Peggy's Jibber-Jabber: My Biggest Frustration

Looking through the picture file I created for this week’s letter blog, I see there aren’t many stories — and not a lot of pictures either!

My biggest frustration came from spray painting ladybugs. Two things were going on and neither of them good!

Taping it off for the different colors is a pain. “Can I paint the body color first then tape it off for the black?” I wanted to know.

“Yeah. Black will cover most anything,” my handsome husband said.

I had three ladybugs cut and ready to paint. I painted one all red, one all purple, and one all yellow, saving myself the time and aggravation of taping it off twice.

My red one wasn’t sprayed evenly so the next day I applied a second coat. Almost right away wrinkles appeared.

“Why did it do that?” I asked.

“Because the paint underneath wasn’t dry,” Mike answered.

“I waited twenty-four hours,” I defended.

“What’s the can say?” he wanted to know.

I looked. “Forty-eight hours! Now what do I do?”

“Sand it off or strip it,” was his answer.

Then the rains came. Not steady but intermittent showers. I sat on the patio and went to work on the wrinkled red ladybug. I tried sanding and found it was a lot of work. I got the palm sander out and all that did was melt the paint and move lumps around. I set it aside and went to work on the purple one. Mike came out on the patio as I was taping it off.

“Peg, you can’t spray paint if it’s raining or threatening rain,” he said.

Did I listen?

NO!

“Why not?” I wanted to know.

“It’ll take longer to dry,” Mike said.

Well, I don’t care if it takes twenty minutes or two hours. I can work with that. I applied kind of a heavy coat and it was all shiny and purdy when I was done. I left to do something else and after a half hour went back to pull the tape. I was so excited to be one step closer to done. My heart fell when I saw the results. The paint was dry, powdery, didn’t shine, and had wrinkles!

“Why did it do that?”

“It’s drying before it hits the surface and it can’t level out.”

Okay. I’m learning. None of this stuff happened before when I made my other ladybugs so I’m guessing the weather was a big factor. I resigned myself to stripping it and went to the garage for the lacquer thinner. I decided to try a test spot and used a cotton ball. It works! But a cotton ball didn’t seem optimal to me. “Can I put it in a spray bottle?” I asked Mike.

“It might melt some of the plastic in the sprayer,” he guessed.

“So basically, that means it’s a single use sprayer?” I could work with that.

I filled a fingertip spray bottle with thinner and sprayed the part I wanted to remove. It didn’t take long for it to loosen the paint and I could scrape it right off.

This made me very happy! I worked until I had the black and underlying purple paint stripped off. Mike thought the thinner might lift the tape too but it looks to me like it’s still stuck down nice and tight.

The next day, having learned my lesson, I sprayed painted a sample piece. I set it aside to dry intending to check it in twenty minutes, but life got in the way.

We had a refrigerator go out about a year ago. Luckily, we had a second one. On a trip past Root’s, a place the services, repairs, and sells both new and used appliances, we stopped. We’ve bought from this third-generation business before and they do an excellent job. Mike wanted to check out used fridges so we could once again have a spare. We found out that even a used fridge is a few hundred dollars.

“How much is it to have him come out and look at ours?” we asked the attendant.

“It’s a seventy-five-dollar service call.”

We didn’t exactly make an appointment but Bill, the repair guy, would call when he had an opening.

Bill called the day I was painting and showed up shortly after I painted my sample piece. I took Bondi out with me and set her in the grass thinking she’d follow me. Just outside the garage door she found a furry treat that used to be a mouse. I knew she had something when she took off for the house. She was right not to let me catch her. When I finally did and saw what she had, I took it away from her. This dog is such a different dog than Itsy and Ginger were! Bondi eats anything and everything! Weeds, rocks, egg shells she digs out of my scrap bucket, anything that comes out of either end of a cat! OY!

Our refrigerator only needed a new controller and Bill had it fixed in no time. It was cheaper than a used fridge.

“We should’ve done that a year ago,” Mike said.

“Yeah, well, you just can’t get in a hurry about this stuff.” That’s one of my favorite sayings by my handsome neighbor Lamar. It took him fifteen years to put a handrail up on the cellar steps and that was his reason.

When I got back to my sample it was shiny and bright. Yay! I got the ladybug out intending to spray it. I looked at the sky and the clouds were moving in. Did I miss my window of opportunity? I took a chance and sprayed it anyway. It came out shiny and bright! I put it aside to dry a bit before I took the tape off. When I came back out my heart sank into my stomach. It was another fail. It’s dull and streaky. Who knew spray paint was so temperamental!

Now I’ve had to set this one aside, too. I was mourning over it, thinking I’m going to have to strip it again, when a thought occurs to me. I can flip it over! The other side is a clean, unpainted surface! Why didn’t I think of that before!

“Peg, you’re a slow thinker, remember?” you say.

And you’re right. It certainly took me days and wasted hours of sanding and stripping before I thought of it. But I don’t know how it’ll go over with the lady who’s paying me good money for it.

“She’ll never see the back once it’s mounted,” you say.

I know. It just doesn’t seem right. I’m thinking I’ll recut ladybugs for my sale pieces and finish these for my kids. I’m sure Kevin and Kandyce won’t mind if there’s paint on both sides. They call imperfections and little boo-boos character.

>>>*<<<

Bondi is such a stinker. This is the pad from one of the beds. She’s got this tiny little hole in it that she sticks her mouth in and pulls out the stuffing.

I thought she’d quit when she got all the stuffing out that she could reach. Not so.

When she can’t get any more, she’ll pull the bed around, working more stuffing within reach. I don’t know how she learned to do this. Now if only she picked up on house breaking as quickly!

Soaking up the sunshine with Smudge.

The mornings are chilly. I’m glad I’ve still got Itsy’s little shirts for her to wear.

We bought her a new squeaky toy. She loves squeaky toys. I couldn’t resist when I saw a long little banana for a long little doggie.

My last Bondi story of the week is one that doesn’t make me very happy.

Tiger’s been playing with Bondi and sometimes he gets a little rough. When Bondi squeaks, he stops, or, at least, he used to.

Tuesday we were watching TV and Tiger and Bondi were playing in the dining room, just out of my line of sight. Bondi cried, and cried, and cried, and cried and cried. Tiger was really hurting her and not stopping. I jumped up and yelled and Tiger went running. I checked Bondi for blood but didn’t find any. She did whimper when I touched her paw though. She was limping a little and more the next day. The day after that she seemed better but when we were playing, I threw a toy for her to fetch, she took off, came down on her paw just right, cried, and started limping again. I have no idea what Tiger did to her. Sometimes I think her paw is turned out a little, other times I’m not so sure. Is it possible he broke it without breaking the skin? Since then, Bondi has hurt her leg a few more times, yipped, and limped for a little while.

I made a decision not to let them play together unsupervised anymore. Tiger bites at her as any cat would bite its prey. The backbone to paralyze it, the belly to gut it, the back of the neck, again to paralyze, a leg, tail, or shoulder, whenever he can get a hold of. Bondi yips, runs away, and comes back. When Tiger gets enough, he growls, runs away, but he comes back, too. Tiger really could stay away from Bondi if he wanted to. She’s confined to the kitchen area. He gets to go anyplace else in the house he wants to or up on a chair in the kitchen, so I don’t understand what’s going on. When I saw Tiger grab her by the throat, I said that was it. I’m not letting them play together anymore. I really am afraid he’ll kill her. I’ve taken pro-active steps in that direction. If Bondi tries to play with Tiger, I go after her with the fly swatter. I don’t really want to be swatting at her but it’s like when you live in town and your kid runs into the street. You spank them so they remember never to do that again. A little pain on the bottom is a whole lot better than burying your four-year-old.

“Why did you pick a four-year-old?” you wonder.

I knew a couple who had a four-year-old and that’s exactly what happened to him. He saw his papaw across the road, tending to the cemetery there, ran over to be with him, and got hit by a car. Dennis and Laura never had any other children.

>>>*<<<

We lost a little tree to something that chews. I say it was a porcupine. Someone else said it was a beaver.

Quill pigs and beavers both have teeth that grow and they must chew wood to keep their teeth short. They both eat the soft inner bark of the tree, small twigs and branches, but not the wood itself. So, I don’t know who cut our tree down!

Mike put a rope around it and hauled it to the burn pile.

I’ve been really bad at keeping the weedeating done this year. And as a result, weeds grow. I bet that’s a shocker, right? One of the weeds that grew where I’ve kept it cut in years past was this one with pretty little purple flowers.

“What is it?” I know you wanna know.

This is Indian Tobacco also known as Puke Weed.

Many Native Americans tribes used it for respiratory and muscle disorders, as a purgative, and as a ceremonial medicine. The leaves were chewed and smoked. The foliage was burned by the Cherokee as a natural insecticide to smoke out gnats.

Although it may be used medicinally, consuming Indian Tobacco causes sweating, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, tremors, rapid heartbeat, mental confusion, convulsions, hypothermia, coma, and possibly death. The root is toxic and can be fatal if eaten. My advice? Put it in a jar on the window and feast on it with your eyes.

Another one I found was this Clearweed also called Coolwort and Richweed. It’s an edible herbaceous (relating to herbs) plant in the nettle family.

I saw this guy walking through the tall grass. I waylaid him long enough to take his picture.

Asters are blooming!

I’ve got a nice Chokecherry tree down by the pond. Chokecherry gets its name because of the bitter and astringent taste of the fruit. It’s important to many wildlife animals. Birds, rabbits, rodents, and bears all seek out and eat its fruit. It provides food, cover, and nesting for a variety of birds. It’s used extensively by deer as a browse source in the winter and the early spring flowers provide an important source of nectar for butterflies, honeybees and ants.

Chokecherry has an interesting place in history. The Indians used it in a variety of ways but it’s always cooked or dried. The most important way they used it was in the making of pemmican, a winter staple for them.

Today we can use it to make jellies, jams, pie-fillings, syrups, sauces, and wines.

I do have a lavender Teasel! There’s so much of the white around here it makes the lavender seem special. If all I had was lavender then I’m sure I’d feel the same way about the white.

Whenever I see these, I just think of them as deformed Smartweed. That’s sorta true. They’re in the same buckwheat family, but this is called Arrow-leaved Tearthumb.

A pretty burdock flower.

“Are there any spiders on it?” I mumbled aloud. Mike was waiting for me on the golf cart but I didn’t really expect him to answer. What I also didn’t expect was to find a Harvestmen on the leaf below the flower.

Daddy Longlegs are in the arachnid family but not a spider. They’re in the order of opiliones. Other critters that are arachnids include scorpions, mites, and ticks, and those are clearly not spiders either. I’ve written about Harvestmen before so I won’t take the time to write about them now.

This guy is a spider. He was hiding from the rain in a rolled up Glad leaf.

I found more Doll’s Eyes shrubs that I didn’t know I had. Actually, the birds eat the fruit and spread the seeds so these may not have been here before.

These berries will be white with a black dot (hence doll’s eyes) when they’re ripe. The birds are immune to the toxins in them but we are not. They’re poisonous.

My Monarch emerged from his chrysalis. I looked every day but by the time I saw him, he was dry and ready to fly. I had to put my hand inside the butterfly house to get a picture. I didn’t want to man-handle him and I didn’t want him to fly away before I could get a picture.

“Peg, how do you know he’s a he?” you ask.

Easy. He’s got scent spots on his hindwings. Females don’t have that.

I saw these interesting banana-shaped seedpods with little flowers. I had to trace the stem back to find out it belongs to the pretty yellow sorrel plant.

“Peg! Are those bugs I see in the background?” you ask.

Good eye! I didn’t see them until I saw the picture on my computer, then I went out and took more pictures of them. These guys are tiny!

“What are they?”

I don’t know. I suspect they’re the larva of something but I’ve searched the internet for them and can’t find anything. I posted it to the bug group on Facebook but no one’s replied.

A week later they’ve turned brown and sprouted wings! They remind me of the harmless Crane Fly but they are much too little.