Extra! Extra!

          An extra letter blog!

          A bonus!

          I can hear some of you groan. "One a week is plenty enough!" you say.

          I can hear some of you cheer for you love me, love my pictures, and even love my jibber jabber.

          Elk Mountain was 18 pages when I printed it, contained more than 90 pictures and covered just one day. There were six more that followed. Don't'cha wanna hear about them? Don't'cha wanna see those pictures?

          I have confidence that you do. Which is why I'm spending another grueling day sorting and editing photographs and writing.

          I've been in the habit of saving my prettiest sunset photos to end my letter blogs with. With the seasons moving into winter, I'm more likely to catch a beautiful sunrise. Even though I have ended with sunrise photos in the past, I was thinking about it. Sunrises are the beginning, sunsets are the end. So let's start with a sunrise photo I took just this morning.

          There hasn't been a lot of activity on our bridge this past week. They poured concrete in lifts.

          "What's a lift?" you ask.

          I know, right! I had to ask too! A lift is 15 inches. They can only pour 15 inches (more or less) then have to use the vibrator to release all of the air bubbles. They pour 15 more inches, vibrate it and continue on in that manner until the pour is complete.

          They poured the caps on both sides of the creek, covered it all with plastic and went away for a couple of days.

          Other things capture my attention while sitting there watching them. 

           By the way, they have a name for people like Mike and me who come to the job site to watch and there's always someone who does. They call us Sidewalk Supervisors.

          "Do you mind?" I asked.

          "Not at all," I was told.

          I saw two butterflies this week. This is a Painted Lady.

          And I thought the Monarchs were all gone but here's a latecomer.

          Thursday, some of the guys came back to the job site and what?

          "Strip the forms maybe?" Mike guessed.

          We didn't see them so we don't know for sure what they did.

          And these things showed up, whatever they are.

          I guess we've been too busy to pay much attention.

          "What did you do this week?" you ask.

          This week we enclosed the patio in plastic. We had so many cold winter winds find their way through every little crack not to mention the army that marched through when the door was open. The plastic is an effort to stem the tide.

          Unfortunately, it was windy. No, I mean it was really really windy! One section gave up the fort. It didn't even make it 24 hours.

          Mike was discouraged. He tries so hard to do things right the first time so he doesn't have to do them again. However, we often tease that our name is Mike and Peg, the Do-It-Again Luby's. 

          All of the stuff we used for this project was stuff we already owned. But Mike thought it best if we got just a few pieces of longer one by fours. You know what that means, don't you? Road trip!

          Our first stop would be the Ford dealership in Wysox. Mike needed a new marker light for Big Red.

          What is this plate trying to say? I can't figure it out. I get 'you are' part, but what are you?

          Old windows in the woods.

          The neighbor's barn is steadily progressing.

          "If I lived here," Lamar said of the mountain

 top where this place is, "I'd never get anything done because I'd always be looking at the view."

          The sunflowers with their heads bowed.

          Crossing the bridge into Towanda.

           The kids painting windows for Halloween.

          I thought you might like to see this window done.

  

            

  

          I took these at the lumber company.

          And more pictures on the way home.

          ♫Little pink houses for you and me♪

          We haven't made the repairs to the patio yet; the weekend was upon us and someone in this house feels the need to write on the weekends.

          Another job we knocked off our Things To Do Before Winter list was to cage in some of our trees and shrubs. Last spring the deer ate almost all the leaves off our Rhododendrons. They won't get them next spring.

          And again, we used stuff we already owned.

          "Don't take a picture of that!" Mike growled.

          "Why!"

          "I'm ashamed of it."

          Personally, I don't see a thing wrong with it. It serves the purpose and it didn't cost us anything — oh!

          "Oh what, Peg?" you say.

          It did cost us something. At least it did Mike. It cost him a pound of flesh, so to speak.

          "Peg! What are you talking about?" I know you wanna know.

          Mike was laying out where he thought the posts should go. Me, not always content to let Mike do things his way, made a suggestion.

          "Maybe we should stand the fence up and see if that's where you want the posts to go. Wouldn't that be better than having to move them if you put them in the wrong place?"

          Mike, not always content to go along with my harebrained ideas went along with this one.

          We set the fence section in place and Mike placed the pole.

          I had one job. One job! No. Two. I had two jobs! It was my job to hold the fence while Mike drove the post. I could do that. Using one of these things is not easy and requires a lot of muscle to drive the posts in the ground. And if you hit a rock — all bets are off. After slamming it a bunch of times Mike stopped to catch his breath and asked, "Is it moving."

          Now I had a second job. I had to watch and see if the post was going into the ground with each battering ram as Mike used the full force of his body.

          I bent down to watch more closely, let the fence drift into the work zone, and —

          "OWW! SON OF A $%&*!"

          I stood up in time to see Mike grasp his hand. He slammed it between the ram handle and the fence I was supposed to be holding out of the way. I felt so bad and apologized profusely. Almost immediately a bubble formed. "I wonder if that's blood." I poked it a little but as you can guess Mike wasn't having any of that.

          "Don't touch it!"

          "Now I know how it feels when you hurt me and don't mean to," I told Mike apologizing again. "That's going to be really sore tomorrow."

          "Peg, why didn't you put ice on it?" you ask.

          I wanted to but Mike wouldn't. He kept saying, "It'll be alright."

          I'm really surprised about how little Mike complained about it in the days to come. Which is hardly at all. I'd ask him if it was sore and he'd say a little and never spoke of it again.

          When we made the awning over the kitchen patio we used reclaimed roofing. It had holes in it and we knew it had holes in it.

          "We'll put house wrap under it and it'll be alright," Mike said.

          Well, it still leaked but it didn't bother me. It bothered Mike. So we got up there and used Gorilla Tape to cover all the holes. I was in charge of cutting the tape pieces for Mike and I'll tell you what! Pull that strong tape off the same finger fifty million times and your finger gets sore! "I bet I don't have any fingerprints left!" I whined. My finger was sore for two days!

          I did see a cute little jumping spider though.

          Something else I saw this week was my Inky Caps Mushrooms.

          "I'm going to try them this year!" I told Mike. When I went to pick a few I saw I was already too late. They were getting inky already. I should have found them a couple of days earlier.

          Inky caps are a mild mushroom (or so I read) but can be toxic if you consume it with alcohol. I don't drink so that's not a problem for me, but I wanted to warn you in case you thought you'd like to try them too. And you have to cook them as soon as you harvest them because they'll become inky pretty quick after picking.

          I missed a couple of pictures but I'm not going to go back and add them. It messes up all my pages. I'd really like to find a different program to write in. One where the pictures don't jump around on me. But until I do...

          More road pictures.

          In my kitchen this week I made homemade cheese crackers! Swiss is my favorite but I also made sharp cheddar and pepper jack.

          "Were they hard to make?" you wanna know.

          Nope! My friend Jessica shared the recipe with me and they're easy peasy lemon squeezy! And delicious!

          When I fed my outside cats the other morning I saw there was a skim of ice on the outside water bucket.  

 

          I went in search of pictures just for you and started in the back yard where the Zinnias have gone to seed.

          I decided to walk up the hill and see if I could find any ice-covered milkweed pods. Crossing the yard I see Jerry, an old feral that divides his time between us and the Robinsons. See the top of the crane in the background?

          I'd forgotten. I'd asked Mike to mow the wildflower patch where I thought I was going to go to look for pictures. I did find a fluffed out milkweed but no frost crystals to speak of.

          Mike found me a new stove on FB Marketplace. We went to pick it up Saturday late morning. More road pictures anyone?

          This is my new stove, which is currently sitting in the living room, waiting for Monday when this old woman tucks pen and paper away for another week and goes back to work.

          Until next time, let's call this one done!