A Morbid Surprise

You know the kids' Bible song "A woman went to fill her water pot....."?

Well this morning, THIS woman (me) was watering her garden, and went to fill her water pot from out of the rain barrel, and this is what she saw...................  floating in the water.................

(whoops, I forgot to turn the picture right side up).  At first I couldn't tell what it was because of the reflection.  But the whiskers and the eyes told me that it was either a squirrel or a rat.  I didn't stick around long enough to figure out which one, but I guessed it was a squirrel, since we don't really have any rats around here, especially that size.  I was a little bit freaked so my knee-jerk reaction was to back away, say "ew!", and walk (very fast) back into the house.  I texted Chuck right away - what a time for him to be gone in Seattle!  Since he was gone, I knew I was gonna have to handle this on my own.  He told me I needed to empty the whole thing out and replace the water, which I already guessed that I would have to do.  So I gathered my senses and "manned up" (or "wommanned up") and dumped him out.

Hmm.  He looked a lot fluffier when he was floating in the water.

Poor thing.  Now I feel bad for him.  Or her.  I hope there's no orphaned babies.

But I wasn't gonna allow myself to get emotional over a dead squirrel.  I grabbed a shovel and flung him into these weeds.  For one brief moment he was a dead flying squirrel.

Now I will think of him every time I throw my rhubarb scraps in there.  May he rot in peace.

Oh, look!  A pretty butterfly came to pay his respects.

Poor squirrel.  I really do feel bad for him, but what can I do?

On a different note, we acquired more garden vegetables to raise:

Chuck's secretary gave us 8 acorn squash seedlings.  I love acorn squash so of course I wanted them, but where, oh where, am I going to plant them?  I got on the internet to learn more about them, and apparently they take up a LOT of room.  I found room for two of them in one of my garden beds, and I'm hoping that the roots aren't going to spread and interfere with my other veggies.  The plants are intended to grow out, but eventually I am going to have to trellis them up so they don't crowd everything else out.

Now, what to do with the other 6?  I hated to throw them away.  So we went shopping for more growing pots and some more dirt.

I hope these pots will be big enough.  If the plants don't make it,  I suppose we have nothing to lose.  All I could do was try it.  I was going to put them next to the chain-link fence so I could use the fence as a trellis, but for now I decided to line them up next to my bed where they will get more full sun.  Eventually I will have to trellis them up somehow, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Wisconsin Trip 2015

Another annual visit to my home state of Wisconsin!  We arrived in my home town of Marshfield on Thursday evening and went straight to my mom's place.  My parents live in this building:

It's a really LONG building so I only took a picture of the main door way. It is a retirement home for old folks who are still able to live independently.  They only have one guest room, but so far we have always been lucky enough to reserve it for ourselves when we needed it.  It's a 3-story building, but my parents live on the first floor.  The guest room is that window on the third floor up above the entry way.  

So Friday, we spent all day shopping with my mom, and then took her to the park, and then took her out for some ice cream.  I think we really wore her out.  While we were roaming around, Chuck found this coffee shop:

It became his favorite place and we patronized it several times.  It is the neatest coffee shop.  I love the atmosphere of the brick walls with their antique-looking decor.  I ordered some tea and they steep your tea bag in this cute little pot and give it to you with a mug:

We took my mom there a couple times and, as an extra bonus, she said that she used to work there before she got married, when it was a different cafe.  She told us where the tables were and the cashier register, etc.  She said when she got to work, the first thing she had to do every morning was fill up the ice bin. 

BTW, the park in Marshfield also has a zoo, and they currently have a new bear cage under construction, and after it's done, they are going to get two orphaned Kodiak bear cubs from Alaska!  Pretty cool!

On Saturday, my sister Kris drove up from Sparta to meet us and we all drove to Milwaukee to visit a museum.  Unfortunately, my brain wasn't working very well that day and I accidentally left my camera in the car, so now I'm really kicking myself cuz I have no pictures at all from the museum, and no pictures of Kris.  Anyway, I'm really glad my sister came along cuz she is really fun to be with.

Sunday we went to church, of course.  It was good to see my old friends there again.  After church, me and Chuck went to visit his mom.

We didn't know what to expect cuz we've been getting bad reports about her behavior which has become combative (spitting, hitting, pinching, kicking, swearing, etc.).  She didn't seem to know who we were, but thankfully she was mellow that day and we didn't have any problems with her.  We all think that she was overmedicated.  Her doctor is in the process of weaning her off some of her drugs, so maybe that's why she was docile that day.(?)

After that, we drove to Neillsville to visit Chuck's sister Joyce; his sister Karen and brother Jim were there too.  We had a family discussion about "what should we do with Mom?"  Without going into a lengthy explanation, I'll just say in a nutshell that, in the end, we all agreed that she needs to be moved to a different facility.  Hopefully, it will happen very soon.

While we were at Joyce's house, someone suddenly exclaimed:  "Look!  A snake!"

This snake was slithering through the grass and everyone kept saying "I've never seen a snake that big before!"  That thing was over 5 feet long!  

Then Joyce, being the adventurous one, came up with this idea:

The whole time I kept telling Chuck to hurry up and take the picture cuz I was so worried about picking up wood ticks from that grass.  Everyone kept saying the wood ticks were really bad that year, so I was trying to stay out of the grass as much as possible.  And here I am LAYING in it!  Usually the wood ticks stay in the long grass, but they were saying that they've been picking them up in short grass too now.  Anyhoo, Jim said it was a pine snake, and I'm assuming it wasn't poisonous; otherwise someone surely would've stopped us from doing this.  After this picture was taken, the snake tried to continue on his way across the yard, but Karen grabbed it by the tail and started yanking on it.  We asked her "WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?"  She said she didn't want it to leave cuz she wanted to look at it some more.  Crazy.

BTW, Joyce is the one in the back (with dark hair), and Karen is the one in the middle.

After we left Joyce's house we saw these deer off the side of the road close to her house:

On Monday, we took a drive to the town of Plover to visit Karen at her house.  We went with her to check out a facility close to her house that takes care of Alzheimer's patients.  The next day Joyce went with her to check it out too.  Karen and Joyce are both in the medical field, so they know what to look for and what questions to ask.  Last I heard, that is where they wanted to pursue moving their mom to.

On Tuesday, we drove to Hortonville to visit his brother Dean and his family.  Chuck had a good time shooting hoops with Dean's three boys and earned the nickname "Mr. Swish".

Then Karen and Joyce came to meet us there cuz they wanted to update Dean on the status of their mom, and also get his input on the matter.  Dean is also in the medical field, so his opinions equally held a lot of weight.

Here is Chuck getting smooches from his sisters:

He loves it.

On Wednesday, Chuck and I were finally able to take our mini vacation and escape from everybody.  We drove all the way up to the north coast of Wisconsin, to the town of Bayfield, on the shores of Lake Superior, so we could visit the Apostle Islands.  We checked into the room that we had reserved at this B&B:

The house was originally built in 1870-something, and was since added onto.  As it turned out, we were the only guests there because we beat the weekend rush, so that was nice.  The couple that owns the house were really nice.  I didn't know until the next morning that the wife is a huge quilter.  She owns her own quilt shop in the town of Ashland and teaches classes and everything.  I kinda guessed that she was quilter because I was examining the pretty homemade quilt that was on our bed.  I wish I had a picture of these people, but I felt too embarrassed to ask if I could take their picture.  I have a picture of their dog, though!

Chuck and "Tyson"

That evening we went walking around in the town of Bayfield.  There were some hiking trails and the town itself was very interesting because it had so many really old buildings.  Like this library, built in 1873:

Here is a quilt shop that we passed.  I don't know how old the building is, but it looks like it used to be a house.  The wife-owner of the B&B we stayed at personally knows the lady that owns this shop (no surprise there.......)

And of course, Chuck just HAD to find another coffee shop to fall in love with:

We went in there twice to buy coffee.  And a mug.  And a lemon ginger scone.  And a ginger cookie.

Here are a few pictures from the hiking trails in Bayfield:

Okay, next day:  Thursday.  We took the ferry to Madeline Island, the biggest of the Apostle Islands.

On the island, the town of La Pointe is a lot like Bayfield - very historical, but smaller.  First of all, we rented a tandem bike (bicycle built for two) and rode on a trail that skirts the coast of Lake Superior.  It was a very pretty bike ride.  We asked some other tourists to take our picture:

We've never ridden a tandem bike before, so we wanted to try it.  The first couple seconds were a little awkward, but it was actually very easy to ride.  And the nice thing was that Chuck was never half a mile ahead of me and getting impatient.

We parked the bike when we got to this trail to hike on.  Here a few pictures:

The trail took us through the woods and the skeeters were pretty aggressive that day, so we didn't hike the whole thing.  It was a very scenic hiking trip, but if you really want to see some awesome scenery, I think you'd have to rent some boats like these guys did:

We hopped back onto our tandem bike and rode a ways to another hiking trail on a beach:

We were getting hungry and didn't have any food on us, so we hopped onto the tandem bike again and headed back into town.  We found some lunch and then took a walk in town to see all the old buildings.  Here is another library that we found.  It used to be a schoolhouse in the early 1900s.

We went inside it, and it's pretty neat.  The upstairs is a big open room, and then there's a small "reading room" where you can shut yourself in if you REALLY want some quiet time.  The room has some really old books in there that you can get lost in.

Anyhoo, we knew that everything in Bayfield closes at 5:00, and Chuck wanted to go in that coffee shop again so we got on the ferry earlier than we had planned and headed back to Bayfield.  After one last walk around town, and one last coffee from the coffee shop, we headed to the town of Ladysmith so we could visit his sister JudyBug, which would finally be our last stop before coming back home.

I love JudyBug to death, but I was sorta kinda dreading going there because her house is "Wood Tick Central".  She and her husband Al live on the banks of a river, in the woods, and she has wood ticks like you wouldn't believe!  When we got there,  Chuck already found a wood tick attached to his shoe lace just walking from the car to their front door!  While at their house, I insisted on having my feet and lower legs sprayed with 100% DEET if we were gonna be outside for any length of time.  It was the only way that I could somewhat relax and enjoy myself when we were outside.  We had a good time there though.  We played bean bag games and ate S'mores by the fire pit,  and me and Al went for a nice bike ride in the country.  And the next day Al took us out on his boat:

At one time when Al was making the boat go fast, it created a wind that swept my hat right off my head and deposited it in the river!  (Actually it was Judy's hat; she let me borrow it.)  So Al had to turn the boat around so we could retrieve it out of the water.  

The cool thing that happened at Judy's house was this wild partridge that kept following us around.  Judy calls him "Brownie". It was hard to get a good picture of him cuz he camouflaged with the background so well.  All four of us took a walk down their drive way to the road to get their mail, which is 1/4 mile, and that bird followed us all the way there and all the way back.  It was the funniest thing!

On Saturday morning, it was time for us to head back to Minneapolis so we could catch our flight back home. Miraculously, I somehow managed to spend two nights at JudyBug's house without getting any wood ticks on me.  At least, not that I know of, so far.........

  So nice to be back home!  Let's see how my garden is doing, shall we?

Holy Cow!  My rhubarb went crazy!

My peas have sprouted quite a bit - that's good.

I think this is the pollen part of the corn plant coming in:

Overall, everything in the greenhouse looks "okay".  The tomato plants looked a bit weepy, but at least they're still alive.

Hey, look!  A pickle!

Future pumpkin!  (I hope)

It's good to be back home again, so I can once again take charge of my garden.  It's a little nerve-wracking to put your "baby" in someone else's care, not knowing for sure if they will take good care of it.  But they did okay.  Today I stayed pretty busy trying to get everything revived.  Did some pruning, watering, and harvested a lot of rhubarb, and also spent a lot of back-aching time getting all those weeds out of the flower garden in the front yard.  What a chore!  It all looks so much better now.

Now I can relax.

More Projects

The weather has been so nice this past week.  Even my kitties went outside - to find some shade to sit in.  It was that HOT.  That kind of weather is so nice to have, but can also be frustrating because it puts me in a dilemma.  It's too nice out to stay indoors, but when I go out there, it's too hot be out there.  So I'd go back in the house, and feel guilty for not being outside.  What to do?  Pray for rain?

Anyhoo, we finally started getting some rain yesterday, which was a good thing because all the trees were looking unhappy.  Now they look happy again.  And the nice thing is that it gave me a break from having to water everything in my garden beds.  BTW, my peas are sprouting!!!  YAY!  The only thing I'm waiting to see yet is my carrot sprouts.  Also, Chuck was pointing out that we still had three more blue Lowe's buckets that weren't being used, so we planted more cucumber seeds in them.  If they don't produce anything, it won't be a big deal.  He just hated seeing those buckets sitting around when we could be using them to plant something, so the important thing is - the buckets are being used.

The forecast says that the temps are supposed to get cooler with and on/off showers now for the next few days, which I am very thankful for because we are gonna be leaving for Wisconsin tonight, and a little bit of rain and cool temps will help my kids out a little bit, since I am leaving my garden under their care.  Now that I have my garden well established and growing, I will be very hard to live with if they kill everything that I've worked so hard for.

So, what have I been working on?  Whenever I go "home", I always want to bring something for my mom, so I made her these little jars:

I've been saving all my glass spice jars as I empty them because they are too nice to throw away.  So I converted these into treat jars.  I have them filled with chocolate covered plums, and chocolate covered cranberries.

I also made this placemat for her.  These colors always remind me of her for some reason, so I thought it would be perfect for her.

I know it's a little bit skewed, but she knows that I'm still a beginner quilter, and I know she will like it.  I also made this Halloween one to give to one of my sisters:

I used the same pattern for both of them, which I copied from this:

It's one of those "Quilt Block of the Month" patterns that you can find at JoAnn's.  I've been collecting them because I like the block patterns.  I know it's supposed to be used for making a whole quilt, but I just use them individually to make place mats.  Maybe I will actually make a quilt out of them some day.

Another project that I just started yesterday is sorting and cutting down all my fabric scraps.  I've had this bin of scraps sitting in my closet for YEARS, and now that I'm just starting to get "into" quilting, I've been digging through them, trying to find what I can use up.

I know my collection of fabric scraps is pretty small compared to most quilters, but I want to "nip it in the bud" while it's still feasible and not too overwhelming.  These are my bigger pieces that I don't want to cut down just yet.  But my smaller pieces, I have been cutting down:

I'm about half way through this stack.  I found some ideas on the internet what other people do with their scraps so I'm using some of their ideas.  I am cutting them into different sizes of squares and different widths of strips, depending on how big the fabric piece is.  Eventually I will have enough to make a scrap quilt.

Right now I am just putting them in plastic sandwich bags, but I'm sure I will eventually have to use a different system, using bins or something.  But as of right now, the plastic bags are working, just to help me get started.  I was hoping to get through the rest of that stack before we leave for our trip, but I don't know if that will be possible, with the laundry and the packing and the cleaning yet that I have to do.  I'm actually surprised I'm using up my time writing this post, but I wanted to say "goodbye" before I left.  Hopefully, when I get back, I'll have some interesting pictures and stories to share.

'til then!