My Miss Rosie and I had a discussion about the church sign in last week’s letter blog.
“It’s to let people know the church is on the right,” she said.
“What people?” I asked. “The sign faces the bank. Only the people going to the bank or the people working at the bank are going to see it.”
Miss Rosie, and maybe you, are confused. “Isn’t it right there in front of the Dandy?” she asked.
“Yes, but you can’t read it from the road.”
We were out this week and I took pictures to show you what I mean.
You can see only the top of the sign because there’s a van in front of it, but even if you could read it, the church isn’t on the right, it’s there on the left just past the sign. On the other side of the road is a car in the bank parking lot.
This is pulling into the bank parking lot. Now you can read the sign (if my photo was better) and the church is on the right.
I took the last photo as we left the bank. You can see our gas is $3.24 at the Dandy. You can see Napa Auto Parts across the road. And if your eyes are really good, you can see the turnoff for 706 is just ahead. What you can’t read is the church sign. The church is on my right at this point, but the sign is past it. You can see the nearest cross road is on the other side of the Dandy and a truck waiting for traffic to clear is sitting on the opposite side. So, who exactly is the sign for? Is it a personal vendetta?
We went out this week, I told you that already. We did a little shopping and returned a light Mike bought for Big Red. The topper had a light in the top center and somewhere along the line of years, it got broken or fell out, I don’t remember exactly what happened to it. For the last few years the hole for the missing light was covered with that good ol’ fashionable and reliable duct tape.
The light Mike bought was for a Leer topper and Big Red was sporting a Century.“I feel like an idiot,” Mike confessed.
“We’re old,” I consoled. “They’ll understand.”
“And we don’t drive it much,” he pointed out.
There for a few years, we didn’t drive it at all!
Leer makes Century truck tops, but the place we went to didn’t deal with the Century brand. He did, however, give Mike the name of a place that does deal in them.
“It’s in Milton,” Mike told me when he came back empty-handed to the car. “You wanna go on a road trip?”
“Well, yeah! But not today.” As a matter of fact, it’ll be next week. You’ll have those road pictures to look forward to, if that’s your jam — if that’s something you like.
Here I could see distant fog and even distanter wind turbines on the hillside. (Boy, I bet “distanter” makes my editor’s left eye twitch!)
The vultures were in their tree, their wings spread. This stretched-wing position is called the horaltic pose, and it’s not only used by vultures, but some hawks, storks, and cormorants do this as well. While scientists are not certain of the exact function of this behavior, they believe the reasons range from temperature regulation to parasite control.
We passed three oversize loads heading for the gas field. We see oversize loads fairly often, but seldom three in a row. The first one had passed before I thought to take a picture.
Both sides of the road in Tunkhannock were lined with picture signs for all of the seniors graduating from the high school.
You just never know what’s going to catch my fancy and make me take a picture for you, do you?
Linda, one of our church peeps, is in a physical therapy center. She was there for two weeks before I found out where she was. While we were in Tunkhannock we stopped to visit her.
This place is brand-spankin’-new. It’s only been open for a month.
“How is this place funded?” Mike asked Gerri, the cute little redhead at the reception desk.
She turned to a man sitting next to her, doing paperwork. “That’s a question for Dave,” she said.
Hearing his name, Dave perked up. “What’s that?”
Mike repeated his question.
“It’s privately funded,” Dave answered.
Because this is a memory care center, and they can’t have Alzheimer patients wandering away, the staff has to let you in and out with a key card.
Linda loves reading my letter blogs and I print them for her every week. Knowing we were going to see her, I delivered the two weeks she missed as well as the current issue. I don’t know how long she’ll be staying there, but she’s in good spirits and working hard to gain her strength back. The people at the facility are good to her and she had nothing but nice things to say. Linda even told us about her favorites and how they make her feel special.
She is, you know. She is a special lady.
Other than that, it was a quiet, stay-at-home week.
I was happy for a break in the rain and got my dog run mowed. I thought that was quite enough for one day, so I sat on the patio and drank a bottle of water while I cooled off.
I’m glad I had my camera close by.
A Spicebush Swallowtail landed on the flowers waiting to be repotted.
A whistle pig makes his way across the concrete. A groundhog will have several burrows in his territory and move from one to another so he doesn’t deplete the food supply in any one area.
The dogs were with me but they didn’t see him or they’d’ve barked up a tornado! That’s bigger than a storm, don’cha know.
Noise from the sky drew my attention. A big bird came into view, trailed by two smaller birds attacking him. They landed in a nearby tree.
I’m guessing the orange bird is a Baltimore Oriole, but I can't quite identify the other one.
The big black one took to the wing, and as he flew away, I caught sight of his fan-shaped tail — and I know it’s a crow.
The two smaller birds weren’t done with him yet. They took off in hot pursuit. This behavior is called mobbing. Smaller birds team up to drive away larger ones they see as a threat — like the crow. They’ll swoop, call loudly, and even strike him as they chase him away. Crows, for all their intelligence, get mobbed pretty often by smaller birds. He might’ve been prowling for a nest to raid, looking for eggs or nestlings.
“They eat other bird babies?!” you cry incredulously.
Yep. Not a pretty picture, I know. It’s part of their opportunistic diet. While they mostly eat fruits, seeds, insects, and carrion, they won't pass up an easy meal if they find an unattended nest. That said, they're not the worst offenders when it comes to nest predation. Other birds, like blue jays and grackles, as well as mammals like squirrels and raccoons, also raid nests. It’s just part of life.
It was so nice to be sitting on the patio after what seems like weeks of rain and bone-chilling temperatures. Granted, high fifties and low sixties isn’t exactly bone-chilling and would definitely feel great if it had been the dead of winter, but not after a week of seventies and eighties! The dampness and chill cut right to the bone and drove us back inside.
So, there I was, enjoying patio-sitting, admiring the freshly-cut lawn, recuperating and hydrating, after all my hard work, when I hear it.
“Hear what?” you wanna know.
I hear the buzz of a million bees! Okay, okay! A million bees might be hyperbole. I don’t know how many bees it takes to make such an audible buzzing sound from such a distance, but I knew what it was. I looked up and what do I see? My locust trees are in bloom!
It had been so long since this has happened that I’d forgotten they were white blooms. I told you last week that they were pink. I was obviously wrong.
In my defense, I’ve seen locust trees with pink blooms. We had them in Missouri. That must be how this old-lady brain got it confused.
I planted Johnny-jump-ups in a raised bed where they lived happily for two years. This year they got a little wandering spirit in them and they’ve left their bed.
A few of them have even made it up into the next raised bed where the rhubarb lives.
A yellow bird catches my attention. I barely got my camera up in time before he left. But I needn’t’ve worried. He came back to the same place again and again and again. At first, I thought he was after nesting material, but I never did see him take any. Whatever he was up to, he gave me lots of opportunities to take his picture.
He hopped from one section of fence to another, and I followed with my camera.
While going through the pictures on the computer, I see this one.
This is a Northern Warbler. It looks like he’s sticking his head in the end of the rusted fence pipe. I’m thinking he found a nest of insects and he (or maybe it’s a she) is taking food back to the babies. They’ll eat spiders, caterpillars, beetles, flies, and ants.
Now, a word about my rusted fence pipe.
We bought the fencing used for a great price. We flipped the panels over so we had good, sturdy pipe on the bottom for the dog run. We’ll just call the top rusted parts character.
And then I saw this guy! That long tail gave him away; it’s a Brown Thrasher.
I couldn’t help but laugh as I watched him pick something up and toss it to the ground. The way he did it reminded me of how birds crack open snail shells. But here, sunflower seeds are the only thing I know for sure is there on the ground under the feeder.
Since I’m not familiar with this bird, I asked Copilot, my AI buddy, what the Thrasher was doing.
“That sounds like classic Brown Thrasher behavior! They’re known for their vigorous foraging style — flipping over leaves, tossing aside debris, and even batting around objects as they search for food. If it was under your sunflower feeder, it may have been inspecting discarded shells or testing the weight and edibility of fallen seeds. Alternatively, Thrashers sometimes play with their food — tossing larger insects, nuts, or other items to break them open or reposition them before eating. They’re methodical hunters and often repeat actions if they’re unsure about an item’s usefulness.”
So, there you have it.
I saw an orange toad! I don’t recall ever having seen one in this color before. I Googled it and it’s in the range of colors that toads can come in.
Once I finished a bottle of water and rested for a bit, I got up and repotted the flowers I’d bought.
You see the water pitcher with flowers in it? My beautiful friend Annette made it in pottery class. It was nested in its basin in the middle of my dining room table. Then one day, as I sat on my knees on the floor scooping Sugar’s litterbox, I was tossing the ball over the table for Raini. I always toss the ball for her while I’m scooping the box. It’s a game she loves and has come to expect. As soon as she sees I’m getting ready to do the litterbox, she runs to find her ball, brings it to me, and drops it beside me. As soon as my hand reaches for it, Raini races around the table and waits on the other side for the ball to come sailing over the top. Sometimes I make her wait an extra fifteen or twenty seconds. Much longer than that and she’ll come back to see what the holdup is. Playing slows down the litterbox scooping process, but it sure makes for one happy Heeler! I didn’t put quite enough oomph into a throw one day and the ball clipped the top of the pitcher, sending it jangling onto its side against the basin. And just like that, the pour spout was broken into three pieces.
Aye-yi-yi!
I was sad.
I love the pitcher and basin and I love that my friend made it. I felt really bad.
I set the pitcher up and fit the pieces back together and — surprise! — they stayed without a drop of glue. A casual glance wouldn’t even tell you it was broken.
So, there it stayed, and I was more careful and deliberate with my over-the-table tosses.
Until I wasn’t.
Raini brought the ball back to me and I was feeling a little short. Short on time, short on patience. I wanted the job done and to go back to what I was doing before. I picked the ball up and tossed it back over my shoulder without a glance. Reaching for the pooper-scooper, I heard the clang and rattle-rattle as the pitcher went over on its side again.
Sigh.
“What was that?” my handsome mountain man called from his recliner.
“Nothing!” I said. But it wasn’t nothing. I had to confess. “I hit the pitcher with the ball — again!”
“Peg! Didn’t you learn the first time?” you wanna know.
You’d think I would, wouldn’t you! (Not a question, Editor, a statement of fact.)
Now my pitcher spout was in four pieces!
This is ridiculous! I admonished myself. I fit the pieces back into place and moved it to a different place, one that didn’t include the table!
I didn’t want to throw it away. For the next couple of days, I let it rattle around in my head. Maybe I could break it into smaller pieces and use it for a mosaic, I think. Then I decided to glue it back together and make a cascading flower planter out of it, maybe set the basin of water under it for the birds and bees to play in. I just have to be careful not to leave the pitcher out in the rain or my flowers will drown or float out. Either that or make some kind of cover for it — or drill a hole in the bottom for drainage.
I’ll figure it out.
I could’ve just given you the short version. I broke a pitcher while tossing the ball for Raini and decided to turn it into a flower pot.
But stories have a way of taking on a life of their own, and before I knew it, those nineteen words had stretched into more than 500.
We’ve had a lot of rain. Guess who got stuck again.
Once I had Mike back on his way, I took my camera and went for a walk around the pond.
“What did you see?”
I’m so glad you asked!
The first thing I saw were these Whirligig Beetles. Did you know that these guys are the wild little acrobats of the water? They get their name from the way they zip around in dizzying circles on the surface. Whirligigs have split eyes, the top half sees above water, while the bottom half watches below. That means they can keep an eye out for both predators from the air (like birds) and prey beneath the surface (like tiny insects). Another interesting trick they have is to trap an air bubble under their body to help them breathe underwater when they dive. It's like carrying their own oxygen tank!
The surface of the pond is decorated in the white petals from the Nannyberry tree that lives on its bank. I sorta like the underwater forest this picture depicts.
And I saw two baby turtles! This is the first time I’ve ever seen them this little in my pond. I believe they’re Eastern Painted turtles and one saw me coming and took a dive before I could focus the camera.
Lastly, I have about a third of a blank page staring at me — in the printed version of my jibber-jabber. Rather than leave it blank, I went back through the week’s photos and found this cute one of Bondi.
I was sitting on the patio after mowing the dog run when Bondi jumped into a chair, then onto the table. But then she got stuck — she couldn’t figure out how to navigate around the collection of yard sale junk to reach me.
And now that the white space is mostly gone, let’s call this one done!
Done!
P.S. Then I realized this was only page nine! OY! There’s a whole blank page on the other side of this one! Nonetheless, be that as it may, and furthermore, we’re still calling it done!
