You know something?
I kind of lied to you in my last letter blog — but it wasn't intentional! And it goes to show you just how much stuff we forget. Last Saturday, Mike and I'd gone to the arts festival down in town, I told you that. I told you I spent Sunday going to church and working on my blog. That's the part that isn't true. If I had all day Sunday to work on it, why didn't I finish it till Tuesday? I wondered as I was writing it. But I didn't dwell, I just moved on. When I downloaded my camera in preparation for today's letter blog, I saw the truth of it.
Last Sunday was Father's Day — how could I forget!
"Mike, you want to go to the Hotel for Father's Day dinner?" I asked several days before the event.
"Naw."
"Okay then. If we're not celebrating Father's Day with dinner out, we're not celebrating Mother's Day out either!" I informed him. Fair's fair, right?
Mike thought about it for a few minutes. "You better make reservations."
"Let's invite the Kipps and the Robinsons."
"You arrange it."
So I did.
Sunday was beautiful, even if it was a little warm. Mike and I arrived early and had no trouble parking in front of the Hotel. Hmmm. That sure is different from Mother's Day. You couldn't get close to the place then.
"Want to take a walk?" Mike asked.
"Sure." And we strolled down the street, looking in shop windows and waiting for the others to arrive.
We got to the end of the street and walked back. "Let's just go in and get our table," Mike said.
Our table turned out to be an eight top right in front of that big window behind the bench.
Steph and Jon arrived first.
Steph was barely seated when we spot this goofy redhead through the window.
And here's Miss Rosie with her handsome husband.
"You're not as busy on Father's Day," Mike commented to our waitperson (I almost said waitress but I don't think that's politically correct these days).
"Nope," she replied. "Fathers usually want to play golf or stay in their man-caves and drink beer."
After dinner — I had prime rib— we got the hostess to take a group picture for us — is it still okay to say hostess?
We've slowed down on the brush removal at the pond. We took out the one by our bridge...
...then before we started the big one at the pond's edge, I had Mike take a picture with me in front of it holding the chain I lug around.
With the big bush gone you can see across the pond to the barn on the hill.
"Pond? Peg, where's the pond!" you say.
I know, right! With all the pond lilies in there, you can't see the water. We don't know if we should work on Spatterdock control or let things alone. I expect we won't worry about it this year. I had hoped we'd keep a little more water in the pond by taking out some of the bushes and trees that thrive there, but it hasn't helped. The pond is still really low.
The Heal-all is blooming.
And so is the Chicory.
And the milkweed!
Since it's the only food a Monarch caterpillar will eat,
Mike mowed around a patch for me.
And where you have milkweed, you have Red Milkweed Beetles.
Deptford Pink.
Morning Glories
I'm not sure what this is.
Red Admiral Butterfly
White Cabbage Moth
Trichopoda or Feather-legged Fly. He's a genus of Tachinid Flies which are a very large family of true flies with more than 8,200 known species. Kinda pretty, ain't he.
Oh! That reminds me. My cousin Stacey emailed me after I called the Wolf Spider beautiful. "Spiders are not beautiful!" She's probably not gonna think my fly is pretty either, is she. And spiders weren't the only thing she commented on. She had a different name for the cookies I call Pecan Wedding Cakes. "I think we used to call those Nun's Farts." Oh my gosh! She cracks me up.
I wanted to go see the eagles in my cousin Justin's backyard. He told me that the eaglets were getting up onto the edge of the nest now and spreading their wings. On the way, we dropped off the trash and recyclables at the garbage company.
"Look," Mike said. "They're finally getting that mountain of milk jugs cleaned up."
Then we pulled around to the front and I see it's just as deep out front as it ever was.
I expected to see Karen, who's been tending the recyclables for nine years, I think she told me, but she's gone.
"She quit," her replacement Lisa told me.
"I see you're getting things caught up a little."
"I'm trying too but it comes in faster than I can sort it."
"Well, okay then. Here's another bag for you," I said getting it out of the back of the Jeep, "and if I ever put something in there that's not recyclable, just let me know. I pay to get rid of my trash."
"Okay," Lisa said, took the bag and we left.
We drove over to the office. I went in to pay while Mike put two bags of garbage in their big dumpsters. It saves us a little money to drop it off rather than have them pick it up and it wasn't out of our way at all.
"You gave her the wrong bag," Mike said when I climbed back in the Jeep.
"What?"
"You gave her a bag of trash."
"Well, let's go fix it."
"Can't," Mike said. "I already threw it in the dumpster and I can't get it back out."
I'm so embarrassed! How will I ever face Lisa again!
At Justin's, Mike parked and we walked down to the river. I couldn't spot the eagle's nest through the thick wall of leaves. We walked down to the river's edge.
The Susquehanna was down and Ginger waded right in.
"I'll wait up at the house for you," Mike said.
"Okay. Ginger and I are going to walk a little."
I spotted a damselfly, landing on a rock. In my photo, I see he's got lunch in his mouth.
After I'd gone a little way I scanned the trees and spotted the nest but I didn't see any babies. We walked for a while then turned around and headed back. Going past the nest again, I see one of the babies. It thrilled me.
Mike was sitting on the swing waiting for me.
"Where's Justin?" you wonder.
Justin would have been at work. I didn't really expect him to be home in the middle of the afternoon.
I took road pictures for you.
"Look at that," Mike says. "When the mower quits you just leave it where it is and mow around it."
"Kinda looks that way, doesn't it."
"Yep. That's why they paint John Deere's green."
I laughed at his little joke. He likes John Deere but he likes Kubota better.
In Laceyville Mike turns the wrong way. He's not headed for home. "Where're we going?" I asked.
"I want to drive down to Meshoppen and check out that old hospital. Maybe someone will be there and we can get a tour."
Mike and I had been talking to someone, I forget who just now, but she said the (recently closed) furniture store had been sold.
"Ken-Mar?" Mike questioned. "Where was that?"
"You remember," I prompted. "It's the one that sent us the going out of business flyer... Out by the gas station."
Something clicked. "Oh, yeah."
"He bought both buildings," she told us. "The one Ken-Mar was in and the one in Meshoppen that used to be a hospital."
I don't know that I knew that that big old building used to be a hospital. Going past and seeing the old man sitting there on the corner, I thought he might have been a hotel. "I bet that was a fabulous building in its day," I'd often tell Mike.
I'd seen a dumpster sitting here the last time we were past, the doors were open and the dumpster was full. Today, this day, no one was there. Mike drove around the block.
In preparation for this letter blog, I Googled old hospital in Meshoppen. I found a picture from the early 1900's and the description said this was the Kennard Hotel before it was a hospital or furniture store.
Meshoppen used to be an affluent town at one time, is my guess, because there are some really big beautiful homes there.
But now... most of the big homes have been turned into apartments and some of the homes look poor and unkempt.
An old church. Someone took the stained glass panels out.
Look what I found.
"Eww, Peg! Why are you touching that snake?" you ask.
Don't worry, he's not alive. In fact, he was pretty stiff! This is just a baby Milk Snake and I don't know why he died right there on the concrete.
"Maybe it got too hot for him," Mike guessed.
Speaking of Ewwws, check this out.
I found mouse droppings on my kitchen counter so I set a trap under the counter, two traps as a matter of fact. I'm guessing this guy got caught in one and backed into the other one.
"Peg, why two traps so close to each other?" you wonder.
I've had them take the bait and not spring the trap before so I set two traps as a failsafe, you know what I mean.
Can you stand one more Ewww?
Look at my bed! Just look at my bed, would ya! I pulled the blanket half off so it wouldn't seep through to the sheets.
"What is that?" I know you're afraid to ask.
I think this is Molly puke. I know it's puke but the part that I think, is the Molly part. That cat! I'm tellin ya! She just loves to drink out of the bathroom faucet so much that she gorges herself — then pukes. After having to clean up after her twice for that reason, I stopped turning on the faucet for her. "And you'd better stop too!" I warned Mike. "Because if she pukes again, you're cleaning it up!" Well, he kept doing it.
"Did you make him clean it up?" you ask.
No. No I didn't. This was a little more complicated than using paper towels to clean up the floor, but the next time!
I was standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes and I hear a bird squawking. I look up in time to see this bird dive down to the patio. That's strange, I thought and kept washing away. I got one more dish washed when the scene repeated itself. What is going on? I dropped the dish I was washing back into the sink, grabbed the dishtowel, and headed for the door.
Mama Robin was squawking and diving again, right at Spitfire who held Baby in his mouth. "Spitfire!" I yelled. "You drop that right now!"
Spitfire growled at me.
I showed him who the boss was! I grabbed his neck and shook him. He dropped the baby and I tossed Spitfire in the house.
"Oh, Peg! You didn't! You said you weren't going to interfere anymore."
I know, right! It's not like my cats are hungry and even though baby robin may be a delicacy in the cat world, I just couldn't let him kill it. I couldn't help myself.
I tried to get Mama Robin to follow me away from the house, but I don't even know if she knew I had the baby.
She just sat in the tree and cried.
Finally, not knowing what else to do, I put the baby in a shady spot under the tree Mama was in, stroked his neck, — and laughed when he opened his mouth — and left it there.
I kept the cats in for a few hours, despite Spitfire's agitation over his confinement. When I went out to check, the baby was gone and I didn't hear the mother anyplace.
You know, y'all know I'm not a fast thinker, I've told you that plenty of times and often follow that statement up with an example, so let's keep the tradition going, shall we?
My dish drainer sits on the left side of my sink. My microwave is over there too. Often times, I'll push the drainer back in order to have room in front to set my coffee cup. Are you with me so far? And I'll end up shoving the silverware into the soap dispenser if I'm not careful. This has been going on since we moved in here.
"Peg, why don't you put the soap on the other side of the sink?" you ask.
See! I knew you'd see the answer right away! Me? It took me eight months to figure it out!
Do you remember the green berries I showed you several weeks ago? I thought they were chokecherries and guess what? They're not. The berries have split open and there is all this white fluff all over the place!
This tree is an Easter Cottonwood tree and the website said don't plant them cause they're messy — and they are.
Despite doing my best to identify stuff for you guys, or rather, I do my best to identify things correctly for you, I make mistakes. There are many things that look similar and sometimes I quit looking too soon.
Take these yellow wildflowers. I called them Golden Alexander's last time, but in doing further research, I'm not so sure they are. They could very well be Wild Parsnip. The only way to tell them apart is to look at the leaves. I think I'd do better if I saw them side-by-side in real life because even after studying the pictures, I'm still not sure I can tell which is which.
Golden Alexander sounds more exotic, but Wild Parsnips can be eaten in their first year. Leave them in the ground until after the first frost and they'll be even sweeter for you. They get flowers the second year and after that, they are too tough to eat. Now, that being said, Wild Parsnip can cause phytophotodermatitis. That means the juice from the plant causes a chemical reaction, which makes skin hypersensitive to ultraviolet lights. In plain terms, it'll cause blisters!
And look at this beauty, would ya.
After spending a long time looking through pictures, trying to find another one like him, I found two that were similar. I don't know if this guy, this dragonfly is a Halloween Pennant or a Painted Skimmer, but I'm leaning towards the latter.
"Peg, dragonflies, damselflies! What's the difference?"
Damselflies sit with their wings folded together and straight back along the tops of their bodies, dragonflies sit with their wings out to the side.
And now, open doors.
They have a mulberry tree making a mess on their car,
and their dog was barking at our Jeep as Mike slowed for a stop sign.
We had a beautiful sunset the other night and the sunrise was just as pretty, according to my husband. I didn't get up and see for myself.
Let's call this one done!
