This week I had a day that didn’t go very well for me. But before I tell you about my no-good very-bad day let me tell you something I do love.
“Me?” you say.
Yes. You. But that’s not what I was going to say. I was going to say that I do love my morning love notes. I’ll send out eighteen notes — well, technically one note to eighteen different people. Not everyone replies — and that’s all right. You have to ignore me for a long time before I give up on you. Sometimes I’ll get a reply before I’ve sent my note — and that’s okay too. Sometimes the notes come in sporadically throughout the day — and that just gives me something to look forward to all day. And sometimes a reply comes in after I’ve gone to bed for the night — and even that’s okay.
“I hope you post a pic of the chimes,” one of my love notees replied.
It’s one of those things I wasn’t necessarily gonna talk about in my letter blog but since you asked, here they are, hanging on my plate shelf with my most often used recipes stuck to the wall behind them.
And Saturday morning I talked about a SNAFU in my mask making and counting endeavor. I took credit for making one more than I actually made.
“I hope you plan to show us the three and three-quarters masks.”
“Three and three-quarters?” you wonder.
Well, here’s the thing. It was mentioned that the masks sometimes come up too high and interfere with the eye. I had a great idea to shorten the top edge between the nose and ear. Well, all that did was place the ties lower behind your head. My idea was a bust. That was a couple of weeks ago. When I sat down to make this batch, I inadvertently picked up the ‘modified’ pattern, cut, and sewed the mask together. As I was turning it right side out, I couldn’t figure out why it was so hard to turn. Then it hit me. I’d used the wrong pattern. I should’ve thrown it out right away, I thought. But fat-lotta good that did me now! I tossed the mask aside, found the pattern, and pitched it — right out into the trash! The no-good mask hasn’t got any ties on it so that accounts for the three-quarters.
And one morning one of my sibs mentioned how, as a kid, taking a nap was punishment. Now it’s a treat. She was gonna take a nap.
“I never nap,” I replied. Yeah, well, famous last words, right?
It’s the truth. I’m a no-napper. But then my no-good very-bad day happened.
“Peg!” you exclaim. “For heaven’s sake! You do go on! What happened!”
Tuesday! It was Tuesday when I did something I’ve done hundreds, nay thousands of times in my 61 years.
“61?” you ask.
Yep. I had a birthday but I’ll get to that later.
I bent over (to put food in the cat’s dish) and hurt my back. I felt something like an electrical shock radiate out from my spine, in my lower back, in both directions, and the muscles started to spasm. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to straighten up but I did. After that my back was really bothering me so I took a muscle relaxer.
Lunch time, I had a pan of oil heating on the stove to sauté some squash. The first one or maybe the second, that I dropped into the pan splashed the oil up onto two of my fingers. Thanks to my beautiful cousin Lorraine I’ve got lavender oil for burns. Thanks to my beautiful friend Jody I’ve got an aloe plant for burns too. Between the two it didn’t hardly blister at all!
In the afternoon of this no-good very-bad day I helped Mike in the lower garage. Now that the door was on, he wanted to move stuff around.
“Grab the end of the culvert, Peg, and help me move it,” Mike said. It was long, like twenty feet long. I marked it with a star in the picture.
“Where are we going with it?” I picked up the culvert with both hands and duck-walked it as Mike led. It wasn’t especially heavy, just awkward.
“Over to the other side.”
We got it over there and I set my end down on the left side of the post you see in the picture. Do you see that other thing? The one with the arrow pointing to it? That’s called a quick hitch. Mike took it off his tractor because he couldn’t hook up the brush hog with it on. The quick hitch was standing up, leaning against the post.
“Can you…” Mike started to ask and stopped.
I hate it when he does that but knew what he was going to ask. He was going to ask if I could put the culvert on the other side of the quick hitch. I looked and decided I could but didn’t think there was enough room between the hitch and the lawn mower on the other side for it to go the whole way to floor. But maybe that didn’t matter. Rather than say anything I thought I’d just do it and let the chips fall where they may. I picked up the culvert and lifted it over the hitch. It came down against the hitch which put it in motion and it slid to the floor. Unfortunately, the post wasn’t the only thing it slid against. My shin happened to be within sliding range and it slid down my shin too!
“Ow!”
“I didn’t even cry,” I later told Miss Rosie.
“Are you alright?” Mike asked.
I pulled up my pant leg and this is what I saw. I hobbled over to where I’d set my camera and took a picture for you.
“Why you always gotta talk about the bad stuff?” Mike was agitated.
“What’s the point in getting hurt if I can’t talk about it?!”
“Because I hate it that you got hurt! I feel like it’s my fault. I’m supposed to protect you!”
“It was totally my own fault,” I soothed. “If I didn’t wanna do it, I could’ve left it and you’d’ve done it.”
“I think I can get the rest on my own,” Mike dismissed me.
“Good. I’m going to lay down for a while.” I’d hurt my back, took a muscle relaxer, burned my fingers, and raked my shin. And that’s how a girl who never ever takes a nap, ended up taking a much-needed nap.
“What do you want for your birthday?” Mike asked on my birthday.
I didn’t hesitate. I knew what I wanted. Have wanted for quite a while now. I’d even researched it. “I want a new camera.”
Mike didn’t say anything but I knew what was going through his head. Thousand-dollar camera. Six-hundred-dollar lens. I hurried on. “But not a Canon. This time I want a Nikon D3500. There’s a two-lens bundle deal for less than five hundred dollars.” Mike didn’t say anything and I know enough not to push.
After a while he gets up and goes to his computer. “This one?” he calls me away from my computer and we start looking for the deal I saw.
“It’s on the WISH website but I don’t know if it’s a good camera or not.” I’d seen something since my initial search about WISH selling a lot of junk stuff.
Mike surfed on his own and found Best Buy had the best deal for what I wanted. “You wanna go to Dickson City tomorrow?”
I smiled. “Sure!”
I was up early enough to catch the sunrise.
After the morning chores were out of the way we headed out to get my camera. All along the road going into Tunkhannock I see the trees look funny. “What’s going on with those trees?”
“I don’t know. Are they dying cause it’s been so dry?” He paused. “Maybe it’s from all the pollutants the cars and trucks put out.”
I thought about it. “Cars emit carbon monoxide and trees breathe in carbon monoxide and breathe out oxygen. Besides, it’s only one kind of tree that’s turning brown.” That led me to think about ash borers. “Maybe it’s a bug or a disease.”
I didn’t take a picture and wish I would’ve.
Going through Tunkhannock I spot Shaggy and Scobby’s Mystery Machine. By the time I got my camera to focus it was almost outta sight as we waited at a red light.
A good ways to Dickson City, we approach another light and see something’s going on. “I think that truck’s broke down.” I guessed wrong. It was a fender bender — and my camera wouldn’t focus when it counted. I got shots before the accident scene and after.
We were greeted at the door of Best Buy by an employee.
“What brings you in today?” he asked.
“We’re looking for a camera.”
He got on his talkie. “Seth, I’m sending two people back to you to look at cameras.” Then he turned to us and gave us directions as he undid the retractable belt barrier that stopped people just inside the door. “Head straight back to the information counter and Seth will help you.”
We had masks on and they had a sanitizing station set up but he didn’t ask us to use it.
Seth didn’t know much about cameras so it’s a good thing we knew what we wanted before we got there. And this is my new get-up.
“How do you like it?” I’ve been asked several times.
“I like taking good pictures again,” I told Jody after she’d asked.
“I didn’t think there was anything wrong with your pictures before. In fact, I thought you got some pretty amazing shots.”
Ah. She loves me.
The long lens is a 70-300mm lens. The minimum focal length is 3.7 feet. That means if I see a tiny little bug and want a close up of it, I have to stand almost four feet away from it. The smaller one is an 18-55mm lens and will focus around a foot. So it’s just different than my Canon but not anything I can’t live with.
I couldn’t use the Nikon on the way home because the battery had to be charged first. So, I was stuck with the Canon that will only focus part of the time.
I almost got these two shots in focus before we were past.
You can bet it didn’t take me long to go out taking pictures once the new battery was charged! So, let’s look at some of my practice shots with the long lens.
Mike.
Miss Rosie.
Lamar being goofy.
Stuff on the Kipp porch.
“I’ve got a birthday present for you too,” Miss Rosie said.
I can only imagine my face lit up. Who doesn’t like presents? “You do?!”
“Yep.”
Miss Rosie gives the best gifts EVER! I don’t know how she always manages to pick out something perfect for me. This year I was blessed with another Miss Rosie original. She painted a Monarch and some beautiful purple flowers on what I assume was a sugar bowl with fabulous patina. It’s now a pencil holder on my desk where I can look at it often and feel loved.
She also got me a Monarch tee shirt. It’s got a caterpillar on the front and a big beautiful butterfly on the back. It’s rather appropriate considering my side hobby of collecting Monarch caterpillars.
“How are your caterpillars?” I know you wanna know.
My very first one, a male, emerged from his chrysalis on my birthday!
Right now, I’ve got about 24 in my butterfly house. Seven chrysalises, one caterpillar hanging in a ‘j’, one caterpillar up top but not yet in a jay, and the rest are still feeding.
I find lots of bugs when I’m out caterpillar hunting.
Treehopper.
Milkweed Weevil.
Monarch caterpillar sign on a leaf. Okay, it’s poo!
Milkweed Tussock Moth caterpillars.
Hickory Tussock Moth caterpillar.
A Milkweed Beetle, hiding.
A Rose-hip Fly, aka Flutter-wing Flies.
A Scorpion Fly.
A ladybug feasting on a Monarch caterpillar carcass.
Robber Fly
Katydid nymph
I’ve got a few road pictures.
Vernon, Mike’s crony (which means buddy), cleared some paths up through his woods for his family to go four-wheelin’. He invited us to go on up and check it out. So we did. It’s a little bumpy but a nice ride. We didn’t stop for me to examine this so I can’t tell you if it’s natural or man-made.
The last time we made this trip we came home with about four of these hitchhikers. This time we only had two. This is a Spined Micrathea aka Spiny-bellied Orb Weaver or just Spiny Orb Weaver.
Some critters are more fascinating than others and I find this one fascinating, especially in the way it looks. Males of this species are seldom seen and they don’t spin webs. Most times when they’re seen it’s while they’re in a web courting a female.
The Micrathea spins a wheel-shaped web with one very long silk thread leading to a branch or leaf above the web. This is its escape line and comes in handy when a bird or golf cart blunders into her web.
Micrathea eggs overwinter and hatch in the spring. The female will create egg cases as long as the weather holds but in the fall their metabolism slows and they generally die when it freezes.
And that’s probably more than you wanted to know.
I love the humbees and photograph them every time I see them.
Joe Pye Weed is blooming.
Something big and wobbly flew past before I could see what it was. I was able to see where it landed and can tell you it’s a pair of mating Monarchs.
Some kind of fly on White Sweet Clover.
Two kinds of Touch-me-nots, aka Jewelweed. The Pale Touch-me-not is yellow.
The orange is called Spotted Touch-me-not.
I don’t know what this is. The spent flower or a flower in its own right?
“Peg, all you have to do is keep an eye on it. Go back in a couple of days and see what it looks like,” you say.
I know, right! Except there’s one problem. I can’t remember where I took the picture.
I do know what this is. It’s Boneset. Because of the way the leaves grow around the stem they believed it would heal bone.
This one I didn’t know. I thought it was a kind of milkweed because when a leaf broke it had ‘milk’. But my search to find out what kind of milkweed it was proved futile. I turned to my FaceBook plant group.
“It’s Spreading Dogbane,” I was told.
It’s not a milkweed but it’s in the same family. One thing I know for sure. It sure does smell good!
I took Itsy with me a couple of times when I went out to make pictures. “Itsy,” I said getting her attention. “Since Ginger's gone you have to be my dog now.”
I stopped and set her down so I could use both hands to take pictures. Itsy headed for home, grumbling under her breath, “This is bullshit.”
I saw a lot of these butterflies this week. They’re called a Cabbage White. Therefore, you’ve got to see more than one picture.
Two’s company —
— three’s a crowd.
One afternoon we went for a golf cart ride. Going past the hunter’s cabin we see their resident whistlepig. Art, one of the hunters, pointed out the entrance to his den on one of our visits. It’s a huge mound under the porch.
Woody was feeding in the yard. When he heard us, he ran for his den. Up the steps he goes and stops. The last time we stopped and he dove for cover between the top and second step. This time we didn’t stop and he stayed put.
I had Mike stop so I could get a picture of Evening Primrose for you.
This is called a fertile frond. It bears the spores for ferns.
A speedwell.
Jumpseed or Virginia Knotweed. This one is a species of smartweed and is in the buckwheat family. It’s named for its seeds which can "jump" several feet when a ripe seedpod is disturbed.
Not far from home we see Spitfire sitting on the road eating his kill. He took off before we got very close. He took his kill with him so I never knew what he’d caught but I suspect it was a mouse.
Just outside our driveway I see a snake. “Don’t you run over that snake!’ I warned Mike. But when we drew abreast of it I could see someone else already had.
“Aww. Poor guy. What kind is it?”
“Just a garter snake,” Mike said. Considering his fear of snakes I was surprised he even looked at it. If one comes on TV he closes his eyes. “Tell me when it’s gone!”
“Let me get it off the road.” If it lays on the road it’ll just get flattened and be of no use. If I toss it in the weeds then other critters could eat it. As I walked over I considered how to pick it up. By it’s head? It can’t bite me. But prudence won out and I picked it up by the tail. The tip wrapped around my hand, released, and whipped back the other way before wrapping around my hand again. The poor thing had his guts squished out and was still alive. Unfortunately, I failed, for the second time, in ending the misery of a poor injured snake. I just tossed him up in the weeds.
Can you see all of the little orange and black bugs on these leaves? I had to ask my insect group what they are. These are called Locust Leafminers. Their favorite food is the Black Locust.
At the bottom of the webpage was this picture and you know what? This is exactly what the trees going into Tunkhannock look like!
“What do you think these are supposed to be?” Lamar Kipp kicked off his shoe and held his crazy sock up for inspection.
“I have no idea,” I said and snapped a couple of pictures. “But I’ll ask my readers.” So, help us out. What do you think this is?
When we moved here there was a work bench in the generator room. We took it apart and kept the top. This week we put it up in the lower garage for Mike. There are two boards, two and half inches thick. One is twelve inches wide, the other seventeen. They’re both 146 inches long. That’s over twelve feet!
How about a little news from the world of Tiger? I’m going to have him fixed through the Meshoppen Cat Rescue. It’s only fifty bucks, a lot cheaper than going through my vet. I put in a call to Paula and she had an opening to take him this week. I put Tiger in a carrier and put him in the Jeep. He cried and cried. “Let’s let him out,” I suggested. All of our years of traveling with cats has taught us that they cry more when confined to a kennel. I reached behind me and unlatched the door. It wasn’t long at all until he settled in Ginger’s car seat.
We get there and Paula thinks he’s too little yet to have his ‘nuggets’ cut off. We’ll try again in a month.
Tiger doesn’t need fancy schmancy toys. Give him a wrapper from a pack of Ritz and he’ll happily carry it around and bat it for twenty minutes.
He likes to sit on my desk when I’m working on the computer. When he’s had enough petting he’ll move off to the side.
“How do you expect me to get my work done?” I asked.
I don’t think he really cares.
And I thought it time I introduced you to Honey, the three-legged coon. I don’t see her every night but I do see her four or five nights a week.
Anon inspected this chocolate chip cookie before I offered it to Honey. She loves them!
This is the second time I fished these guys out of the pool. I’ve added a couple of sticks so they don’t get stuck again.
Gosh! I’m out of room before I’m out of pictures! Are you tired of me yet?
Let’s call this one done!
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