Did
you miss me last week?
“I did,” my oldest and much-adored sister told me. “Even though you told us in your morning love note that you weren’t going to write, I really like getting them and missed it this week.”
It did my heart so much good to hear that. It’s like Patti knew I could use a little extra encouragement and took time from her busy schedule to drop me a short note.
“Why didn’t you write last week?” you wanna know.
I just didn’t think I had much to talk about. I hadn’t been anyplace and hadn’t taken many photos. In fact, I didn’t even bother to download my cameras, that’s how sure I was that there wasn’t anything to talk about.
“I’m sure next week's will be extra special,” Patti said.
I’m not so sure about that but here goes. Let’s start with the wildflowers that are blooming around here right now.
This
teeny-tiny little white flower is Northern Bedstraw. It was used in folk
medicine as a tea to help with urinary tract issues. Crushed leaves were
applied to irritated or ulcerated skin. Some herbalists used it in calming teas
to ease tension and promote relaxation. And the roots were boiled to make a red
or purple dye.
It’s
called Bedstraw because it was once used as a mattress stuffing. The dried
stems and leaves contain coumarin, a
sweet-smelling compound that repels insects and gives off a pleasant, hay-like
scent. Imagine drifting off to sleep on a fragrant, bug-resistant bed of
bedstraw!
While
you can eat this kind of Bedstraw, it’s not as palatable as some of the other varieties.
This kind is best in tea or as a coffee substitute, if you roast the seeds.
I
found Orange Hawkweed growing beside the road. While I have a lot of it growing
in my yard, mine is the yellow color.
This wildflower is also called Devil’s Paintbrush because of its aggressive spread. It has the ability to form dense mats that crowd out the native plants.
The young leaves and flowers are technically edible and have been used to add a splash of color to salads or brewed into herbal teas, but it’s slightly bitter.
In folk medicine it was used as a diuretic and detox, for respiratory relief, a digestive aid, and anti-inflammatory.
I spent quite a bit of time on my kitchen patio.
A lot of it was just sitting.
Drinking coffee or water, watching the birds and listening to their bird song. And I was perfectly happy.
This little House Finch came by for breakfast, all puffed up like a feathered marshmallow. It tickled me. I wondered if he was drying off after all the rain we’ve had or maybe those tiny bugs they get are like little vampires. Sucking their blood by moonlight and poof! Vaporized by the sun.
They would crash into my kitchen window a lot! From their perch on the feeders, they’d see the sky reflected in the glass and fly right into it. It never seemed to seriously hurt any of them, thankfully, but that sound? It got to me every time.
“What did you do?” you wanna know.
I
Googled it. They said a screen on the window would help and if they still flew
into it, at least it would cushion the blow. I found the screen that went to
the window and put it back in.
“Why
did you take it out to begin with?” you may wonder.
And that’s a great question, one I may not’ve thought to answer if you hadn’t’ve asked.
Before Mike put electric on the patio, I would run an extension cord through the open window when I was working on projects. Once he did put the electric out there, I never put the screen back in because we never opened the window after that. If I want fresh air, I open the door. That’s way easier.
While
sitting on the patio, I took a look around and realized Mike’s six-foot ladder
had been camped out there for weeks. I’ve been meaning to put a few more screws
up and rearrange things. Some screws were doing double and triple duty, with
two or three things competing for space. This week, I finally tackled it. I
moved things around, spaced them out, and gave every piece its own proper home.
I was up and down that ladder
like it was my full-time job! I’d climb up, drive in a screw, climb down, move
the ladder, climb back up to get the piece I wanted, climb down again, shift
the ladder, then climb back up to hang the thing in its new home. I only did it
that way once. I learned. After that, I started bringing the piece with me on
the first trip up. Even then, there was still a lot of ladder shuffling and
stair-stepping to get everything where it belonged.
These days, I’m extra careful
on ladders. My sister Patti once stepped off thinking she was on the bottom
rung — but she wasn’t. She broke her leg, didn’t have her phone, and had to
crawl back to the house just to call for help!
Aye-yi-yi!
That story sticks with me. I
didn’t want that to happen to me! Every time, before I stepped off the ladder,
I took an extra second and visually checked to make sure I was at the bottom of
the ladder. Old people don’t bounce, they break.
My phone rang.
Guess who got the mower stuck?
I took a break from
rearranging the patio to pull my handsome mountain man out.
“Peg, that’s not your regular
mower,” you say.
Nope. No. It’s not the Gravely
Zero Turn. It’s been so wet that Mike thought he’d avoid getting stuck by using
the four-wheel drive Kioti tractor with the belly mower.
“I
thought you were going to stay away from the wet stuff,” I scolded as I hooked
up the tow strap to the back of the golf cart.
“I
didn’t think I’d get stuck coming down the hill,” Mike said.
After
having driven down to the Leer truck cap factory outlet and not getting the
light we needed for Big Red, Mike went back to the truck cap place in
Tunkhannock and re-bought the one he’d returned. Raini and I helped him put it
in. It took a little engineering on Mike’s part, but he got it to work.
Sometimes,
if I’m standing still, Raini comes up and presses her body against my legs. Most
often it’s while I’m doing dishes, or standing at the counter that she does it,
but she did it here in the barn when we were helping Mike. She is protective of
me, but not against Mike. I think this is her way of saying, “I need a hug.” I
usually reach down and give her a quick scratch or a pat on the shoulder when
she does it.
Speaking
of our girls, Bondi doesn’t sit in my desk chair with me anymore. She used to
lay behind me while I sat on the edge of the chair. For more than three years
she did that. It’s been months now, since she sat with me. I think, but can’t
say for sure, that she’s more comfortable in the recliner with Mike. One thing
is for sure, I’m more comfortable! But I do miss her.
Reading
and putzing around aren’t the only things I did this week. I made a
stained-glass suncatcher as a graduation gift for Heidi, the Pastor’s daughter.
I do love glass and copper together. Heidi liked it, too.
I
also worked on a watercolor dog portrait. I love this view of Scout as he has
his nose stuck up to the camera, but I’m afraid it looks disproportionate if
you didn’t know it was supposed to look this way and I don’t know what to do to
make the viewer understand that that’s what’s going on.
The
first time I painted it, I didn’t even finish it. Maybe I’ll go back and work
on it just for the experience. I didn’t like the dark snout.
So,
what did I do the second time I painted it?
Don’t laugh.
I made it even darker!
Aye-yi-yi!
But, to be fair, it IS dark in the photo.
The painting is sitting on my
desk and I look at it and I just don’t like it.
Then one day, Me says to Myself, “Peg,” I
call myself Peg ‘cause that’s my name, don’cha know. Me says, “Peg, just
because it’s dark in the photo doesn’t mean you have to paint it dark.”
That was my ah-ha moment.
When I try it again, I’m not
going to make the snout on Scout dark! I’ll also pick one color for around his
eyes and that color might not be either of the two I tested in this piece.
It’s all about practice.
While I was sitting on the
patio, I decided to make some tin can flowers, something I haven’t done in a
year. I’ll paint them bright colors and hang them on the fence.
I saw a video where someone
cut the top off a plastic bottle, threaded the corner of a plastic bag up
through it, cut the corner, and folded it down over the top. Now your plastic
bag has a screw top.
I just opened a bag of brown rice and
tried it. It works. It seals the bag and pours nicely, but honestly, a twist
tie works equally well and would’ve been a whole lot less trouble.
Another hack, or tip, I saw is one I
rather like. When you open a bag of veggies or, in this case, tater tots, cut a
V out of the top middle and tie the corners together. The reason I like this
one is because the plastic on these bags tends to be thicker and my twist ties
aren’t quite long enough.
I spent several hours out in that wreck of a room I call a library, sorting books by author and genre. Then I posted twenty-seven Dean R. Koontz books for twenty dollars. I went back out to the library and brought in thirteen of my Patricia Cornwell soft backs. I turned around from the table where I’d just taken their picture, to the computer, and had a buyer for my Koontz books already. I posted the Cornwell books for fifteen dollars, and while typing a reply for the Koontz books, the same buyer wanted the Cornwell books as well.
Did I sell them too cheap?
Were they worth more?
Maybe.
“He’s probably gonna resell
them and make money on them,” Mike said.
Mike is probably right, but
honestly, I don’t care. The buyer is a gal named Trish (not my WV best bud) and
she didn’t try to talk my price down.
“I don’t drive,” Trish said.
“Can you ship them?”
“I can, but you’ll have to pay
shipping,” I told her.
“That’s fine,” she replied.
“Give me your address and I’ll send the money.”
It was while talking to her
that I found out she lives in Hughesville, about an hour from us.
“We
could take them down and stop for a sandwich at that little restaurant in Muncy
Valley,” Mike suggested.
Trish
agreed to pay fifteen dollars for us to bring them down.
Can you say, “Road pictures!”?
I’ve passed this spot several times, always noticing a portion of the field fenced off with a sign posted on it. I tried snapping a photo, but never got one clear enough to actually read it. So naturally, my imagination filled in the blanks.
Maybe it was a habitat for some elusive critter, protected by law and lovingly hidden away. Or maybe it was a rare plant, tucked behind that fence like a botanical treasure.
On this trip, I finally got an answer. Turns out, I was partially right — it is for protection. It’s guarding a pipeline. I’m guessing the sign identifies the owner of the pipeline and maybe has emergency contact information on it.
Mike had taken us through Sonestown, then we crossed the new 220 and went up the old 220. I’d been seeing these purple flowers growing along the highway in several places and because there was no traffic behind us, Mike stopped and backed up so I could get a picture for you.
“What
is it?” I know you wanna know.
This
is Purple-flowering Raspberry or sometimes called Virginia Raspberry, or
Thimbleberry.
This raspberry has no thorns
and produces red, fuzzy berries that are technically edible but are dry or
bland. The critters like it more than people do. It’s a pollinator
magnet for bees, butterflies, and even hummingbirds love it. Plus, it provides
shelter and food for various critters.
In folk medicine, the leaves
and roots have been used for their astringent properties, particularly to help
with digestive issues like diarrhea.
Like other raspberries, it
may have been applied topically for minor skin irritations, though this is less
documented.
The berries can also produce a natural dye in shades of blue to purple, which might’ve been used in traditional crafts.
A section of the old road still has the
old cable-style guard rails.
Do you remember that I went to a
specialist and had a root canal done on a tooth about six weeks ago? I’m pretty
sure I told you about it. Well, it’s been bothering me since then. I know it’s
not the tooth itself, because Dr. Steve, my dentist, put the permanent filling
in it and didn’t use any Novocain. The problem is in the gum. It only hurt when
I bit on it, wiggled, or tapped it. I said something to my dentist about it,
but he didn’t want anything to do with it.
“You have to go back to where
they did the root canal and have them check it,” he told me. “They did the
work, and maybe they’ll know something about it that I wouldn’t know. You need
to get it taken care of before we crown it,” Dr. Steve went on to say.
Okay, then.
I called the specialist and they
could get me in that same day. Unfortunately, we were heading to Hughesville to
deliver books. I made an appointment for the next day.
The morning fog was still burning off when
we left.
We’re driving down the road
and the funny man I’m married to says, “What’s a Mar?”
My mind goes to, Mar? Lamar? And tried to puzzle out
what he was asking. I almost asked him, “What’s Lamar doing?”
But before I could ask, Mike
said, “Oh.” I looked over at him. He looked in the rearview mirror and said,
“It’s backwards.”
It took me a second to switch
the letters in my head. M A R to R A M. There must’ve been a Ram truck behind
us and I laughed when I got the joke. And that’s why they spell ambulance backward
on the fronts of ambulances!
We’re almost home when, out of
the blue, Mike says, “Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.”
Once again, I’m puzzled. I
look over to Mike and he tips his chin to the road in front of us. There, on
the road, are tire marks were a tractor trailer tire skipped long the blacktop.
I laughed at my silly
husband. Sometimes pictures have sounds. He then imitated the sound of a solid
line of black marks. Both sounds I’m sure he’s heard more than once in his long
truck-driving career.
I didn’t take many pictures
on that trip. I just didn’t see anything that inspired me.
The root canal specialist
believes I have an infection in my gum, but there’s no abscess. He gave me a
hand-held mirror and showed me how the healthy gums reacted when he ran his
dental tool around a tooth and how it bled easily when he did the same thing
around the tooth that had the root canal.
“I’m going to give you a
Z-pack and a special mouthwash,” he told me. “Before you go to bed at night,
put a nice gob of toothpaste on your toothbrush and go around that tooth and
the tooth in front of it for about 10-15 seconds. Then swish the mouthwash
around for 20 seconds or so, spit it out, and go to bed and let it do its
work.”
They called the two
prescriptions in to Walmart in Tunkhannock for me.
Mike and I stopped and had
lunch and it was a couple of hours later before we got to Walmart. I gave the
gal at the pharmacy my name and date of birth.
“They just phoned it in,” she
told me. “It’ll be a while until it’s ready.”
I was dumbfounded. I thought
they’d’ve called it in before this.
“I’ll note that you’re
waiting and it’ll be about twenty minutes,” the gal said.
Okay, then.
I thanked her and went back
out to the car where Mike sat waiting for me.
“We can pick it up Monday
when we come back over for my dental appointment,” I suggested.
“Maybe we should just wait
and get it now so you can start the meds,” Mike said.
“Peg, another dental
appointment!?” you exclaim.
I know, right! I’ve
definitely been spending a lot of time in dental chairs lately, that’s for
sure! But Monday is for a six-month cleaning.
While we were sitting there, waiting
for my prescriptions to be filled, the skies opened up and rain came down. I
picked up my camera and took pictures as the droplets formed and ran down the
windshield.
I
don’t need to put both pictures in my blog, I think. But which one
would they find more interesting? I wonder.
I decided to ask Copilot, my artificial
intelligence buddy. When I uploaded the photos, it would only take one and
since I was on the second one, the one with rivulets, I asked, “Do you think
this photo is interesting?”
“Absolutely. There’s
something quietly captivating about it. The way the droplets cling and meander
across the glass feels like a moment suspended in time — just you, the rain,
and whatever world lies beyond that blurry veil. It’s got that introspective,
in-the-car-on-a-rainy-day mood that turns the ordinary into something almost
cinematic,” Copilot said.
Then I uploaded the second
picture, but it was the first in the order I’d taken them.
“Or do you think this one is more
interesting?” I asked.
Can you guess what Copilot
said?
“They’re both compelling in
different ways, but this one — the second image — has an extra layer of mood.
The droplets are still there, but the light and blur in the background give it
this soft, almost dreamlike quality. It feels more introspective, like a
fleeting memory or the quiet pause before a thought fully forms. It’s got that
cinematic stillness — like a moment just before something is said. If the first
one is about presence, this one hints at possibility.”
Wow. I don’t know that I got
any of that from either one.
Speaking of AI...
I was sitting near someone at
a party last weekend and the guy says, “I hate AI! It’s dumbing down our
society.”
I don’t necessarily disagree
with that, but Big Mouth here pipes up. “I love AI! It’s not the technology
that’s bad, it’s what you do with it.”
“What do you mean,” one of
the gals asked.
“Like, one time, I wanted to
convert my favorite quick bread recipe into a cookie. I asked AI how to do it
and it gave me the formula to convert it. I asked him if I gave him the recipe,
would he convert for me, and he did!”
“Now that sounds
interesting!” she said.
Do you remember when the internet first
came out? Do you remember people saying how evil it was? My own mother was
under that spell. Eventually she came to realize that yes, there’s a lot of bad
on the World Wide Web, but there’s a lot of good, too!
Most recently, I used Copilot
to help identify a bird.
“It’s a female Cowbird,”
Copilot told me.
I know that AI can make mistakes, so I’ll pull up a search page, type in photos of female cowbird, and see if I agree.
“Do you?” you ask.
I do. It looks like the
pictures that came up.
I know that in many species
of birds the males and females look markedly different, and the cowbirds are no
exception. I knew what the males look like, I’ve seen them at my feeders
before. And they’re easy to identify. They have a glossy, iridescent black body with a rich, chocolate-brown head. The sheen on their black feathers can
catch hints of blue or green in the right light, giving them a sleek, almost
metallic appearance. In dim light, they look black.
Here’s an image from the internet.
AI doesn’t just give me the
answer to my question, it often times elaborates on its answer. In this case,
Copilot told me that the females are brood parasitic. They will lay their eggs
in nests of other birds and let them raise their young for them. Most often
they target smaller songbirds whose parenting instincts are strong enough to
raise the cowbird chick, even at the expense of their own. Cowbird eggs hatch
sooner and the chicks grow more quickly than their nest mates. That head start
often means they out-compete the host’s own young for food, or even pushes them
out of the nest entirely.
Good for the cowbird, bad for
the host birds.
“I wonder why they don’t
raise their own young,” you say.
I know, right! I wondered
that, too.
Back to Copilot.
There are two kinds of brood
parasitism, AI says. Facultative is where the birds
still raise their own young but sometimes sneak an egg into another nest. And obligate
is where they only lay eggs in other birds’ nests and never raise their own.
Cowbirds are obligate brood
parasites. It gives them more time to lay more eggs in more nests and they
don’t have to build nests, incubate eggs, or feed chicks.
But it’s not a one-sided
game. Host birds have evolved defenses like recognizing and tossing out the odd
egg. Others puncture or bury it under new nest lining. A few just cut their
losses and start over somewhere else. Some hosts, like robins, will physically
attack cowbirds when they catch them lurking near the nest.
We definitely live in the information age and that information is even easier and faster to find with the help of artificial intelligence.
One
last thing before we call this one done.
We’re
getting to the age where our friends and family are dying around us. We recently
lost Margaret, our 99-year-old Missouri friend. This week we last another of our
long-time Missouri friends. Gary Weber had been the mayor of our little Missouri
town and one of Mike’s good friends. Even after we moved here, to our mountain home,
Mike kept in touch. Gary died unexpectedly at the age of 83.
Done!
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