          I could tell by the tone of his voice that something was wrong. I jumped up and hurried into the living room where Smudge was laying in his lap.

          "What is it?" he asked and pointed to an open wound on Smudge's side.

          Smudge let me look as I gently moved the hair aside. "I don't know but I bet whatever it is, it burst when Smudge was sitting on my rocks out by the kitchen door and that's what that bloody stuff is."

          "Do you think it was a grub?"

          "I don't know but I tend to think it might have been a thorn or something like that that festered up. Now that I know I'd say it did look like bloody pus."

          We've been putting Vaseline on it per Dr. Lamar's orders and it's looking much better today.

          Mike and I have been making good on his resolution to walk more and we've been joining Rosie, Lamar, and Maggie on their morning walks. I expect that you're going to see a lot more of them in my letters now since we see them a lot more.

          "Rosie!" I called to get her attention as we walked down the road. "You see those balls on those stalks right there?"

          "Yeah?"

          "That's where a bug has laid its egg and the weed kept growing around it."

          "Really?"

          I picked one intending to show her the hole he escaped from. I rolled it between my fingers. "Hmm, I don't see an exit hole. Maybe he's still in there." I tried to break it open but couldn't. In my mind's eye, I could see Momma pull a pocketknife and open one of these bulbs up but I didn't have a pocket knife. "Lamar, can you open this for me?" I asked and held it out to him.

          He took it but couldn't open it either. He dropped it on the ground and stomped it. I laughed. He shrugged and picked it up, pulling broken bits away.

          "There it is!" I don't know why I was surprised.

          Ginger stopped at this spot in our dirt road and sniffed. With my Cadillac eyes it looked like a petroglyph. But I knew it couldn't be. "Do you think it was a snake?" I asked my traveling companions.

          Rosie and Lamar looked. "That's what it looks like," they agreed.

          And then my mighty snake hunter finds not one, but two snakes on the same walking trip!

          She's funny, that Ginger is. Those snakes are long gone but she continues to check the same spot where she found them every time we walk past.

         

  

          We walk Maggie speed when we walk. She's getting old for a dog her size and her joints are achy. If Maggie needs to stop for a minute, either to rest or sniff something, we all wait on her. It's not a hardship though; we love Maggie.

          Sometimes Maggie has enough by the time we reach the Robinsons' barn and Lamar will sit in the shade with her while the rest of us finish our walk.

          Maggie can be a bit finicky at times. "Maggie, look at Ginger. She's in the water. Do you want to get your feet wet? It'll make 'em feel good," Rosie coaxed Maggie who simply stood there panting.

          "Maggie, why don't you get a drink of water? Go on now. It's okay. You get a drink."

          Maggie did put her foot in the water but that was all she would do that day. 

           In the days to come, she warmed up to the idea and not only walked in the water but actually took a drink too. She's come a long way since she's joined the Kipp family but she still needs permission before she'll get a drink — even at home.

          I have more pictures from our walks with the Kipps and I want to clear them from my list, so in no particular order, here are more Walking Pictures.

          The Kipps let us know when they are getting ready to leave their house and Mike and I head down to meet them. Sometimes we get almost the whole way to the Kipps' house, like on this day.

          "Lamar is trying to get Mama in," Rosie explained. "It used to be we'd let her follow us because she was very road savvy and would jump into the weeds when she heard a car coming, but anymore she's stupid about it and sits right in the middle of the road. So now we try to lock her in the house before we go but she won't let Lamar get her this morning."

          Mike helped, calling to Mama kitty. She flopped down in the dirt and let Mike pick her up.

          "Traitor!" Did you hear her? Mike did. Mike heard her call him a traitor as he handed her off to Lamar.

          The coltsfoot is going to seed. "It's just like the dandelion fluff," I told Lamar.

          And then I saw a dandelion! It's not full open yet but a few days later they are all in their glory!

          I don't care what anyone says. I think dandelions are a pretty wildflower.

          Geese flew over our heads.

          A couple of sparrows were flitting about and caught my attention.

          "Geesh," Mike says. "We're either waiting for Maggie or waiting for Peggy to take pictures!"

          "Yeah, well, get it over it," Rosie tells him. She's got spunk. Don'tcha just love a woman with spunk? I do!

          There is one more picture of the Kipps in this week's album and that one comes from having lunch and game afternoon with them this past week.

          Rosie and Lamar set such a pretty table with real daffies, real plates, real silverware, and real good food. Rosie is such a good cook.

          I just love the times we spend getting together with our neighbors.

         

          Mike and I went to work clearing more ground and pulling more stumps.           That big stump he couldn't get out the last time you and I talked? I put the chain on, that's my job, and Mike pulled from a different direction and got the stump out.

         

          Smudge helped.

          I stayed up on the bank a good part of this day, hooking and unhooking stumps and small trees as Mike pulled them. When Mike called a halt to our workday, I came down off the bank and Mike went to work grading the bank out. Smudge stayed up on top. Can you see him?

          Tuesday.

          Oh my gosh, what a day Tuesday was. I started the day the same way I start every day, with my morning loves to my beautiful sister Phyllis.

          "Pulling stumps today," I told her.

          "Please be careful," she told me.

          I let Ginger come to work with us. Most of the time she camped out on the bank of the pond and watched whatever it was that she was watching. I don't know what it is with her but she spends many happy hours watching — just watching.

          The first thing Tuesday we cleared away some of the stuff we'd already pulled. I piled as much stuff into and onto the bucket of the tractor as I could get 

then Mike took it around to the brush pile and dumped it on top. 

We're going to have some fire, that's all I've got to say. That and I hate fires. Did I ever tell you how much I hate fires? I do. They scare me. But there isn't any help for it. We need to get rid of this stuff and I know Mike will take all the precautions and much care to burn it as safely as he can.

          Once we had some room to work we went back to pullin' again. Either stumps, brush, or small trees; it all has to come out.

          I do much of the work because I can and Mike can't. With his back he wouldn't last long. I just feel blessed that I am able to do it. That and I try to remember that being active burns calories and I'm still on a weight loss journey. Sure, it's filled with potholes like Reese's Heavenly Peanut Butter Trifle and sidetracks like homemade bread, but I'm not quitting. I'm not going to quit living and enjoying life and I'm not going to quit trying to be healthy. The two are going to have to find a way to coexist.

          So Tuesday, what a day Tuesday was, did I tell you that? We were doing what we've been doing for a week now, pulling small trees, stumps, and brush. Mike was in his place on the tractor; I was hooking and unhooking the chain. With the small brush and skinny trees I have to wrap the chain around at least twice, going over and under so the chain bites in and doesn't just skin the bark off. That means I have to do a lot more pulling on this heavy chain as I give myself enough slack to wrap it around. 

           As the brush and small trees were coming out, I'd unhook and unwrap the chain, toss the stump, tree, or bush out of the way and drag the chain to the next victim. I was getting tired. I reminded myself that that's when you really start to burn them calories up. So I kept plugging along until that fateful moment.

          "What happened?" you ask.

          We pulled a tall skinny tree and I went about the business of getting it unhooked and out of the way. He was tall, too tall for me to throw, (and I'm sure it was a he because boys always cause the most trouble) so I got him by his roots and was dragging him away. I got him down the bank then I got my feet tangled in the roots from some of the others that we'd pulled and TIMBER! Down I went. Straight and tall, like a tree in the forest, I fell. I knew I was falling. Time slowed down. I looked at my feet, my mud boots amid a mass of tangled roots and I knew there was going to be no recovery. I didn't panic, I surrendered to what I knew was going to happen. As I started to go over I thought of my older and much-loved sister Patti. She fell. She took a really bad fall landing on her elbow and jamming it up into her neck. Ultimately, she had to have surgery. So I kept my wings in.

          Time resumed, reversed even, going from slowing down to speeding up. The next thing I knew, I was on the ground. I did a face-plant on the gravel of the driveway.

          "Umpfh," I said as I landed and rolled onto my back.

          "Are you alright?" Mike asked getting off the tractor and coming to help me.

          "I don't know. It didn't hurt bad enough that I'm going to cry." Do you do that? Judge how bad you're hurt by whether or not you're going to cry?

          I took inventory. My eyebrow hurt. Gingerly I touched it. "What's it look like?" I asked.

          "It's got dirt on it," Mike said. "Close your eyes."

          I scrunched my eyes shut.

          "Not that tight!"

          I relaxed a little and he brushed the dirt from my face.

          My wrist hurt too. I looked at it. It was just a little scrape. I brushed the dirt away. The thing that hurt the most was my ribs. "How did I land?" I asked Mike. "On my hand like this, or my arm like this?"

          "I don't know but you bounced."

          Immediately an image of me hitting and bouncing came to my mind's eye and I laughed. "Ew, ow, don't make me laugh, it hurts," and I grabbed my ribs.

          "Let's knock off for the day," Mike said and helped me up.

          Later I discovered a scrape on my elbow too. My eyebrow bruised but it wasn't noticeable unless you looked at it under the bathroom lights. My wrist bruised. My ribs have bothered me all week and they're still tender today. I must have landed pretty hard against my arm.

          "I bet that chain weighs 20 pounds," I told Mike.

          "But Peg, it's not like you're picking up the whole chain at once," Mike said. "You're just picking up the end."

          "And dragging it!"

          Every time I told the story after that, the weight of the chain crept up and up.

          "It must weigh 30 pounds," I told Rosie.

          "It must weigh thir— 40 pounds!" I told Joanie.

          I made Mike weigh it for my story. It weighs 32.4 pounds.

          But I'm not blaming my fall on being tired from man-handling that 50-pound chain. No siree. I'm blaming it on my sister, who jinxed me just that morning when she told me to be careful.

          And that's all I've got to say about my fall, but not all I've got to say about Tuesday because what a day Tuesday was!

          After my fall we came up to the house and we're washing at the kitchen sink when Mike looks out the window. "Did you put more rocks over against the wall?" he asked.

          "Yep," I had to admit.

          "Why...." He let it trail off, thinking. "Was that groundhog digging over there again?"

          "Yeah." I hated to tell him. I knew he'd be mad.

          "When?"

          "Last week while we were gone shopping."

          There are two old groundhog holes under the side of the mill, not far from each other and now they're inside the fenced courtyard off my kitchen. Last year Mike shoveled gravel into the holes and put a big rock on top and the groundhog didn't bother them at all last fall. Then, home from shopping last week, I see him. I see my whistle-pig. He had one hole dug out, having made a new entrance beside the big rock, and he was working on the other hole. I opened the door and he dived into the open hole.

          What am I going to do? I wondered. If I tell Mike, he'll shoot him, or worse yet, entomb him in the hole.

          I stood at the kitchen sink and watched out the window as he came out of his hole, cautiously, and went the few feet to the other hole, and started working on digging it open again.

          I opened the door and he dived into the other hole again. I walked over and peered in the hole — and he was there, peering back out at me.

          "Listen you!" I told him. "You'd better git back to your other hole or Daddy's gonna shoot you! Do you hear me!" And I gave him the meanest look I could muster.  

          I went back in the house and a few minutes later, he sticks his head out of the hole, his nose twitching as he sniffed the air. He came out a little farther and stopped. Then he came the whole way out and stopped. He crept a little ways farther from the hole and looked back at the hole he'd been trying to clear. He went farther into the yard and farther still. Once committed, he made a dash for the fence, scooted under, and raced for his other den.

          Boy, was I surprised when he did exactly what I told him to do!

          "Peg, it's more likely he thought this den was too close to human activity and that's why he decided to abandon it," you say.

          Hey! Don't burst my bubble here.

          I went out and tossed small rocks into the hole and piled more rocks on top and the whole way around so he wouldn't try again. And now Mike saw it.

          "Peg," Mike says.

          Uh-oh, I thought when I heard the tone of his voice.

          "We can't have him digging under the mill."

          "I'm going to trap him!" I begged.

          "I don't see any trap."

          "I don't have anything to camouflage it with yet."

          "Well, you'd better give it a try or I'm going to shoot him."

          So Tuesday I set the trap. I got lettuce and apple and put a few pieces outside the live trap, a piece just inside, and the most in the back of the trap.

          Tuesday I caught my whistle-pig with no camouflage.

          Unfortunately, it was almost time for me to leave for my exercise class. I put on my leather gloves and went out to move him into the shade.

          "Hey buddy, how ya doing?" I asked. He panicked and raced from one end of the cage to other, banging his nose on both ends.

          "Calm down, calm down," I told him.

          "Traitor," he said. "You gave me food! I thought you were my friend!"

          "Hey now. A new home is better than a bullet in the head, don't you think?"

          I moved the live trap into the shade and went in to talk to Mike. "You could take me to class and then re-home him."

          "We can do it when you get back from class," Mike said.

          When I got home from class an hour and a half later, Ol' Mr. Whistle-pig had worked himself into a real big frenzy. He was not happy at all and had torn up all the grass under the cage. Conversation was out of the question as he hissed and snapped at me.

            We put a trash bag under the trap in the back of the Jeep and took him for a ride.

          "Peg, I thought it was illegal to trap an animal in one location and release him in another?" you say.

          I've since found out that as long as you keep it within a five-mile radius, it's okay.

          Four point nine miles from home we stopped, took the cage out, and set it on the ground. It was a nice wooded area with a creek nearby. When Mike opened the door

the whistle-pig took off so fast I barely got a picture of him as he races down the hill.

          I took a picture of the sun setting as we came back across the Susquehanna.  

          And that was my Tuesday but not the end of the adventures I've had this past week. Could you stand another?

          My neighbor Sally gave me a bunch of Lilies of the Valley. "Where can I plant them?" I asked Mike and we discussed several locations.

          "Put them up against the mill so you can see them from your kitchen window," Mike suggested.

          I started preparing a bed between the gutter line where the water comes off the roof, to the wall of the mill.

          "You can't put dirt up against the boards," Mike tells me later when he checked on my progress. "It'll rot 'em out."

          I finished pulling the grass out and laid rocks along the gutter line to create a front border for my new garden. If I use the same kind of rocks on the backside, I thought, there won't be any room left to plant flowers. Then I thought about the Robinson's quarry. They have flat stones. I could get a bunch of jagged ones and line them up against the wall. I ran it past Mike.

          "We could use flashing," he suggested.

          "No, I want to use stone. It'll be more interesting."

          I checked with Jon Robinson and he gave me permission to get all the stone I wanted. Mike and I got on the golf cart and went to get some. On the way up to the quarry Mike spots something in the field.

          "Are those antlers?" he asked.

          "Where?"

          "Over there," and he pointed.

          I leaned forward but all I saw was the white stubble of some long dead plant. "I think it's just an old dead plant."

          "I think they're antlers. You want them."

          "Yeah!"

          Mike put the golf car in park and retrieved a pair of antlers for me. I didn't take a picture until later at home and if that was all we found that trip, I'd have been pleased enough.

          Up at the quarry Mike helped me to look for thin rocks with a straight side and an interesting side.

            When we had enough we headed back down.

          "Let's go the other way around," I suggested.

          Mike is a good husband and tries to give me my way when he can.

          I took a picture of Jon's tree stand.

        

 

          Then we see something in the field. "Is that a cat?" I asked and pointed.

          "I think it's a skunk."

          "Cool! Let's get closer."

          "It's a porcupine!" I exclaimed. When the quill-pig saw us he turned and went for the trees.          

          Mike stopped the cart so I could walk over for a better shot.

          "Hey! Where're ya going?" I asked him. 

            He kept going and all I got were pictures of his rear as he squeezed between the boards.

           Then he started climbing the tree.

          Up and up he went.

          Until he was high up in the tree.

          Having scared him enough, I turned and went back to the cart where Mike and the girls were waiting for me.

          We hadn't gone very far when we got stuck in some especially wet ground. I tried to call Jon Robinson but he'd gone to bed already. He leaves for work really early in the morning so he goes to bed early at night.

          I cut across the field and made it down to the hunting cabin above our place, went down their driveway and took a deer path to our house. I got the Jeep and went to pull the golf cart out of the mud.

          It was too late for me to work on my flower bed but I did go out the next day and arrange the stones as best I could.

          This is my favorite stone. It has plant impressions on it.

          On Thursday, I saw this bird down at my pond. I know my picture's not the best but he took off before I could get anything better.

          I searched and searched but was having trouble finding a bird with a crest like this one. Finally I enlisted the aid of the Kipps. "What is it?"

          Lamar checked his big bird book. "Rosie and I think it's a Little Blue Heron,"

           I was leaning toward a Reddish Egret.

            Then a couple of days later I found him at my pond again and got a much better look at him. Because the Kipps put me on the right path I was able to identify him. He's a Green Heron. They're about 18 inches in length with a 26-inch wingspan.

          Isn't he awesome!

          Well guys, I've gone and done it again.

          "What's that, Peg?" you ask.

          I've gone and carried on for another 20 (printed) page letter. And once again I must make myself stop before I've run out of pictures — as if 68 weren't enough!

          Heck! Let's make it a nice round 69 pictures. This one has been tagging along for three weeks now waiting for his turn to be put in the letter blog. Nothing special. Just a road picture I kept forgetting.

          Let's call this one done!