Thankful

          On this Saturday morning, I’m sitting here sorting my week’s worth of pictures, improving the clarity and/or color, cropping, reducing the size to a more-manageable up-loadable size, and think, I took some good pictures this week. Then I realize that if I didn’t have you to look at them, they wouldn’t even exist. So, this week I am thankful. Thankful that you want to see whatever pictures I’ve taken during the week. Thankful that you want to read about whatever adventures or madcap capers I’ve been involved in this week. I’m thankful, and truly blessed, to have you.

          The bud I didn’t know last week opened into a beautiful Meadow Buttercup.

          I guess I didn’t know what a buttercup leaf looked like. At least this kind of buttercup. There are more than 300 varieties of buttercups. 

          My yard is loaded with buttercups, and I couldn’t be happier.

          A honeybee is pretty happy about it, too!

          I love that I’m able to take Raini out without a leash and she mostly stays with me. However, if it comes down to a choice between me and a pile of cat poop, I don’t always win.

The Nannyberry is blooming.

It gets a big purple/black fruit on it that has a big flat seed inside. I’ve read that they are edible but I’ve never tasted one.

The Autumn Olive...

...and Japanese Honeysuckle bushes are fully loaded and the air is sweet with their scent.

          I took pictures of damselflies...

          ...while Raini chased frogs. 

          I was working in the house and Mike was out mowing when he called my phone.

          “Can you come down here?” he asked.

          “Ooookay. Where are you?”

          “Down by the pond,” he answered.

          “Why?” I wanted to know, even as I was grabbing my camera and heading out the door.

          “Because there’s something here you may want.”

          I couldn’t imagine what would be there that I’d want.

          Mike was sitting on the mower waiting for me when I got there.

          “What?” I asked.

          He pointed to something laying in a yet un-mown swath of grass about 30 feet away.

          “What is it?” I asked as I cautiously approached.

          “I don’t know, but I don’t want to get off the mower and move it,” Mike said.

          There it is! There’s the real reason he called me down!

          “Where did it come from?” I asked bending down and picking up what appeared to be something from a piece of machinery. “Is it off your mower?”

          “No. I kicked it up from somewhere.”

          “Yeah. I can see where the blades hacked it up. Where were you when you hit it?” I wanted to know.

          “I think it was over by that bush,” he said pointing to a nearby Autumn Olive. “You should be able to see the hole it came out of.”

          I did look, but I couldn’t definitively identify any such hole.

          I took my treasure back to the house and hadn’t been settled in very long when I got another call. This time, when I picked up the phone and saw it was Mike again, I guessed, “Are you stuck?”

          “Yeah.”

          I guessed right. I took the golf cart down and pulled him out. I’m always saving his butt.

          I have lots to do.

          I have commissions. One for a book box, one for a sign.

I have a new porch sign I want to make for my Miss Rosie. That means I’ve got boards to sand and stain.

I’ve got flowers that my beautiful Jody brought me that needed to be put to bed.

We’re not even going to talk about the abundance of housework that always seems to need to be done.

But most importantly, I had a beautiful patio and a beautiful spring day to rest in. Rest can be so important and so underrated. Doing nothing but drinking a cup of coffee and simply enjoying the moment was what I was doing when my phone rang. My stretchy pants and tee shirt don’t have pockets so I reached up inside my shirt and pulled my phone from the only pocket I always have with me. My brassiere. Checking the ID, I see it’s one of my beautiful sisters.

During our conversation, a Purple Finch landed on a branch close to the sunflower seed feeder.

“Did you know that Purple Finches aren’t purple?” I asked Phyllis.

“No, I did not,” she said.

You many not be crazy about my choice of natural landscaping around the bird feeders but you have to admit a picture of a bird on a branch sure is prettier than a picture of a bird sitting on a feeder.

“There’s something coming up in the buckets I put the Chinese Lanterns in last year.” Phyllis told me she hadn’t gotten any lanterns.

“Is it Chinese Lanterns?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want me to send you a picture of a Chinese Lantern leaf?” I asked starting to get out of my chair.

“No. Actually I can take a picture with Google Lens and it’ll tell me what it is.”

Phyllis showed me where Google Lens was on my phone and I’ve been playing with it ever since.

It mis-identified my Peony bud.

“Are you sure it’s a Peony?” Phyllis asked.

“Yep. I planted it.”

I tried it on my picture of the finch and it says it’s a Rosefinch. Why Rosefinch is all one word and Purple Finch is two, I don’t know. 

            I tried it on the other shot of my finch and it’s now telling me it’s a House Finch.

I searched all of those on the internet and in my bird book but I still think it’s a Purple Finch.

I opened the app and tried again, this time focusing on the head of the bird and now it’s saying Purple Finch.

I guess, just like with any info you get from the internet, you need to dose it with good old fashioned common sense.

I tried it on the buttercup leaf and it knew on the first shot that it was Meadow Buttercup.

Mike came and sat down with me, and while we chatted the girls started to play. At first, they were chasing each other around the yard. It’s fun to watch little Bondi, nose out, ears plastered against her head, tail straight out behind her, running just as fast as her little legs could carry her — and Raini hot on her tail.

Raini tags Bondi and Bondi, flipping over, wipes out. If she’s quick she can get back on her feet before Raini grabs her back leg. Otherwise, she’s at Raini’s mercy.

Pretty soon, the tables turn and Bondi takes off after Raini — and Raini runs. The games tend to get really loud.

“Settle down!” Mike yelled.

          Races over, they opted for a wrestling match.

          You know darn well there’s no way Bondi can pin Raini, unless Raini allows it. Sometimes she does, sometimes she doesn’t.

          Break over, I gathered my gardening supplies and planted the Spiderwort, Forget-me-nots, and Vinca that Jody brought me. Raini helped.

          Here’s a fun Forget-me-not fact sent to me by the beautiful and thoughtful Jenn Kipp.

The yellow ring at the center of the flowers turn white after pollination, signaling to insects there’s no more nectar. The insects learn to visit the flowers that haven’t been pollinated yet, ensuring no Forget-me-not flower is forgotten.

          Mike has managed to keep himself busy. Besides getting the mower stuck a second time this week, he’s working on the renovation of the apartment.

          In the apartment, Mike tore out an old, rotted section of floor.

          Mike has a bad back.

Just think about how much an occasional backache hurts you and yet it’s something he lives with every single day. He really has to push himself to do anything.

Mike came in from working and I don’t know what I was doing.

“Peg, could you help me? Please? I just can’t get down anymore.”

How can you say no to a plea like that? When Mike had rested and was ready to tackle it again, I followed him over to the apartment.

“What do I have to do?” I wanted to know.

“Just hand me up the big pieces and I’ll carry them out.”

I got down on my knees and handed all the big pieces of old rotten board up to Mike. He carried them out to the golf cart for the short ride around to the burn pile. Then I used a little whisk broom and dustpan to clean up the rest.

Plumbing was added after the cement slab had been poured so it runs on top of the concrete. That’s why the floor had to be built up on joists.

“There’s a round hole down here,” I told Mike.

I was surprised because it’s not like they just knocked out a patch of concrete all willy-nilly, it’s round.

And I was kinda freaked out, too. The first thing that popped into my mind was a movie I saw hundred years ago about a demon-possessed house. The demons entered the house through an old well in the basement.

Luckily, that didn’t happen here.

Mike replaced the boards and the floor is good and solid now.

He also painted the old dark paneling in the kitchen. I think it looks fabulous!

          I tried a new recipe for a vanilla nobake cookie. It calls for a box of instant vanilla pudding.

          “How are they?” you wanna know.

          Well, the truth is, I kept sampling them all day and still didn’t know how I felt about them.

          I took some to my Bible study class that night and those who tried it said they were good. Some even went back for thirds.

          Mike and I took a few down to the Kipps.

          “They’re okay,” Miss Rosie said. “But I like the chocolate ones better.”

          Something else she really liked was her Bondi time.

          Miss Rosie’s Bluets are blooming and Lamar is careful to mow around the patches of these pretty blue flowers with yellow eyes. Bluets are also called Innocence or Quaker-ladies.

          Their Rhodie is getting ready to burst forth.

          “It must be a different variety than ours,” Mike said. “Ours have come and gone already.

          Who knew there were different varieties of rhododendron? Not us!

          “I wish we’d’ve gotten that kind,” Mike said.

          “If wishes were horses then beggars would ride,” I’ve told him more than once.

          “What does that even mean?” he wants to know.

          I don’t know where I learned this proverb but I’ve known since I was young what it means. Wishing gets you nothing or even the poorest of the poor would have transportation. To this day I wish for nothing. If you Google it, it says it’s a Scottish nursery rhyme first recorded in 1628 and goes like this: If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride. If turnips were swords, I'd have one at my side. If "ifs" and "ands" were pots and pans, There'd be no work for tinkers' hands.

          As we were leaving the Kipps I spot this guy on the dusty porch rail.

“What is it?” you ask.

This is a Stonefly.

Stoneflies are an important food source. Once they reach this stage in their life, they have no functioning mouth parts. Their only purpose is to reproduce and die. Stoneflies lay their eggs on the water and since they are very poor fliers, it makes them easy prey for fish.

When we got home, we found a visitor fluttering against the window on the patio.

          Isn’t he a handsome bird!

          “What is it?” I asked Mike. I was trying to get a look at him while wrangling the dogs into the house as they were furiously trying to get to the bird.

          Mike didn’t know but then again, I didn’t really expect him to.

          I took a picture.

The bird panicked and went to another window, frantically trying to get out. He stopped beating against the window and sat down. His feathers all splayed out looked beautiful. I took a picture thinking they might help me to identify him.

Mike approached him from the right while I opened the door on the left.

          The bird flew to the window where I first got his picture and just sat there, defeated.

          Mike was able to gently cup him in his big giant mountain man hands and carry him outside.

          Feeling the fresh breeze renewed his hope and he struggled to be free.

          Mike opened his hands and the bird took off.

          “What kind of bird was it?” you wanna know.

          I used Google Lens on both shots of him and both times Google tells me this is a Great Crested Flycatcher. Further study tells me this is a large insect-eating bird of the tyrant flycatcher family. It’s widespread in North America and is found over most of the eastern and mid-western portions of the continent. They dwell mostly in the treetops and are rarely found on the ground. Adults usually measure between six and eight inches in length, with a wingspan of around thirteen inches.

          I’ve been doing a bunch of baking lately and my streak of bad luck that started with accidently erasing my external hard drive continues.

          Mike and I picked a day to go shopping. I got out of bed that morning narrowly missing stepping on a present someone brought me in the middle of the night. Yep, it’s another little jumping field mouse.

          Going past the eagles’ nest, I spot an eagle in a tree but didn’t get my camera up in time. I wanted to stop and see the baby eagles. By this time, they should be standing on the edge of the nest testing their wings. Unfortunately, there’s too much foliage between the road and the nest and I couldn’t see a thing. 

          I did spot a hawk across the road. Even though the picture isn’t that great, I’m always excited to see these larger birds of prey.

          Construction had us at a stop. I put my window down and took a picture of the wildflowers. Four petals, these are Dames Rocket. 

          We did our shopping and on the way home we see a sign for computer repair.

          “Just for kicks, let’s stop and see if he can get your pictures for you,” Mike said. 

          So, here’s the deal.

Miss Rosie, you have my permission to skip this part since all the computer stuff looks like mumbo-jumbo to you. And my morning love note peeps already know this, too, so they can skip it if they want.

          The long and short of it is this. It would take my computer twenty-seven days to analyze the eight-terabit hard drive and probably that long to write it to the new hard drive. In the meantime, I can’t use my computer.

          We pulled up to where this guy works out of his house and he came to the door. I told him what I’d done.

          “Oh, I can’t help you,” he said. “Once it’s been formatted, the files are gone!”

          Once he said that, I should’ve just thanked him and walked away. But you know me, I speak my mind. “That’s not true. The information is still there, the computer just marked it so it can be written over — and I haven’t saved anything else to it since.”

           “I’ve been doing this for thirty-five years and I’m telling you there’s no way to get it back once it’s been formatted.”

          I looked at Mike and he twitched his head towards the car.

          “Okay. I guess you can’t help me then,” I said a little sarcastically. “Thank you for your time.” And I tried to smile to soften it a little.

          “Sorry I can’t help you,” he said but I was already halfway back to the car.

          I took a picture of a house on the same road.

         “He really put me in my place, didn’t he? I’m not even a computer ‘expert’ and I know it’s not gone! He’s an idiot!” I told Mike once we were buckled in and headed out.

          “I know,” Mike placated me. “Why don’tcha call Calaman?”

          I did and Calaman said he can probably get the stuff for me. I took both external hard drives out to him and told him what I’d done.

          “How much is it gonna cost us?” I asked.

          “It’s a hundred dollars just to run the software to recover the files. Then I usually cut off after four hours.”

          Mike and I guessed it was gonna be around three hundred bucks.

          The next day I got a call from Calaman.

          “It’s been running all night, it’s about seventy-five percent done, and it’s found three hundred thousand files!” He sounded so surprised. I wasn’t.

          “I told you I had about six-terabits full.”

          “It must’ve gone in one ear and out the other,” Calaman said. “It’s gonna take a week, maybe more.”

          I wasn’t concerned about time. Anything under twenty-seven days was a plus for me.

          “It’s gonna be five, maybe six hundred dollars,” he said.

          Holy sh— crap! I’m in shock and my stomach fell the whole way to the floor. “But isn’t most of the time just letting the computers run?” I asked. “Can’t you keep it down to around three-hundred and I’ll make you cookies?” Like I said earlier, I’ve been doing a lot of baking and I was making cookies at the time of his call.

At this point he said something about trees and branches and I think he was making it all sound way more complicated than it really will be — but I don’t know that for sure. “If it was just a matter of a three or four days then yeah, I could, but we’re talking a week or more now.” He paused and I didn’t say anything. Calaman went on. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll make it reasonable for both of us and I still expect those cookies!”

I laughed. “Deal.”

You know something. All of my mom’s pictures are on there. Every picture I’ve taken for the last twenty years is on there. And Kat’s pictures are on there. (If you don’t remember who she is, ask me. I’d be happy to talk about my beautiful daughter, gone too soon from this world.) I would really be sad not to have those, but you know what? I’d get over it.

The week before I messed up the hard drive, I’d taken pictures at church. Pastor Jay was out of town, gone to pick up his son from Bible college in Florida, so we had a guest speaker. A retired preacher and father to one of the gals at my church. The whole family had come to hear him preach. Afterward, I took a family picture for them.

Not even a week later her father had fallen seriously ill. It was life threatening. And to think I might’ve taken the last picture ever to be taken of him surrounded by his progeny and I lost it. I was heartbroken for Lynda.

Now, two weeks later, her father’s turned the corner and is improving.

If it wouldn’t be for those pictures, I’d be tempted to say forget it.

Baking supplies restocked, I decide to make some of those chocolate no-bakes that my Miss Rosie likes. Something Momma taught me to do and something I do to this very day is double check my recipe. I might even triple and quadruple check it as I go along. In this case it was during my double check that I realized I’d added a half-cup of cocoa instead of a quarter-cup.

“I don’t know what line I was reading!” I told Miss Rosie.

“So it’ll be extra chocolaty?” she replied.

“Nope. I doubled the recipe.”

I knew I’d never have time to spoon out a double batch of no-bakes before they set so I patted them into a cookie sheet and cut them into squares.

“They taste the same,” Beth said. She’s the sweet little girl that comes and works out with me. Why a twenty-something young gal would want to come and work out with this old woman, I don’t know. But I’m thankful for her. Otherwise, I’d find lots of reasons to skip my workout.

          I made one more batch of no-bakes this week. This time it was peanut butter. The recipe said to cook it until it reached 230 degrees on a candy thermometer. If you don’t have a candy thermometer, the recipe said, this will take about a minute and a half.

          Guess what?

          I have a candy thermometer! I can’t mess this up, I think.

I cooked it to 230 just like the recipe said and it was overcooked! The cookies were crumbly and didn’t want to stick together. They still tasted good but I’m mad! This one was NOT my fault!

          We took cookies down to the Kipps and Miss Rosie agreed. Both flavors were fine.

          Tux always likes to get a scratch from Mike, even climbing into his lap at times.

          Handsome Lamar put the cookies in the house and Mama Cat took the opportunity of an open door to scoot out of the house. She didn’t hesitate on the porch where we were sitting with all three dogs; she went right down the steps and into the sunshine.

          “We should go,” Mike said. “We’re keeping Mama from sitting on the porch.”

          “No, we’re not,” I said. “She wants to sit in the sun.”

          Miss Rosie agreed with me.

          “Getting her vitamin D,” Mike said.

          I got a picture of a tiny little butterfly sitting on a garlic mustard flower. This guy is a Pearl Crescent. Their wingspan is less than two inches. They’re found in all parts of the United States except the west coast, throughout Mexico, and in parts of southern Canada.

This week I managed to burn the lasagna.

          “I’m so sorry,” I told Mike. “My feelings won’t be hurt if we throw the burnt parts away.”

          The noodles seemed rather tough to me, like they weren’t done. I don’t know how it can be both burnt and not done, but leave it up to me!

          I saw Mike was struggling to cut it with his fork. “Do you want a knife?” I asked.

          Mike flipped his fork over and tapped the bottom. It made a dull thunking sound, not at all what you would expect if the fork was hitting the Corelle plate.

          “There’s something in here,” Mike said.

          “I think there’s just a crust of burnt on the bottom,” I speculated, got up and got him a sharp knife. I felt a little bit bad because I gave him the more burnt side.

          Mike was sawing at it with his knife and couldn’t cut it.

          “Just eat the good stuff off the top,” I said.

          “There’s something in here, Peg!” Mike was adamant.

          I took his fork and poked around for myself. I was gonna show him it was just burnt. Boy, was I shocked when I pulled a plastic lid from one of my storage containers out from under his lasagna!

          “How did that get there?” you ask.

I know, right! I wondered that myself. I’m gonna guess that since I’d pulled both our plates out of the drainer together, a plastic lid was stuck between them and I just plain didn’t see it when I slapped his lasagna on the plate.

          My beautiful Joanie had a yard sale this weekend. During one of our chats on Facebook, she sent me a picture of her handsome husband sitting in the yard. For kicks and grins, I used Google Lens on his picture, just to see what I’d get.

          “What did you get?” you wanna know.

          It sent me visual matches of gray sweatshirts and men in gray sweatshirts.

          I tried Google Lens on this unopened Indian Paintbrush wildflower but it gave me a bunch of wrong guesses, like a spent dandelion. I’ll show you them again after they bloom.

          The world lost Tina Turner this week. All over TV, tributes to her have been playing.

          I was washing dishes when her song What’s Love Got to Do With It came on. In my mind’s eye I see and hear my little girl singing, “What’s love Doctor Do, Doctor Do did it.” My eyes unexpectedly filled with tears and I smiled at the memory.

          But speaking of dishes!

          One of the plants on the shelf in my kitchen window was leaking dirt. I have no idea where the dirt was coming from. At first, I thought it was one of the cats digging in the pot so I just cleaned it up. That wasn’t a bad thing since the sill and the back of the sink needed a good wipe down anyway.

          The very next day there’s more dirt! The cats have been spending almost all of their time outside these days and I don’t believe any of them had gotten up onto Smudge’s old window seat. Now I’m wondering if maybe I didn’t have a mouse living in there.

          I got out my little stepladder, pushed all the suncatchers to the side of the curtain rod they hang from, and pulled my jade plant down. He’s a pretty sorry looking little guy. He’s been dropping his leaves so he’s looking a little leggy.

          I didn’t find anything living in the pot. I took him and his scraggly looking brother, a spider plant down, and didn’t see anything in there either. I cleaned the shelf, the window sill, and the back of the sink. Since I had the plants down, I decided to repot them. I couldn’t leave the jade outside but I left the spider plant out.

          Once the shelves were clean, my attention turned to the window. It had a big splat on it. It kinda looked like a bird dropped a bomb on it. I got out the window cleaner and sprayed the window. The splat was on the inside, so I doubt it was a bird. Likely as not it was a present from one of the cats.

          When I came back in from washing the outside of the window, I was so proud of the sparkle that I had to take a picture. It’s like a holiday around here if windows get cleaned, I thought. Then I remembered it is a holiday. It’s Memorial weekend.

          Thank you to all the veterans who made the ultimate sacrifice while serving our country.

          Speaking of our country, I got a note from my handsome brother David.

          “Have you read One Second After?” he asked.

          “No. Have you?”

          “No, but my neighbor showed me a copy and it looks pretty good.”

          I went to the library on my e-reader and got the book. The forward was written by Newt Gingrich, a politician, author, and fiftieth speaker of the House of Representatives. He said the story isn’t real but it very well could be. I don’t want to ruin it for you if you decide to read it but it’s really scary to think that something like that can happen. I was telling Miss Rosie about it.

          “It sounds like an awful book,” she said.

          Not that the writing was bad, the story line was what’s so awful. “It is!” I agreed with her. “I think after this I’m going to read something a little lighter.” And I am. I’m reading The Borrowers, by Mary Norton again for the third time. After something as horrifying as One Second After, I needed something less serious and more fun.

           Let’s call this one done!