Toni

           Mike’s one and only sister came to visit us this week. Toni lives in Illinois with her husband Lowell. She’s been wanting to take a road trip and visit us for quite a few months now. Finally, the stars aligned and her son Tom was able to get time off work and make it to her home and drive them out here. Their first stop upon leaving Illinois was Tom’s house in Ohio. From there it was only seven hours to our place.

          Yeah. Only seven, right!

          We sat on Mike’s newly enclosed patio and visited for a while. We let the pups out to say hello and they took to Lowell immediately.

          “Animals like him,” Toni said.

          Animals like Mike, too.

          They loaded up in the golf cart and Mike took them on a tour of the property.

          Then it was supper time.

          We wanted to take them down to Forksville to see the covered bridge and have a Philly Cheesesteak at Big Mike’s but they’re closed Monday and Tuesday — this was Monday.

           “How about pizza?” Mike suggested.

          “Lowell likes pizza,” Toni told us. “He’d probably eat it every day.”

          “Peg would, too,” Mike said.

          Well! I felt like I needed to defend that! “What’s not to like about pizza‽ You’ve got all your food groups covered. Meat, veggies, bread, and dairy! It’s like a complete food!”

          We went to a local pizzeria. The food was good but I have one complaint.

          “What’s that, Peg?” you wanna know.         

          Everything was served on paper. S’okay. I can live with that. The silverware? That was an entirely different matter. It was like the cheapest plastic you could buy. It was nigh on impossible to cut anything with it.

          “Next time we’ll get it to go,” I said. “At least at home I know there’s good silverware there.”

          Once we left the restaurant we went up to the Wyalusing Rocks, a scenic overlook.

Can you see the train cars on the track?

          “Let’s go down to the Marie Antoinette overlook,” I suggested.

          This overlooks the French Asylum, a village built in preparation for the arrival of the French queen. Unfortunately, she was jailed and beheaded before she could escape.  

     

The next morning, we went to Mark’s Valley View for breakfast. They were really busy.

          “Wyalusing doesn’t have any power so everyone came up here,” our waitress Cindy explained. It was a planned outage. It didn’t matter a lot to us. We sat and visited while we waited.

          After breakfast we stopped at the historic site of a Moravian village.

          Back at our mountain home, we discussed our options.

          “We can ride down and see the covered bridge and have lunch in Dushore, or we can go to Steamtown,” Mike said.

          “What’s Steamtown?” Tom asked.

          “The train museum in Scranton.”

          “I like trains,” Tom said.

          It was decided. On the way down, Tom said, “I didn’t know Scranton was a real place. I thought it was a made-up town in the show The Office. Did you ever watch that? It’s so funny.”

          “We did not,” I said. “But we can go past the building they show in the opening credits.”

          “The Dunder Mifflin Paper Company?” Tom asked.

          “I think it’s the Penn Paper Building.” I had to do a lot of Googling but once I asked the right question, Google confirmed it was the Penn Paper Building shown in the opening credits of The Office. Since Tom was such a big fan, I thought it would be cool to take his picture in front of the building.

          “Can we go inside?” Tom asked.

          “I don’t think so,” I said, but could’ve been wrong.

          “Never mind, then,” Tom said, and we went on down to Steamtown.        

          We lost Tom pretty soon after we started walking around. 

          He was interested in seeing everything —

          “I went around twice on some of the displays,” he told us later.

—whereas we did the express tour.

We made sure to visit the Big Boy before we left.  

        

          “You wanna take them to see the Nicholson Bridge?” Mike asked me.

          I said no. I was tired. And I wanted to get home to my babies. Raini had spent a lot of time being kenneled in the last two days.

          As we got closer to home, I relented. “We might just as well go see it. It’s not that far and who knows when they’ll get back out here to see us again — and it is impressive.”

          We don’t know if there’s a place to go where you can see the whole bridge at once but we drove under and around it.

          The Tunkhannock Creek Viaduct is its real name. It measures 2,375 long and stands 240 feet off the creek bed. It was the largest concrete structure in the world when completed in 1915.

          Dinner that night was at the Wyalusing Hotel. The food there is almost always good.

          Toni and her family went back to their room afterward.

          Mike and I hadn’t gone far down the sidewalk towards our car when he got caught up in a conversation with the people who’ve painted most of the buildings in the historic part of Wyalusing.

          Karen and Rich were kind enough to take a break from their work and answer the million questions Mike had. I bet we spent twenty minutes there.

          “Is the other guy one of their workers?” you ask.

          I know, right! That’s what I thought, too!

          “That’s Ed. He’s a local and comes down and checks on us every day,” Karen told me.

In other words, he’s a sidewalk supervisor. And I don’t say that in a mean way at all. Sidewalk supervising is way more fun than working and Mike and I have done our share of it, too.

The next morning, Toni, Lowell, and Tom stopped on their way out of town. As we chatted the girls were being obnoxious, jumping on everyone and Raini still nips quite a lot. So I put them in the kennel together. I really thought they’d fuss but they didn’t. They were surprisingly quiet for the hour or so that Mike’s sister and her family visited.

All in all, it was a very nice visit. And at our ages, who knows how many more visits we’ll have in us. We should treasure each and every chance we’re given to be together.

>>>*<<<

          Last time I told you I had a secret project in the works and I’d be able to tell you about it this week — and so I shall.

          I was commissioned by my beautiful younger sister Phyllis to make a memory box for our oldest and much-adored sister Patti.

          I was hesitant.

          “Patti doesn’t like clutter,” I reminded her.

          “Tell her if she doesn’t like it or if she doesn’t want it, she can send it to me.”

          “You want a memory box with Lee’s picture on it?” I was dubious.

          “Why not? I loved Lee, too. He made our sister happy.”

          That was months ago. You can’t get in a hurry about this stuff, don’cha know.

          When I first got to work on it a couple of weeks ago, I wanted horseshoes but didn’t want to buy a mold.

          How hard can it be? I asked myself and Googled it. I found a video tutorial on making horseshoes out of clay and I was so proud of my horseshoes that I just had to show someone. I video-called Phyllis.

          “That is so cool!” she said. “But I think it’d look better if the date was in a smaller font than his name.”

I shrugged. “It’s all I’ve got.”

“I’ve got ya,” Phyllis said. “And for the back I’d like to see a bucking bronco.”

          In my mind’s eye I saw all the stencils I’d made knowing I was going to do this project. “I’ll try. I’ll have to see what I made for stencils.” I didn’t know how I was going to pull it off, but I’d think of something. A couple of days later, molds show up in my mailbox. Horseshoes, bucking bronco, wild mustangs, and new silicone alphabet and number molds.

          I was having a hard time with the layout on the back. I need a strand of barbed wire, I thought. I cut a piece of the real stuff but decided that might be a little dangerous. So, what did I do? I Googled barbed wire silicone molds.

          I not only didn’t want to spend the money; I didn’t want to wait for it to get here. How hard can it be? I asked myself and freehanded the barbed wire.

For the spine I used real jute twine and Lee’s last name.

          I have to tell you. I’d already made the large numbers for Lee’s birth and death dates when Phyllis and I decided to get a smaller set. When I was designing the spine, I decided to add Pat and Lee’s wedding date. 1993. I can probably use some of the numbers I’d already made, I thought. I got to looking at what I’d need to make yet and was surprised that I didn’t have to make any. Lee was born in 1939. All I had to do was switch the three and nine. It just worked out so slick — almost like it was planned!

          I packed it in a layer of bubble wrap and sent it off. Boy was I anxious! I’ve never been so nervous in my whole life! There’s just something about big sisters and measuring up and trying to impress. I watched the tracking. It was delivered. I waited all day for a call from my big sister.

          It didn’t come.

          I panicked. “Phyllis, she hates it and she doesn’t know how to tell me!”

          “No way!” Phyllis said.

          “Then why hasn’t she called me?”

          “I don’t know. Want me to call her?” she offered.

           I took a deep breath. In my mind’s eye, I could see the box sitting in a lock box at the stand of mailboxes that service her community. “No. Maybe she doesn’t check her mail every day.”

          “I can vouch for that,” Phyllis said.

          The next day I got the call. “Thank you! It’s beautiful!” Patti said. “How could I not want it? It has my handsome cowboy on it!”

          I was relieved. “Phyllis commissioned it for you.”

          “She did?”

          “Yeah. She thought you might like it.”

Honestly, I never would’ve taken it on myself to make it for Patti — not that I don’t love her. I do. Very much so. I just don’t know if my stuff is good enough to merit a place in her classy, beautiful home.

          “She could put it on her patio,” Phyllis suggested when I said as much. “It would go good with the antiques out there — or she could send it to me!” she iterated.

          “You’ll have to call and thank her, too,” I said to Patti.

          “Of course. And I have to tell you this. I went to the front door, just to look. I wasn’t expecting any packages, and there it was. Hmm, what’s this? I thought.”

          Patti never uses her front door. It could’ve sat there for weeks. I think it was all the anxious, nervous energy that Phyllis and I were giving off that finally made its way to Arizona and caused Patti to check, even when she wasn’t expecting anything.

          Another secret project I had in the works for weeks was this primitive chicken dangly I was making for my Miss Rosie.

          I don’t even know where to begin with all the problems I had with this. And that’s the problem when you don’t have a video tutorial to work from. You gotta find out the mistakes on your own.

For one thing, there’s probably six coats of paint on one, and at least four on another. and by the time I’d gotten to the third one, I’d made up my mind how I was gonna paint it and it only has two coats. Okay, okay! That’s a lie. Part of him has three coats, too.

          The sticks were from my pond. I found them when I was helping Mike pick rocks and I thought they were perfect for this.

          But the real and eventual terminal problem became apparent while I was stringing it. I was using jute and pulled one of the eyelets out of the chicken. I’ll just hot glue it in, I think and put a drop in the hole. Quickly before it had a chance to cool, I pushed the copper pin in and the glue set like right now! The pin was only about a third of the way in and wasn’t going any farther. I’m guessing the cold copper was the culprit. I’ll heat the pin, I think, and that worked. From then on, I was careful stringing it.

          I hung it up and looked at it and wished I’d’ve put the larger chicken on the top instead of the bottom — but I wasn’t gonna change it.

          The next day I came outside and aye-yi-yi! The bottom two chickens were laying on the ground.

          Design flaw.

          I thought the clay would adhere to the pins. I was wrong.

          “You should’ve put a hook on the bottom instead of leaving it straight,” my handsome husband advised after the fact.

          “So, what do I do now?” I asked.

          “You could try those little screw-in eyelets. But I’m afraid it’ll make the clay expand and bust out.”

          “I might just as well try,” I said. “I don’t have anything to lose.”

          It worked on two of the chickens but on one, it just kept doing what Mike said it might do. It expanded, broke the side, and pulled straight out. I ended up cutting a good portion of the bottom off because I had it mangled up so bad.

          She just looks like she’s laying, and I thought she’d be okay.

          Then, when I put it back together, I put the larger chicken top.

          I called Miss Rosie. “I have a present for you,” I told her.

          “Another one‽”

          “You don’t have to take it,” I reminded her.

          “I’ve never not liked anything you’ve ever made,” she said.

          “There’s always a first time,” I pointed out.

          Mike took me in the golf cart and I gave Miss Rosie her primitive chicken dangly.

          “Oh! That’s cute!” she said.

         And we found a hook to hang it on.

          Miss Rosie got to enjoy it for exactly one day. The next morning it was in pieces. When the chickens fell, they broke their tails and combs.

          He’s done for.

          Should I try to make another one?

          I painted Kat’s memory box. I want to reprint the picture on the front and use my fancy scissors to cut it out like I did Lee’s, and I need to line the inside with felt. Then she’ll be on her way to Minnesota. 

   

          Raini Dae is so smart!

          I’m trying to walk her twice a day. Things get in the way, like rain, and I don’t always get it done but I think it helps her.

          The first couple times I had them out together, I didn’t leash Raini. She wouldn’t leave Bondi alone. Jumping on her and nipping, trying to get her to play. It makes walking together a challenge. And when a car came, I was nervous Raini would run, either in front of a car or away, so I held her. For those reasons, and because Raini needs to learn, I decided to start leashing Raini.

          Neither dog is crazy about wearing a harness and leash. Bondi runs from me when she sees me pull it out, and Raini fights me, but they’re okay once we get out on the road.

          Bondi does her own thing. Smells the roadside weeds where the deer or Tux have been, trots in front or behind me, crosses the road. Raini, on the other hand, is very attentive to me. She hasn’t been bothering Bondi and usually trots along just behind me and since she doesn’t pull on the leash, I occasionally check to see where she is. And she’ll be looking up at me.

          When I hear a car coming, I do what the Kipps do. I tell the pups, “Car! Car!” (You gotta say it twice like that), move them off the road and into the weeds if I can, then wait until the car is past. Then I tell them, “Okay,” and we go on our way.

Bondi often is oblivious to a car. They just don’t bother her and I have to shorten her leash and tell her to, “Wait!”

The first time I took Raini on a leash and a car came, I got both of them off the road and stood beside Raini instead of picking her up. Raini freaked out! Crying and squirming and trying to get away. I squatted down beside her, put my arm around her, and cooed until the car was gone.

          After a couple of times of cars passing, me squatting down beside Raini, and a couple of days passing as well, I had her in the tall grasses beside the road, my arm across her back, and I told her, “This is what I want you to do when a car comes.”

          No one truly believes a dog understands us. Certainly, I don’t.

          The next day we were out for a morning walk and I heard a car coming. I gave the signal. “Car! Car!” I was busy reeling Bondi in on her retractable leash and when I turned to Raini, she was climbing the bank. I watched as she turned around and sat down. She stayed like that until the car was gone.

          I was amazed and proud at the same time. But is it a fluke? I wondered.

          The next car that came, I gave the signal and watched Raini to see what she’d do. She climbed the bank, circled around a small sapling, sat and peeked out.

          We go on our way, trying to get out of the dust cloud as fast as we can. Sometimes the drivers are considerate and slow way down so they don’t raise so much dust, but there are a few who never slow down at all.

          I’m watching the roadside, looking for wildflowers or anything else interesting to photograph, trusting my ears to alert me when a car’s approaching. Bondi growls. A rumble that starts low in her chest, then she barks. I look up and see there’s a jogger coming towards us. Raini doesn’t have a clue what all the fuss is about but Bondi barks up a storm, her hackles raised, and as the jogger gets closer, Bondi retreats to the refuge of behind my legs, and keeps up a steady stream of barks.

          “Sorry!” I called.

          “That’s okay,” Lady Jogger calls. “My mom has little dogs, too,” and she passed us by on the other side of the road.

          A car comes and adds another layer of dust to the already dusty roadside vegetation and obscuring Lady Jogger.

          Even though Bondi can’t see her through the dust, she knows she’s there. She takes a few steps, stops, turns around, and barks.

          Bondi stays vigilant for a long time, checking to make sure the jogger doesn’t double back and sneak up on her. That was when I decided to take this picture.

          I did find some freshly bloomed and relatively dust-free wildflowers.

          This is yarrow. It’s a super-herb. It can do so much. If you can only have one herb, this would be the one to have.

It’s very nutritious. You can eat the young leaves raw or cooked.

It’s been widely used in herbal medicine, both internally and externally. It’s used in the treatment of a very wide range of disorders but is particularly valuable for treating wounds, stopping the flow of blood, treating colds, fevers, kidney diseases, menstrual pain, and the list goes on.

It’ll repel beetles, ants, and flies where you grow it. You can burn it to repel mosquitos. Add it to your compost pile to speed up bacterial activity.

But let me tell you one thing. I’d never collect anything from the side of a dusty dirt road.

Day Lilies are blooming. The unopened flowers can be steamed and taste just like asparagus — or so I hear. I’ve never tried it myself. 

          This pretty little thing is called Deptford Pink.

          It’s classified as endangered on the Vascular Plant Red Data List for Great Britain and protected in the UK under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, 1981. It’s declined rapidly in range and is now known to inhabit only about 15 sites in the UK, mainly in the south.

          I found Chicory, too. It has a long history of herbal use and is especially of great value for its tonic affect upon the liver and digestive tract.

          The leaves are bitter, especially when flowering, but you can eat them raw or cooked. You can eat the flower raw, too. That would be pretty in a salad, but again, it’s bitter. So why would you want to?

          The chicons (blanched buds), or roots are baked, ground, and used as a coffee substitute and food additive. In the 21st century, inulin, an extract from chicory root, has been used in food manufacturing as a sweetener and source of dietary fiber.

          And chicory is also grown as a forage crop for livestock.

          This is Blue Vervain. The roots are more active than the leaves. The plant is used in the treatment of stomach aches, gravel, worms, and scrofula. An infusion of the roots, leaves, or seeds has been used in the early stages of fevers. A snuff made from the dried flowers has been used to treat nose bleeds.

          “Peg, what is gravel?” you ask.

          That’s pretty much what it sounds like. It’s the debris which is formed from a fragmented kidney stone.

          “What about that scrofula stuff?”

          I had to look that one up. It says it’s a disease with glandular swellings, probably a form of tuberculosis. Also formerly called King's Evil.

          I knew the Kipps were walking Saturday morning so I hooked up the girls and we joined them. There’s nothing like company for the ‘kids’ to misbehave. Raini kept jumping and biting Bondi. I tried to separate them with my foot, hoping Bondi would take advantage of my distracting Raini and get out of range.

          But did she?

          NO!

          Lamar took Bondi for me.

          We came to a section of road, just across from the Robinsons' pond, and started seeing a bunch of Stoneflies.

          “What is that?” I asked Raini.

          She chewed it but didn’t eat it.   

    

Bondi had to come and see what was going on but she wasn’t much interested in them either.

          This is White Sweetclover also called Honey Clover or Sweet Clover. It’s great to make into winter hay for your livestock.

          Although called clover, it’s closer to an alfalfa. 

          “What’s on the road down there?” I asked Lamar. “Turkeys?”

          They were pretty far away.

          “Could be,” he said.

          I snapped a picture and zoomed in. “I think they’re vultures — and they’re eating something!”

          We get closer and nature's cleaners fly away.

          There wasn’t much left. I could see a dark tail, and black socks on the brown hind feet. “What was that? A fox maybe?”

          Miss Rosie wasn’t interested in looking at it at all and Lamar wasn’t either, but he did look. “It looks like… it looks like… fly food!”

          Yeah. There was a cloud of flies around it.

          “I bet it was a little groundhog,” I said. “That would make more sense.”

          “I’ve seen little ones in this area,” Lamar said.

          We get to the turn-around point and everyone who wanted a drink got a drink before we headed for home.

          “Hey! There’s Salsify!” I said.

          “There’s what?” Lamar asked.

          “Salsify. Goat's Beard. It wasn’t blooming yesterday.”

          “Maybe the rain made it bloom,” Miss Rosie said.

          I snapped a couple of pictures even though the flower isn’t fully open. I always think of one of the old ladies I used to take care of. Beautiful Miss Helen loved Salsify. “It’s also called the Oyster Plant,” I told the Kipps. “It’s said the roots taste like oysters.”

          “That’s enough right there for me not to want to try it,” Miss Rosie said. She likes the broth in oyster stew but thinks the oysters look like snot balls, and she made a face that said yuck all over it!

          “The vultures are back,” Lamar said. This guy was tired of us interrupting his brunch so he didn’t go far.

          Then I spotted a big, beautiful Queen Anne’s Lace.      

  

          Raini made a grab for Bondi’s leash.

          “You can’t help Lamar walk her,” I scolded.        

It was getting hot and Raini made a jump for the weeds but the leash held her back and she didn’t go far.

          “She wants to cool off,” Miss Rosie said.

          I dropped the leash and Raini dived in the weeds and disappeared.

          “Raini!” I called and she’d nose her way out.

          I let her drag her lead and it was fun watching her run and take a flying leap into the weeds. The only thing is, there’s a ditch in there, and down she’d sink, out of sight. She was wet when she came back up but she had fun and we laughed at her antics.

          The last picture I took on this walk-about was of the tiny little grass flowers.

          One hot afternoon I got the tub out and filled it with water for the girls. It sat there for a while before Raini took any interest in it. Then she climbed in and started splashing about. 

          She seemed most fascinated with the corners and scratched and splashed at them. 

          I threw a toy in. Bondi didn’t want it in there but couldn’t get a hold of it. 

          Raini helped her out, picked up the blue de-squeaked toy, and dropped it outside the tub. Then she went back to her corner digging.

          Down at our pond, the Pickerel Weed is blooming.

          And I took a couple of dragonfly photos. I’m not sure what this guy’s name is. 

          But this one is so distinctive he wasn’t hard to ID. This is a White Tail. 

          While I was waiting for the White Tail to land, I glanced at my feet and saw shimmery scales. Did a snake shed? I wondered and picked up the skin to see how long he was.

          Nope! It wasn’t a snake. I was seeing a scattering of dragonfly wings glinting in the sun. I’ve seen a Green Heron sitting there (but I haven’t been able to get his picture) and I’m guessing he doesn’t care for wings. I counted four pair of wings that day, and the next I found another pile with three sets of wings.      

          This is the Mourning Cloak Butterfly. These butterflies have a lifespan of 11 to 12 months, one of the longest lifespans for any butterfly.

          Let’s call this one done!