WWQP Bulletin Board Chat

RAIN

Sara, thanks for the offer. We've had a bit but no where near enough. It will take several years of normal rainfall to come close to getting our water table up. Many of our wonderful wildflowers never bloomed from late spring through the summer and even now and there has been very little production of fruit from trees. I've seen one buckeye nut and just a couple of acorns. That means the bears are in peril. Unfortunately that means they will be raiding garbage cans and bird feeders. They love sunflower seeds. My backyard birds disappeared from my feeders a month ago and have suddenly reappeared and are eating with gusto. A friend suggested as we work to solve all of life's problems at the quilt frames on Friday that the birds have to come to the feeders so ravenously because there are so few seeds available in the environment. That's a hypothesis that makes a lot of sense. We've not only had this horrible drought but we had a hard freeze Easter weekend that killed off all of the flowering that was going on then including the entire apple crop of the western part of the state. Of course, with my usually impeccable timing last year and this year I spent several thousand dollars having sizable beds planted with shrubbery that have been damaged by one or the other of the climate problems. I hate watering stuff as I'm dependant on a well. There are places in the county where wells and springs have dried up and the county is having to truck water to those folks. We are all hoping for a dreary cloudy rainy winter with some serious snow in between the rains. That would be a big help to the farmers next year and all of us for that matter. Normally they have three hay cuts in my neighborhood but there were two this year. That forces some to buy feed for the winter rather than providing their own. There are a couple of Hereford and Brahman herds on my valley. Risky business is agriculture.

Been out all day doing things that I'd rather not have been doing so I won't venture out tomorrow except for a good trudge up the hill. I've got to get back on the weight watcher track. I've been forced to eat really greasy suthen cookin' today at a covered dish I was obliged to attend. Yuck, fried chicken with super heavy breading full of grease, beans cooked for hours in water with fat back, breaded, fried ochra, chicken salad made with twice the mayo it needed and my tuna salad with half fat free mayo and half regular. I would have made it with the less than wonderful fat free stuff if I'd made it for myself. Gad, no wonder half the population here is dangerously obese. There were far fewer people there so I came home with about a quart of the tuna salad. Please tell me to cut my losses (thereby increasing my future losses) and pitch it out. I'll make some more with my last can of tuna with an absolute minimum of fat free stuff; just enough to hold the tuna together which is what my wise mother used to say. I have a couple of locally grown heirloom tomatoes called Cherokee black which beats the heck out of anything that comes here from FL or other places. The tomatoes have been few and far between this year. A good, thick tomato slice and good leaf or romaine lettuce are wonderful with tuna or anything else for that matter.

Tomorrow I will try to recover from having my grandson's laid out blocks all over the floor this morning when the block butler fell off the wall. The block butler lady told me on the phone to spritz it with water as it does not work well if it gets too dry. That's the last thing I will try before asking for a refund. I've already contacted the credit card people as the bill payment is due 10/19. It was much easier than it used to be. I simply took care of it on phone. Of course had to do the birth date, mother's maiden name etc. to convince them it was me and she told me to withhold the payment if the issue is not resolved by then. I still hope to resolve it as block butler is great if it works. So far I've had to have two of them replaced so their quality control stinks. At the frame Friday one of the gals said she had the same problem. If the moisture works I call her. Otherwise I'll get some cheap batting and simply tape it up there. Wish I'd done that in the first place. Flannel doesn't hold the blocks very long but I was advised (again at the frame) to use cheap batting. Sounds like a great idea.

I think I'll cut and paste the quilting stuff onto the BB so you are hereby absolved from any obligation to read it all over again. Why make two posts when one will do? Nobody's posted over there since Tuesday.

Well, I left at noon leaving behind a mess in the kitchen so best get at it and start tomorrow with a clean slate.

Jane

posted by Jane in NC @ 7:28 PM