Snack Time

So, this morning I awaken to loud, pleasant chirping. The chirping sounds really close to my window, like the source was in my bedroom. I glance at my window and see a brown bird, a wren maybe, between the glass and the opened screen snacking on the dead stink bugs that were laying on the sill. The bird flew off before I could snap a photo and I looked back later and the entire collection was gone.


 

An Odd Collection

I'm tired of stink bugs. Do you have them? Ever since Christmas I've been escorting out or flushing down about four of the little buggers a day. I can't figure out how they're getting in. the windows have been closed for months now. Maybe they got in back in the summer when I had a window fan in our bedroom and have been waiting stealthily until now to come out now to drive me crazy. I escort them out my window. I've amassed quite a collection of frozen stink bugs on the window sill now.

Oh Dear. They could be in hibernation, only to come back to life in the spring bug us once again.

They scare Fern, which I find funny. It's just an ugly bug, herbivore at that, no bite, no sting. They don't even smell very much. But they are annoying.



 

Went North

I am struggling to get back into the swing of things after being on vacation last week. There is so much to do, laundry, and the yard needs some attention. Dan mowed it on Sunday, but the weeds have really encroached the periphery, some of them are quite tall.

The central reason for vacationing in New England was for Fern to attend and compete in the ISI Worlds championship in Boston (really Marlborough, but whatever). She did quite well: of four individual events she got two firsts (FS4 solo compulsories & artistic), a second (FS4 interp) and a third (freestyle silver). She had at least five and as many as seven in her flights so I was extremely pleased with the results, especially after placing last out of three or four several times at local competitons in the spring.

Fern skated Monday and Tuesday and her team events were on Saturday. I thought the Bowie's production team event went well, but we got third out of four. The team that won had a "Sesame Street" themed show, big family appeal, but the skating was sloppy, in my opinion, and I thought they should have gotten third and Bowie should have gotten second. The second place team, the one I had placed first, skated a very clean, choreographed program, but the music was eerie and was lower on the family appeal scale.

In the interim, we went up to New Hampshire for a few days at the beach and took a five-hour whale-watching trip. The journey out to the Jeffery Ledge, 30 miles off shore, took about an hour and a half. This ledge is a mountain range in the New England Gulf where the fish (plankton, etc.) whales eat are plentiful. (See that wide high place in the map below.) We got to see a pair of humpback whales and a pair of north atlantic right whales. The right whales are very rare, only about 420 in existence. This pair was a mom and her calf. I saw another animal breech the surface and splash down about 500 yards away from the boat but our guide only saw the splash and couldn't tell me what it was. It could have been a minke whale or a white-sided dolphin.


View Larger Map

We had good food, luscious lobstah rolls (lobster salad, like tuna salad, but with huge hunks of lobster meat on a hot dog roll) were prevalent but Kevin stuck to his cheeseburger addiction.

I've posted some pictures from the trip from my phone. I took the "big" camera too, but it'll be a while before I can download them. I got maybe a hundred shots of the whales but I won't know if they are any good until I can see them on a larger screen.

We also fit a couple days in Boston taking in a Ducks tour where Fern got to "drive" down the Charles River, the Blue Man Group, and the Museum of Science where Kevin spent three or four hours watching George Rhoads's Audiokinetic sculpture, Archimedian Excogitation. I watched too. I want one of my own.

Squealing with Joy

What you are looking at is a brand new bloom spike on my Oncidium orchid. It wasn't there last Friday. I'm so excited. Orchids are easy to grow, but finicky at the same time. They need the right light and water to be happy. I guess this one is happy.

So for the next several weeks I'll be on 'orchid watch' waiting for this baby to bloom. Of course I'll post pictures.

Cardinal Family Update

All three babies have hatched. They sit there with their mouths wide open waiting for food when their mum has flown off. I really need to get a picture of these chill'n to share, but the nest is hidden behind a lot of branches and leaves and I need a longer lens.


 

At Least One

I can see at least one hatchling in the cardinal's nest!

 

Soon to be a Mama

This mama cardinal and her mate will soon be the proud parents of triplets. I know this because her nest is right below my bedroom window and I saw three speckled eggs in there.

There are too many leaves in the way to get a picture of her sitting on her broodlets and she yells at me too much when I try to move the branches out of the way for a better shot. My iPhone needs a longer lens.

 

Mid-week Rambling

I'm so behind in blogging. I'm still doing the single mom thing, Dan doesn't come home until tomorrow night late. I'm kinda caught up on laundry, maybe just one regular load and one utility load to do and the hampers will be empty. I can't get too excited about that though, Dan'll be bringing home a suitcase full of more laundry.

The local power company has been doing work in our town to improve the reliability of the power supply. That means they are ripping down the trees within twenty feet of the lines.

Here's our backyard before:



Here's our backyard after:



Entrance to the neighborhood before:



After:


Depressing, isn't it?

We're getting $100 per tree they took out. They call them vouchers, but really we have to pay for any new trees out-of-pocket and they will pay us back up to the limit with proof we've installed trees from the approved list. Nobody bothered to mention to us the value of ten full-grown trees is about $10,000 and $1000 in vouchers won't even come close to providing shade and a privacy barrier like we had before. Furthermore, the price of the tree does not include installation. I went to one nursery to check out what they had in stock and their labor charges. I calculated each tree installed will be about 175% of the original price.

I've envisioned filling that space with a row of pink crape myrtles. They grow pretty fast and are so pretty in the summer. Two problems: the smallest size starts at $150 ($262 installed) and I'd need/want seven for a total of about $1840 which is way over our allowance, and they are out of pink ones and I don't like the white or purple crape myrtles.

I started considering other options, different varieties of trees and large shrubs. I started poking around on the 'Net and one click lead to another and I found a coupon offered by the state of Maryland for $25 if you plant a tree on their list. Many of trees on the state's list match the trees on the power company's approved list.

There is a nursery, one with a more expensive reputation, that takes the state coupons. I poke around on their site. Well, they have plenty of the pink crape myrtles in stock, which start at $130, are on sale and can be installed for about 128% of the original price. It looks like I can go back to my original plan, or at least start planning based on my original idea.

Maybe I should look into fruit trees while I'm at it....

Vanishing Act - Parts 2 & 3

Part 2

While we were in Manhattan on Wednesday on our way from the bus stop, sans phone, to Arrojo Studios, Fern and I stop in a shop and she tries on clothes. She ended up buying this adorable high-waisted black skirt. Very hip.

At the end of day we're back in the apartment. We have a dilema. I need to be back in Washington at 11:00 on Thursday for a meeting which was already postponed twice for me, I'm so important, Dahling.... We need to watch Lost. We need to drive 4 hours. And we need to get some sleep.

The plan, albeit not a good one, becomes return to the apartment, take a nap, eat dinner, watch Lost, leave Brooklyn, drive home, sleep till 10:00, get up and go to work. Fern didn't have to do that last bit, just me.

The nap was cut short by a quick dinner delivery guy, but we were diligent about cleaning up during commercials and were ready to go.

I'm blaming this next part on the fact I didn't have an adequate copilot/navigator. Somehow, after crossing the Outer Bridge Crossing I ended up on the way to Atlantic City instead of Washington. I saw the signs for the Turnpike, I just ended up on the Parkway instead. And, I was in the express lanes so I couldn't correct my mistake quickly. It wouldn't have been a problem at all had I crossed the Goethals, but nooo.

When I got off the Parkway I pulled over to check my (mostly) trusty iPhone. I plugged in 'hotel' in the map and it came up with one less than a half mile down the street. And they had a non-smoking room available, for a whopping $68. They even had quilts on the beds. :) The alarm was set for 5:30 and we were out of there before 6.

When we got home Fern cleaned out the car and I took a shower before heading off to work. She couldn't find her new high-waisted skirt which she had been wearing the night before. I'm usually the last one out of a hotel room so I can look for hidden belongings, but not this time.

I called the hotel to no avail, they didn't see it. I think they did and liked it too much. But, that's just me.

Part 3

BG&E wants to take down all our trees along our back property line that borders the state highway. They are too tall and can cause too much trouble for the power lines. They will give us $100 voucher for each tree they remove so we can have shorter trees put in. Somehow I don't think that'll be the same as the 60' shady Cypress trees they'll be replacing.

 

Day Trip

Tuesday afternoon I took the kids to the zoo. And I took the "big" camera. It's hard to take time to set up good animal shots when the kids want to keep moving, but here are my attempts.

gazelle


prairie dog


papa lion



This tiger was gnawing on and playing with this burlap bag. I'm not sure what was in it, maybe catnip. I don't usually see zoo animals actually moving, but I managed to capture him mid-jump. I'll work on the focus later...

Snow Day

This morning as I head towards AM's house for our morning walk I hear "Ma'am!" I look around. It's the lady who lives in the house with the pretty back yard. It has gotten so many beautification contest awards they've asked her to stop entering, or so I hear. I stop to answer her and instantly become mosquito breakfast. she tells me to watch out for the fox, she'd just seen it on the side of her yard chasing a squirrel. I need to be careful.

I look around and realize this is the house where I saw the deer running by on Tuesday. So I ask her about them. There are three, and she sees them all the time. They are comfortable in her backyard and often tip-toe back there and lie down. OK, she didn't say tip-toe, but she described how they carefully walk across the street and they live over near the railroad tracks. They come most mornings about this time. Hmm, I've only ever seen them once, and that was Tuesday, so it can't always be this time. At which point I slap at a couple mosquitoes and look around again for the fox and bid this woman a good day.

I meet up with AM and relay the exchange to her. She then tells me schools are closed today. We had some horrific thunder storms roll through yesterday, three separate cells, and a lot of schools are without power, so they closed the whole county. Monday is the scheduled last day of school, but the kids won't be attending. So are they going to make it up on Tuesday? She doesn't know. Later I found out they are not going to make it up, which I'm happy and sad about. They pushed Kevin's graduation ceremony from today to Monday and now he'll miss it. I'm very bummed. (See my husband's blog for pictures of our storm damage.)

We bought thank-you cards for him to give to his teachers. Now I just have to get him to write them out. I hope he can get this last thing done for him before the summer break.

Things that make me go "hmm?"

Yesterday morning during my walk I saw a flash of brown, a big flash of brown, like the size and color of a great dane. I instantly feared for my life. I have dog issues, I'm not ashamed to admit it. It started when I was in kindergarten. My mom would visit a neighbor who had a german shepherd. It would be tethered to its doghouse and would bark incessantly and jump at me when I'd walk over there after school to find Mom. I was too frightened to walk around the perimeter of its reach to the house.

I froze in my tracks, looking where I'd seen the flash of brown and following the trajectory of where I might see it again. It was a deer, two deer, in fact, running through the neighborhood. They were pretty far from the woods, several streets away. Rabbits? yeah, they are a common sight, but deer, in our neighborhood, on the side close to the highway? Wow.

---

All my machine quilting skills can be summed up briefly: straight lines, or meandering. Before spring break I bought two books on machine quilting by Diane Gaudynski. I've been wanting to be able to do more than that because straight lines and meandering gets boring. I have a stack of quilt tops waiting to be worked on and I don't want to do the same kind of quilting over and over. I've been reading the books, but it's time to try it out. So, the other night I drew up a practice feather wreath and did something new.



This is my first attempt of quilting following Diane's instructions looking at the back of my piece:


Not too bad, right? That's because I had white thread in the bobbin. This is the top where I had pink thead:


Yikes!!!!! The pink thread shows every mistake, every wobbly line. It's not very encouraging to see this side. A year and a half ago I bought the mid-line Bernina 440QE sewing machine. It came with a stitch regulator, a BSR, a gadget that reads how far the fabric has moved since the last stitch so it knows when to take the next one and all the stitches are the same length. Consistent stitch length is a goal of quilters, so the BSR is a helpful gadget. I've quilted several quilts with it in the meander style and it is great. It's like learning to steer a car without having to learn how fast to drive. The faster you move the fabric, the faster it sews, you don't have to worry about the foot pedal.

Last night I drew up another practice piece and quilted it without the BSR so I had to steer the fabric and control the machine speed at the same time. Somehow, it worked a little better. Go figure. I'll keep practicing. I'll be comfortable enough one of these days to work on a "real" piece. Maybe.

Compilation of Failures

Yesterday is over. Thank goodness.

I volunteered to coordinate my office picnic, sorry, summer off-site staff development meeting. Two years ago I planned it, it went well, but decided to hand over the reins to someone else. It never got off the ground.

My boss asked me to coordinate the outing again this year and I agreed. One reason for me to do it is because I am a member of a pool club which has a nice place for a group gathering.

In the beginning I polled office mates as to whether they'd like a planned menu or potluck. The results were split. I took the diplomatic approach, those who wanted to bring potluck could and the rest could just give me $5 each and I'd purchase extra food for the group. Good plan, yes?

The pool club opens at 11:00 am in the summer and noon when school is in session, so the plan was to have everyone start arriving around noon and we'll start the grills at 12:30. Instead of going into the office, I stayed home bought and prepared the food from the monetary contributions. I bought brownie mix, chicken to grill, chicken to make my curried chicken salad, cucumbers, and a gallon of milk to make another batch of mozzarella to go with the tomatoes someone else was bringing.

The batch of cheese completely failed, didn't come together at all, the curds never formed solidly enough to create the cheese. I think it was too hot when I put the rennet in.

I ran out of my favorite curry powder for the chicken salad. My neighbor was visiting and ran to the store to get some for me, thank you.

Do you need anything else while I'm there? "No, thanks, I think I have everything." Out the door and down the driveway and I remember I need tablecloths for the picnic tables. Darn, now I have to make another stop on the way to the pool.

I arrive at the pool at 5 till 12:00 and the gates are still closed so I run over to the grocery first. I'm back at 10 after 12:00 and the parking lot is still empty, whew, nobody is there yet. and the gates are still locked. Uh oh. The club opens at 1:00 pm when school is in session, not noon. D'oh!

On the bright side, no one showed up until about 25 minutes till 1 and I remembered the printout of the guest list to give the gate guard and remembered to bring the grill tools.

Forgot to have someone bring napkins with other paper goods, and forgot to write down the person bringing hamburgers so I forgot burgers would be on the menu.

Then there's the whole part when I left the picnic —and Kevin—to pick up Daughter so she can attend, but her bus was late, thus I abandoned my guests for much longer than intended. And most were gone when I got back. Argh.

I hope everyone had a good time despite my oversights and failures.

Can't wait till next year!

Pea Diaries - Day 57

A moment of silence, please. The peas are dead. What plants made it past 2 inches high were nibbled off by Flopsy and her gang. I should have been celebrating a harvest soon, but it just didn't happen. Good thing I didn't plant that second half pound bag of seeds this spring. I'll look for another place to plant them for the fall.

On a happier note, I have two of my four tomato plants in the ground with a dozen smashed egg shells for the calcium. I've been eating a lot of scrambled egg whites for breakfast. But I'm not done yet, two more plants to go. Now I've got to figure out how to support these new babies, cages, stakes, more copper structures? Maybe I could solder a copper pipe cage. Hmm... This calls for a trip to the hardware store!

I went to the Mecca of gardening centers on Tuesday. All those tomato seedlings I planted? scorched. I left them out in the direct afternoon sun too long. I was so bummed.

So I headed over and bought 4 tomato plants. This gardening center draws folks from southern Baltimore, Annapolis, and eastern side of Washington DC. It's huge. They have everything: vegetables, herbs, perennials, annuals, trees, pond flora, etc. And everything there is for Zone 5. It's not like a catalog where you've got to be careful what you buy, make sure you don't buy something for South Carolina, then it dies in the winter.

I wanted to get some Hostas, too. I've got some shady places in my flower beds that need something and Hostas fit in nicely. However, when you visit Mecca, prepare to pay Mecca prices. I wasn't prepared to spend $25 or even $14.99 for any of the plants I picked out, as pretty as they were. The lady ahead of me in line spent $470 dollars. I got out under $10 for my two heirloom and two regular tomato plants.

I heard on the news radio station which has a gardening "column" to put egg shells in with the tomato plants when you plant them to prevent blossom-end rot. Anyone ever try this? Does it work? How many shells?

I really need to get about 10 yards of mulch. My beds haven't been mulched in years. The weeds are so bad. Some have grown into weed-trees. Sheesh. I really want to hire a gardener. When I was a kid we lived in Okinawa and had a gardener. The image of him tending the hibiscus has stuck with me for years. Now I have a full time job and am often too tired or busy to take care of the flower beds after work. Oh well. maybe some day.

But for now, I need to find places for my new tomatoes and a place for the soon to be relocated lilac bush.

Pea Diaries Day 24

I'm not thrilled with the germination rate of these pea seeds. These are the sprouts from a half-pound bag of seeds. Look at the Day 1 Diary entry and you can see how many seeds are there and how many sprouts are growing now. I may have some burrowing animal issues going on in that bed, too. Oh well. I'll see how these grow and decide later whether to move the bed for a fall planting.

Two forms of ID

Last Friday I went over to the pea patch to check on the status of my emerald delights. The seedlings were just starting to poke through. Then we loaded the car and headed to OC for the weekend.

Monday on my way to work I reach for my work ID, my credential, as I approach the gate. Nada. Gone. It's not in my usual location in the car, in the cup holder tray. I get my driver's licence and check in at the guards' station to get a temporary pass. I then keep my DL handy because sometimes the guards ask for it too when entering the building with a temp ID. By the time I got to my desk the licence was not in my pocket. Hmm. At lunch time I retrace my steps and cannot find it. No one has turned it in to the guards' stations. All the while I'm racking my brain to remember where my work ID might be. Not in my purse, or tote bag. Not in my coat pockets, not in the car. Where could it be, I didn't go far?

How on earth am I going to get another temporary pass tomorrow if I can't find my licence?

As the day wears on, my panic increases. Then I get a call from some woman who found my licence in the hall. She's in her car on the way out for the day. "Can I bring it to you tomorrow?" Aye yai yai. Well, no. I meet her in the parking lot and get my card. Whew.

Monday evening when I get home from work I walk over to check on my peas—did all that rain on Sunday help any? Any more sprouts? And there is my work ID lying in the wet grass.

Pea Diaries Days 1 & 2

Yesterday in the mail I got my box of seeds. I ordered two half-pound bags of garden pea seeds (Alderman & Eclipse), two packs of bell peppers (rainbow mix), and a pack of tomato seeds (Giant Belgium). It's the first time in years I bought tomato and pepper seeds, I usually just buy the plants at the hardware store in June. If I am successful in growing these seedlings, and you live in my town, (I'm not mailing tomato babies), I'll give you a seedling or two. Just ask. (We'll see who is reading this!)

Today I left work early for an appointment and afterward had time to pick a place in the yard for my peas. This house was a model home for the builder when the neighborhood was being built 20 years ago. It's a corner lot and the house faces the intersection (to the southwest) so the front yard is bigger than the back and has better sun, and I usually plant my veggies in in the front. Today I picked a spot of unused soil next to the garage.

Last summer —or was it two summers ago?—I taught myself how to solder copper pipe together and made copper trellises. I made them so the four units are supposed to fit together in a large X formation, but I've never ended up using them like that. Anyway, I prepared the bed for the peas, soaked one pack in warm water (the other variety wants warmer soil so I'll wait a few weeks), sprinkled them over the soil (dirt), covered them up and stuck the trellises in the ground in the middle of the bed. I'm a fan of the "wide row" method of pea growing, instead of one seed two inches apart for the 16 million feet a pound of seed will create. The vines help support themselves this way, too so you don't need to provide a lot of growing support.

Friday afternoon I abandoned my post as house-sitter and went to the beach. OK, I got my family first, then we went.

Living in Maryland, the usual destination is OC, aka., Ocean City, (not Orange County like on TV). We like the small town feel of Chincoteauge in Virginia. Assateague Island across the channel is where the beach is which is a national seashore/refuge so there are no huge hotels or loitering teenagers. Just beach. And wildlife.

The Chincoteague VFD raises money every year by rounding up the wild ponies on Assateague and swimming them across to Chincoteague on the last Wednesday of July. The new colts and fillies are auctioned off, then later that week the adults are swum back.

These babies can go for a lot, usually $1000 - $1800 each. The foals that are too young to leave their mom are auctioned, then returned to the herd. The whole process is fascinating, and they've made Pony penning week a long standing tradition, I'm just baffled this small town's VFD needs such funding. If such numbers are kept, I'm sure they would be high on the list of dollars collected per residents served.

Anyone know?

'Tis the vacation season. Many of my neighbors look to me to house sit while they are gone. For lack of massive amounts of personal vacation time accrued keeps me the go-to gal.

One neighbor has a blue and yellow macaw. She's a pretty bird and big! Makes our parakeets smaller than tiny. Sometimes I take her out of her cage, but her beak scares me, so I don't do it often.

Another neighbor has a pool. Since our family has a membership to a community pool, we're not really programmed to take advantage of available swim time. But I still need to check things. We had a record-breaking 5.2 inches of rain yesterday and the pool was quite full, about two inches from the top. Note to self: come back later and back-wash if it keeps raining. Then I check the skimmers. After I lifted the lid I peer down onto a frog trapped by the high water. I helped him out, but he went back into the pool.

OK, I kinda get the frog-water therefore pool thing, but when I got home, I found another frog. This time in the space between the refrigerator and freezer doors on the fridge in the garage. I guess frogs even like to go someplace new.

You ever find a frog in a different place?