I have enjoyed watching the Finch care for her nest of 4 tiny mouths to feed. Once they hatched, I quit looking for a while so she could care for them. Over the weekend, I peeked again and instead of large gapeing mouths popping up, there were little feathered birds with proportional heads and big black beady eyes looking back at me.
It is amazing how quickly they go from awkward disproportioned nearly naked bodies to little feathered well proportioned birds. In the midst of the nasty weather this week, chilly, gray, and periodic heavy, heavy rain, she fledged these 4 little creatures out into the world. The nest is empty, the hanging pot can again be watered.
I know that the birdhouses by the garden have supported two nests of Tree Swallows and one nest of Eastern Bluebirds, the Barberry bush had the nest of Caroline Wrens, and these little finches. I think a Hummingbird has a nest in the breezeway garden, one flies from there to the feeder and back often, but I haven’t attempted to find it in the rain.
One of the wonders of spring is watching the nests of baby birds, the tiny rabbits kits, and the fawns. I discovered this year that something, probably the deer like Sunflower shoots. There were dozens in the walled garden under the feeders and everyone of them has been clipped off just above the primary leaves. I haven’t been weed wacking in there to let them grow. I guess it will get mowed down as soon as it dries up. I will then put down cardboard, move some rocks to the back side of the wall and start filling it with leaf mulch or compost. And still no corn. Two packages of seed from the feed store and both seem to be bad even though they were packaged for 2020. It is probably too late to try to find corn seed elsewhere and plant it now, though we have about 4 months til first frost.
The past three days have felt more like early spring. Gray and rainy, highs in the low 60’s (mid teens celcius). No walks, no garden time, just hunkered down inside in long sleeves, long pants, and socks, all of which had been put away clean a few weeks ago until fall.
I go out to do chores, to drop packages of stuff I am selling to minimize, stuff that has life in it, but not being used. On our way to the post office drop box, we saw our first fawn. Doe and fawn were standing in the middle of our gravel road. Mom seemed unsure how to proceed, fawn was confused about the big brown animal on 4 wheels that made loud noise. Mom finally veered to the left, over a wire fence. Junior couldn’t manage the fence and seemed even more confused, finally turning the other way into the tall wet uncut hay field. I’m sure Mom went looking for Junior as soon as we passed on to the main road. And of course, I didn’t get a picture.
This time of year, the Iris have all faded, the summer flowers are all blooming. I especially love the Day Lilies. They are in a bed that runs down the east side of the garage and a few in the back of the garage. The tall “Ditch” lily is from my Dad’s gardens. He loved Zinneas and the tall orange wild type day lily. When we bought this farm, the prior owner had a herd of miniature horses on it and prior to her, it had been used for grazing cows. As a result, the top of the property was pretty void of much vegetation except some grasses and multiflora roses with some cedar trees scattered around and the run off creek that flows in a slight diagonal across part of the north edge of the property. That area is much too rocky to hay and without the horses or cows grazing on the vegetation, many volunteer trees and a few we planted have grown up. Along the creek, I planted a few clusters of the lilies and we planted 4 River Birches. The creek has divided and spread the lilies over quite a good length of it’s run and the Birches have gotten tall. After my Dad passed away, the following spring, I went up and dug a small amount of the lilies and brought them down to the house to add to the others. They are the tallest currently in that bed, but there is a yellow one that will be taller later in the summer. Currently 6 different cultivars are blooming and the bed is getting full, crowding out the Autumn Joy and the Coral Bells tucked between them. In another year or so, I will have to divide them. The Iris already need to be divided behind the garage.
The grass desperately needs mowing and edging, but it has to stop raining and dry up some before that can be done.
Time is being spent spinning on my spindles and knitting on my shawl. I am trying not to be competitive in the Spin Along which only requires 20 grams of spinning a month. By the time I finish the Peacock braid and take the Jacob off the spindle, I will have probably 140 grams. It adds up when I am not in the garden.
In desperation for something new to read last month when the library was only doing curbside delivery and everything I wanted to read had a hold on it, I downloaded an E-book from the monthly Amazon list. I have chosen from the monthly options before and been happy with the selection, discovering new to me authors. This one was about a serial killer who found his female victims on the World of Warcraft game. Well, I’m not a gamer, so the settings and terminology were foreign to me, the story line predictable and the ending making me want to write a review on Goodreads suggesting the author go back to writing school. No, I’m not going to do that, nor am I going to out the author or title here, but I felt like I had wasted several hours of my time on it. The library has reopened to check out books, I placed a hold on one a friend recommended and it became available yesterday, so masked and hand sanitized, I went in and picked it up and left. We will see how this one goes.
Before the world went into lockdown, I placed an order for 3 sets of items to be used as favors for a retreat to be held later in the summer if lockdowns allow. The order was to be fulfilled by Amazon fulfillment, so not coming from other distant land. The order didn’t come, then shipping slowed to a crawl due to COVID and since I wasn’t in a hurry, I waited. Months went by and the items could not be tracked because there was no tracking number given. I finally contacted Amazon and according to them, the package had been fulfilled by Amazon fulfillment and they could see that it had never been delivered. They did send me a refund, but this put me back to square 1 on the project. I was able to locate some of the items needed through another source, but some of it can’t be located at a reasonable cost to me.
This brings about two other issues. I designed labels for the containers for this retreat favor and decided that rather than print them at home on labels that would likely fade or smear, I would have Avery Dennison print them on plastic stick on labels that wouldn’t fade or smear. This is a nice service, though those labels ended up costing nearly as much as the containers. I received a shipping notice within a couple of days, the labels being sent Sure Post through UPS to the USPS. Tracking said I should have received them a week ago and tracking hasn’t changed in a week. If you go to the UPS site, it says that once the package is transferred to USPS (Postal Service), you have to contact USPS not them. Their site says the package was transferred in Roanoke over a week ago. USPS site says it is awaiting the package from UPS in North Carolina. Bottom line, it is lost in the ether. I have called Avery and was put in a call back queue awaiting to discuss it with them.
Because of shipping issues and not wanting to have to go out to the USPS or other shipping sites unless absolutely necessary during the lock down, I signed up for the 4 week trial of Stamps.com so that I could buy and print postage at home for anything from stamps, media mail, small and large packages as I was selling some items that I no longer use in my fiber arts and crafting. It took less than their 4 week trial to discover that when you add insurance, you get billed separately at the end of the month though it appears to come out at the time you buy the postage and that you get charged nearly $18/month for the privilege of printing your own postage yourself from home, though you can do it through other services for only the cost of the postage. I went online and processed a cancellation of services form and submitted it. When I received the credit card charge for the insurance and 4 weeks service which I didn’t complete and shouldn’t have been charged if the form had been processed, I called them, accepted that I was stuck with that month but was assured that the service had been cancelled. A month went by with no use and again I was charged for a month of service. I called again on Friday, sat on hold waiting for a customer service representative for nearly 30 minutes, and was told that neither my attempt to cancel online, nor my first call had cancelled, but it would be taken care of immediately and I would be refunded. The refund showed up in my account the same day that the month’s service was recharged to my account, but it was the weekend. This morning after another 30 minutes on hold awaiting a representative, following an electronic message that my account was closed, the representative said the notes showed it was closed, the refund made, and yes, rebilled, but she couldn’t help me because the account was closed and I would be transferred to her supervisor. Another 30 minutes of hold time and the supervisor was able to refund the second charge and assure me I wouldn’t be charged again, and that it hadn’t previously been marked not to recharge. I maintained my calm and stayed nice. But then they had the gall to send me a customer service survey. I wasn’t nice.
Avery finally called back, a much nicer system than sitting on hold for an hour and very quickly offered me either a refund or them to reprint the labels and send them out rush delivery. At least they have their act together.
And don’t get me started on FedEx, they have yet to get a delivery to me without it going to a neighbor or totally astray.
If the Post Office goes under, we are in trouble, we will never get anything ordered.
The rain did come off and on today, so I chose to do stay at home activities. First thing this morning, I finished spinning the wine colored wool that I took on my walk yesterday and began plying it on my largest spindle. It was taking forever and after about 90 minutes, I wished that I had plied it on my wheel, but persisted throughout the morning and early afternoon.
I am trying to finish knitting a shawl with it before the end of June. This is the last 27 grams of the wool. The shawl had a major error in it and I had to rip it back about 2/3 of what I had already knit, pick up the stitches and start again.
After lunch, I started two loaves of sandwich bread for the week. Of course it had to be tasted while still warm.
I know that the fad during the pandemic is sourdough and I have made my share of it, but we both prefer yeast bread, half whole wheat with good stone ground flour.
Between rain storms, I took a basket to garden and picked a basket full of fat shelling peas.
While out there, I spotted 3 chubby asparagus spears among the thin ferny shoots, added them to the basket as well. Since hubby was having a chop for dinner with our corn, peas, and cantaloupe, I pulled a fresh small garlic bulb and a small potato onion. While out there I ran the broody hen off the nest for the third time today, grabbing the eggs under her. This has been a six week brood. Nothing I do breaks her.
The onion, garlic, and their tops were chopped along with half a green pepper that was in the refrigerator and sauteed to top his chop. There were enough peas for dinner and the first batch in the freezer. I planted about 2 or 3 times as many peas as usual and wish I had planted twice what I did. My dinner was many of my favorites, fresh sweet corn, just picked and lightly steamed peas, cantaloupe, and fresh bread. The hens get the pea pods, corn cobs, and cantaloupe rinds and seeds to make compost to feed the garden in the fall or next spring.
While wandering the garden, I picked a few raspberries and a blueberry, but they didn’t make it back to the house.
I love when the garden starts to provide and pay back for all the toil of the spring prep. Every couple of days the suckers are pinched from the tomatoes and the tomatoes and tomatillos are tied higher on their posts. I am seeing blooms forming on both. The cucumbers have been given a trellis, the bush beans are filling out, but no blooms yet. The potatoes have purple/blue flowers and desperately need a good layer of hay applied to them. I’ll tackle that the next dry day. The peppers aren’t doing much yet, but they will. I added more basil seed and a few Chinese cabbage seed to a bed that still had space. The only failure I am seeing in the garden is the corn. I have planted it twice and still only have 3 stalks and the pumpkins didn’t come up. I need a plan for that area that will provide us with something for the table, maybe more potatoes?
I periodically suffer from extreme GERD attacks. The first one landed me in the E.R. thinking I was having a heart attack. Now when it happens I grab the Tums, chew Fennel seed, avoid certain foods, but I don’t feel like heavy exercise when it happens. The most recent attack began last weekend, so walking our steep road was not appealing to me, doing the driveway to the mailbox and back, almost half a mile has been about all I wanted to do. Yesterday was better and we went to town to walk a part the old paved rail grade that runs between two towns. The part we chose is usually not busy with walkers, but we know there are a lot of bicycles. We ended up seeing at least a dozen walkers, another dozen bicycles, and three maintenance men mowing the edges. No one had on a mask but us. The path is about 8 feet wide with another couple of feet mowed on each edge. When we were approaching another walker, we moved off the right side of the path and kept going, doing about 2 1/2 miles.
Today I decided to do our road. I had a couple of ulterior motives because we are about to get a few days of rain and it will be muddy and the rain will knock down Rhododendron blooms, and because Artist daughter in law wants Cicada shells. I have been looking around the trees near the driveway and gathered a few, but mostly seeing live Cicadas. I found a windfall of them today along the road and quit counting at 60 gathered.
As they emerge wingless, they climb and the shell splits down the back and the new adult Cicada emerges, dries it’s wings and flies off to find a mate. We are in week 2 of the emergence and they only live 4 to 6 weeks then after laying their eggs, they die.
The one craft that I do that can be done while walking is spinning on a spindle. I stuffed some fluff in a bag, hooked it to my belt loop and took my Jenkins Finch for a walk and parked it in a Rhododendron bush to take a picture of the flowers.
I always love coming out of the woods after climbing this hill and seeing the roof of our house appear below the ridge.
The seasonal wildflowers continue to change. The multiflora roses, another invasive species here is blooming, the dandelion puffs have faded and the Goat’s beard puffs are emerging.
It was a pleasant day for a nice walk before coming home to prepare dinner for us.
After retirement, days started melting into each other, but there were certain events each week that helped keep things in order. The spinning group met on Thursday right after lunch and I had a Thursday late morning regular appointment. Saturday morning was breakfast out and a Farmers Market run year round. Sunday we would have lunch at McAllister’s.
With the stay at home order, each day is, “What day is it?” followed by a check of the phone or computer to see where we are. There is no regular schedule, we get up whenever, usually early for me as the sun lightens the sky. Lunch is prepared after hubby is up, news checked, etc. Sometime during the morning or afternoon, some garden time and a walk are included. Some spinning on the front covered porch, except Asplundh has been chain sawing everything near the power lines for days. They even drown out the Cicada song.
Our state is in Phase II of reopening. Shops and restaurants can operate with restrictions, but we aren’t comfortable at our ages going in to them, especially since so few people heed the mask wearing and social distancing guidelines. I did venture in to the grocery this week and a man about my age without a mask crowded me every time I distanced to let other shoppers make their selection and move on. I am afraid to say anything for fear of enraging a fool. The employees are all supposed to be masked, though many wear them only over their mouths. The frozen food manager who always is loud, didn’t have one on at all. Thank goodness for our Natural foods store and their curbside delivery, they have mostly eliminated the need to go anywhere else. And our local plant nursery and garden center who have gone overboard to be safe and ensure safety, so flowers and vegetables have been purchased and planted to maintain.
Last night, the school board in the next county where daughter lives had a virtual meeting with hundreds in attendance to discuss school reopening for the fall. Daughter watched 3 hours of chaos and disorganization. The plans sound like someone came up with them an hour before the meeting and will have a detrimental effect on any parent who is working, working from home, lacking childcare, lacking the ability to connect to the internet, without transportation to get their child to and from the abbreviated days they are in the building. Tonight we had a video chat with our eldest grandson who turned 15 today and they don’t know how the new school year will operate where he lives.
Who would have thought in this modern age, that a virus would shut down the world and turn our lives around.
I spin, I knit, I garden and cook and try to make our lives as normal as possible, but someone please tell me what day it is.
Once masks were recommended, prior to them being required in businesses and other buildings other than your home, I made each of us 2 masks. Then I made daughter one, later another and two for each of her two kiddos. It seems like they are always in the laundry even though we aren’t going out much. This morning, I decided that we should each have two more and I had seen a short video on the construction of the pleated kind that seemed a better design and simpler to make, no pattern required, no elastic, no bias tape. Simple job, but the folding chair at my sewing machine is so uncomfortable.
They are designed to be tied behind the head, however when I was making the first ones, I bought a dozen cable locks and slide the two ends through which makes a tight fit and does not come untied.
I have been spinning on the Peacock gradient braid of fiber with my spindles. Last night I finished spinning the first two colors and plied the yarn. I wasn’t happy with the twist, it was too loose, so this morning, I ran it through the wheel a second time and careful not to over twist, put more in. It is 190 yards of very light fingering weight, it is only 47.78 grams.
When the gradient is finished, it will become the yoke of a sweater for me with the body and sleeves, the gray Shetland that I have been spinning. There is more of it waiting for a turn on the wheel, I got tired of spinning it on spindles.
The reddish wool that I have been spinning on the tiny spindles is being knit into a lacy edged shawl.
The garden got a couple of Bull Nosed pepper starts and some basil. There is more basil started from seed and it will be added to the garden as well and some dill started also from seed.
I had to replant the corn bed. Then it got two heavy rains, so I am hopeful that it will come up this time. The seed is not from the company I generally use, but it is packaged for this year and I didn’t do a germination test first. If it doesn’t come up this time, I will do a germination test.
The tomatoes are being trained up 7 foot poles as a single leader per plant so suckers are being removed every couple of days, the tomatillos are also being trained up poles, I don’t need them sprawling all over the beds. The peas are heavy with pods, the tomatoes have blooms, the onions have bloom buds on top. The potatoes are getting large. I need to top them again with more soil and then start piling on spoiled hay. Spoiled hay needs to be put on the asparagus bed and soon a containment rope will be needed to contain their ferny tops away from the other beds and the paths.
The hay is tall, the turkey’s can be heard, but rarely seen unless they come into the mowed area. The deer look like moving brown humps as they graze, also unless they come into the mowed area. These are one of the pair of twins from last spring. They were just outside the garage door as I was going out to lock up the hens last night. The Mom’s are seen singularly now, with new fawns tucked away until they are a bit bigger and will follow her around. I haven’t spotted any new ones yet.
Yes that is a stink bug on the glass on the inside. Taken through the glass because I knew they would bolt as soon as I opened the door.
After mowing and gardening, the rain began and I sat on the covered porch and spun on a spindle while the Hummingbirds flitted in and out of the overhang to the feeder. It is easy to spot in the second photo, can you find one in the first?
The Carolina Wren that I startled away from her nest while watering a hanging plant a couple days ago, had 5 eggs. After enjoying dinner on the porch, I climbed up on a chair to see. Three have hatched and one raised a wobbly head, open mouth, begging for food.
They will be left alone and I will watch them fledge from the hanging pot in the next 10 days or so.
There are a lot of rabbits about, I tried to get a picture of one last evening, but I couldn’t zoom enough to really see it.
Old is a number. By number, I am old, but still active, healthy in habit, and fairly strong. I am older than my Mom was when she died by almost a decade. Old here in the mountains seems to be a lower age than I have reached, but I’m from a long lived arm of the family paternally. My great grandmother lived to 94, my grandmother to 88, my father to 92.
I love old things, but I’m not an antique collector. My parent’s home had many antiques when I was small, but most of them were replaced during the two years my mother worked outside of the home when I was in 7th and 8th grades. A few pieces were saved and a couple of those pieces have come to me. Two simple tables, hand built by past generations and kept in the family. One is a small table with three drawers that was in a kitchen long ago. When the top right drawer isn’t pushed tight shut, there is evidence of a mouse gnawing it’s way into the drawer, a small oblong hole and a keyhole with no lock.
My Dad cleaned this beautiful little table of paint and put a wax coat on it, it is repurposed as a side table in our living room.
I don’t know the history of this one, except hearing the story that my parents felt it was too tall, the legs had the same flattened ball shape turning at the bottoms of the legs and Dad cut them off. When it was given to me, the top was loose with nail holes in it, the finish damaged. It too had evidence of having been painted and the paint removed. I stripped the table, put L brackets under the top hidden by the drawer to tighten it and refinished it. It is the table between our chairs in the loft, where we put our beverages and my spinning bowl. It too is from my mother’s family home.
This cedar chest was in the hall at the top of the stairs of my in-laws home. When my Mother -in-law passed and their house was sold, we got the brass accented cedar chest. It smelled of mothballs and is full of old family photos and home movies from hubby’s side of the family. It serves as our living room coffee table.
When I was pregnant with our first child and we were moving from the duplex that I co owned with my parents into a larger home in which to raise our family, we bought me a Boston rocking chair for the nursery. It was used in the nursery for the older two children, but when we moved to a larger home in a nicer neighborhood prior to child three, I found this 1700’s pressed wood rocking chair in a shop where I bought the reed I used to make baskets. The gentleman caned chair bottoms and had begun making the pressed leather pieces that adorned some chairs from that period. This rocker came home to be in the nursery for the youngest.
Because of it’s age, it was used, but used gently. When youngest was about 3 or 4 years old, we elected to down size to a townhouse that we could afford on my salary as a school counselor so that hubby could open his own Law Office, knowing that it would be a while before his fledgling business would be solvent. Since the boys had to share a bedroom, the chair was put in the living room. Our children knew that if they used that chair, it was to be used gently. One Thanksgiving while we were living there, I hosted the meal for some of the extended family. One member, a large man sat in that chair. Son 1 suggested to him that maybe it wasn’t an appropriate choice just prior to him leaning back and snapping the back right off the chair. There was an antique repair shop that put dowels in the broken spindles and re glued the chair so that it looks okay, but it is now just a decorative piece. The seat is sound, and it is probably safe for gentle use.
Somewhere in our life history, a good friend purchased this antique treadle sewing machine at an auction. My husband purchased it from her for me as a gift. It has been in several locations in our homes, but fits nicely in this corner of our hallway and holds a landline phone that we must keep to have internet. The brown rectangular box basket on top is my great grandmother’s sewing basket. The machine has a leather drive band and still works, though I think it needs a good cleaning and oiling.
There are a few other small items, a child’s chair that is from my Dad’s childhood, another child’s chair that belongs to one of our Daughters in law, a bentwood doll’s chair made for my mother, and a small pottery jug that came from my mother’s family home. And in our loft, the large Walking Wheel seen in the header photo. That wheel, a gift from hubby a few years ago, purchased in an antique shop in Front Royal, Virginia on a visit to Son 1’s family. It is a functional wheel and knowing now what I didn’t know then, we paid about twice what it is worth, but it is beautiful and I love it.
Whether these pieces stay with our children when we are gone or not, this is so they know some history. I have thought about putting the history of each on a card and tucking the card in a drawer or under the lid. They haven’t all “fit” in some of our homes, but they are all perfect for this log home in the middle of a farm.
I believe in peaceful protest, but not riots that bring out people who use the crowds to vandalize, loot, and arson. I am a Caucasian female, born to a middle class family of two parents, so no, I don’t know what it is like to be a targeted black male. I am old enough to have lived through the 1960’s as a teen and young adult, drove a mini van with curtains in the windows, so got stopped a couple of times for minor offences or license checks, but never felt threatened by those stops. I was taught right from wrong, how to be polite, but not to be racist.
I joined social media to connect with friends and family that I rarely get to see, to get updates on groups to which I am a member, but between the 24/7 onslaught on the news about politics, Covid, and now BLM, and every other post addressing one of those issues, social media has driven me away. I try to avoid the television, but if it is on and I want to spend time with hubby, I am in the same room with it and it is like a train wreck, you can’t avoid watching it. Last night after Trump had a peaceful protest attacked with tear gas, flashbang granades, and rubber bullets so he could have a photo op, I couldn’t take it anymore. I turned my chair away from the screen, put on headphones and played music, probably louder than I should have to drown it out.
I go outside, play in the dirt, take walks and pictures of the pastoral scene. I spin, mostly on my Jenkins Turkish spindles, and knit with the yarn I spin. And still I am stressed and have trouble sleeping.
The Jenkins spindle spin along in which I participate, starts new every month. I started the month with empty spindles and a brand new braid of wool in Peacock colors. The goal each month is a minimum of 25 grams of spun singles or plied yarn. That is less than an ounce. In two days, I have already spun 23.49 grams. I started with two colors pulled off of the gradient braid and divided it lengthwise into two equal pieces, weighed them to be sure they were.
This is half of the purple and blue, the next part to spin.
Here are the 23+ grams still on the apple wood spindle with the other half behind it and the rest of the braid under it. I can’t spin that much every day, but it is my sanity for now. I thought our country had made progress in social relations, but the past 4 years have changed my mind. It hurts my heart and soul that such bad behavior occurs. We are all the same color on the inside. Children aren’t born racists, they learn it. Stop teaching it to them.
“To make a difference in someone’s life, you don’t have to be brilliant, rich, beautiful, or perfect. You just have to care.”
Cabin Crafted 