What You Missed

           “Peg, what did you miss telling us last week?” you ask. “I’ve been waiting all week to find out!”

          What did I miss?

          I missed a bunch of stuff! Sometimes I forget part of a story and if I’m pages past it when I remember, it’s too hard to go back and put in. Sometimes I get tired, sometimes I run out of time, and sometimes I run out of the number of pages I’ve allotted to the letter blog. Several of those things apply to last week’s letter blog.

          But here’s what I forgot in the story.

          I was talking about making the memory books for my best girl, Joanie.

          I had stuff collated on the table as I was printing over multiple days.

          “You better cover those so the cats don’t mess them up again,” my handsome mountain man said.

          I thought that was a really good idea since I’d already lost one page due to a dirty cat paw print.

          I cast my gaze and my mind about to see what I could see to cover them with when I wasn’t actively working on it. Nothing was jumping out at me. I took my most favorite lap blanket off my lap to get up and that’s how I came to use it to cover the project. Little did I know that it was a cat magnet. I only had Tiger on it the first day.

         The next day, Spitfire joined him.

          It was getting late in the weekend, and I was at the limit for a first-class postage stamp, when I decided to call it done.

Something else you didn’t get to see was all the flowers that are popping out.

          My hyacinth is blooming. This was one of Kat’s favorite flowers and the reason I bought it to begin with.

          My daffies are blooming. I love daffies!

          Our forsythia was blooming, too, but I never got out that way to take a photo.

          On the wild side, we have chickweed blooming.

          Chickweed is completely edible and has a mild, pleasant taste. It’s packed with vitamins A and C, as well as minerals like calcium, magnesium, and iron. Many people add it to salads or cook it like spinach.

          Traditionally, chickweed has been used to soothe skin irritations, wounds, and rashes. It’s also believed to help with arthritis, asthma, and digestive issues. Some herbalists use it in teas, tinctures, or salves for its anti-inflammatory and healing properties.

          There are some studies that suggest chickweed may help with weight loss by regulating fat metabolism and suppressing appetite. Chickweed is also thought to support the lymphatic system, helping the body eliminate toxins and reduce swelling.

          Dandelions are blooming. Every part of the dandelion is edible, from the roots to the flowers. The leaves are rich in vitamins A, C, and K, as well as minerals like iron and potassium. Young leaves are great in salads, while the roots can be roasted and used as a caffeine-free coffee substitute.

Dandelions have been used for centuries in herbal medicine. They are known for their diuretic properties, helping kidney function and detoxification. The roots are particularly valued for liver health and digestion support.

And the last wildflower I missed talking about last week is the one Bondi sniffed when I was trying to tip the flowers up for a better shot.

This is Purple Dead Nettle. It’s called dead nettle because it won’t sting you like nettle does. This plant is not toxic to humans or animals, and some herbalists use it in teas or tinctures for its anti-inflammatory and antihistamine properties. You can even eat it raw in salads!

It’s an early spring bloomer, providing nectar for bees when few other flowers are available.

That catches you up!

This week started with a trip to the grocery.

We rounded a curve. “Look at all the birds!” I exclaimed.

I snap away as we get closer. They’re Turkey Buzzards and we interrupted their breakfast.

This huge expanse that looks like it could be a lake is actually plastic covering whatever crops this farmer is growing.

All along the highway as you’re getting into Tunkhannock, both sides of the highway are lined with white-blooming trees. I suspect, but I’m not one hundred percent sure, that they’re Bradford Pear Trees. It’s a beautiful sight but, “That’s why they’re considered invasive,” I told Mike.

“What’s it hurt?”

“They take over and crowd out the native plants.”

Look at these clouds!

Every time we come home, some little girl expects a new squeaky. They come on a card of five and we always give her one. This time I gave her an extra special treat. I let her open the zippered cooler bag — yes, she can do that — find the card of squeakies, pull them out and rip all the squeakies from the card.

She had so much fun I didn’t mind sweeping up the pieces.

“Pick one,” I told her.

She took the red one and went to play with it while I put the others away. The first thing she does is go to her kennel and dig her bed out. She’ll nose her squeaky under it, or fold it inside, walk away for a second, then come back and get it. She’ll play burying and retrieving it for half an hour and who knows where I’ll find the bed when she’s done.

One thing I always wonder about is how can Bondi tell the difference between two squeakies of the same color. She can, you know.

At the end of the hallway, there’s a graveyard of squeakies — abandoned toys that stay wherever they landed when she’s had enough. We’ll be playing before bed. I’ll toss a ball for Raini and I’ll toss Bondi’s squeaky down the hallway. If her squeaky lands among all the others, she can still tell which one she was playing with.

For kicks and grins, I’ll swap her squeaky for one of the same color. She’ll run after it but won’t bring it back. She’ll come back, sit in front of me, and the look she gives me seems to say, “What’s this shit you’re trying to pull?” 

She knows, I’m tellin’ ya!

Weird, right?

Raini told me something for the first time, this past week. She got my attention, went to where her leash lives on top of her kennel, and pointed her nose at it. She did it several times and I was convinced she was asking me to take her for a walk.

It was beautiful outside so I relented. “Okay, let’s go for a walk.” I got her leash and hooked her up. Then I got Bondi’s harness and leash. “Come here,” I told Bondi. She took one look at what I was holding and took off in the other direction. She stopped. I took a couple of steps toward her and she ran for the bedroom. “Stay here then.”

I took her leash and went outside. Bondi followed — at a safe distance. Raini and I went out the gate. Bondi came running. I held the gate open only a smidge and when she squoze through, I nabbed her. Raini did really well walking on the leash. She didn’t pull at all despite it having been months since I’ve walked her down our road. I’ve learned, though, that to keep peace I have to keep Bondi’s leash short so she stays behind the boss.

I took pictures.

“I was going to go with you,” Mike said when we got back.

“Take us for a golf cart ride,” I suggested.

We went down to the lower bridge. Coming back, I said, “Stop here and let’s go look at the creek.” 

There’s a place where the hunters allow walk-ins to cross their property to the creek.

I let the dogs off the cart, dragging their leashes, and Raini got in the water.

I got distracted by pretty wildflowers and wasn’t paying attention to the dogs.

This one is called Trout Lily.

These are Spring Beauties. They have five petals.

“Raini! Stop!” Mike yelled.

I looked and there was Raini rolling in the tall grass. I went after her, yelling for her to stop the whole way. Did she stop?

NO!

I was almost upon her when she stood and shook herself.

“I don’t see anything,” I called back to where Mike waited on the golf cart. “I think she was just drying herself off.”

Famous last words, right?

I take Raini back to the cart and called for Bondi. I turned around and there was Bondi, rolling in the same spot recently vacated by Raini.

“BONDI STOP!” I yelled.

Did she stop?

NO!

“BONDI COME HERE!” I’d hoped a different command would yield different results.

Did it?

NO!

I had to go after her, too.

I trudge through the tall grass and I’m almost close enough to grab Bondi when she stands up and picks a nugget up out of the grass.

“Drop it!” I command.

Did she drop it?

Yes!

“There is poop here!” I called to Mike. “But I don’t see any on her.”

We get on the cart and head home when I notice Raini does have poop on her brand spankin’ new Seresto flea collar. Then I see a tiny bit on Bondi’s collar too!

“Let me off at the back gate,” I told Mike. “I’ll tie Raini up so she can’t go in the house and I’ll get a bucket of water and clean her off.”

I did, and I did.

After I finished with Raini, I got Bondi. I picked up her head and she had a big ol’ smear of poop from chin to chest!

Ay-yi-yi!

I didn’t want the girls to go in the house right away so I played ball with them.

Another day, Mike yells for me. “Peg, get your camera and come here!”

I know what that means! That means he sees something he knows I’ll like. I don’t hesitate as I stop what I was doing, grab my camera, and head out the front door.

Mike is waiting out front for me and I look around. “What? I don’t see anything?”

“There in the grass,” he says.

I look and still don’t see anything. “Where?”

We walk over into the grass and get close enough to send this guy slithering away.

“Oh!” I say and snap away. “It’s just a little garter snake.” He was only a couple of feet long. “He won’t hurt anything.”

“I know,” Mike said.

I got him turned around and encouraged him to go into the weeds.

“Wanna go for a golf cart ride?” Mike asked.

I was already outside and I already had my camera — and the weather was beautiful!

“Okay.”

Mike takes us down around the pond.

“There’s violets blooming. You can eat them, you know?” I said, getting off the cart.

“What do they taste like?” he asks.

“Purple.”

“What does green taste like?”

“Grass.”

We get to the end of our driveway and see a snapping turtle trying to cross the road.

Mike drove down past him, turned around to come past him again so he was on my side and I could get some good pictures.

Mike pulls into our driveway and stops so we can watch him for a few minutes. The turtle turns around and disappears down into the ditch.

“Uh-oh,” Mike says.

“What?”

He pumps the gas pedal and the engine doesn’t start. Dagnabit! This is the third or fourth time this cart has left us sit. Mike could usually get it to start again by tightening the battery cables, until he couldn’t. Then we replaced the battery cables. Then it let us sit again and he replaced the battery. This is the first time since then. We got off the seat and Mike opened the engine compartment. He tinkered with the battery cables but it still wouldn’t start.

“I’ll have to go for the tractor,” he said.

I looked for the turtle while I waited, but couldn’t see him anywhere. I even walked down to see if he was climbing the bank to our pond. I heard him once but couldn’t spot him.

When Mike got back, I hooked up the tow strap and got back on the cart. On a whim, I pressed the gas petal and it started! Mike saw me coming, reached down and unhooked the strap and handed it to me as I tooled past. I get up to the house and make a U-turn to back the cart in his space. I put it in reverse, hit the gas, and it was dead again!

What is going on!

Mike is confounded.

>>>*<<<

Raini is up to her old tricks again.

“What tricks would that be?” you wanna know.

She’s going after the tires on the lawnmower.

“I thought you fenced it in?” you say.

That’s right! Good memory! We did! We put chicken wire the whole way around the alcove and it worked for a while. Unfortunately, someone discovered that she can scoot under the wire.

The weather was beautiful this week. We scrounged around and found everything we needed to make a proper fence. The dogs stayed close by as we worked and didn’t get in our way at all.

She’ll never get to the lawnmower tires again — unless she learns to climb, that is.

Something I made this week, from a recipe I found online, was something called Stupid Pie. I read the ingredients and the directions and decided it was something that I wanted to make.

You know me! I like to make things. I love all my old tried-and-true recipes and crafts, but there’s nothing quite so exciting as something new — especially if it’s good.

“How do you make Stupid Pie?” you ask.

Oh! It’s so easy!

Preheat your oven to 350. Grease a 9-inch pie plate. In a medium bowl beat 3 egg whites until foamy. Add 1 cup granulated sugar and mix until stiff peaks form. Set aside. Crush 23 Ritz crackers roughly, not all the way to crumbs. Stir into whipped egg whites gently, along with 1 cup chopped pecans and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Spread in pie plate and bake 25-30 minutes until lightly golden. Top with whipped cream. Can be eaten right away or chilled.

There you go. Instructions and ingredients all at once!

I got to wondering about this recipe.

“Is this something new or something old with a different name?” I asked my AI buddy.

“It seems like Stupid Pie is a modern revival of an old-fashioned dessert that has been around for decades. The quirky name might be new, but the concept has been enjoyed under different names for years! It’s quite similar to some older desserts that have gone by different names such as Pecan Delight, Angel Pecan Pie, Mystery Pie, and Cracker Pie,” Copilot tells me.

There you have it!

I wasn’t sure I liked it at first but after it was chilled, I liked it a lot. I took some down for Miss Rosie and Lamar and Lamar liked it so much he couldn’t stop talking about it — or so I hear. I’ll have to make it again but I’m going to call it by one of its other names.

Speaking of recipes...

I saw a woman on Facebook show how to make a fool-proof loaf of homemade bread that came out very soft with a soft crust. The recipe she gave is almost exactly like the recipe I use. She added sugar, which I don’t, and she stretched and folded it twice before she rolled it out, rolled it up, and put it in the pan for the final rising.

There is no way that the recipe she gave resulted in a dough that could be stretched and folded. I’m thinking the reason it was softer was because of the oil she rolled the dough in before dumping it onto the counter.

I gave it a try and the results I got were not what she presented. In fact, I thought the crust was harder. I wonder if using a stand mixer with a dough hook was what made the difference.

 Our Bradford Pear trees are blooming. They’re way down past the barn, on the other side of the driveway, on the opposite side of the house as my kitchen and I can stand at my kitchen window and watch their white petals fall from the sky like snow. They really sail a long way on the wind.

This is a Boxelder. It’ll get “helicopters” on it just like a maple tree because, guess what?

“It is a maple?” you guess.

Yep! It is a maple.

Our Rhodies are blooming, too.

My best old friend in West Virgina told me the hummingbirds have made it back to her house. So, I’m looking for them here next week.

What I did see this week was a bright and colorful Baltimore Oriole.

I know that some of you are following my art journey. I haven’t done much this week because guess what? The weather was so beautiful I spent a couple of afternoons cleaning the kitchen patio and just sitting and enjoying being outside.

This is all I’ve done and the instructor got ahead of me so I never finished.

Speaking of done...

Let’s call this one done!

Miss Me?

           Did you miss me?

          I know that some of you did. And know this for sure — I missed you. In my mind’s eye, I see all your beautiful faces, feel your hearts full of love, and try to think what pictures you might like to see, what stories you might like to hear.

          “Where were you?” you wanna know.

          Where was I?

          Well, actually, I wasn’t anywhere, at least not during my letter blog writing time. I was here in my mountain home, working on a very special and time sensitive project for a very special lady I love.

          “What were you doing?” you ask.

          I’m so glad you asked!

          My church peep, and sister in Christ, Joanie, is the lady I was talking about. Her 95-year-old mother died and Joanie found a journal Eileen had been keeping. Inside the journal she wrote letters to her children. Eileen had thirteen kids but they’ve lost a sibling to cancer.

          “I’d like to make copies of this for my siblings,” Joanie mentioned to me.

          “I can do that for you.” Joanie gave me the journal. I scanned each page into my computer — as a jpeg — a picture. I wanted to be able to edit them.

          Then Joanie sent me enough photos that I could put pictures on all the opposing pages. I tried my best to match a picture to who or what Eileen was talking about.

          I started the project on a Wednesday, worked on it over the weekend, and finished it just two hours before the deadline, six days later. Whew! There for a while I wasn’t sure I was even going to get it done!

          “What took so long?” you wonder.

          There were 43 pages including a front cover, a memorial page, and a printed copy of the obit. Scanning takes time. I wasn’t tracking, so I don’t know how long it took to do that part, but it wasn’t overly long. After scanning, the pages had to be edited, then brought over to a program where I resized them to print on a half-sheet size piece of paper.

          All of the photos had to be downloaded (which didn’t take too long), then they had to go through some editing — cropping and adjusting the light, and to add a little more interest — a little more cuteness — I added frames and clipart. Again, I wasn’t tracking time so I don’t know how long the designing portion took either.

          Printing! Now that was time consuming! Because everything printed as photos, it took the printer thirty minutes to print 15 copies of one side of one page — and the pages were double-sided. That’s 84 pages! Do the math.

          “Peg, your math isn’t very good,” you say.

          I know, right! Two pages were single sided.

          Aaaaaaand — we won’t mention the reprints because I messed up.

          Let’s complicate this a little more, shall we?

          Our church let me use their comb binder and combs to put the books together. I took 45 pages with me so I could get the right size comb. The largest size in our stock seemed the right fit to me.

          “Are you sure it’s gonna fit?” my ever-helpful handsome mountain man asked as he saw my pile of printed papers grow.

          “I think so.”

          “If you need bigger ones, we need to order them now so you get them in time,” he pointed out.

          He was right. I took 45 pages and punched ‘em. The machine only has two adjustments for paper size, regular and legal. Consequently, the holes were very close to the bottom edge on a half-sheet. The comb size was perfect for the number of pages. In another respect, they were too long. I had to cut four combs off so they fit.

          I continued the printing process, calling up the next page on my computer and adding paper to the printer.

          You know, Peg, I said to myself. And to quote my father, “I always call myself Bert ‘cause that’s my name, don’cha know?” Rather than printing them all, why don’t you print half? Then you can bind them while the rest are printing.

          That sounded like a good idea to me!

          Another perk of doing it that way was if I messed up and put the wrong picture on the back of the wrong page, I’d only mess up seven copies instead of 16.

          “Peg, I thought you were making 15 copies?” you query.

          Yes, that’s true. But I was printing a copy for our church as well. Several people expressed an interest in reading it, so 16 copies it was.

          I was contemplating the punching issue and how I could better center the punches on the half sheet. I need something to put in for a stop. I even thought maybe I wouldn’t change it because if I did, I’d have to reprint 45 pages — or they wouldn’t align. I pushed that thought aside. I wanted them to be nice for my best girl.

          A picture of a stick flashed through my mind’s eye. But how to get a small piece was rattling around in my head. I envisioned pulling a splinter off a piece of wood or cutting myself as I whittled a piece down. Then my thoughts landed on a toothpick! It was already small. I broke the tip off and thought to insert it against the stop. But how am I going to hold it there? I wondered. The answer came to me — hot glue!

          “How will you get the glue off?” you ask.

          No worries. Hot glue doesn’t bond well to plastic. I was almost certain I’d be able to peel it off. To make sure, I tried it in an inconspicuous spot. I was right. The glue peeled right off.

          At first, I thought I’d put the toothpick inside, against the stop, then I saw how the machine was made and knew it would work better, and be easier to remove, if I laid it across the top.

Despite being careful, I had to reprint a lot — thanks to misaligned punches, punching the pages upside down, and misprints. The rejects aren’t a total loss, though. I can use them to clean paint from the plate in gel printing.

                    >>>*<<<

          In other news...

          I had a big bird circling my house one day. I got my camera and looked through the zoom. It was a turkey vulture. I didn’t think too much about it. The next day I walk out and see a big bird sitting in a tree across the road and two more big birds took flight from the ground. I grabbed my camera. Turkey vultures.

          Something’s dead, I think. And you might not be surprised to hear that I had to find out what it was. One thing I knew for sure, all of my cats were accounted for.

          I found a way down the steep bank and made my way to where I thought the buzzards had been. I didn’t find or smell anything dead. Maybe they were just resting or getting a drink from the nearby creek.

          A lot of garbage has accumulated on the bank through the years.

          A tire so old it’s been assimilated into the ecosystem.

          An old can, slowly rusting away.

          A huge concrete slab. 

          My camera found other things to photograph as well. The white against all the winter brown caught my eye. I thought, fungus? Looking closer, I was surprised that they were teeny tiny flowers!

          More white. The veins of a leaf. 

          The bright reds of the newly sprouting multiflora rose leaves.

          The catkins have gone to seed and droop with the wetness of the recent rain. 

          Someday I’m going to hack steps into the steep bank and have access to our part of this beautiful creek.

          >>>*<<<

          The lease for our Buick will be up soon. Mike has had his heart set on an electric vehicle for some time, so we went shopping. While EVs are still pretty pricey, and the infrastructure is still lacking, we found a Kia Sorento Hybrid that we could afford.

          Can you say road pictures?

          “Road pictures!”

Still standing! 

          Train graffiti. 

          Turkeys.

          We couldn’t buy a car that day. We keep our credit frozen so no one can apply for credit in our name, but we got to look at a Sorento, sit in it, check out its features, talk about whether to lease or buy, what rebates and interest rates were being offered, then we talked about color.

          “I don’t want a black interior,” Mike told Rich, the agent at Kia.

          “Black is by far the most requested color for interior,” he told us. “That makes it hard to find in any other color. Let me check and see what we have at our other dealerships.”

          We waited.

          “They have two at the dealership in New York. I can have it here tomorrow.”

          We made an appointment to come in the next day and went home and unfroze our credit.

The next morning, we were on our way when Rich called us. “It’s not here yet and I don’t know when it will be here. And once it gets here, we still have to detail it.”

We rescheduled.

“I’m surprised he said Monday,” I told Mike.

“How come?”

“When we were down there at the dealership, he said he was taking Monday and Tuesday off to use up some of his vacation days.”

Monday. We were excited to be shedding this shoebox of Buick Encore. Okay! Okay! It might not be quite that small, but it’s too small for us.

“Let’s use the GPS and see if there’s a different way to get there,” I suggested. “Maybe I’ll get some new pictures for my letter blog.”

“Okay,” Mike agreed.

I put Matthews Kia of Blakely in my phone and let it take us across country.

Can you say, “Road pictures!”

The first part of the trip was on roads we usually travel.

We interrupted breakfast.

The forsythia is blooming in Tunkhannock, days before ours bloom here.

Once we hit Dalton, we left the highway. I took a picture of the building on the corner both coming and going.

          Another coming and going picture.

          Mike and I walked in the dealership, my eyes trained to Rich’s office. It was dark. “He’s not here,” I said.

          There were a couple of other guys around. One was with a customer and one was on the phone.

          “Let’s look at it again and just make sure there’s enough room,” Mike said and opened the Sorento Hybrid on the showroom floor.

          I will always be grateful Rich wasn’t there that day.

          As Mike sat in the Sorento, I watched as a bald-headed guy in a bright orange Under Armour shirt glanced at me, pushed his chair back from his desk, and stood up with the phone to his ear. Trying to wrap up his conversation as quickly as he could, he bent over as his head followed the handset to its cradle. Straightening up came around the desk.

          “Are you the Lubys?” he asked.

          I grinned. “We are.”

          He extended his hand. “I’m Billy. Rich called in sick this morning and asked me to take over for him.”

          It was only when I took his hand that I noticed there was something different about Billy. I’m not going to say wrong, because there’s nothing wrong with him. Billy was born with ectrodactyly or split hand/split foot malformation (SHFM).

          We spent the next four hours or so, making a deal on a new car and getting to know this amazing man.

          “Tell us about him,” you say.

          I fully intend to — but not now. Not in this letter blog. I want to write another story just about Billy. It may take me some time to do it, so don’t look for it right away, but it will soon be in the works!

          I have more pictures to show you, more stories, and I forgot a part of one of my stories. It’s too hard to fix now because all the pictures jump around on the pages and it’s a real time-consuming job to fix it. Much easier to talk about it next time.

          Let’s call this one done!