Ramblings of a rural(ish) geek

Let's see:

I did not cut back the milkweed -- most of the seedpods still have seeds in them, so I'm leaving them up for the birdies. I did go and cut back the beardtongue and Chinese lanterns in the NW garden, leaving up the stonecrop and the Russian sage which still have seeds.

We have had a couple of hard freezes, but they haven't lasted very long. Temps are supposed to be warm for at least another week, so the pump gets to stay in the pond for a little while longer. DB is muttering about how 'kids these days' have it easy -- the village holiday parade is Saturday, and it's supposed to be somewhere in the 40s(F) for the parade. The valve body on his sousaphone froze two of the four years he did that parade, and SR had icicles off her sax at least one year. (I think she marched in the first two parades - I don't remember exactly when they started the parade.)

The birds have not been eating a lot of birdseed - consumption usually goes down in November unless it's snowy or very cold. Once the migrating birds have gone through, all that we have are the ones wintering over, and there's seeds and fruits available until it snows and/or freezes and stays frozen.

I wound up making a cranberry bundt cake for Thanksgiving dessert, modifying a raisin pound cake recipe as necessary to fit the ingredients I had on hand.

(I do have three things! It's a post!)

Gosh, I hope so.

We got over two inches of wet sloppy "snow" yesterday, and then it dropped below freezing, so there's a lovely crust of ice on top. Paved areas were pretty much too warm for the snow to accumulate, but not so the grass/flowerbeds/decks. It's melting quickly in the sun, but the side deck is in the shade of the house and the sunlight won't get to it until afternoon. And they're telling us to expect temps near 50F today, upper 50s tomorrow, and upper 60s on Sunday. Yeah, it's April.

The cranes were picking birdseed out of the hanging birdfeeders this morning. Unfortunately, they're still very aware of movement inside the house, so I was unable to get pictures. :(

J put the pump in the pond over the weekend, which is good. What was not good was that he unplugged the heated birdbath to do so. I had to go out with a pitcher of hot water (to melt the snow/ice mess) and then one of tap temperature to fill the birdbath.

Last Saturday, while J was off at Robotics competition, DB and I went out with pruning shears & a pruning saw and cut back the lilac. The idea is to cut the whole thing back to 6"-8" and let it grow again -- it'd been ignored for 15 years, and was way overgrown, to the point that it wasn't flowering very much, and had a bad case of powdery mildew and the lichen that old lilacs get. We left the big trunks for J and the chainsaw (because I didn't know where it was). J went out on Sunday afternoon to deal with it, and the chainsaw wouldn't start. Maybe this weekend.

The funeral meal was last Saturday. It was not quite the wreck I thought it would be -- I got the crew to set the hall for 102 people, and we fed about 85, which gives nice spacing. (They had originally only set 80, so it was good thing I had them set more tables.) There were more people than that at the service, but there were some who never planned on staying, and some who left when it took over an hour for everyone to get over to the hall -- much chatting with the widow. There were enough leftovers to send some home with the family and still have a light lunch after church the next day. This weekend is the farewell potluck for the minister -- she's not leaving for a month, but there's no open Sunday between now and then. I still haven't decided what I'll bring. Nor do I know which instrument I'll be playing in the praise band -- it depends on how many trumpet players show up.

DB's Miraphone (tuba) is back in its second home -- the corner of the living room. :) It will go back to school on Monday, although probably not before the band director notices that it's gone -- he wasn't in school on Friday, but the associate director was, and he said it would be fine if we borrowed a good tuba.

I set out a hummingbird feeder on Tuesday. I still haven't seen any hummers, but the ladies on the lake say they have, so there are some in the area. Wednesday morning I looked out and there was a Baltimore Oriole on the hummingbird feeder. So I dug that feeder out and set it out. Thursday afternoon the Oriole was on the oriole feeder.

My left shoulder had been hurting since the concert (apparently, I really shouldn't unrack chairs); so I finally went to the ortho last Friday. She gave me a script for therapy and one for the NSAID-that-actually-works. After five days on the NSAID, the shoulder felt pretty good, but I still kept the PT appointment. The PT said that it was a good choice, as the joint is still not right, so we'll be working on the tendonitis which allowed the joint to shift a little out of position. So now I have exercises and icing to do. whee.

And now the lady red-winged blackbirds are back -- they generally trail the males by a few days.

We got about 11 inches of snow by the time it was all done by mid-Thursday. The base was heavy and wet, but then we got lighter stuff that drifted and it got windy, so there was a drift about 18" high across the garage doors when I got up on Thursday. It was 47F yesterday, and didn't drop below freezing overnight, but there's still a significant amount of snow left (not in the driveway though, as that got cleared).

I was able to make it in to the library on Wednesday, and back home again. DB was not so lucky -- he was coming home from a friend's house, and missed a turn. He wound up in the ditch about 15 feet from the road (much of it down, as he was 5 feet below the road surface). I had him call AAA, who showed up an hour later to winch him out. (60 minutes is good response time in decent weather, so I'm not complaining at all.)

Designer called counter fabricator, who said "huh. musta' lost that order, 'cause we usually get estimates out in 2-3 days". Whatever. Anyway, quote came in on Saturday, and I stopped by (I was in town for groceries anyway) and ordered the cabinet. Delivery in 4-ish weeks.

We were supposed to at least have scheduled the new floor by now, but that's not happened. If I don't hear from her by the middle of the week, I'll call and see if she knows where my floor is (somewhere between northern Ontario and here, I'm sure, but I'd like a little more precision).

In other project news, I have the bits (blouse, jacket, skirt, overskirt) cut out, and now all I have to do is sew them together.

The counting of the froggies is 12, and I saw some toadlings up by the house -- they're about 3/4" long. I have eaten some tomatoes out of the garden. The milkweed is setting seeds now -- it looks like we're going to have a good crop of milkweed fluff this year.

The wasps have moved in on the hummingbird feeders, so I've had to take them down -- I'll put them back up again in mid-September. I need to plant more late summer flowers for the hummers.

DB's last high school band concert was Wednesday night. He played in both the full orchestra and in the wind symphony. The orchestra was working without their main director, who had been in SD for a funeral until Wednesday am; and the principal horn player, who wasn't able to play due to illness. So the middle school band director (who is a very good horn player) sat in and sight read the first horn parts. DB said that the winds had only rehearsed William Tell three or four times before the performance, but it really didn't sound too bad -- the trumpets got out of sync on the fanfare/hunting calls, but it wasn't horrible, and they got it together by the time they really needed to be. The Wind Symphony played a couple of pieces that I have, and I laughed a bit at one place -- the FCB had always mangled a transition, and the WS did the same thing we always did. SR says that there's a note in the music that says "mess up here". :) (It's a transitionless transition -- end a measure at one tempo and style, start the next measure in a different tempo and style.)

SR saw a female oriole in the backyard the other day, so I had her mix up some oriole food and put out the oriole feeder.

The gardens are getting overrun with weeds, but I had a funeral meal to host on Wednesday, and those put me out for a couple of days, between onsite and recovery. Maybe today, but DB has Senior Theater stuff this afternoon, and we need to go pick up a couple of people for that. (It's Moving Up Day (aka Practice-for-Next-Year), when seniors are told 'don't come in', because there isn't room for them.)

I did. Which explains why DB only had two days of school last week (Monday was a scheduled off day for "Great Americans' Weekend") due to the cold (past a certain point, you start running into busses not starting, as well as student safety). At one point before last week, SR and I were contemplating going to see the Open Hood event at HFM on Friday, but with every school in the metro Detroit area closed Thursday and Friday (and the museum offering buy 1-get 1 admissions), we decided we could wait. Maybe this week. Although not Thursday, because that's MSBOA Band & Orchestra Festival, and DB and I will both be working.

(The thermometer in the backyard, which is reasonably accurate and fairly well located, indicated that it was -25F/-32C at 8am Friday. yeah, not so much with the busses starting.)

I have no idea what to expect from the bands and orchestras on Thursday. They all sounded pretty good at the concert last week, but I noticed a lot of things that could have been better. I fully expect that the directors noticed them as well, so it becomes a matter of how much time they can spend on fixing them.

There were doves standing in the (dry) birdbath this morning, keeping their feet warm.

More weeding. It never stops. The ground's been drying out, and in a couple of the flowerbeds that means that the weeds break off rather than come out. The rain we got yesterday should loosen the ground enough that I can actually pull weeds.

More birds. We saw a pair of Downy Woodpeckers at the feeders yesterday. There's also a pair of male indigo buntings, and probably a female or two (the females look quite a bit like female house finches, so they can be hard to ID). Not a lot of male goldfinches this year, although ours often fade as the summer goes on and the mating season is over. SR thinks she saw a female oriole -- wrong size & shape to be anything else, but didn't get a really good look at it.

And frogs! We've seen a couple of frogs in the pond in the last couple of weeks. Dunno why we don't have more, but I suspect the cooler than usual temperatures have something to do with it. We also have duckweed in the pond in addition to the algae that we usually have. I hope we'll get more frogs as the season goes on -- the usual peak is sometime in September.

Anna is being quite "helpful" in the workroom. Every time I go down, she comes over for attention, and so I lose 30-45 minutes to that. And then she falls asleep in my lap until I try to do handwork and then she wakes up. (If I actually try to do something, she gets between me and what I'm working on, or tries to headbutt the iron, or catch the scissors, or play with the pins, or get under my hand as I'm feeding fabric into the sewing machine.) So yeah, not a lot getting done.

When I put the peony rings in on Thursday, they were just below the top level of leaves. By Monday morning, it looked like I might want to lift the rings up a bit....



There is so much weeding to do! And it rained hard this morning, so the gardens are too wet to walk in.

The indigo bunting was on the platform feeder this morning, before the rain came through. I tried to get a picture, but he flew off when I stepped away from the door to get the camera. :(

It's still cool in the basement, and now it's gotten damp. I plugged the dehumidifier in yesterday -- I really don't like running both the space heater and the dehumidifier at the same time, but if I'm going to get anything done down there, I don't think I have a choice.

Apparently we've got a full-out wildlife habitat in the backyard. Early this afternoon, I heard a wild flurry of birds taking off from feeders/shrubberies/trees. I looked outside, but didn't see anything that could have caused it. About 10 minutes later, I glanced outside and there was a hawk bathing and drinking in the shallows of the pond. Well, yeah, that might make the mixed small birds (aka "lunch") scatter. I expect the froggies are all well-hidden as well.