In The City

           Mike had a checkup in the big city of Sayre.

          We didn’t need to leave until mid-morning and I took the opportunity to exercise Raini before we left.

          “Where’s your ball?” I ask. She runs to find it, brings it, and drops it at my feet. “Let’s go outside,” I tell her.

          She knows “ball” and she knows "outside." I don’t know if she knows all the other words in between.

          It rained the night before. And it rained. And it rained! My little two and a half-inch rain gauge was overfull. One of my morning peeps said we got four inches!

          I wake up bunches in the night. After twenty years of hot flashes, I’m still having them. I guess I should be thankful that that’s all they are! At least I don’t have night sweats. And no, I’m not going to take medication for it either. Every time I woke up it was raining hard! Maybe it was the rain that woke me a couple of times.

          Tossing the ball for Raini, it got stuck on the roof. “Let’s get the ladder,” I tell Raini and she knows "ladder," too. She runs around back and I follow. Going around the corner I see my pokeweed succumbed to the hard rains.

          I love the raindrops on my Glads. I know you don’t need to see two shots of it but I love both of these.

          Walking around the other side, looking for another interesting angle, I see a bee took shelter under the umbrella of a Glad.

          Mike and I went down to see the pond. It was overfull, coming up under the little bridge, where it’s usually dry, and overflowing its bed on the other side.

          I checked the time. “We’ve got time to go see the creek,” I told Mike. We could hear it rushing its way to the Susquehanna.

          The Kipps’ yard was flooded.

         

Mike crossed the bridge to turn around and I like the mist peeking around the tree.

I made my travel coffee and we left.

Turning off our little dirt road onto the blacktop, we see someone hit a tree.

          Going down the mountain, there were several places where the rain washed the gravel across the road.

Mike’s appointment was at the hospital in Sayre. I know about how long it takes us to get there, and I added extra time. Nonetheless, Mike stresses about being late. To alleviate his fears, I had our destination programed in the GPS. It gives us time of arrival and he could watch that.

It was our plan to run through McDonald’s and pick up breakfast. Mike loves the Sausage Egg McMuffin and I do the Sausage Breakfast Burritos.

“We have time to eat it here,” I said once we picked up our food. Even though we ate in the car in the parking lot, it was still nicer than Mike having to eat while he drives.

Road patching caused us a slight delay, but no worries. I allowed enough time for incidentals.

Mike had bloodwork done before seeing his doctor. They did all the things you would expect your doctor to do. Took his temperature and blood pressure, checked his blood oxygen, listened to his heart and lungs, and then answered his questions.

“How was my blood work?” he asked.

“Everything looks good,” she assured him. “You’re perfect.”

Mike looked at me and grinned. “I’ve been trying to tell her that for years!”

After we left, we headed up to Waverly for some of that cheap New York gas.

“Let’s see how the GPS takes us,” I suggested. “Maybe I’ll get to see something different. And that’s where I took these In the City pictures.

          The patching crew stopped us again on the way home. I looked out my window and saw this tree loaded with berries? Acorns? My picture isn’t clear enough. I can’t tell what they are.

          Don’cha love the old lamps on this building in Towanda?

          “Peg, what’s that sign in the middle of the window say?” you wanna know.

          It says:

I asked Jesus, “How much do You love me?”

“This much,” He answers.

Then He stretched out His arms and died.

          A handsome, majestic eagle sits on a dead tree branch and dries his wings.

          The winery covered the grapes with bird nets.

          Switching gears, look what the Milkweed Tussock Moths have done to the Milkweed plant they were on.

Most of my milkweed is pitiful this year. They didn’t get tall, they didn’t produce many flowers, and they look just awful. I don’t know what happened to them.

I haven’t seen many Monarch butterflies and this is the second year in a row that I haven’t seen any caterpillars either.

St. John’s Wort is blooming. I caught this little bee coming in for a landing.

It got its name because it blooms the same time of year as the Festival of St. John took place. Another name for it is Goat Weed.

If you crush a bud between your fingers, you’ll get a reddish stain.

In the old days, they would hang it on house and stall doors on St John's Feast Day to ward off evil spirits and to safeguard against harm and sickness to people and livestock. In other traditions it was burned in bonfires for the protection of crops along with other herbs believed to be magical. Because of its supposed potency in warding off spirits, it was also known as Demon-flight. Other names for it are Devil's Scourge, Lord God's Wonder Plant, and Witch's Herb.

          It has antibiotic properties and you can use it topically to speed wound healing, soothe skin irritation or psoriasis, and reduce scarring. Internally it’s used for hot flashes and mental disorders.

          You need to be careful with this plant because it can interfere with your prescription meds.

          My Chinese Lanterns are turning red!

 

          On one of my play dates with Raini, I see something fluttering in my Hydrangea bush. It’s a Crane Fly caught in an old spider web. Since there’s no spider, I set him free.

          “How do you know there’s no spider?” I know you wanna know.

          If there had been a spider, that Crane Fly would’ve been trussed up tighter than a bongo drum! Besides, the web was in disrepair.

          In craft news this week, I don’t have much to report. I’ve spent hours designing and redesigning the growth chart I’m working on. I think we’ve got it nailed down and I sent her a final design for her okay. That was earlier in the week and I haven’t heard back from her.

          “I’m sorry about being a pain,” I told her. “I just want to make sure it’s exactly what you want,” I told her after sending several (I don’t know how many) pictures and texts.

          “You’re not a pain at all,” she told me. “I like seeing the different options.”

          While waiting before printing patterns, I did other things. One of them was preparing the board. The girls always go with me out to the outside wayback where I sand. Do you think Bondi was too close to where I was working?

          I got it painted so it will be good and dry when I do hear from her.

          Something else I did was put a sealer on my concrete leaves. I want to use them for a bird bath and coated the underside. I let them dry for twenty-four hours and filled them with water and landing pads for the birds and bees. I’m sorry to say it was a bust. They were both dry the next day. Any advice?

          Speaking of birds...

          I love watching the Baltimore Orioles at my jelly feeder.

          What I don’t love is trying to get the last of the jelly out of the jar. They put ridges around the jar to give it strength but there’s no way a spatula can get it out and I end up throwing jelly away.

          What if I heat it up? I wondered and stuck it in the microwave for thirty seconds. First off, thirty seconds was way longer than it needed and was bubbling when I took it out. Other than that, it worked well to pour the jelly into a little dish and let it reset.

          I wonder if it’ll work for applesauce.

>>>*<<<

          I keep a scrap pan. I throw all my kitchen scraps into it and when it gets full — or stinky, I take it way out away from the house and toss it into the weeds.

          My pan was getting yucky. I set it under the outside spigot and put some water in the bottom. Then left it for a couple of days. When I needed it again and went back for it, I see it made a fabulous earwig trap — not that I was trying to catch earwigs.

          Earwigs get their name from an old folk tale that suggests these bugs would crawl into the ears of people and lay eggs inside the brain. There’s nothing in fact to prove this. They have two long pincers protruding at the end of their body, which is where they get their nickname, the Pincher Bug.

          I did not know that earwigs have wings. I guess I’ve never looked at one very close. Earwigs are mostly nocturnal and often hide in small, moist crevices during the day and are active at night. They are environmental janitors and feast on dead and decaying plants and insects. This is great for keeping a garden clean and maintaining the look and feel of the greenery. However, they become a true pest when they run out of dead and decaying materials as they will then move on to living plants and vegetation to feed on, thus potentially wreaking havoc on a gardener’s plant life.

          Besides the earwigs, there’s a moth floating. Google Lens says it’s a Dark-barred Twin-spot Carpet moth.

          Speaking of bugs, I happened on a herd of ants feasting on a worm on my sidewalk. By the next day there wasn’t any sign of it ever having been there.

          Ants are certainly industrious.

     

          With all that ickiness and grossness, let’s call this one quite enough, aka, done!

          Done!