When I left you last time, I alluded that there were more adventures than just my trip to the Sight and Sound Theater to see the production of Daniel. Before we get to this week’s adventures, we’ll pick up what you missed last week.
We have a Belted Kingfisher that fishes in our creek. His favorite fishing spot is a dead tree that extends out over the water. I see him there a lot and for a long time I’ve been trying to get a decent shot of him.
Kingfishers are territorial and will defend their fishing grounds vigorously against other kingfishers. They nest by excavating tunnels in riverbanks, often extending 2 to 3 feet horizontally into the bank, where they lay their eggs. Kingfishers are expert fishers, have excellent eyesight, and hunt by diving headfirst into the water from a perch or while hovering above the surface to catch fish with their sharp bills. Primarily they eat small fish, crayfish, crabs, small frogs and tadpoles, small reptiles, and occasionally they may catch and eat small rodents. Interestingly, in the case of the Belted Kingfisher, the female is more brightly colored than the male, which is unusual among birds. Females have a chestnut belly band in addition to the blue band that both sexes have. And lastly, Belted Kingfishers have two fused toes.
I’ve been seeing lots of butterflies but managed to get only two. This one is a Duskywing.
This little Peral Crescent has a tattered wing and is sitting on a dandelion.
Daisies growing along the roadside. Not bad for a picture taken at 50 miles an hour.
These things pop up from time to time. A new gas well is being drilled. In a couple of weeks, it’ll be down.
Some shots from our walk about town.
Moss, ivy climbing the rocks.
Stone steps.
I love trying new things and starting new projects. After I made Miss Rosie’s primitive chicken mobile, I had a request for a cat-themed one.
I didn’t think I’d have any trouble, especially since I had no problems in the making of chicken mobile.
Boy! Was I wrong!
I use patterns for lots of things. It just makes life easier. I drew (freehand) the chickens on a piece of thin metal and cut them out. I made the concrete clay and formed it on top of the metal. Easy.
For the cats, I drew on corrugated plastic sign boards. With the amount of detail in my cats, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to cut them from metal. I got a knife, started cutting, and stabbed myself, not once, but twice!
I was going to use the cutout to form the cats on but it looked to me like I could use the other piece for a form. It wasn’t very thick so I cut out a second one. I figured I could make one layer, add the hangers, and slap a second layer on top. I only did the one cat. I needed to see if it would work before I made any more.
After it dried, I tried to unmold it, and what a disaster! Did I mention it was corrugated? I was thinking, hoping really, that my clay wouldn’t go into the corrugation. It did. And the layers didn’t bond. I’m glad I didn’t make any more than one!
I tried again. I made more cats and this time formed them on top of the cutout, much the same way I did the chickens.
After waiting a day, I wanted to flip them over and take off the plastic board so it could dry.
The first one slid off nicely, and so did the second one, I broke the third one.
I’ll have to make another one.
While sanding the edges, I broke a tail off another cat. Now I’d have to make two new ones.
I’m not sad. Many times the only things I keep for myself are the broken ones. I’ll repair them but I won’t sell them.
“I either need to reinforce the tail with wire or redesign my pattern,” I told my morning peeps.
“What would happen if you used all concrete?” Mike asked. My recipe only contains one-fourth Portland.
I asked Copilot, my AI chat buddy. “It’ll be more brittle,” he said.
I scrapped that idea. Then I wondered if I'd put in the right amount. I doubled the recipe. Is it possible I forgot to double the cement? I asked myself, vowing to be more careful, more sure of my measurements in the future.
I gave Copilot my recipe. “How can I make this stronger?” I asked.
“Increase the Portland and take out the drywall compound,” Copilot said. “The drywall compound adds to the smoothness and workability of the clay but isn’t necessary for strength. You’ll have to experiment with it and find what works for you. Happy crafting!”
Some might get frustrated, at this point, but not me. I’m learning!
While I was sanding the first cat, I thought it might be too big. It was ten inches tall. I made it smaller for the second try, and at eight-and-a-half inches, I thought it might still be too big. I made it an inch smaller for my third try. Even then, by the time I string them together, it might still end up being a fairly large piece. I checked with the gal I’m making them for.
“Size won’t be an issue,” she assured me as she has two nice-sized gazebos.
I’m going to go with the seven-and-a-half-inch-sized pieces. It’s just a little longer than Miss Rosie’s chickens.
I was careful with my recipe, adding in extra Portland and omitting the drywall joint compound. I redesigned my patterns, attaching the tail to the body and I added wire, just in case.
Once I put the wire in, tapped it down a little, and started putting a layer of clay on top, I decided to make my cats more 3D.
Oh, what joy!
What fun it was to add clay and smooth it, form hills and valleys, a rounder tail, a paw. To be creating something with more depth than just flat cats like my first two attempts. I thought of my cute little redheaded sister. Diane has taken up rock sculpting. She’s getting good at it, too. I could see her, in my mind’s eye, a hammer in one hand, a chisel in the other, and imagine that she felt much the same joy as I felt.
I thought of you guys too, and my best West Virginia gal. It would be fun to have her here, making things with me. Would she even want to try something like this? I wondered. My hands were messy with clay. I wiped them clean enough to take a picture and sent it to her. Here you can see the wire I added to the tail.
And these are the finished pieces. Well, except for painting, that is.
With the extra clay, I made hearts, triangles, flower pieces, and leaves. I thought I would glue the flower pieces together after they dried.
I haven’t decided what to do with the other side yet. I kinda wanna 3D that too but don’t know how or what I’m going to do. No one showed me how to do this so maybe, if I let it rattle around in my head for a while, I’ll figure something out for the other side.
Speaking of cats...
We were given a ceramic cat that was sorely in need of repaint.
“Can you make it look like Smudge?” my handsome mountain man asked.
“I can try,” I said.
I spent quite a bit of time at the computer looking for photos of Smudge. The first thing I did was search my blogs. The very first one I opened was from three years ago when I told you about Smudge being hit by a car. The first photo in the blog was Lamar bottle-feeding Cleopatra, Smudge’s sister. They’d been abandoned by their mother and we were taking care of them.
The next photo was of Miss Rosie giving Smudge love, equally as important as giving them food.
Smudge was one of Mike’s favorite cats and I’m not sure he’s ever quite gotten over losing him — but Tiger helps! Tiger is Mike’s cat now and lays on his chest every night while we’re watching TV.
I kept looking and found photos of Smudge helping us on the roof.
I managed to find enough photos to know Smudge had a white belly, white collar, and a white band across his rump which left him with a black saddle.
It may not be a perfect rendition but I did the best I could. “It’s close enough,” Mike says and it’s certainly better than it was.
Losing Smudge was a sad time in our life, much harder on Mike than me.
This week we’ve had another loss — three losses to be more precise. I’m more mad than sad about it since it was my fault.
“What happened!?” I know you wanna know.
Teaching my birds to find the opening between the cages was the beginning of the end for three of them.
I’m in — was in the bad habit of not closing the gates for the water and food dishes the whole way. It’s hard to tell from the photo but there’s barely an open space at all. Not even big enough for me to put my finger through. They had to be looking for it.
One bird escaped out the top where the water is and the cat got him. At least, that’s what I’m guessing. There’s no bird flying around in here and a few feathers on the floor is all the clues I’ve got.
The white one tried the lower food cup, got out, but died in the net.
The last one got his head out but caught his wings in the wires where he died.
So, I’m sorry my stupid, stupido, bone-head, lazy, bad habit, cost the life of three living things when it didn’t have to happen.
“Why didn’t you close them the whole way?” you ask.
There’s a catch in some of the gates and they’re hard to push open. Over the course of time that I’ve had my birds, I’ve always left it a little open like that.
My Nannyberry is blooming.
So is white clover. All aerial parts of the plant, including the stems, leaves, flowers, and seed pods, can be consumed. The leaves and flowers have a delicate, sweet taste and can be used fresh right after harvesting or dried for later use. You can make tea with flowers and leaves. The leaves can be added to your salad or baked goods for a vanilla-like flavor.
Clover contains essential vitamins and minerals, including vitamins A, B2, B3, C, and E, as well as magnesium, potassium, chromium, and calcium.
In folk medicine it was used to purify and cleanse blood, treat gout, fever and colds, as an expectorant, for joint pain, eye health, and a digestive aid.
Although related, red clover and white clover are not considered identical in their benefits. Red Clover is used to help reduce symptoms of menopause, maintain bone density, improve heart health, skin conditions, asthma, and whooping cough.
They do have blood purifier in common.
As for eating red clover, it’s very similar to the white.
Blue-eyed grass is blooming.
Raini and I were down at the pond. The Red-winged Blackbirds were scolding us. I suspected there must be a nest close by but didn’t have a clue where — until the female broke cover. I used my zoom lens to get this shot and didn’t bother her nest at all.
On a golf cart ride I spotted moss flowers and stopped to get a picture.
Walking a few feet into the woods to get the shot, I spotted two new-to-me wildflowers.
Starflowers.
And False Solomon’s Seal.
I hung sheets on the clothesline and discovered some stinker laid eggs on one. I suspect it was a stink bug.
Claverack, our electric company, is putting in fiber optic cables for the internet.
Mike went and talked with the guys.
First, they come through and run the line, leaving it slack but with straps to hold it temporarily in place.
Then they come through with a device that zips down the line and secures it to an existing line by wrapping a wire around both lines.
“You should see this thing, Peg!” Mike was all excited about it as he told me how it works and how expensive this thing is. “They cost ten thousand dollars each and they have a lot of ‘em!”
In the photo, you can see he had just released one of the temporary straps, not what I was photographing, but a happy accident nonetheless.
Hey! Look here! First stuck of the season!
I got the golf cart and backed up to pull him out.
“I knew I shouldn’t’ve come up in here,” Mike said. “It’s just too wet.”
I attached the tow hook to the back of the mower, got back on the golf cart, checked to make sure I’d put the lever back into forward gear, pressed the gas, and — nothing. The cart wouldn’t start.
Mike had to get off the mower to get the tractor and got his shoes wet and muddy, something he was hoping to avoid. He towed the golf cart up to the house and went back for the mower. Once I saw he had the mower out and unhooked, I started for the house. I heard something that made me stop and turn around. Mike was using the belly mower on the tractor to try and mow the area where he’d gotten the mower stuck.
Guess what happened.
“He got the tractor stuck?” you guess.
Yeppers! He got the tractor stuck.
Mike used the bucket to push himself out and it took him more than a push or two to clear the mud field. It was more like eight or ten before he could stop using the bucket.
“What were you thinking!” I demanded.
“It’s four-wheel drive. I didn’t think it would get stuck.”
I guess now we know.
Remember that barn on the way to Tunkhannock? The one they’re working on? I said I wondered if it would be a venue to hold weddings or parties?
Look at it now!
“Maybe it’s gonna be someone’s house,” I mused. I guess time will tell.
Let’s end with a couple or three road pictures.
And call this one done!
Enjoyed as usual!😊
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