Meanderings tonight…

A story in Health news about mothers who can’t afford diapers, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-204_162-57596030/affording-diapers-a-problem-for-30-percent-of-moms-study-suggests/

I wonder if they know that disposable diapers are a fairly recent development, and I wonder if there are any store that even sell cloth diapers any more. But then, when my kids were babies, I bought yards of flannel and made my own cloth diapers. 

My Peruvian daffodils were blooming, and they make for such a pretty striking flower,

I’ve had a pair of Sandhill cranes in my pasture for the past week, and they’ve been upsetting the dogs with their calls. I love to listen to them.

I’ve been getting the jewelry bug lately. It’s been years since I made jewelry, and I have bins and bins of supplies, so I thought I would get everything out and give it a try again. My wire wrapping skills have suffered, but I’m getting the hang of it again. Here are some pairs that I have in my Etsy shop,

and some of my latest beads too,

I had to place an order with Double Helix, since they just released a bunch of new test batches of silver glass. I’m going to have fun playing with them!

Laying in bed watching Letterman, and one of his topics was Nik Wallenda walking the tightrope over the Grand Canyon. There was video of Wallenda on the tightrope and praying while he was walking, praying to Jesus, God and the Holy Spirit. I wonder if he thought he was going to be protected by all that praying, and I wonder if he has read the Bible, especially the verses about the stupid and foolish facing disaster, or maybe the ones about life being a precious gift.

Just my thoughts...

Almost a month since I posted?!? Just nothing to write about, I suppose. I’ve been busy getting pasture mowed and the garden mulched. The weeds have been outpacing me, as usual. The heat has moved in this week, in the 90s. Yuck!!

Just flower photos today, I’ve got amaryllis bulbs blooming,

I made a mad dash outside to get photos, and was attacked by mosquitoes. Here’s some lilies blooming,

and my grapefruit tree has blossoms like crazy, and they smell sooooooo nice!

I thought this was an orange tree, and had one single fruit growing on it through the whole winter, and about a month ago, decided it was ripe enough to pick, and was quite surprised to find it was a grapefruit! Oh, it was so juicy and sweet-tart. Hopefully it’ll have more than one this year. I’ve got a lime tree that is getting big enough to get some blossoms on it this year, I hope.

We’re jumping from mid-April (last week my furnace was still going) to mid-June, hot and humid. I don’t remember ever having such a cold, cloudy spring before. Last week I was shocked to see a huge flock of geese heading north. Usually I see flocks that big only in the fall when they’re heading south. The grass is certainly liking this weather though.

My orchids are loving this weather too, they’re still blooming like crazy, and here’s a new one that I got as a baby last year,

and I’ve got a pretty amaryllis bulb blooming,

and the birds continue to entertain me, here’s two of the dark boys fighting,

and last but not least, a very scraggly Indigo Bunting,

Continuing from yesterday’s post, a “documentary” about mermaids,
Animal Planet scores ratings gold with fake documentary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVgrOXVJ77M
Reminds one of Orson Welles’ airing of War of the Worlds in the 30s.

I really have my doubts about the human race sometimes.

A teapot at J.C. Penney’s sells out because if you squint your eyes and use your imagination, it looks like Hitler.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/05/jc-penneys-hitler-tea-kettle-sold-out-in-hours-because-this-is-the-internet/276334/

My mother would keep a daily journal, and when I was younger, I thought it was kind of a waste of time. What difference would it make if she went fishing and caught nothing, or if it rained all day.

But it rubbed off on me. Although I don’t keep a daily journal, I do write down significant things. But sometimes at the end of the day, I talk to my sister and get asked what I did for the day, and my answer is ‘not much.’ So I was thinking that maybe I should be more like Mom, writing every day, so I don’t feel guilty about doing nothing when I actually got a lot of stuff accomplished, and those days that I don’t do much, maybe that will be an incentive to get going.

Along with this line of thinking, I wanted to get an app that I could access over my computer and iPad. I tried Apple’s Reminders (can’t move tasks into a different order), ToDoist (wasn’t impressed with it) and Astrid. I liked Astrid, until I couldn’t get onto their website to check my tasks. So now I’m using Wunderlist, and it’s working very well. I can put in tasks, reorder them, and then check them off when I get it done. On my list for today is to list beads, get my dahlias and glads planted, four o’clocks started, and get down into the basement and find the box that has the rest of my bulbs that I dug up last fall!

ETA: Busy day!! I listed beads, planted a dozen dahlias, 50 glads, three tuberose, six packs of flowers that I bought over the weekend, did some weeding and mulching, chores, milked the cow since she’s in heat and the bull is keeping last year’s calves away from her so she’s really full of milk (and boy, is her milk ever yellow from being on fresh grass, full of beta carotene), washed dishes, did some tilling with the electric tiller since I don’t have gas for the big one, worked on my quilt block, and made a batch of quesa fresco cheese. I am done for the day, and am going to spend the rest of the evening in my recliner!

I have Baltimore Orioles, lots and lots of them!! The dark red Oriole is still here, and a couple of others that aren’t the normal coloring. There seems to be a wide variety of coloring this year.




It’s so much fun watching them squabble, and they’re quite noisy about it too. Here’s a couple of grosbeaks,
I had an Indigo Bunting, but didn’t have the camera handy, darn it! Here’s a movie of the orioles this morning,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MICH6KgOCO8&feature=youtu.be

An exciting day at the bird feeder this morning!!! A scarlet tanager!!!! And the dark Baltimore Oriole came back with the rest of the bunch. I had six boys here this morning (seven if you include the dark one), and one poor female.

Such a bright color!!!

Wood stove going yesterday because it was so chilly, and today it got up to 94°. Bizarre! And this morning I saw the strangest Baltimore Oriole! He was a dark rusty red instead of bright orange.

This is the normal coloring:

I’m in 7th heaven!!!!! I’ve got 5 orioles at my feeder!!!!

Incredible pictures and video of the ice tsunami at Mille Lacs Lake over the weekend, http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/photo-galleries/2013/05/11/ice-surging-off-of-lake-mille-lacs/photo-357352/. This stuff was moving just like a lava flow, and piling up 30’ high. Really weird!!

Sheesh, freezing weather tonight, and forecast of 90° by Tuesday. I would just like a nice, normal, slow spring.

Cute picture on https://www.facebook.com/lists/10201268334056816 of fishing opener,

I am so excited, spring is finally here! Well, except for the next few days, in the 40s and 50s. But we had a few days of 70s and 80s and things are starting to pop.

Lilac buds that I’m hoping are going to explode into blossoms,

Sand cherries budding out,

and YIPPPEEEE, a Baltimore Oriole!!!! He’s all puffed up because he’s so darned cold!

Now that’s it’s warming up, I’m trying to get back into listing beads, so here’s some new ones,

May 4th, wood stove keeping me warm in my recliner, and it’s snowing out there again. We are going to go straight from winter to summer this year.

More snowflakes coming down, sigh, but at least the snowstorm missed us yesterday. 15-18” of snow south of us. Yuck!!!!

A touch of color to brighten the mood, a cardinal in my lilac bush,

and my new orchid (I was so excited when I repotted it and found there were two separate orchids in the pot),

and some funny Internet pics,



and dogshaming.com

If I didn’t live in Minnesota, what would I have to complain about? 81° on Saturday, and today there’s a winter weather advisory on until tomorrow night, with snow coming down already.

An really cool weather video,

http://www.kare11.com/news/article/1023782/391/Strange-ice-phenomena-unfolds-at-Minn-lake?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Cbc%7Clarge

Minnesota, where you can see an old fart (excuse the language) driving his motorcycle, white hair flying in the breeze along with the snowflakes, and where you can have winter storm warnings on Tuesday and get bit by mosquitoes on Saturday.

Got to love it.

It felt like the movie ‘Groundhog Day’ this morning,

a poor confused Robin from last night,

but at least the sun was shining!! It’s amazing how my energy level and mood can lift, with a bit of sunshine. It was a busy day, I shoveled snow, made some beads, cleaned, washed dishes, planted some more seeds, cleaned, washed dishes, worked on a new appliqué block, did chores, made some mozzarella cheese, and made cheeseburger pie with homemade crust. I made the crust with lard and coconut oil, and boy, was it flaky! Nice!
And now my back is killing me, so I’m going to be best friends with the recliner for the rest of the night.

Well, the snow is melting away, which is good, because I’m off to the neurologist tomorrow to hear another explanation for my headaches (allergist said it’s because of unknown allergies, dentist said misaligned jaw which isn’t the case because he ground my teeth to realign it, doctor said it was because I’ve taken ibuprofen for 30 years and it was medicine-induced headaches, not the case because he tried four different meds and still have the headaches). I’ve rescheduled three times now because of snow storms, and believe it or not, there’s more snow coming tonight! Bleep, bleep, bleeping snow! I am so very tired of it. Of the 30 some peppers and peppers I planted last month, only 2 have survived damping off disease. So I’m planting more seeds today. I picked up some heating mats from Menards, so hopefully they will help.

I’ve really getting spring fever! This weekend my nephews are going to come up and we’re going to start building my high tunnel greenhouse. This is what I’m aiming for,

ETA:

Rescheduled my neurologist appt. It’s snowing, there’s a winter storm warning out, and a forecast of 5-9” of snow by morning. This is so depressing…. I’ve got the fire started, and I’m off to my nice warm, cozy recliner with a new appliqué block.

12” of snow,



I keep telling myself this is April, not January.

Last night Pyr wanted some attention,

so we had a sing-along (Lukas finds it very irritating to listen to, but I think it’s funny!),

and Suka needed to get into the act,

Laugh of the day: