Shaggys

          The sunrises have been beautiful but with the time change, I was afraid I wouldn't get to see anymore. We always get up about the same time and I didn't think I'd get up any earlier just to see a sunrise.

          Surprise!

          We are getting up earlier. Mike wakes up with the first light, and his stirrings wake me up. Mike'll gather the little girls up and put them out while I stretch and get awake.

          "Peg, come see this sunrise!" Mike called from the kitchen.

          I threw the covers back and padded out to the kitchen in my sleepwear. "It's beautiful!" I said and grabbed my camera.

          Another morning we had a foggy sunrise and these mornings always remind me of the nursery rhyme that Kat used to love to recite.

          One misty moisty morning,

          When cloudy was the weather,

          I chanced to meet a man all dressed in leather.

          He began to compliment,

          I began to grin,

          How do you do, and how do you do, and how do you do again!

          I'm going to enjoy all the sunrises no matter what they bring.

          Since we moved, Smudge has been hanging around the kitchen door.

          "Poor Smudge," Mike says and lets him in the house.

          Smudge used to be an inside cat, then he was an inside/outside cat, then with warm weather and fleas, Smudge became an outside cat, and for the most part, he's been pretty happy being an outside cat.

          Now it's getting colder outside and I hear "Poor Smudge" a lot more often and Mike lets him in. For the most part I don't mind if he's in the house. Heck, I'd let all the critters in if I could! But Smudge has no manners and gets up on the counters, so then he gets put back outside.

          I make critter food in the mornings to supplement the dry food. I mix hot water in with dry kibble and let it soak for a little while then I mix a can of soft food in. And that's how you feed ten cats one 5.5 ounce can of cat food.

          This seems like a good place to add a note for all you tenderhearted feral cat lovers out there. Now that it's getting colder outside, add an extra spoonful of fat to the cat food. All summer long I've been saving meat drippings in the freezer for just this purpose.

          Smudge was in one morning as I was making their breakfast, when he made a leap for the countertop and pulled the plate of dog food to the floor. So now he's not allowed in before breakfast.

          "Poor Smudge," Mike says every day.

          "Mike, he's getting his winter coat. If you keep letting him in, he'll lose it!" I remind him.

          "I feel so sorry for him! It's cold outside!"

          "Yeah? Then he can go around to the cat room." Not everyone has a room just for the feral cats to come in out of the weather, but we have one!

          "What do we have that I can put out there for him?" Mike asked one day this past week.

          "Like what? An old rug?"

          "No. Something big and soft."

          I made several suggestions but none of them were to Mike's liking.    

          "I'll find something," he said and went off to the wayback, that's what I call the back part of the mill we use just for storage. After a while he came back with an old sleeping bag.

          "It'll get wet," I pointed out.

          "No it won't. It'll stay dry under the overhang."

          That night, laying in bed, I was watching The Brave and Mike was sleeping. At a quarter to eleven, Mike wakes up, tosses the covers off, and gets up. I think he's just going to pee but then he heads for the living room. "Where'ya goin?" I asked, but didn't get an answer. Lights come on, doors open and close, and after a while Mike comes back to bed. "Where'd ya go?" I asked again.

          "Nowhere," he answered as he crawled back in bed and pulled the covers up.

          "What'd ya do?"

          "Nothing," he mumbled and that's all I could get out of him.

          In the morning, I see what Mike was up to in the middle of the night.

          "Uh-huh," I say.

          "What! Smudge went in as soon as I put it down for him."

          Plans are in the making for a bigger, better, winter house for Smudge.

          We had our first snow on Tuesday. The ground was too warm so it didn't stick. And I know the pictures won't do it justice but squint your eyes and use your imagination.

          On Monday, when Mike and I went to get the mail, I saw a whole bunch of fungus had sprung up beside the road. I didn't have my camera with me at the time, but here I was, bundled up against the biting wind, camera in hand, Ginger on her leash, so it seemed like a good time to walk down and take pictures of them.

          Look at them! Are they edible? I have no idea, but because they are next to the road, I probably wouldn't eat them anyway.

          I looked down over the bank and there were great clumps of them.

       I walked down to look at them and they had come up in such a way that they'd pushed soil,  grass, branches, and leaf litter right up with them!

          Ginger was excited to be out for a walk so I took her down to the creek.

          I spot the bright red berries of the Winterberry beside the road.

          Coming up our back driveway, I see the rust-red of the Bradford pear trees poking above the roof line.

          Dried Bergamot.

          This is what the Bittersweet looks like this week.

          A skim of ice on our pond.

           Mike and I were planning a small dinner party for Thursday night. Wednesday I woke up with a scratchy throat.

          I hope I'm not getting sick, I thought and proceeded with our plans anyway. I made chocolate chip cookies and a soft pumpkin cookie with penuche frosting. 

       In the morning I would make banana pudding. Early in the afternoon I would make the homemade bread. And the shrimp alfredo would be made just in time to serve. And that was the plan.

          By Wednesday night, I was feeling worse. My muscles were starting to ache and my head felt like it was full of cotton. I took my cup of tea and curled up on the couch next to where Mike sat in his recliner watching TV. "Mike, I'm getting sick. I think we should cancel the dinner party."

          "Let's wait and see how you feel in the morning," he suggested.

          Despite a nighttime dose of NyQuil, in the morning I was sicker. Muscle aches, an alternating stuffy then runny nose, sneezing, and only a little coughing. Dinner plans canceled, Peg spent the day in bed — on the couch actually, and Mike took care of everything. He fed himself, he took care of Itsy and Ginger, and he played nursemaid to me. He made sure I had tissues handy, was covered from head to toe in not one but two blankets, and my pillows were fluffed. He's a pretty good guy to have on your side, that's all I've got to say.

          A day of rest did me good and I was almost back to my normal self by Friday.

          Hey!

          Guess what?

          I was sitting in front of my computer when I heard Mike put his recliner down. I expected him to come to the kitchen but he didn't, instead he'd gone to the master bathroom. I heard him coming back out when he yelled, "Peg! Come here! I'm NOT happy about this!"

          Uh-oh, I think, but immediately jump up and head his way. "What? Did someone mess on the floor?"

          "No. Look!"

          I looked. There on the floor was a squiggly piece of carpet string. I bet he thinks it's a snake, I thought. I bent down as I approached, to get a closer look, and I was fully prepared to snatch it up and dangle it in front of his face and tease him a little with it. He hates snakes. But the surprise was on me!

          "It's just a little rat snake," I said covering my surprise. "It won't hurt you."

          "I don't care. I don't want it in the house."

          I got my broom and dustpan and took him down to the pond where I turned him loose and took his picture as he slithered away.

          "Why didn't you see him before you went in the bathroom?" I asked Mike when I got back up to the house.

          "I don't know," he answered.

          "Where do you think he came from?"

          Mike didn't have an answer for that one either, but he's really freaked out over the whole thing. "I can't walk around the house without shoes on anymore," he says.

          It's the third rat snake of very similar size I've seen in the last two weeks, and although the other two were outside the house, it's a conundrum, that's for sure.

          We have discovered that we have a clock collection. I knew we had a few clocks, but until we started unpacking and finding box after box after box labeled CLOCK, I had no idea we had so many clocks!

          There's a clock in the kitchen nook.

          A subway clock on the corner of the dining room and my desk.

          "What's a subway clock?" you ask.

          It's a clock with a face on both sides.

          Three clocks sit on the buffet waiting for better homes.

          There's a clock laying on the dining room table, waiting for a home. You can see it in my cookie photo.

          There's a clock behind Michael's desk.

          "That's a big clock!" you say.

          Yes. Yes it is. "You need one that big when you have old eyes," is what Mike likes to say.

          The bookshelf next to Mike's desk is the temporary home of more clocks.

          The living room is home to the grandfather clock that also shows you the phases of the moon.

          Another clock lives on the curio.

   

    

      In our bedroom, beside a painting that my cute little redheaded sister painted, is another clock.

          The bathroom has a clock!

          Even the back wall of the utility room has two clocks laying in wait.

            "How many clocks do we have?" I asked Mike.

          He counted. "Twenty one, not counting the clocks on the phones, or the computers, or the alarm clocks, or the microwave."

          "Well you don't have any excuse to be late," Rosie Kipp observed.

          Mike worked on some of his clocks and got them working.

          "All those clocks going off at once must make a heck of a racket," you say.

          Well, they aren't all set the same so they don't chime at the same time and since I like to hear them, that's the way I like it.

          Now, before I go I have an update for you. Momma looked up those mushrooms for me and they are edible. They're called Shaggy Mane and they're in the inky cap family. They have a very short window of usability because they will start to turn inky a few hours after picking, so you have to use them almost right away. They have a mild flavor so they do well as a stand-alone dish.

          Shaggys can be used to dye wool, paper, some fabrics, and will give you a gray green color.

          Thank you Momma, I love you.

          Let's call this one done!

Laughter And Tears

          WHO REMEMBERS WHEN WE HAD A WHOLE CLASS FOR TYPING?

          This came up on my Face Book page and it gave me a chance to thank our Lord, who loves us, wants only the best for us, and gives us blessings we don't even know we need or want.

          I don't know how or why I ended up in typing class in my ninth year of school, but I suspect I left a blank spot on my class schedule when I filled it out and the secretary stuck typing in there. They always gave us a week or so at the beginning of the school year to change a class if we wanted to, and I thought about it, but I didn't, and as a result, I learned to type. 

          Typing was never on my radar.

          I never wanted to learn to type and I never saw it as something I would need in my career choice for the future.

          "What did you want to be when you grew up?" you ask.

          I only ever wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. All the moms in all the old westerns that paraded across the black and white screen of the TV as I was growing up were stay-at-home moms; taking care of the home, garden, and the three c's — children, chickens, and cows — while my husband was out driving the steers to market or hunting down the bad guys. Not to mention that my own loving and devoted mother was a stay-at-home mom too.

          Now, here I sit, a hundred years and two lifetimes later, using a blessing that God had so graciously given to me, and I needed that little reminder to take a moment and thank Him. God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good.

         

          That son of ours!

          I'm tellin' ya what!

          That Kevin!

          He cracks me up!

          He sent me a picture and asked, "How about that spider?"

          I knew what it was as soon as I saw it, "Wolf spider! They do get big! He's cool!"

          "I was scared putting that ruler down," Kevin admitted.

          "He won't hurt you," I told Kevin but didn't admit I wouldn't pick him up with my bare hands either.

          "I know, but it's still a big spider!"

          You should see them when they're carrying a couple of hundred babies around on their back, I thought but didn't say. Instead, I asked, "What did you do with him?" I hate to see people kill spiders just because they're in the house where they don't belong, but not everyone is willing to catch and release like I am.

          "Left him alone and looked for a flame thrower!"

          And I laughed. It wouldn't be the first time someone burned their house down trying to kill a spider.

          Speaking of houses, my house is getting beautifuler and beautifuler.

          Everyday we add memories, fix memories, move memories, hang memories, and make new memories. It's made for a very melancholy week for me.

          "Peg, in that space between the window and cabinet... I've been thinking about it," Mike said.

          "Oh yeah?"

          "Yeah. Let's put Kat's shelves up there," he suggested.

          In my mind's eye, leaning against a wall in my shop, I see the two pieces of stair tread that I brought home from Kat's... death, dying, passing, funeral ... are all words that flood my mind. Which one to pick? Where I got them is more than a one-word explanation.

          Kat and her fiancé Jesse were renovating an old store. There was some kind of huge inside stairway leading from the first floor to the second and they took it out to make two separate apartments. Kat saved a few pieces to make shelves with and I brought these two home with me after we cleaned out her apartment, never knowing what we would do with them.

          We bought brackets, put the shelves up, and I thought, for the umpteenth time this week, Kat would love that.

          Kat.

          She is still in the RV where she's been since she died. I didn't have a place to move her to — until now.

          Mike and I went down to the garage and collected all the things of my makeshift memorial and brought them up to my forever home. We set them on the kitchen counter while we moved the radio to the top shelf.

          "Kat's going here? In the corner?" Mike asked as he wiped the windowsill.

          I thought about it for a moment. "I haven't decided yet." I'd been contemplating giving her a spot on the shelf itself.

          Then Mike carefully, lovingly, picked up each piece and arranged them on the windowsill. Her picture, taken just months before she died, the necklace she had on when she died, broken, draped over the corner, her baby that wobbles his head in the sunshine, cloth roses she made, rocks that tickled her fancy, and a small urn containing her ashes, and tears sprang unbidden to my eyes. I turned away quickly, not wanting Mike to know how deeply his tenderness touched my heart.

          And I have to remember....

                    God is good, all the time.

                          And —

                              Heaven is a billion, gazillion times better than anything on earth.

          Road pictures.

          The school kids painted the storefronts for fall.

          The Susquehanna after a rain. This is looking toward Wysox.

          I love the cows.       

Now that the leaves are off the trees, I can see things I haven't seen since last fall.

I was surprised to see these juicy, ripe pokeberries. All of ours are gone. Maybe these are still here because it's in the middle of town.

   

      Yes, there are still a few of these around. I have no idea if these are in working order or not.

          Being so busy around here plus now that the girls have a fenced in yard, has slowed me down on my picture making around the homestead. But I did make an effort to go out at least one day last week.

          Dried milkweed pods end up in all kinds of configurations.

          A buttercup. Since plants often bloom by temperature as well as sunlight strength and hours, many of the spring plants will bloom again in the fall.

          Our pond has lots of water in it now. Spitfire followed me and is sitting on the opposite bank. Can you see him?

          I thought more of the bittersweet would have burst out by now.

Dried Queen Ann's Lace.

          Mike and I were in the kitchen one morning shortly after the sun was up. "Peg, see that bird in the top of that tree?"

          "No."

          "Where's your camera!"

          I saw it so now you get to see it too!

Let's call this one done!