Food Waste Friday and True Food Confessions--May 17, 2013

It's time for Food Waste Friday, when the Frugalgirl encourages us to post pictures from the previous week of wasted food from our household. This accountability hopefully will help us to be more careful with our food and maybe save some money. Also, I am using this public forum to encourage us to eat out less which includes better meal planning. You can follow how we are doing in this endeavor by reading True Food Confessions.

This Week's Food Waste

Food Waste=None

This Week's True Food Confessions

A few things we had to eat this week. We were lucky to have fresh asparagus and greens from Uncle Billy's garden.

I started to write my regular Friday post and got a little bored with it. It was much like last week's so you can read that if you want to get a feel for it. In the meantime, I'm going to talk about something that has interested me for a while--what you call the meals you eat every day.

Breakfast, lunch, dinner, supper

These are the four common names that are used for the meals of the day in most English speaking countries. Dinner came from a old French word that meant to break the fast of overnight and was usually used for the main meal of the day--one at noon in a two meal system. Over the years the main meal has changed from the first one of the day to the last one of the day and use of the word dinner has followed that change. When I was growing up, we had breakfast, dinner, and supper in that order. Calling dinner the evening meal was something that I only read about in books. I think this usage reflected that I grew up in a rural farming community. However, as I made my way out into the world, I gradually adopted the naming that I had read about. I eat breakfast when I first get up in the morning. I eat lunch in the middle of the day, and I have dinner during the early evening. (Although sometimes I still have supper then. It just depends if I am channeling my roots that day.)

What do you call the meals you eat every day? Has it changed over time?

A Second Look--Birds, May 16, 2013

I love to watch birds. Not in a bird watcher kind of way like someone who has a life list of birds they've seen and hope to see. Also, not like a friend who knows every bird that comes to her feeder and gives each one of  them names according to their looks and actions. I'm not quite as serious as either one of those kind of watchers. But I love to watch birds all the same.

I know that birds have struggles like every other living thing, but to me they look joyful as they flit about. They look happy as they are looking for grubs, and they look satisfied while they are building their nests. Watching birds that have these apparent attitudes is one of the reasons I love to watch them.

My bird watching began two years ago when Ward got a bird feeder for his birthday. For the first year, most of our bird watching was really squirrel watching as we tried to keep the squirrels from eating the bird food. When that problem was solved, our bird watching began in earnest. We called excitedly to each other when we saw a bird on the feeder, and then called Aunt Martha, our bird expert, to help us identify it. 

As time went on, we learned to identify more birds by ourselves and I started taking pictures of them to share with you during my Second Looks. I'm not sure if you are aware of my bird picture taking methods, but I am shooting through my dirty kitchen windows. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And many times the bird has moved on before I can get the camera in place. But I do it all the same. The birds have been particularly active the last few weeks as they find mates, build nests, and raise babies.  Below are pictures of some of this activity in my backyard. Many of the pictures are not of great quality (remember the dirty kitchen window thing) but I'm sharing them because they tell my story. I love bird watching.

Bluebird scoping area for nest site. It chose this box.

Inside the above box, five eggs were laid and recently hatched. It's hard to tell much about the baby birds since they are all in a big pile, but if you look carefully you can see in the last picture they are starting to develop feathers.

Bluebirds did not get to use this box because it is being used by a house sparrow. House sparrows are aggressive about nesting areas and some people remove their nest when they see it being built so the bluebirds will have a chance. I just couldn't do that. The birds have been building the nest for over a month and it has no eggs yet. The latest building material was blue jay feathers.

This is one of a pair of sparrows that has been building the above nest.

This is a house sparrow's egg shell that Ward found buried under the sparrow nesting box. A coincidence, yes. But an interesting one since that box is new to that location this year. I'm not sure where the egg came from.

Woodpeckers. We have also seen hairy and pileated woodpeckers at the feeder, but not recently.

Our woodpecker tree with a new hole for this year. I don't know if any of the above woodpeckers made it.

Cardinals. I have seen a lot of cardinal activity recently including dueling males fighting for mating rights. Sometimes the male and female show up to the feeder together and sometimes they don't.

These two house finches were eating dandelions together. The one on the left looks like a fledgling female. Notice the downy feathers on top of its head. The other one with the red head is a male.

Another finch. A gold finch.

Cat bird. This a new one for me and Aunt Martha promptly got a call.

Robin, Blue Jay, and Carolina Wren

I guess that's enough for now. And now for the disclaimer. I identified these birds to the best of my ability, but who knows if I got them all right.

A Second Look

This is the first week in several that it has not been raining during my Second Look .  I found this a nice change of pace. Blooms are continuing with something new blooming every day. Also, we found a not-so-pretty cicada still in its shell while we were planting some new bushes. The cicada invasion has begun in some places, but we don't expect them until later in the month. I can wait.

Here is what I found this week during a Second Look.

Rhododendron

Star of Bethlehem

Azalea

Baby peaches

Azalea

Siberian Iris

Lily of the valley

Bleeding heart and azalea

Cicada cocoon

Boys vs. Girls--Future Plans

Before I had kids, I thought that each child was an individual, and didn't believe much in gender stereotypes in children. Little boys ran and jumped a lot because that's the kind of games they were taught. Little girls played with dolls because that was the kind of toys they were given. I thought that if all kids, regardless of gender, were exposed to the same things, they would have the same tendencies. Then I spent some time in the real world of kids and figured out that I was wrong. Possibly there were some differences between boys and girls. From time to time, I'm going to share some of my experiences that led me to this conclusion. However, so as to not bias you, I'm going to let you guess, who are the boys in the stories and who are the girls.Today's StoryTheo was playing Nintendo with his best friend from kindergarten, Julia. Here is the conversation Julia's mother and I overheard."You know that some day we are going to get married and we'll play this game with our little  boy or girl.""We can't play this game with our kids.""Why not?""It only has two controllers."

You decide: Which was Theo and which was Julia?_____________________________________________________________________________In case you're wondering--Julia had future plans for marriage, and Theo had future plans for the video game. (Is anyone else having problems with Blogger's formatting? It's driving me crazy. This post was going to look a lot different, but I can't seem to make it happen.)     

Brighton Dam Azalea Gardens--week two

Last week, Ward and I visited the Brighton Dam Azalea Garden. I hoped that we could go back in a week because I thought the azaleas would be at their peak then. Well, mission accomplished. Yesterday, Ward, Wally, Theo, and I went back for a picnic and another walk among the azaleas. I was wrong about the flowers being at their peak. Many of the bushes had faded, but there was still plenty to marvel at.

We grilled hot dogs, watched geese, checked out the dam, and walked in the azalea garden. It was a beautiful day and Mother's Day on top of that, so there were plenty of people who joined us at the park. It was fun to watch multi-generations enjoying kids, dogs, and the scenery. However, did I mention it was a windy day? Theo said that it was so windy, that the hot dogs were being moved on the grill. I do know that it was so windy that I had four layers on including Ward's sweatshirt and jacket that he brought along.

Here are a few scenes from our visit.