A Strange Happening
Doris, both your bird feeders are far more 'elegant' than mine. Mine are the least expensive, servicable kind and now that I've seen yours, I am totally dissatisfied with mine. However, stay they will as the cost of upgrading two of them is not within my budget at the moment. Mine do the job but yours are much prettier, by far.
Two nights ago, alone in the house as himself was some distance away having attended a funeral in the afternoon, then meeting up with longtime friends afterwards, I was on the telephone with friend Margaret, as I do every evening, at 9 pm when I heard from the other side of the house a huge shattering sound. The dogs appeared undisturbed by this noise, which came from a cupboard next to where they were napping and when I called, they did not sniff the cupboard, leading me to believe, what initially I had thought, that an animal had fallen in from the ceiling of the long narrow cupboard. But, what was it? I checked the room from the doorway but not wanting to go right in, as there is a slight corner and turn at the end where I could not see, I closed the door, heart racing, for the noise continued, a pinging sound which I decided now had to be a bat. Terrified of bats, I know they do good things and at night are not far from the house as they swoop over the pool just off the back porch collecting bugs. We had a bat in the house two years ago when one slipped in the screen door as we were going in and out at night. The pinging continued. The dogs were still unconcerned, which did little to reassure my imagination, which by now, had at least two bats flying around in the room with visions of them flying into my face, getting tangled in my hair, biting me, rabies, possibly. The door remained closed all night, the pinging noise abating slightly. Himself arrived home late to the news that there was either an animal or several bats in the cupboard and not to open the door till morning. And so, morning came, himself, no fear, opened the door, I cringed, keeping the dogs at bay in case something came flying or racing out the door when I heard a chuckle from inside the cupboard. The noise, I was told, come and look at it, himself said....your storm door insert from your studio has shattered into a million tiny pieces. It was the kind of glass that honeycombed and it lay around the frame in a crystal pile. The mystery is why the glass exploded after twenty years of use and being stored carefully against a wall where nothing touched it. Spontaneous combustion, himself said. But, why?
Instead of bird feeders, I'll be replacing the storm window insert in my studio door. Nothing but the frame left and it's broken too. A mystery, for sure.
Rosey
bird feeders - #2
Here is the other feeder I have, about half the price but holds half the amount of seed, so has to be refilled almost daily in the worst of winter.
bird feeders
The best feeders I have ever bought that are critter-proof, came from Wild Birds Unlimited. They were expensive and worth every dollar. No motors, no batteries, just work on pure gravity. The weighting is adjustable.
Good news
Not that anyone knows this family, but our friend in Sevierville, TN finally had his kidney transplant at Vanderbilt yesterday. He had been waiting about a year. This is his second kidney transplant, as after 11 years or so, the other one gave out.
We are so glad he is doing well. The donor is doing well also.
Is anyone planing to go to the Cloth,Paper,Quilting Arts classes in Chicago at the end of August? The classes looked interesting, dying, etc.
There is also a quilting cruise out of Ft. Lauderdale Dec. 3rd in case anyone wants to get out of the cold. Fonz and Porter are puting it on.
Right now it's 91, and I'm draging about like a slug. There are lots of weeds that keep on growing, in spite of my best effort.
DH is on his "lets move to a condo" kick again. With all the weeds, and other upkeep it doesn't sound so bad some days. He only has 5 more treatments! Yea.
Going to read or watch a mindless movie on TV.
Went to see Letters to Juliet on Sunday eve. Cute chick flic.
Sara in Fla.
GOLDFINCHES
are favorites of mine. I'd never seen them til I came to NC. They are ubiquitous here. My experience has been that they eat as much of the sunflower seeds as the niger seed. Black oil sunflower seeds seem to attract my birds more readilly than anything else so I pretty much sitck to that at 40 lbs. at a time. I, too, store them in a garbage can of the metal kind so rodents can't penetrate. Trouble is that after the raccoons invaded last year and I lost the war. As I used more and more secure feeders (read that more expensive) they adapted and ended up destroying all but one of my feeders. I gave up and the birds think I don't love them anymore. Fortunately due to a restoration of rain in this area there is plenty of natural food for the birds but I miss being able to watch them out the windows in the kitchen and sewing rooms. I filled my remaining feeder yesterday and it is still intact this morning so time will tell. If you are lucky enough to have gold finches in the area along with cardinals and indigo buntings and see them at the feeder at the same time, you are lucky enough. I think I’ll set out the hummingbird feeders too. It’s late to convince them that they are welcome but they are greedy enough to give it a try I’m sure. I’ve also had butterflies come to my hummer feeders on rare occasions.
Rosey, the raccoons are notorious rabies carriers so it’s more than risk of treatable sickness when anyone including people has contact with their saliva. The dogs get their rabies shots (yours have I assume) but you and I haven’t. A health dept. person told me that when the dog has a tussle with a ‘coon it is very risky if you have contact with the dog even if it just the coat. On two occasions I’ve had the good fortune under those circumstances to have had no consequences. A healthy ‘coon is not normally out and about in the daytime so beware.
Heather, that is one beautiful grandson you have. Enjoy, but don’t spoil if you can manage that. Corrupting them is always possible though. I once had my granddaughter with me when I visited a must see quilt shop in East Rochester when she was barely 5. When we went in I told her that she could pick any fabric in the place and I’d make her a pair of shorts. This place, Patricia’s Quilt Shop if you’re ever in Rochester area, has a lot of wonderful stuff. There was a whole shelf full of ‘30s repros and Laura went straight to it with her arms spread as wide as possible and said, “I like these!” I heard some discreet chuckles from the cutting and check out area and looked up to see the benign smiles on the faces of the other grannies in the shop. I told them that I was corrupting her behind her mother’s back.” More chuckles and approving nods from the witnesses ensued. Laura got her shorts and everyone including me was vey happy. Grandchildren are truly gifts of nature, God or whatever. For her 16th birthday next year I am going to have Al’s wedding band along with my wedding set made into a pendant for her. The boys are telling me that they hope to pack her up with them and drive down here for a week during the summer. Oh how I long for such a visit. That’s the only gift I need from them.
Tenneh, your life sounds chaotic to this tired old broad. You daughter is another cutie. I hope her recovery goes well and that she’s back on the horse soon. It’s a lesson that’s best learned early in life and she’s literally there sooner than most of us before we have to learn to “get back on the horse.”
Doris you efforts sound downright exhausting. When you are through with your chaos and have learned to love it come a bit east to the mountains were I have plenty more for you to have fun with.
Dinner guests tonight so I need to get going here. There’s a ton of food in the house but the local strawberry season is upon us and it never lasts long enough to suit me so I have to trek to town to get some. The local grocery never buys locally so their berries come from CA and it ain’t the same stuff. They’ve just had some locally produced lettuce this spring so let’s hope they are changing their policy to one of buying local produce.
Jane in NC
Exactly so, Doris...
How nice of you to post the picture. My bird feeder is something of a crock. I bought an antique wagon wheel years ago and would never tell how much I paid for it because himself, being a 5th generation Scot, would have been appalled. It had rubber around the edge and that was the feature for me because the birds feet wouldn't get stuck to it in wintertime. However, the raccoons slowly descimated it in trying to reach the bird seed in the feeders and it gradually fell apart. When the cottage on Georgian Bay was sold two years ago, I inherited a wagon wheel which had been used to support a table top and this has been hoisted up on the steel pole, looking quite neat and tidy now. Two hanging baskets with geraniums, two niger seed feeders and wind chimes, one of which Ceilia P, gave me are all visible from my studio window. I'm told raccoons don't like niger seed. So far, so good. One little guy had a good wrestle with my metal garbage can full of bird seed a few weeks ago and rolled it around until the bungee cords snapped off and I haven't looked to see if he ate the whole can of bird seed or not...won't worry about that till next winter. They are persistant little animals and very vicious if you ever get near them. They look cute; they are anything but, and dogs can become violently ill from contact with their saliva although I don't know enough about this to comment other than one breeder's dog ended up in OVC last year as a result of this poisoning. I do not like them around the house, which is why the niger seed.
Rosey
canaries
Rosey P - those yellow birds are most likely Goldfinches
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/American_Goldfinch/id
The males are an olive greenish yellow in winter, and their colors get very bright by this time of year for mating attraction. They're one of my favorite birds to feed and watch.
New carpet got installed today, and I hope the guy who does the runner on the stairs can come tomorrow. I hate having the house all topsy turvy and will spend tomorrow putting a lot of it back in order. I've been moving stuff for over a week, vacuuming all evening with the upright, and am exhausted. Tomorrow I'll go along the baseboards with the canister vac and pick up the bits & pieces of carpet. It was interesting to see what the original color of the old carpet looked like, when closet bits came out. They had not faded from sunlight. Quite a difference!
Family room will still be 'torn up' because painters come next week to change the color. This, too, shall pass.
Have any of you seen the ads for the new Janome Horizon 7700? It has 11 inches of free space under the arm, for FMQing. Wow! I am sorely tempted.....
Hugs to everyone!
Tuesday & finally...warm...
Tenneh, good luck with your move and settling into your new quarters...a new adventure for you. Your daughter looks very sweet and of course, having fallen off YOUR horse, would make it less acceptable than having fallen off a stable horse taking riding lessons...If she likes riding, hope she sticks with it. Where I live, there are many horses, horse farms, riders and competitions. In my younger days, I was horse crazy...now I admire them close at hand but not on top of them.
I'm dangerous around garden centres at this time of year and as much and all as I try to restrain myself, I find it impossible to pass plants by. Kathi, in Idaho, assured me that she was sending good weather our way...a bit of a trip, mind you but it has finally arrived. My birdfeeding station has two hanging baskets with ivy geraniums on it along with two niger seed feeders which attracts, all day it seems, wild canaries. The contrast between the bright, intense yellow of the tiny birds and the baskets is eye candy for me. Mind you, they are hungry little fellows and will eat me out of house and home buying niger seed, I suspect. The openings on the niger seed feeders are too small for blue jays and bigger birds and they are hanging about in the pine trees trying to figure out why it isn't their bird seed feeders hanging there and no doubt feeling hard done by.
Heather, how is that new baby doing?
Rosey
DD in her cast
DD with her glitzy cast and note the awesome doll cast!-Tenneh.
Soon to be on the move
Hi, I have been thinking of you all! My prayers and thoughts have been with you.
As for me, stop the world and let me off has been a thought lately!
Last week at work for me, I move over Taupo way next week.... Have house packed already- keen to move- LOL. Horse has already left, and is staying with a friend, a wee holiday for her.
life has been busy, I am so glad I had such a lovely summer....
DD( now 6) fell of my horse and broke her tibia- well initially she landed ok, just fell off over the horses shoulder, but then got her legs tangled in the horses and the horses steel shod hoof kicked her on the bone, and that was a visit to the big city hospital for us both! Mum as the mum, not the nurse. ExDH was not impressed, with me or the horse....
DD had 4 weeks in a full length cast to the top of the thigh, purple with glitter no less. The awesome staff even put a cast on her doll Lisa! And then a wheelchair and a walking frame. She handled it well and had most of the time off school as it was too much of a hassle getting the wheelchair etc on the schoolbus, so I took her in on my days off. Just last week she graduated to a below knee cast- bright pink! and a walking boot, so back to school full time now. lots to catch up on!
Got DD home from school one day to stay with me, and find my horse paddock empty. Evidence she had crashed into the fence and gone over.... a few panicked ph calls, the neighbours had not seen her, and she was found down the road up a driveway, walking, but minus a horseshoe and all shook up...Duck shooting season started the week before and we are wondering if a nearby shooting had frightened her.... she is not telling. She seems to have really tweaked her back as she (probably) crashed into the fence at high speed and flipped over it. Waiting for a horse chiropracter to see her at the moment.
Then I was in the middle of online job applications and my computer had a major heart attack! It did not survive, but my awesome IT guy saved some of my documents.. most were saved to separate hard drive, just not the latest stuff for the job applications! it was not a good time to have it happen! That delayed things for a week or so. Finally got a new computer set up and then... got hit by a Trojan virus....
I have casual on call work organised, but interviews for fulltime jobs still to come.
So after all that drama, life is slowing down, and there are less distractions with everything packed away. Quilting left out to last though! Staff at work have all signed little hearts to applique on my stars in the scrap quilt, from the Drs to the cleaners! It will be a lovely reminder... although they are still pleading for me to change my mind and stay! However I will move boldly forward to my new life. I feel very positive about the move, and I will be very happy to get a fulltime job confirmed!
so thats my news, I am happy to be back on line and catching up with you all,
Cheers from Tenneh by the two rivers
Labels: DD in cast, Horses
