Well, my loves, we have a winner in the fall favorite photo contest.
“Tell us!” I know you’re anxious to
know!
The winner is this one!
It won by one vote.
Actually, it only got one vote — and that one vote was mine.
“Peg! That’s not fair!”
I
know, right! But it’s my letter blog, so what’re ya gonna do!
“Why do you like this one?” you ask.
I like how the darkness opens into
light. I was looking at it on my ‘puter and spotted a cross, that ancient
torture device that took the life of our Lord, and thought it rather symbolic.
We move from the darkness of sin into the forgiving light of God.
Several of you expressed the same sentiment as my beautiful Missouri gal did. Linda says, “This is like asking to pick a favorite child. No can do!”
It
tickled (and slightly amazed) me that Linda took the time to count to the
picture she liked best. “Number 84,” she said. That was the sunrise. Linda
thinks sunrise and sunset pictures are so serene and I always think of her when
I’m taking those kinds of pictures.
Linda, I took another sunrise photo
for you this week.
The real winner was the picture of the
pond. It was the only one to get two first-place votes, as well as a second and
a third-place vote.
My letter blog had 41 views last week but only eight people voted, nine if you count me.
“Peg, which one surprised you the
most?” you wanna know.
I’m so glad you asked! The one that
surprised me the most was the bat. It received two votes. But honestly, I’m not
sure if they were just telling me they liked my stained-glass bat or if they
were giving it a vote.
Nonetheless, it gives me a good segue
into showing you the bats I created this week.
I
still have to paint the eyes and polish them but here’s how my Colony of bats is shaping up.
Did you know that when bats are flying
in the sky, they’re called a Cloud? Or that where they live is called a Camp?
But back to my original subject…
There was one picture that got a second-place
vote that some people never got to see.
“What’s up with that!”
Here’s
what’s up with that. Formatting and fitting to pages sometimes affects the
number of pictures I can print. There are times that one picture makes the printed
letter go to another page and if that page only contains a few lines, I’ll go
back and take a picture out. That’s what happened last week. It doesn’t matter
at all when I post it online so I’ll sometimes include those pictures.
“Which picture was it?” you ask.
My
beautiful West Virginia friend loves the red barn against the blue sky and voted
for it. I thought it a good opportunity to include it for those who
didn’t get to see it.
“What was her first-place vote?” you ask.
She voted the church as her favorite.
It was with Trish in mind that I took more
pictures of churches this week.
Mike had an appointment in Vestal, New
York. I didn’t take a lot of road pictures because we’d just been on those roads
last week. But there are several churches along the route, some of them very
old.
Road picture time!
We got behind this semi and wondered what he was hauling.
“It looks like it has two cabs,” Mike
puzzled.
Once the guy turned off, we got to see
exactly what he was hauling. Not one thing with two cabs, but two things with one cab each.
By the time I saw we had a double rainbow I
was too late and only caught the end of it.
“What’s the rough-in measurements?” I
asked.
Pre-hung exterior doors that are 36x80
usually measure 37 1/2 x 81 3/4 to the outside of the frame. The rough opening
for such a door would be 38 1/4 x 82 1/2, says my old friend Google.
“I’m
not using those measurements,” Mike answered. “I’m going to make it 37 1/2 by 82.”
A sign inside the old room. What do
you think it says?
Mike marked the spot inside where he
wanted the door to go and drilled holes in the corners so we could find it from the outside.
It wasn’t raining but condensation was dripping from the roof. I held an umbrella over Mike’s head as he cut the opening.
Then we tried the door and it wouldn’t
fit.
“It’s catching up here.” I showed him
the upper corner. “And there’s a big gap down there on the other side.”
The problem with old construction is
things aren’t always square anymore — if they ever were. This was an old saw
mill. I’m not sure they even cared.
“Just what I didn’t want to have to
do,” exclaimed an exasperated husband.
“What?”
“Trim off a little piece.”
We worked for hours that first day,
trimming here and trimming there, pounding here, pounding there, door in, door
out, door in, door out, door in… well you get the idea. We did eventually get
the door in but it was nigh on to impossible to close.
I was very upset with my husband.
“Mike, there’s a reason they give you a
rough-in opening. So you can square it up if things aren’t straight!”
“I
don’t like to use shims,” Mike explained his reasoning. “And I want it to fit
tight.”
“I guess this is what we get then,”
upset, snarky me says.
The next morning, we were back at it. We
took the door out, trimmed more, re-set the door and still had a problem with
opening and closing.
I bet we had that door in and out at
least three more times.
I stood back and looked things over while Mike measured. ‘It should fit,” he said.
It didn’t though. “Do you think maybe the threshold is the problem?” I went for the level and put it on the sill. It was way off.
Mike leveled it and from there it wasn’t
long until we had the door in and working pretty good. It’s not perfect but as
Mike often says, “I’m not a door man.”
Then he went and got one of the cut
stones from the abutment of our old single-lane open-grate bridge to use as a
step and I love it.
Mike was working on the kitchen patio landscaping one morning when the Kipps came in from their morning walk.
He parked the tractor, bucket full of dirt, and called. “The Kipps are here!”
I grabbed my cup o’ joe and joined them on the
patio.
Tiger.
Tiger, Tiger, Tiger.
He climbed into the too-tempting-to-resist
bucket full of lovely soft dirt.
“TIGER!” Mike yelled. When that failed
to produce the results he wanted, he beseeched me for aid. “Peg! Get him out of
there! I’m going to be using my hands and don’t want him to pee in there.”
I got up and as soon as Tiger saw me
coming, he rolled over in the dirt. I picked him up, brushed him off, and
tossed him out. Then joined the Kipps and Mike back at the table. It wasn’t long
until Tiger jumped back in the bucket. This time when he saw me coming, he crouched
down and looked up at me.
“I knew I should’ve raised the bucket up,” Mike
said.
After removing Tiger from the bucket a third
time, I got on the tractor and raised the bucket as high as it would go.
“You know that’s just going to present him with
a challenge,” Miss Rosie said.
About this point was when I thought to take
pictures.
But it wasn’t Tiger that accepted the challenge,
it was Smudge. Up onto the hood of the tractor he went and paced back and forth
as he looked things over.
Destination in sight, he leapt.
Smudge
peeked over the edge at us.
Rosie
laughed. “How cute!”
Three
of the boys. Macchiato, Smudge, and Tiger.
Our cats are upside down layers. They
all lay on their backs. Except Tiger. I haven’t seen him do it yet.
For a cat to lay in this position, soft, vulnerable, underbelly exposed, as Smudge and Spitfire are here, they have to feel safe.
Tiger is still checking my butterfly house for birds.
They played for a long time. I’m really surprised that Mr. puts up with the antics of the young cat but he seems to like Tiger. He does not, however, like Smudge. Nope. Not one bit. He’ll nail him every single chance he gets. You can hear Smudge screeching a mile away!
“Meow!” he said and looked hopefully
at me.
“You wanna go out?” I asked and let
him out.
As soon as he was out the door, he
headed, nose down, to a board that was leaning up against the house. I knew
then that he’d seen a mouse and was going after it. I don’t have a lot of
sympathy for mice. I moved the board and the mouse ran behind the garbage-can-turned-wild-birdseed
holder. I moved that too. Then, on the other side of that sits another Rosie window I haven’t
yet painted and an umbrella. I started moving stuff but Tiger thought the mouse
had gone the other way and wasn’t paying attention as the mouse climbed a foot
up the siding, dropped back down, and hid in the corner.
“TIGER!” I screamed. He didn’t come. I
went and picked Tiger up and dropped him where I’d seen the mouse go. He could
smell it but couldn’t find it. The mouse must’ve found a crack to slide into.
Tiger hunkered down to wait and I went back inside.
After a while I look out and see
Smudge is out there and Tiger has a mouse. Did Tiger get the mouse after all or
did Smudge bring him one? I don’t know.
I watched as they tormented the poor little
thing.
“If I believed in reincarnation — which
I don’t,” Lamar Kipp said. “The one thing I wouldn’t want to come back as is a
mouse.”
Cats play with prey to subdue it before
delivering a killing blow, which can be dangerous when hunting rodents. Mice
and rats will fight to stay alive, usually by biting. This could be painful for
a cat or spread disease. Playing with prey by batting or tossing it leaves
small animals exhausted or injured. The cat can then safely kill and conclude a
hunt.
Yeah. That’s what Google says. But I’m
not so sure I believe it. For one thing, if the cat is carrying a mouse around
in his mouth then he can surely deliver the ‘killing blow’ if he wanted to. I
think they just like it.
The mouse that Tiger and Smudge had…
it made a break for it and went through the fence. The boys jumped over but
lost the mouse to a crack under the siding.
Another afternoon, another mouse, I watched as Tiger played cat and mouse with it. The mouse went through the fence. Tiger, very gracefully, jumped over. The mouse hopped, ran, squeaked, and headed for the weeds.
“You better get him!” I told Tiger.
Did Tiger listen?
No!
Smudge was here on this day and followed
— right into the weeds.
At
least it’s not under the house again. I’m thankful for such a small
blessing.
Tiger kept track of the mouse for a little
while but when he started nosing through the leaves I knew he'd lost him and was looking for him.
Smudge climbed a nearby tree.
Did the mouse go up the tree? I
wondered. I scanned the branches but didn’t see anything.
Smudge came down and Tiger went up the same tree!
Regardless, I knew the mouse had made a
clean escape and was gone — for good, I hoped.
Another morning, it was still dark out when I took Itsy out.
Itsy. Oh my gosh. I haven’t told you
anything about her in a while and it’s why I was out with her so early in the
morning.
Itsy is getting old. She can’t hold her pee
as long as she used to. And she especially has trouble overnight. I’d been
diapering her for a few months but that causes problems too. She gets a rub
rash on the soft insides of her legs. Not to mention if there’s a flea, it’s
protected under the diaper and she can’t bite or scratch it. I took care of the
fleas with a new flea collar but the rash was another matter. Night after night
I’d have to listen to her cry for ten or fifteen minutes until she went to
sleep.
It was awful to listen to her pitiful cries.
So, I stopped diapering her.
And started having to clean up pee spots
first thing in the morning again.
Then I remembered a man I used to work with.
His young son had a chronic ulcerated colon condition and surgery after surgery
to remove parts of it. Bob got up two or three times a night to take Tim to the
bathroom or clean him up if it was too late. And Bob slept on the couch with
two or three alarm clocks to wake him up.
“Why does Bob take care of him and not his
wife?” you wonder.
I wondered the same thing and asked him
about it.
“Ira needs her sleep worse than I do,” he
said of his school teacher wife. “So, I take care of Tim. And if I’m on the
couch then I won’t bother her.”
Now there’s a man who loves and is dedicated
to his family.
I decided to do the same thing with Itsy. I
set the alarm on my phone to wake me at one a.m. and again at 5:30. The new
phones are great for multiple alarms and I don’t need two alarm clocks!
I put the phone under my pillow but it still
wakes Mike up. I think he’ll eventually get used to it and not wake up. At
least, that’s what I’m hoping for. Short of sleeping on the couch there isn’t
any other solution.
My twice nightly trips to take Itsy out seem to be working. She hasn’t peed on the rug in the night or first thing out of bed since I started doing this — except once when my phone died and the alarm didn’t go off. I don't let that happen anymore. I’m not crazy about starting my day at 5:30 though. Sometimes I go back to bed but often can’t go back to sleep so I just stay up.
The cats like to follow me out when I take
Itsy out at 5:30. I don’t leave her alone in the yard, especially when it’s
dark. I was coming back in when I heard squeak, squeak, squeak. I got a
flashlight and found Tiger had a mouse! I left him to it and hoped this one didn’t get away.
Once the clothes were hung, I went on
a photograph hunt. I didn’t find anything interesting but I did take this
picture of the barn as the sun was coming up behind it.
“Peg, how are your Monarchs doing? Are they all gone?” you ask.
I had three chrysalises left at the beginning
of the week and didn’t have any Monarchs born last week. Their time in the chrysalis
is determined by temperature and it’s been pretty cool here. It’s getting so
late in the year that I’m getting worried about them so I bring them in the
house at night and take them out in the sun on warm days.
I had the butterfly house on a chair
here at the kitchen table, the chair next to where I sit when I roll my chair
between the computer desk and the table.
With Itsy’s problem, the second I see
she’s out of bed and moving around, I get up and take her outside.
Mike and I were playing cards when
Itsy came toddling out to the kitchen. I got up to take her out and inadvertently pushed my chair back into
the butterfly house and knocked it to the floor.
Sigh.
When I had a chance to look, I saw a chrysalis
had fallen from his anchor.
Monarchs have to hang in order for
them to develop correctly. And once they’re born, they need to hang in order to
pump their wings up. If anything impedes that, they’re crippled.
Not knowing if superglue is toxic, I
decided to try a flour paste. I mixed flour with a little water, smeared it on
the end of the chrysalis, draped a string over it, let it dry and hung it up.
The next morning, I saw the ‘glue’
didn’t hold and the chrysalis had fallen — two feet down to the counter top! I
bet it’s dead now, I thought.
But I don’t give up until there’s no
hope left. I got the superglue and glued another string on and re-hung him.
The
very next day he — she was born! She was
struggling to get out of the chrysalis.
At the very top of the chrysalis, where it’s
anchored, is a cap. The cap is what popped off and caused it to fall. It’s also
where I’d put a dab of flour paste thinking to ‘seal’ it back up and attach the
thread never realizing I’d glued her butt to the chrysalis in the process.
Sigh.
I got tweezers and freed her.
I just hope I didn’t glue her
pooper chute closed!
I left her alone until her wings were fully
inflated, then took her out into the sunshiny day. I didn’t want her to take
flight in the house and risk hurting her trying to capture her.
For the next few hours, I kept an eye
on her. Then she was gone.
Good, I thought.
Only it turned out to be not so good.
Movement on the ground caught my eye
and there she was. Wing torn and wet with what I can only assume was cat spit.
“Poor baby,” I crooned.
After all my careful ministrations only to
have a cat get her made me sad. All summer long I put the Monarchs in the
flowers in my flower pot and that cats didn’t get a single one.
I picked her up and took her out to the tree
— where I should’ve taken her in the first place!
Later on, I looked and she was gone. I
don’t know what happened to her but I have seen butterflies fly with ragged
wings before.
Now I have two chrysalises left but I think one is dead. It should’ve hatched before this one did.
And
with that, let’s call this one done.
And just so you don’t forget,
remember, you’re all in my heart.
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