Long sleep over?? zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Look for photos and thoughts soon – if I can fix my iPad camera.
First Fruits – and Completed Commitments
Today was a busy Saturday. Hubby was up early for a swim. I was in town to visit Ridgefield’s Summerfest on the way to a rehearsal. Lunch on the patio of a local restaurant. Trip up north to the pond supply store. Home to sit on the deck and read (Hubby) and knit (me) for a while. Then gardening for Hubby and baking for me. Then dinner cooked on the grill. A run to the grocery store for missing ingredients for cupcake frosting. A stop at the Carvel!!!! And home to frost cupcakes and watch le Tour de France. Whew! No wonder I’m tired and Hubby is sleeping in the chair with his computer in his lap.
Some random thoughts and photos before I close the lid on this laptop and head off to bed . . . . . . . . . . .
This picture is of some of the first fruits of our garden (gathered and eaten today), though we’ve had some zucchini prior to today.
In the completed commitments category are the two quilts made for the two new homeowners of the Linden Place homes built by Housatonic Habitat for Humanity. The home dedications were in June and I made a quilt for each of the two homeowner families. I haven’t heard that a CO has been issued for either home, but I’m sure they are anxious to move in. Here is a photo of me by our pond with the two quilts in my arms. They are about to be loaded into the car and driven to the dedication ceremony.
I really enjoyed the quilting and finishing of these quilts. They were done in beautiful weather and in my wonderful quilting “studio”. Doesn’t this look like a great place to work?
Big announcement from Mr Wren
Hubby and I spent some time sitting out by the pond yesterday and watching the male wren work. He was tireless and his routine was unvarying. He’d be gone from the nest area — then we’d see him come back and fly straight to the birdhouse and hop inside — then out he’d come and he’d hop onto the same tree branch and sing his delightful song. Off he’d go in search of more bugs for his mate who was apparently in the birdhouse sitting on the eggs. And he did this continuously the entire time I sat outside (which was over 2 hours) and was still working when the mosquitoes drove me inside.
Well — sometime, I would say this morning — something changed. At about 9 am — I heard the male sitting in the tree just singing that same song over and over and over and over and, well you get it, over again!!!!! I thought something was wrong and went downstairs and eventually outside to watch and see what was up. Little did I know that this was the “THEY’RE HATCHING!!!!!” declaration. I heard a second, different wren voice also and by the time I got out to watch, both the male and the female were flying to and from the birdhouse. Not as much singing now, though there’s still some, as there are mouths to feed.
In the photos below, the female wren can be seen peeking out of the box before she leaves it to go search for bugs. She seems very careful.
Yes, it’s a beautiful time of year. I managed to go outside and in the space of about 30 minutes, take 91 photos worth keeping. Here are the Stella de Oro day-lilies from beside the pond. Could have stayed out there all day!
Fore!
Yes, it’s golf time. I played 3 days in a row last week and by Thursday, my feet hurt. But my game is coming around even though my handicap is going up. I was part of a foursome that played at the ABC of Ridgefield (A Better Chance of Ridgefield) tournament on Wednesday. My group placed first in the women’s division and won some money! And I placed first in the closest to the pin contest on hole # 17 at RGC. My tee shot was 26 feet away — not really too close, but apparently close enough!
Thursday was such a nice day weather-wise and the Ridgefield Gofl Course was beautiful. I felt like I was on vacation the entire time we were out there.
Good thing I played a lot last week. Looks like we have at least 5 days of rain here in a row. So, not much golfing will occur.
Good news is that perhaps I’ll get some spring cleaning done!
Time for some fish and frog photos from the pond. I call this one FISH FRENZY. It’s fishie mating time again and they are all chasing one of the females around the pond apparently right up to the edge. Some times I’m afraid they’re going to push Lady right out of the water and I’ll come home and find her on one of the rocks!
Retreat
Just returned home from a 3-day quilting retreat. That is, if you call it a retreat when on day one you have to return to town to speak at a meeting and on day 2 you have to return to town to meet with hubby and your tax account and on day 3 you have to – well – you have to return home. I put 104 miles on my car while I was supposed to be “retreating”. But I did get a lot of work done on a new quilt of my own design (photos of the work in progress to be added later) and did get a lot of catching up with friends from my guild that I don’t get to talk to much at our busy monthly meetings.
Now I need a retreat or a long weekend to catch up from my retreat.
The answer my friend . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . is blowin’ in the wind.
My fascination with the wind farm in Walnut Iowa has not abated one bit, even with all the times that I have driven by it this spring in my “Midwest adventures”.
The answer? Perhaps it truly is blowing in the wind. Sometimes I just don’t see the rhyme or reason for anything and my thoughts are just blown by the wind to rather random places. So much has happened since March 18th when I flew out here to Nebraska that I could write a book. But much of it, I don’t want to remember, let alone re-live by writing about it. And the book would be really boring and a bit depressing.
Life goes on — one step at a time. Hubby and I used to square dance, years ago, and there was a fun dance to a song with the words “one step forward and two steps back”. It was really a challenging dance, but I can say for sure that living your life to those words is not nearly so much fun. Apparently, here comes that latest new theme for blog posts — “song titles and their application to current life as we know it”.
As far as the blog theme, rippled effects, I cannot even being to analyze the ripple effects of this latest chapter in my Dad’s life. Ripples? Ha! More like big, giant waves!!!!!
This is a photo of the lake at Dad’s house. The wind’s were whipping all day at extreme velocity (averaging around 30 mph with gusts higher). At this point, the sustained winds were higher and the skies were darkening. About 5 minutes after I took this photo, the tornado sirens went off at the lake and we went to the basement. The tornado storms flew overhead and one tornado touched down across the river (tipped over a semi and some empty railroad cars) about 10 miles from where we were. This stormy day was one of the last that Dad was in his home. The day was very scary, but so was the realization of how anything out of the ordinary so very confused my father. The dawn of understanding had begun to occur on my part — as to just how non-functional my Dad was even in his own home. The ripple effect (the wave effect) was just beginning at the time this photo was taken.