Just A Tease

           My morning love note was very cryptic, one morning this week. “I'll be painting a treasure box today and that's all that I've got planned,” I told my peeps.

"Peg! I thought you were working on a BBQ sign."

“I was,” I told them. “Long story, which you'll get to read about in my letter blog.”

“You’re such a tease!”

I know, right! I don't want to write the story twice and I didn’t want them to have to hear about it twice either.

I finished a commissioned box for a lady whose birthday is in August. When I took the order, I asked, “What do you want on it?”

“I don’t know. You know what to do. Just make it pretty,” he said. Then, after thinking about it for a minute, he said, “I want 80 on the front.”

“Okay, what colors do you want?”

“I don’t know... white?”

This color-lovin’ lady doesn’t understand just white and said so. “Just white? Don’t you want some other colors on there?”

At this point, my client second guesses himself. “I don’t know. Whatever you wanna do.”

So, I did what I wanted to do. 

I gave him the box and he paid me for it.

Weeks go by and on a visit, he asks, “Can you put some flowers on the front? Brighten it up a little?”

“Sure, I can. Bring it back and I’ll do that,” I told him.

This week he brought the box back along with a request. “Can you paint it white?”

I was taken aback, but recovered quickly. “I can try.”

Now I was sorry I’d steamrolled him and didn’t listen when he told me what he wanted the first time.

Lesson learned.

As we talked, he confessed, “It looks like a coffin to me.”

Whether it looks like a coffin to anyone else or not doesn’t matter. It looks like a coffin to him.

I took the box, and thinking I was going to repaint it, pulled the green felt from the inside.

“Was that in there?” he asked.

“Yeah.” Did he never look inside? I wondered.

I was working on another commissioned piece, a Hillbilly BBQ sign. I pushed it aside and sat to repaint the 80 Treasure Box.

It wasn’t working.

The paint looked gobby and the details were being lost.

I should’ve listened to my first instincts, shelved this box, and made a new one.

I wonder if I can wash the paint off. I got up and went to the sink. I figured I didn’t have anything to lose. Most of the paint did wash off and I used a little nail polish remover to take off the rest. When I set it aside to dry, I left the lid open. The weight of the lid was too great for the hinge and the lid broke off.

Oh well.

I checked the details for the new box with the client a couple of times and it was during one of the conversations that he said, “I’m sorry to be so much trouble but that black box reminded me of a coffin.”

This is like the third or fourth time he referred to the box being black. I admit it was dark but it wasn’t black.

“Mike, do you think he’s color blind?”

But Mike didn’t know. I asked the client and he is colorblind! He couldn’t see the teals on the box nor the green on the felt inside.

I spent the next couple o’ three days remaking his order and this time I nailed it.

“It’s beautiful!” he exclaimed when I presented the new box to him.

This time I used red felt to compliment the red roses, both on the front and on the inside. The spine on this one has the same filigree as the coffin box.

“How much do I owe you?” he asked.

“Nothing. You already paid me for a box.”

This man, out of the kindness of his heart, and over much protesting, gave me a generous tip. 

A hummingbird on a branch under my awning, sheltering from the rain.

After a quick Google search, I discovered the birds will eat most any flavor jelly. I had some orange marmalade and put that out. They do eat it, but I can tell it’s not their favorite.

I made up another feeding station and put grape jelly out.

Did you know that female and juvenile Baltimore Orioles look almost the same? It makes it harder for me to tell them apart unless I see daddy feeding one.

A Tiger Swallowtail on milkweed. 

This is blue vervain, also called Simpler's Joy, or Swamp Verbena. It’s been used for many years as a medicinal herb for treating people suffering from depression, headaches, jaundice, cramps, coughs and fevers. Externally, it’s been applied to wounds, ulcers, and acne. It can, however, interfere with blood pressure medication and hormone therapy. Large doses cause vomiting and diarrhea.

We had a box turtle get inside the dog run, but I don’t know how. Both my bravehearts were scared to death, kept a respectful distance, and barked their fool heads off.

I’ve got a ton of lanterns on my Chinese Lantern plants. These are in a corner inside the dog run. 

The girls followed me around the side of the house to another spot where I’d planted more Lanterns. I wasn’t paying any attention to them, but I’m guessing Bondi went in the cat door and Raini went around to her door. However it happened, I hear the flap and look to see a Heeler nose poking through.

I laughed at her. “You silly girl!” No way was she getting through there!

Speaking of getting stuck... 

Look who I caught in my live trap.

I know better than to leave the traps open at night because this is what you’ll get.

We made a shopping trip to Tunkhannock this week. McDonald’s is where we usually end up eating. I made our order at the kiosk. They ask if you want it to go or to eat in. I said eat in. They asked me for a table number. I looked at the next number on the whatchamacallit and put it in. I finished my transaction, grabbed the number, and found the table Mike was sitting at.

Mike was in the middle of a conversation with a guy and mentioned that if he didn’t have a church, he should come check out ours. That’s when Mike found out he was talking to a pastor of a church just outside of Tunkhannock.

I wasn’t really involved in the conversation but happened to glance at the number on our whatchamacallit. I was shocked to see it said 33.

I put 29 on my ticket! In my mind’s eye I could see it was a 29, how it turned into a 33 is beyond me. I glanced down the row of tables and there sat a guy with a 29 on his whatchamacallit. The only thing I can think is he was on the other side of the same kiosk I was at and took 29 before I did.

When the gal came out with a tray and headed to 29, I interrupted. “I think that’s my order,” I told her and recited what I’d ordered. It was and she gave it to me.

Next time, I’ll pick up the number before I punch it in.

Lesson learned.

We were pulling out of the parking lot and I spot a pair of sunglasses beside the road. Someone set them down on top of their car when they were putting the kids in and forgot. They’re a twenty-dollar pair of Foster Grants.

The only other pictures I took on this trip were of this barn. 

Blue-eyed grass.

Butter-and-eggs, also called Toadflax, is long-lasting in the vase. Like snapdragons, they can be made to "talk" by squeezing them at the base of the corolla.

And as you can guess, it was also used in folk medicine as a laxative and strong diuretic. 

I took Raini with me to get the laundry off the line. With her black coat, and the streak of hot weather we’ve been having, she didn’t go far, but lay at my feet, panting.

I kicked off my shoes and took her to the pond for a cooling off.

My pond is covered in aquatic plants, but it’s also full of other kinds of life. I stood in ankle-deep water and watched the dragonflies and damselflies. The frogs took off as soon as they heard us coming.

This one is a Widow Skimmer.  

       

An Eastern Pondhawk.

This guy I could’ve named myself. He’s a Dot-tailed Whiteface.

I’m just straightening up after snapping the picture of the whiteface and spot this guy hanging on a leaf. It startled me at first because it was so close to me, then I realized it was just the cast-off exoskeleton of a dragonfly that had molted.

I looked around and found another one.

Then I got sidetracked looking at the striations and coloring of the pond plants.

Then my sidetrack got sidetracked looking at grass flowers.

Heading home, Raini in the lead, she spots something that shouldn’t be there and goes to check it out. She always notices when something’s different.

We took a golf cart ride out to our neighbor’s pond.

Black-eyed Susans.

A Great Spangled Fritillary on Swamp Milkweed. 

Vernon has a dragonfly I don’t have. With their pretty butterscotch-colored wings, they’re aptly named Eastern Amberwing.

Day lilies. 

A trip to the recycling center nets me a few more pictures.

Coming back up the mountain, we watch this Shephard go from one window to the opposite one. He must be standing on the armrest or something because he’s got himself out there pretty far.

 “What’s Mike been up to?” I know you wanna know.

Mike’s been cleaning the apartment, mowing grass.

“Let’s go up on the hill and get the rest of the tilt hoods,” he said one day.

He got up the hill just fine. We loaded the hood and I found a possum skull underneath.

Most of the time. the bottom jaw isn’t attached but this one still had a little flesh on it. It’s my first complete skull. 

Mike maneuvered his way backwards down the hill but when he got to the mud pit at the bottom, he got stuck.

“You’ll have to go get the golf cart and pull me out,” he said.

I walked down the hill. When I got to the house I see the girls, laying in the shade, waiting for me.

I stopped long enough to get a picture.

I can hear Mike up on the hill, working the tractor back and forth, trying to get unstuck.

By the time I got the golf cart and started back up the hill, he was coming down. He’d managed to get himself out.

“Let’s take some stones up and fill in the mud pit,” I suggested.

After Mike unloaded the hood, he scooped up stones and we laid ‘em in the tracks for one more trip up the hill to get the last hood.

All that’s left up there now is a huge tank, a smaller tank, and some tires.

Mike gets through the mud pit with only a little slipping and sliding. 

Suddenly, he hits a bump and the hood slides off. I got off the golfcart and tipped the hood back up. They’re fiberglass and not that heavy.

Mike pulled up and I tipped it onto the bucket and held it in place while he raised the bucket.

I don’t know what he’s going to do with them all but I’d like to maybe paint one of the tanks like a Minion. 

And let’s call this one done!

Done!