Meet the Clucks

Last August we needed to get some chickens. Not that we hadn't tried, but the big box stores insist that you buy 6 at a time... and then never seem to have any in stock. So the next best thing? A Facebook search turned up some 4-month-old pullets (females) of the Cream Legbar Variety. It was mid-afternoon when I set off to collect them. On my way out of the garage, I grabbed a large empty moving box and threw it into the back of the car.

The drive took me west and down some narrow one-lane roads, that for some reason were all paved!!! I did hear a bit of music while driving that sounded a little like the soundtrack from the movie Deliverance! Several times I questioned the GPS but eventually, I arrived at the destination.

The lady has a big spread all fenced in with free-range goats, sheep, chickens- several varieties, turkey 2 varieties, a bunch of dogs and cats... and maybe more critters that I didn't see. We exchanged the money for chickens, put them in the empty box, and I left for home.

The look on the DH's face when I opened the box and 6 half-grown chickens popped out. He was expecting chickens that fit in your hand. We locked up the pen and left them to explore their habitat.
The next day we explored more of what chickens need and set about acquiring the supplies. Finding chickens was so difficult that we were not prepared for immediate occupancy, but quickly caught up.

Its been about 8 months and the chickens love free-ranging around the yard. When we open the gate every morning to let them out 4 head immediately for the pond and a drink. Nevermind that they do that at the watering bucket first thing out of their coop too. Only 3 of the chickens actually have names. Loooucy and Ethel are the 2 that are least worried about people and Chicken Little. The name is obvious if you know the story. That chicken is afraid of her own shadow.

When I was growing up my dad used to call them "cackleberries", but we call them 'squakberries'. These girls are supplying us with 1-2 dozen every week, (even during the cold winter), so we are eating lots of eggs and giving some away as well. The girls lay eggs ranging in colors of pale mint green to a bright pale blue and they have large bright creamy yolks. The egg on the bottom is a store-bought egg for reference. Although now, most of the eggs are all a big Medium!

Its time to start recording some information about living here, the weather, rain amounts, additions or subtractions and the work or improvements we are making... on the farm. So far the weather this spring has been up and down temperature-wise, from the upper 20's at night to the highs in the daytime as high as 80 degrees. Many days that have been sunny have been tempered with a frigid wind from the north/northwest. The warmest just last week with a taste of the humidity that will soon be here. Typical for the power shift of the north versus the south for control of where the storms come from. This week we have had weather suitable for shorts and yesterday long pants and jackets. High winds are predicted from most of the day, up to 50 mph. An inch of rain fell on Sunday 4/13/2020 and 3/4 of an inch before sunrise on Monday.

As Always More Later! Beth

Light Refraction

I stayed up late last night, did you? There was a total eclipse of the moon. Ordinarily I wouldn’t stay up to watch it, I mean once you’ve watched the Earth block the moon from the sun and cast a shadow…. what is different from time to time? What made this one different, was three things; the moon was nearly full, was at its closest point to Earth and due to the position and light refraction it was a Blood moon, so called because of the red/orange hue the moon takes on during the eclipse.

I almost didn’t prepare for it, as we had clouds all day…. But just before the first picture… the clouds started to clear out…. I missed the moonrise due to the clouds… so no full shot… of the plain old yellow moon and I didn’t stay up long enough to get a shot of the plain old moon after either.

While in South Africa, we had a Blood moon eclipse and I tried to get some decent pictures, but due to my novice experience and the lighting (safety lighting that only went off in power outages) I didn’t get such great pictures. Not that what I have posted here will win any prizes…. But these are better than the ones I took in 2011.

The start

about halfway

and (nearly) done.

If you missed it, the next one will be in 20 years, so plan accordingly if you want to see one yourself.

Speaking of light refraction. It is spider season these days and most mornings… there are some huge webs strung up in the yard…. As I was preparing to leave one morning the light on one of the webs was beautiful. Showing a web…. in a different light… anyway, I did not have time to find a perfect web strung up in a perfect setting…. Or even harder… the perfect web in the perfect light…. The spiders are hiding… so nothing to fear in the pictures below.

And lastly, I think the trees are leaning a little toward fall. This is the first leaf I found with color on the ground in the yard, a couple of weeks ago. A maple… of course.

More Later! 

Beth

A Day Out

I had a lunch date with a friend that I haven’t seen in person since 2002!!! I would have to say he is one of my oldest friends, that I stay in contact with, (I forgot to take a picture, actually we both did!!!). Since we last saw each other, he moved to Tennessee and now I am about 2 hours away… so we made a lunch date and met up in Bowling Green KY.

I left early, since I have not driven down that way… and didn’t want to discover a road mess… we hear about an accident nearly everyday…and  I know why now.The interstate is under construction for most of the drive  I also didn’t need to leave early, because some where between home and Bowling Green, there is a time zone change, (I am on Eastern time and Bowling Green is on Central time) so I got down there about an hour early!

I am so glad I took my camera along! I did what I usually do, kill time by driving around on roads I’ve never been on, and spied a field full of wildflowers.

One day last week in my own backyard… I spotted this little guy… it is a hairstreak or elfin. The wingspan is between 7/8 to about 1 1/4 of an inch when open, and when folded like this barely large enough to cover a thumb nail. As you can see a common clover flower is large enough… I should have millions of these little guys in my mostly clover lawn!!!

One day while sitting out back with the dogs, watching the clouds try and build up to thunderheads, I noticed that some of the clouds would get this hazy top… I’ve not noticed this phenomenon before.

How about that blue sky?

More Later!

Spring, REALLY?

By the calendar we are in spring. By nearly a week!

Does this look like spring to you? Not to me either.

The temperatures aren’t reflecting spring either today. Yesterday we had snow. All Day! It really didn’t amount to much, about 3 inches. But it snowed all day!!! From about 8 in the morning until 6 in the evening.

So are there signs of spring? I can see one from the deck.

This is a branch on a maple tree,you can see that it will be blooming soon. The flowering plum tree in the front has buds beginning to swell as well. While shopping the other day, I saw many sparrows collecting items to build nests, so true spring is not that far away. (All the white in the background is snow.)

I’m sure there are more signs, but it is just too darn cold to go exploring to find them. Air temperatures are about 25 F (-4  C) with a breeze that brings the wind chill to about 12 F (-11 C). Of course in the not to distant future we will be complaining about how hot and humid it is…. such is our nature, but this winter has just been so cold and snowy.

Here’s to warmer temperatures and summer flowers!

More later, Beth

Houston IQA

I am home from Houston…. I had a great time!!!! Only one glitch, was the headache I got from carrying the laptop to and from class. It ruined Saturday totally for me. But after a bottle of Tylenol, a nights rest…. (and a massage at the show) I was good as new by Sunday morning.

Meeting my friends was the best!!!! Trisha and Wolfie!

Lisa Sipes - Trisha - Wolfie!

The only hard and fast rule was getting to the convention center… on time. Of course the rain storm on Thursday morning…. got in the way of that. I was late for my class. The last time I attended Quilt Fest the car I had reserved was gone, so they upgraded me to a mini van. So I didn’t really put much stock in getting the car I reserved, and of course this time we got the true economy car, that I reserved. We got a Nissan Note…

I thought for sure it would drown a couple of times on our way to the convention center!!! There was so much water on the road, rain still coming down in buckets and no where for it to go… Water was pouring off the overpasses, huge standing puddles on the highway and roads, coming down faster than the wipers could clear the windshield. For some reason, the “fast” setting on the wipers was not all that fast….

We stayed off site, out on the west side of Houston in a very friendly Fairfield Inn by Marriott. The staff was the most friendly ever. Greeting us each time we came to the lobby. Always smiling and asking if we needed anything… at all.

I took 2  classes…. Navigating/Charting my Course to Creativity with Lesley Riley. We created a journal…. and did a bit of exploring…. some exercises…. that may prove useful… some where in my creative process. But since I don’t seem to be truly inspired most of the time or have a personal vision for my ‘quilty-self’, I don’t think it will help me much…. I am also not a journal keeper…. I would probably find some really fun ideas… down the road, but I am just too self-conscious about a journal… to keep one. One thing I did discover…. after traversing most of the continental USA is that Lesley Riley lives and works just across the Potomac River from me in Maryland!

I also took a class on EQ7. This program has eluded me since loading it in 2010. It is not intuitive in the least, even though it is on the Windows Platform. It was a great class and now that I have a basis… for the tools and how the program functions… a bit… I may actually use it. This was another case of going around the world to see the instructor. Barb Vlack is a master in the program and comes from the Chicagoland too. Oh well, we do live and learn don’t we?

I will post more about the show and quilts I saw… later… in the mean time, on Sunday we took a little bit of a road trip. First, because we were a bit early, we took Wolfie to a Michaels Craft store and then to a Joann Fabric Store.

We then made our way to a local sight, the Beer Can house”, but for some reason the curators partied the night before and didn’t see a reason to open the house on Sunday for visitors. NO explanation, just didn’t show up. I called the number and got an answering machine that indicated that Saturday night was some party… Thanks! Next we went south to the Kemah Boardwalk. We spent the afternoon walking around and taking in the area. The number of boats going in and out was amazing… although the water seemed a bit rough….

On the way back to Houston we drove to the Nasa Space Center…. we opted not to go in, but we walked the grounds and looked at 2 of the outdoor exhibits. The Space Shuttle Independence has been moved here, and is still undergoing preparations as an exhibit. It is massive in size! At the front entrance is a little park called the T-38 park and had one of the lunar modules and 2 T-38 jets on display. Pretty cool…. actually.

After 4 very long days… we turned in the glorified roller skate, we called a car and headed for our separate homes. Trish to Wisconsin, Wolfie to Sweden and me back to Virginia.

As always more LATER! Beth

Fall

It is fall here… days are getting noticeably shorter and cooler, and the trees are turning… It would have been nice to go over to the Blue Ridge Mountains to see the color there, but the Shenandoah National Park was closed with the rest of the Government. So this weekend we went looking for some local color.

We had the DGS with us Saturday and Sunday, so we took him out for a walk at a small reservoir. The breeze was a little chilly…and the sun was out. I didn’t find much in the way of color… Lots of yellow, green and orange. The poplars are done (leaves gone), the dogwood is not a pretty red and the oaks may be brown before good color sets.

and there were power lines in the way for vista shots. This was the best shot with color. Also found some dogwood berries, it was the best red I saw. As you can see the leaves were dull purple-y brown.

This was my favorite picture -a gold field with a few remaining bits of color- but then again I always like thistles.

We found some active bits of nature… a few butterflies and grasshoppers flitting about and some Wooly Bear Caterpillars. DGS wanting to hold the ‘bear’, but the ‘bear’ wasn’t going to climb on a human. They all seemed to be on a mission… could it be preparing for winter?

For more information on these guys you can go here or here. Interesting… reading about what they become, what they eat and how fast they can travel! Oh and can the really predict the winter?

It seems that the winter prediction between the caterpillar and my dogs are way different! The dogs say harsh…. the caterpillar says mild. Interesting!

After walking and looking at nature, DGS was done and opted for a ride back to the car. We all forgot that he is sensitive to ragweed… so he was feeling a little punkie… next time allergy meds before he arrives at the grandparents house, unless we get a good frost first, which may happen this next weekend. YaY for frost on the pumpkin!!!

More later--- Beth

What

in the world am I going to blog about? It is the question I have been asking myself for the last week or so. I don’t have anything to say… at least nothing I think anyone wants to hear about.

The DH (dear husband) was away on business last week. It was a long week. A very long week, not really sure why.

I had quilty things that I attended -a bee and a couple of meetings. Both were enjoyable, but neither one was very exciting. I have accepted the nomination for Guild  Secretary. I think it is the only position I have never held on an Executive Board level. May have to practice penmanship. I have suspended the work on the Chickens, because I had a baby quilt to finish. Its done and good thing too. The baby arrived so the quilt will go in the mail soon. And I am quilting another large throw quilt… about 70 x 70, as long as I have the machine set up for quilting… It has been waiting all summer to be quilted.

There is a single constant these last few weeks though. Both of the dogs, Axel and Linzi, are dropping hair like there will be no tomorrow. Between the 2 of them they deposit a small dog every other day. I find the little “fluff” dog floating around on the hardwood floor. So I vacuum just about every day, either the floor or the stairs! I brush them as well, but it never ends. I have never seen these 2 shed like this. It will be interesting to see if it correlates to how cold the winter is.

We also have a new wrinkle. The ‘Budget Impasse’.  DH of course works for the government, but his job is considered essential so he has to report for work regardless. Which means he is employed, but he doesn’t get paid. Is there a term for that? You know when you are out of work and pay its called unemployment. Is there a term for someone that works but doesn’t receive their pay? Oh and all the rules regarding time off, change too. If you have leave scheduled and take it, it’s now called “self-furlough”.

Really?

and of course because we need a picture. One that I think sums it up.

Storm clouds… taken from the back deck in June. It looked like a fierce storm, but didn’t produce much in the way of… storm…..

More later…. Beth

 

It Was Hot!

I’m sure that you have heard the news. There was a heat wave that covered more than 2/3 of the US. Just like most of the East Coast, the weather here has been HOT. No other word for it. The air temperatures were reaching the upper 90’s, add in the humidity and the heat  index said that it felt like 105 to 110….  That is much too hot for man and beast… but I had to go and see what LOVES this kind of weather!

So what loves the sun and heat? Sunflowers!!!

Last weekend, I made a solo ride to an area on the Maryland side of the river (Potomac). I had heard/read about a Wildlife Management Area that plants some fields of sunflowers. I was going to wait and go with a group of camera buffs, but the weather was going be stormy… and the flowers were at peak… and after the storm the field would be wet and muddy.

Field of sunflowers are not new. But the fields were opened to the public to walk in, is a nice change, instead of climbing fences or trespassing. There are several fields, in the area… in various stages of maturity. Next year I plan to visit then again…

This was one of my favorites pictures…. as the breeze would move, these flowers looked like they were peeking around one another…

An of course what is a sunflower picture without a bee?

I have thoroughly enjoyed getting back out with the camera. I hope you have too.

More Later!!!

Beth

Something to Report!

This has been the toughest 7 weeks!!! We arrived in DC on September 7 and made an offer on the house within the week. We have been waiting ever since for the house to close and move in. We nearly gave up more than once - considering rental instead.

But finally wrangled all the parties, lit a few fires (one or 2 will be singed when all is done) and moved out of the hotel on Friday October 26th into this: (the one on the right).

Yes, a townhouse. We didn’t find many (detached) single family homes that met our needs…. in a price range or close enough for DH’s commute to work without sitting in traffic 1-2 hours each way each day.

We are in Leesburg Virginia. A beautiful little city, with small town feel, well so far at least. Near the country and not too far from the city. We both have a little family in the area, so we will be connected again. We are sleeping on a borrowed bed… from family, otherwise it would be the floor!

The house has 4 levels…. and too many bathrooms. See those 2 windows at the top? That is my sewing space. Not as large as I had in Nebraska or Chicago, but much larger than I had in South Africa. It runs the depth of the house and about 14 feet wide. There are lots of built in shelves, a walk in closet, a desk and a full bathroom! The windows in the picture face east, and 2 facing the west, so there will be natural light all day. Only a few townhouses have 4 levels, so I will be in the clouds by myself… most days. DH has his own space on the lowest level of the house as well. The only losers are the dogs, as we won’t have much of a yard, but we can walk to the Potomac in nice weather (so they say) and we will try going to the dog park to keep them sane. Although we can see a huge difference in their attitudes with the added space of the house over the hotel room(s).

Tuesday, the house stuff from South Africa may be delivered (storm may cause us to push that back). With that the kitchen, sewing room and our bed will be here!!! Not sure when the house contents from Chicago will get here, but hopefully still a few weeks off. We would like to get the main level painted before the furniture arrives!

Since we have been back, we have experienced 2 tornado warnings and now ‘Frankenstorm’ is upon us. Originally news reports were that Sandy would make her landing in the Virginia area, but now the New York/New Jersey area will be hit hardest. The wind and bands of rain on the western and southern edges will cause us the most difficulty…. I have a camp stove, several cans of propane and lots of soup, cheese, bread and snacks to see us through a power outage.

As Always- More Later, Beth

Weather

We are having a true taste of weather!!! Here, where we are on the verge of the Southern Hemisphere spring and we have winter. REAL winter. Cold -bone chilling cold. Winds with a bit of ice in them… that make the cold air even colder and cuts right through to your bones. And snow! Yep, snow flurries.

There are places in South Africa that see some snow in the winter, every winter. But for Johannesburg and Pretoria to see snow flakes, that is a bit more unusual. Sort of like snow in San Diego California.

Taken with my phone… on my way home….

On Tuesday, when I got home… I let the dogs out into the yard. Axel, who has of course seen snow was very excited… he ran and rolled and played. Linzi, didn’t even notice…. Pretoria did not have any accumulation and the little that accumulated near Johannesburg, melted shortly after the sun appeared.

It is cold here! Not as cold as dead of winter in the northern plains of the USA. But here where the temperatures are milder, where homes are brick without insulation, windows are single glazed and weather stripping is non existent… central heat is not available and add to that high energy costs (and an overloaded energy grid)… well it’s cold inside and out! Burr.

More Later-

Beth

 

Hodge-Podge Post

Last week was sort of hurry up and wait… with the impending and threatened Government shut down. Of course my job is not ‘essential’ so I won’t have to report to work if they don’t come to a resolution.

I have been busy again in the sewing space to kill some time. I have another Swap Block ready to go… so no pictures yet -the recipient has to get it first. However I can show you the last Sparkly Chicken Swap Block, because the recipient has received hers. Her theme was beach, so I did a very typical beach scene.  Does it say beach to you?

I have also been working out the quilting I am going to do on the April UFO, from Judy Laquidaras UFO Challenge. I have a plan and I hope it goes as well as I think… and do what I want it to do. I made the top back in the early 1990’s, when I was a member of the Annie's Star Quilt Guild in Chico, CA. It is the second of two. The first I hand quilted and I don’t want to do THAT again… I have an idea of what I want to do… so now I am working out the details… and then I will begin.  I have changed out the poly batting to a cotton and spray basted. With DH on the road again, I will be able to quilt as needed.

I have, also-- finally gotten caught up on an International FQ Swap I am a member of. I was waiting for some fabric I ordered to arrive. I waited and waited and waited (from a US store that does online as well, I am just about fed up with them… and the backorders), and finally all but one piece is here, but I have time to get that one still. I have received some great pieces of fabric from all over the world since being involved with this group.

On Thursday last week, I had a short massage on my left shoulder and neck. I wanted to try Shiatsu and see if helped. Oh YES!!! I am thinking I may set up a regular massage appointment to see if I can get my neck and shoulder to relax long enough to get past the tension. I was a little reluctant to try massage again, as the Chiropractors massage therapists… did not ever get deep enough to do much good… I have been managing my neck and shoulder issues… without a chiropractor for more than 2 years with very little pain or discomfort, and few headaches.

A little about South Africa- It is fall here. Not that there has been a real noticeable change in the weather, at least not that you could say… it’s fall. A few trees are showing some color change or leaf loss - the poinsettia trees are beginning to get the red bracts that we see on the small shrubs at Christmas (in the US). I keep trying to get a good photograph, but so far no luck. Maybe a trip to the Botanical Gardens is in order, possibly next weekend. But I think the slight chill in the morning and evening air is the biggest change.  Enough that if you were going to be outside for a bit, you might want a sweater. The day time temps are still upper 60’s or lower 70’s so it’s still nice in the sun.

Well the Government did not shut down, so I must go to work.  Until later, and as always… there will be more later!

Beth