Sky's the Limit

           My week isn’t all one thing. If it was, it would make choosing a name for your letter blog a whole lot easier, that’s for sure. This week, going through the pictures, it seemed like I had a lot of sky photos. So, my loves, Sky's the Limit!

          Last week was kind of a hard week for me.

          “Why?” you ask.

          I don’t really know. But if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say it’s from not getting enough sleep. This new baby of ours gets me up as soon as the sun’s up. Anywhere from twenty to five in the a.m. to no later than five-thirty. And I never go to sleep before ten, sometimes a lot later depending on how good the book I’m reading is. So, I get up, push her out the flap to the side kennel — actually, there isn’t much pushing involved. I’ll set her in front of it and out she goes — put her out, make coffee, and settle in front of the computer to send my morning love note.

          Raini, that little stinker, will do her business, follow me to the kitchen, and settle in her bed under my desk where she’ll go back to sleep. Yet, if I go back to bed, she won’t settle and go back to sleep.

          Or maybe my problem is I’m experiencing a sugar crash. I made Salted Carmel Butter Bars for the first time this week.

          “Who are you making those for?” my handsome mountain man asked me over the sound of the beaters.

          “Lamar! He’s the only one who’ll help me eat this stuff!” Mike is pretty much off sugar and Miss Rosie doesn’t much like caramel or maple. Plus, she’s on that very restrictive no gluten or dairy diet.

          I’m always looking for new easy and delicious recipes to take to potlucks. I read through the recipe and it sounded easy and with a whole pound of butter and 60 caramels in it, what’s not to like!

          It makes a nine by thirteen panful. I took eight big bars down to Lamar and I’ve been working on the rest ever since. The pups like them, too.

          “You’re gonna make a diabetic out of those dogs,” Mike said.

          It’s hard not to spoil them.

          So, last week, eyes tired, head pounding (that happens when I spend a lot of time in front of the screen) I ended the letter blog before the week was over. Not only that, I left my beautiful friend Jody hanging — on two counts!

          “Oh, my goodness! Interesting stories, curious about where the caved-in barn is located. Raini is so clever and you left us with a cliff hanger. What happened with firming the plaster, did the glue work?” Jody asked.

          I couldn’t answer the barn question with anything other than it’s on the way to C.C. Allis (the lumberyard in the middle of nowhere). I didn’t think that was very helpful so I avoided answering that question at all.

The plaster of Paris experiment. I didn’t know what ratio of glue to plaster to mix. I had to start someplace so I mixed the plaster the way it says to. One part water, two parts plaster. Then I added one part glue. It made a sticky, smooth paste and gave the book box a hard, smooth coating, much like Gesso does, only thicker. I haven’t worked on it any further than that. But I think it’s gonna be fine, just a little different. Maybe not quite as textured as straight POP would be. And I’m not sure anyone but me will notice the difference in the final product.

When the week began, two weeks ago now, and I went for my favorite brush, I discovered I didn’t clean it well and the bristles were stiff. I tried warm soapy water with no improvement. So, what did I do? I Googled it! It said nail polish remover is the best thing to dissolve old paint but it’s stinky. Alcohol’ll work, too.

I put my brush in alcohol but it didn’t work at all. So, I switched to stinky old nail polish remover. It worked great! My brush was good as new in no time!

In my stash of brushes, I’ve got several paint brushes that belonged to my ex-mother-in-law, Clara Kathrine Kraft. 

         They were never properly cleaned and only the tips of the bristles would move. I got them when she died and I’ve held on to them all these years. Now, with a jar of nail polish remover sitting there with plenty of remover left in it, I took her old brushes and soaked them. I could see the colors she was working with seep out and before long the brushes were good as new again, too! I left the paint on the handles because I wanted them to keep some of her.

Paint that was dried in for forty years! Amazing! Just amazing!

Saturday, a week ago now, Mike came back with the mail. I was at the computer working diligently on my letter blog.

“It’s for you,” he said handing me a piece of junk mail.

I took it, looked at it, and said, “It doesn’t have my name on it.”

Raini came to see what was going on. I handed her the envelope. “Here. It’s for you!”

Raini took her mail and went out through the doggie door in the screen.

She trotted across the sunlight yard.

Flopped down in the grass to open her mail. 

          I thought she’d tear it up and I’d have a mess to clean up but she didn’t. She lost interest in it after a few minutes.

          Speaking of Raini, she’s been dragging my shoes out. She doesn’t chew them up, at least not yet. At the end of the day, I’ll have three pairs of my most frequently worn shoes drug out from the bedroom.

          “Thank you,” I tell her and she lets me have them.

          Lastly, the only other thing I would’ve told you about last week if I hadn’t’ve gotten tired and quit writing, is a walk-about.

          Mike decided to walk with us so we took the golf cart up to the Robinsons’ barn and left it. That way none of the cats would follow us.

          We had a nice walk and when we got to the top of the hill, the turn-around point, I said, “This is where I give Raini a drink of water.”

          “What about Bondi?” Mike asked.

          “She never wants one.”

          “I’m going to walk down to the pole,” he said.

          That was fine by me. He had Bondi so I was free to give Raini her drink. I poured the water into the yogurt-cup-turned-drinking-dish. “Here ya go, Raini.”

Raini was watching Mike and Bondi and wouldn’t take her eyes off them long enough to drink. She watched until they started back our way. When she was comfortable that her pack wasn’t splitting up, she greedily drank.

Mike and Bondi didn’t wait for us. They walked right on past. This time it was Bondi who was anxious and wouldn’t move until we’d caught up with them.

“Can we go for a ride down to the other bridge?” I asked when we got back to the cart.

“Sure. It’ll give me a chance to cool off.”

We need rain. Our little creek is so low. 

On this stretch of road that I don’t normally walk, I saw some different wildflowers.

This yellow flower is Loosestrife. Not the arrow-shaped leaves. That’s something else. I thought the picture was more interesting with them in it.

Bouncing Bet or Soapwort. It will make a mild soap when you bruise the leaves or flowers, but the root contains the most saponin, the chemical that makes it foam.

While saponins are gentle on fibers, they’re very toxic to people, fish, and animals. 

I found Dogbane growing in the same place I found it last year.

This plant is also called Indian Hemp because Native Americans used the fibers inside the stems to make string, thread, rope, baskets, snares, netting, and clothing.

Dogbane is related to milkweed and contains poisonous sap. Apocynum means “poisonous to dogs”. The toxins cause cardiac arrest. It’s toxic to livestock. Death occurs 12 to 24 hours after ingestion by most animals. Hummingbird moths are not affected by the toxins and feed on the plants.

Despite its lethality, Dogbane has been used medicinally. Tea made from the roots has been used to treat colds, earache, headache, nervousness, dizziness, worms, and insanity. A wash made from the roots has been used to stimulate hair growth, treat dandruff, and to get rid of head lice.

Now that I’ve caught you up, should we start this week?

Mike’s been pulling out bushes. The first big one he took out was growing on his dirt pile for the last I-don’t-know-how-many years. He needed the dirt for his pond project, uprooted the bush, and pushed it aside.

It was Sunday a week ago. I needed a break from writing, so I wandered out into the yard to see what he was doing. When I got out there, he was trying to push the bush to the burn pile. It worked for a minute, then the bush just rolled and branches snapped. It would leave a big mess to be picked up.

We got the golf cart and I hooked the tow rope around a branch near the base.

It snapped the branch off.

The next time I hooked it, I made sure to go in and around a few tightly packed branches and this time it stayed hooked.

When we got to the burn pile and tried to pull the tow rope out, the hook got hung up. I reached in to unhook it at the same time Mike tried to shake it free.

I took a stick to the eye.

“OW!” I cried, backed away and put my hand over my eye. No blood. That’s always a good sign. I blinked a few times and my eye watered.

“Are you okay?” Mike asked.

I tested my eyesight. It was the same as always. My eye hurt but I don’t think he popped my eyeball or anything. “I think so.”

“I’m sorry!”

 “I know you are.” Honestly, no matter whatever else I write in this letter blog, just know that Mike would never do anything to hurt me.

My eye watered enough that it looked like I was crying out of one eye and it hurt all the rest of the day. (Not to worry, I’m fine now.)

Monday, we went to work on siding the last side of the patio enclosure. We only worked until it got too hot. “We’re not on anyone’s payroll so we don’t have to work if it’s too hot,” I told my morning peeps.

We set up the saws on the side we were working on and with no power out there, we took a screen out of a window to run an electrical cord through.

          “We can let the girls out on the patio while we’re working,” Mike said.

          I used the window as a shortcut, stepping through rather than walking the whole way around. The girls were happy to be out where we were.

          “I wonder what they’ll do when you start the saw,” I said.

          “I don’t know,” Mike replied and we went about getting to work.

          “Uh-oh!” I hear Mike.

          Bondi jumped through the open window. 

          Mike picked her up and put her back in.

          Then he put a board up.

          “How did she get out now‽” I hear Mike.

          I put the board I’d been carrying down and see a little nose poking out. “Through the house wrap where it isn’t stapled.”

          We put the girls back in the house and shut the door. It’s easier to work when you don’t have them to worry about.

          Bondi did come out to the side run and watch for a little while but since she wasn’t getting any attention, she went back inside.

          “Raini’s there, too,” you say.

          Yep. Raini did follow Bondi out after a few minutes but she took off as soon as the saw started up. Bondi’s not afraid of noises like Raini is.

          We had some short boards stacked against the side. I’d gone for a sip of coffee which was nearby.

          “Give me one of those short boards,” Mike said.

          “Which one?” I asked, stalling.

I took a swig of coffee and went to set the cup down when Mike said, “I guess I can get it.”

          Which was true. He was only an arms’ length away. He pulled the third or fourth one from the stack and the rest came tumbling down, shaving my shin.

          “OW! Gee whiz, Mike! First you try to blind me, now you’re trying to kill me!” We never let the truth stand in the way of a good story and considering the extent of my injuries, it was only a slight exaggeration.

          Okay! Okay! That’s a lie. It was a HUGE exaggeration. At first it looked like little more than a scrape. Then the blood start to rise to the surface, it puffed up purple, and a rivulet of blood ran down my shin. By the time I took a picture, the puffy had gone down and I wiped the blood away. “Look at what you did to me!”

          Mike looked and grunted. With his quick and clever wit, he said, “Humph. You wait and see what I’m gonna do to you tomorrow!”

          I laughed. He always makes me laugh.

          Then he thought better of it. “I’m sorry.”

          “I know, but it isn’t gonna stop me from teasing you!”

          If you’ve ever handled rough-sawn lumber, you know it’s nothing but a splinter factory. You gotta be careful — or wear gloves. We were handling a board and somehow or another Mike got one of those big ole honkin’ splinters in the pad between his thumb and index finger.

          Now it was his turn to yell. “OW! See what you did to me‽”

          Déjà vu!

          “Yeah? Wait till you see what I’m gonna do to you tomorrow!” I said.

          Before I could render assistance, he had the splinter out — and it bled.

          It was almost time for the Kipps to stop by on the way home from their morning walk. We took a break and went to the kitchen patio to wait for them.

          My little girls are always happy to see Miss Rosie. She has the magic touch.

          “That’s why God gave me two hands,” she said.

          “See what Peg did to me?” Mike asked as he sucked the blood from his wound.

          I was incredulous! “You should see what he did to me!” I showed my shin and recounted the spear in the eyeball.

          Miss Rosie laughed. “It’s not a contest to see who can hurt each other more.”

          After the Kipps left, we went up to the barn on the hill to see if we had any more scraps up there. There’s no use to cut sixteen inches off a sixteen-foot board if we had short pieces in our lumber stash.

          Mike pulled the golf cart to the side of the door and beat on it to rouse the doe. “HELLO!” he yelled. When he didn’t hear her moving about, he went inside. Then we heard her. Mike backed up and got out of the way as the doe came charging out.

          “I’m gonna shut the door so she can’t go back in there,” Mike said. It isn’t that he cares if she lays in there, it’s that he’s afraid she’s gonna hurt herself getting away when he needs to go in there for something.

          The only thing left were boards that were too short for what we needed. We bothered her for nothing.

          We weren’t back at work very long before this helicopter comes whirring right towards me. Brave as you please, I reached out and snatched him from the air.

          “I can tell you don’t wanna work today,” Mike grumbled.

          “I really don’t.” I’d much rather get back to my crafting but I know we’ll only work for a few hours and I’ll have the afternoon to play.

          I took a few pictures of this guy, turned him loose, and went back to work.

          “What is it?” you ask.

          This is a Scarab Beetle. 

          When the sun made its way to where we were working, we put the tools away and quit for the day.

          “You wanna go with me to get the mail?” Mike asked.

          “Sure.”

          Right there, big as day, in the middle of the road, was a big ole black snake.

          “Is it dead?” I asked.

          “No. His head is up.”

          I got off the cart and got a branch to help him go on his way before he got run over. He climbed the bank and disappeared at the base of a tree. 

          I spent the afternoon on my kitchen patio, working on my commissioned book box while the girls lazed about. Raini has finally learned how to jump up into the chairs.

          “Peg, don’t you mean that she’s finally big enough?” you ask.

          I might’ve said that, except she’s been bigger than Bondi for weeks now and Bondi jumps into the chairs by herself.

          “It’s a matter of coordination,” Mike said.

          Walking the girls that night, I took two sky pictures. The first one just after we turned around and headed for home.

          The second one is over the Luby household.

          The next day we had to take Bondi to the vet to have her baby teeth removed. Her adult teeth came in and never pushed ‘em out, so she had two rows of teeth.

          We took the back way over the mountain instead of taking the highway and I took a barn picture to share with you.

          We dropped Bondi and headed to Wysox for breakfast. We were stopped at a traffic light and I noticed a sign I’ve passed many, many times. I think I quit reading after RIGHT LANE MUST TURN RIGHT. Underneath it says AT FARLEY.

          I have a nephew named Farley and thought of his very handsome face.

          Some people collect pictures of things with their name on it.

          Look how low the Susquehanna is!

          We’ve passed Pipher’s Diner many times over the years but have never eaten in there. Sometimes, when we go past, the parking lot is full.

          “It looks like they have a good following,” I said. 

          Since we needed to be in the area early to drop Bondi off, we decided to go in to Pipher’s for breakfast.

          The place isn’t very big. Three tables behind us, and two in front for a total of six tables and lots of counter seating. 

          Tonya, on the left, is the grill cook, and Monique, in the black tee, was our waitress. Mike ordered an omelet and I got sausage gravy and biscuits.

          “How was it?” you ask.

          Mike was happy with his omelet. Tonya was generous with the filing. The gravy was good but a little more on the peppery side than I would’ve liked — but I still ate every bite!

          “Can I use your picture in my blog?” I asked both these gals.

          They both said I could and neither one asked for a link, which surprised me. Whenever I mention using them in my blog, they always ask for a link. They want to see their picture and what I might write about them.

          Mike was reading the menu while we waited for our food.

          One pancake is a dollar ninety-nine but if you want two it’s four eighty-nine.

          “I’ll have two single stacks,” I say.

          “It must be a typo,” Mike said.

          I asked Monique and she confirmed it was indeed a typo.

          Before we left, Tonya handed me a printout from the Endless Mountain Lifestyles website. They featured Pipher’s as an area icon. It was built in 1936 by Charles Pipher. Actress Bette Davis, who owned property near Wyalusing for many years, went into the diner on several occasions. The Lone Ranger, Clayton Moore, stopped there to sign photos as part of a promotional tour during the early days of the show. A brief shot of Pipher’s Diner was included in the 1976 TV movie about the 1950 Brink’s Bank robbery because the criminals were well-known to have made their way through the area.

          We went back for Bondi that afternoon. They cleaned her teeth, pulled four baby teeth, and gave her two shots.

          On the way home we were teased with a brief rain shower.

          Coming up Welles’ Mountain, a semi had traffic stopped in both directions. Mike pulled up behind him and it took us a minute to figure out that he was backing down the hill.

          Mike backed up until we came to a little dirt road. We pulled off and watched as the semi weaved back and forth.

          “Why’s he keep doing that?” I asked.

          “Because he can’t back up very well,” Mike said.

          It wasn’t long until more cars came up the hill and stopped behind the semi. The driver had stopped but now started backing up again. The van didn’t move. The semi driver leaned on his horn. The van still didn’t move.

          “He’s not gonna back up for him,” I said.

          “Oh he’ll back up for him all right. You get close enough to them, they move! I know, I’ve had to do it a time or two myself!”

          “Why’s he backing down the hill?” I wanted to know. I was thinking he was having a mechanical problem but Mike had a different idea.

          “He probably realized he was on the wrong road.”

          As soon as he got past us enough for Mike to scoot out, we did just that, and we went on up the hill. I took a picture of my side mirror as the semi continued to back down the hill.

          That evening, when I walked the girls, I decided on a different route. We walked back to Vernon’s pond for a change of scenery.

          This is Joe Pye, a milkweed. The butterflies and bees love this plant, the deer rarely eat it.

          You can use this plant to make a dye. Depending on which variety of Joe Pye you use and what part of the plant, you can get colors from purple, to pink, to yellow.

          You can dry the stems and leaves. Bundle them and burn as a natural mosquito repellent.

Joe Pye weed has a long history of medicinal use. It's most commonly used as a diuretic, but has also been used for urinary tract issues, including kidney stones, joint stiffness, including gout and rheumatism, reproductive issues, and diabetes.

          You can make a tea from the roots, leaves, or dried flowers.

          Raini enjoys going in the water. Bondi does not.

          She came out with pond grass in her mouth.

          I saw two different dragonflies. This one is the Eastern or Common Pondhawk.

          And this one is the Widow Skimmer.

          The next picture in my file is another walk. Raini found a stick to carry. 

          We hadn’t gone far before I realized we had followers. I’d forgotten my phone so I couldn’t call Mike to come get us. Instead, we head back to the house and do our walk-about on the back forty.

Going past the house to the upper barn, I snap this shot of the sun setting through the trees, lighting up part of the house.

Starting up the path I turn to see our little trailers, Tiger and Blackie.

          The sun through the trees again. 

          This is Ditch Stonecrop.

          This is Nannyberry.

          I dropped Raini’s leash and let her chase the frogs into the pond. Where she went in it was shallow and she could walk. Where she came out it was deeper and she had to swim.

          The eastern sky and garage windows reflect the sun setting behind me.

>>>*<<<

          Another job we’ve been doing is collecting stones from Vernon’s. He’s been doing a little landscaping around his pond and he offered us the rocks.

          Mike wants to construct another stone pillar to match the one on the other side of the driveway so in the mornings, before it gets too hot, we take the Kioti and golf cart out and pick a load of stones.

          The handle that operates the up, down, and tilt of the bucket on the tractor came loose. Mike had a big load of rocks.

          “It’s all it could do to pick it up,” he told me.

          And the hydraulics would bleed down.

          As carefully as he could, and using two hands, Mike tried to lift the bucket, only to have it tilt and dump the rocks. We picked up this load and restacked it on the bucket three times before we got it home!

          Making room to work on this project is where Mike took out another big bush. This time he was able to get it in the bucket of the tractor and hold on to it until he got it around to the burn pile.

          Coming back in the house we find both girls together in the waiting chair. This is where we’ve always found Bondi when we’d come home from someplace.

          Raini hasn’t settled on one place yet. Sometimes she’d be in the waiting chair with Bondi but about half the time she’ll be in her kennel instead.

          >>>*<<<

          Our nightly walk was a challenge this night.

          Two of our neighbors are having trouble with a chicken thief. Our neighbor Adam has set traps and caught coons.

          This coon is lying dead right past Adam’s house. Does one thing have anything to do with the other? I don’t know. All I know is that Bondi didn’t want anything to do with it and I had to make her walk past it, which she did, just as far from it as her leash would allow.

          Raini, on the other hand, couldn’t take her eyes off it. I don’t know if she thought it was alive or what but I got a sore arm from dragging her down the road.

          Okay! Okay! That’s a lie. I didn’t get a sore arm, but I did have to drag her a long way before she finally gave up on it.

          It started to sprinkle. We were staying mostly dry on a section of road that was overhung with trees. But I didn’t want to be caught out if it started to pour — and I wasn’t looking forward to walking past that coon again, either!

          I called Michael and he came and got us.

          This is what the sky looked like over our house when we got home.

          Again, Mother Nature was only teasing us and it never did do more than sprinkle.

          >>>*<<<

          We were out of the 1x10x16 foot rough-sawn boards and we needed more to finish our job. It was another trip out to the lumberyard in the middle of nowhere.

          I’ll pay attention to where that barn’s at so I can tell Jody.

          And I made more of an effort to take pictures for you, too.

          So, Jody, once you turn onto C.C. Allis Road, travel about three miles, just past the road that takes you to Edsel’s Greenhouse, on the left, is where this barn used to stand.

          We didn’t have to buy sixteen-footers and cut them in half to get them in the car because they had seven eight-footers in stock. We took six of them.

          I took more pictures on the way home.

          That morning, the Kipps told me the coon was still there beside the road.

“There were vultures on it before,” Lamar said. “I thought they’d have had it cleaned up by now.”

Miss Rosie made a face, remembering, as she said, “Yeah, and it stunk really really bad!”

That night, I asked Mike to take us to the start of Vernon’s driveway. No way was I going to fight the girls to get past that stinky old dead coon again. Going out to Vernon’s pond and back gives us a one mile walk whereas if we go to the top of the hill it’s more like a mile and a half round trip.

          We just left our driveway and right before Vernon’s we had triplets cross the road in front of us. Mama was on the other side but I didn’t get a shot with her and all three fawns.

          “Is that fog in the background?” you ask.

          Nope. Dust. From a car that went out ahead of us.

          Bergamot is blooming. Mine isn’t but it is in other places.

          And this is Dodder. It’ll be more interesting when the flowers come on.  

          Wild garlic.   

          I’d say this milkweed has a problem.

          I’ve never seen leaves like this before. 

          A fish skeleton hanging from a tree.

          Vernon was feeding his fish when we got there. 

We walked over and said hello.

I tried to get the girls to see the fish that swarmed to eat the food but they weren’t interested at all. Vernon’s got a lot of fish in his pond and some of them are good size, as attested to by that skeleton!

          “Peg, it's hard to tell the size of the skeleton by your picture,” you say.

          I know, right! Trust me, it’s no small fry!

          Berries are getting ripe. I picked a couple to feed to Raini. Bondi didn’t want any.

          “Are these blackberries or raspberries,” I asked my beautiful Jody.

          “Blackberry,” Jody said. “They have MUCH longer sharper thorns. Raspberries are smaller berries (in the wild) and not as seedy. Raspberry and black raspberry are a round shape, blackberries usually more conical.”

          Now there’s a woman who knows her berries! I sorta knew they were blackberries but I didn’t want to look like an idiot and tell you wrong. I knew Jody would know.

          And I took this sky picture looking back over Vernon’s field and the Kipp house is down there, too. 

>>>*<<<

          We finished putting the siding up and all that’s left to do is trim the windows and put up the batten strips. Mike might be able to do this last part on his own, but if he can’t I’ll help.

          Our apple tree has produced one lone apple. Just one on the whole tree! But it’s the first time we’ve seen fruit on it. It really needs to be pruned but neither one of us knows anything about pruning.

          Can you see all the red berries on this bush! It’s loaded!  

          And lastly, I know you’ve been waiting with bated breath to see my latest commissioned box.

          I’ve been nervous about this box every step of the way but I think it’s coming along nicely. This is my most colorful piece so far and I still have a lot to do. 

          Let’s call this one done!