Thankful Sunday--June 30, 2013

I am thankful that Theo and Ward cleaned the gutters.

And I'm especially thankful that we've had no more water in the basement since they did this.

A Second Look--Weekend Edition, June 29, 2013

 
Okay. How did this happen? It's not that important in the grand scheme of things, but it makes me wonder. I've been going around my yard for two years now during a Second Look trying to look at things with a curious set of eyes. I've been trying to see new things among the old things and see old things in a new way. I've been trying to observe the change of things and the sameness of things.

So how is it that I never noticed the very obvious pink blossoms on one of our trees? And I didn't actually notice them. It was Wally.  The interesting part of all of this was that a few days earlier, we were visiting with my father-in-law and we drove by one of these trees. He asked if I knew anything about them because he thought they were pretty. I said I didn't really know anything except they were supposed to be messy. Little did I know I had one in my yard--a mimosa tree.

The mimosa tree is a small tree that originated in Asia and is generally used as an ornamental tree. Honey bees and butterflies like its flowers, and its seed pods are sometimes used to feed livestock. However, in some areas, it is considered an invasive species.

So what did I learn from this eye-opening experience? Don't become complacent because you never know what might be right under your nose.
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Okay, in my defense, I'd like to believe that this is the first year this tree had bloomed. And look. It's nestled between a Japanese maple and Juniper tree. Hard to see, right? :) This is actually why I keep doing a Second Look. I really don't know what I might find.

Food Waste Friday and True Food Confessions--June 28, 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

CEREAL

Miss Landers gave us the last of a box of cereal that she had grown tired of and it turns out no one here liked it very well. So after sitting on the shelf for months, I finally put it outside for the critters. So far we've had a few takers from birds and chipmunks.

This Week's True Food Confessions

Some of the things we had to eat this week.

This was a good week. We only ate out once at a favorite Mexican restaurant that we go to when we visit my father-in-law. And, I actually had a detailed menu plan for three days in a row! There seems to be better success at executing them when they are written down other than just noted in my head. Surprise, surprise. :0

We also, tried a couple of new things this week. I made white chili with navy beans and chicken that turned out well, and we tried a new recipe for Greek Turkey Burgers. The recipe was inspired by this one from Prevention magazine, but had a few substitutions in our version.We worked with what we had on hand.

Greek Turkey Burgers

1 1/4 lb lean ground turkey (Ours was 93% lean,)
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
1/4 cup light sour cream
1/4 cup chopped pitted green olives
2 oz. goat cheese crumbled
1 tsp. Italian seasoning

Mix all ingredients thoroughly and form into patties. Cook on a medium grill until the internal temperature is 165° F. Serve on buns with lettuce and tomatoes and whatever else strikes your fancy.

The verdict on the burgers: I thought they were great. Ward thought the flavor was good but they were too dry. He prefers a juicy beef burger. Also, he thought they would do better cooked in a skillet than on the grill. They kind of fell apart on the grill. Theo thought they were pretty good and Wally did not like them because of the strong taste of the olives. So the reviews were a mixed bag. I think that we'll try them again and maybe add more liquid to them from something like mushrooms so they won't be so dry and not put olives in all of them.

Until next time...

It's been two years since I started to blog and most of you (all of you) were not with me in the beginning, so I am revisiting a few posts about getting started. Today's is about when I was trying to figure out how long my posts should be.

It's been two years since I started to blog and most of you (all of you) were not with me in the beginning, so I am revisiting a few posts about getting started. Today's is about when I was trying to figure out how long my posts should be.

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Long and the Short of It

How long should my posts be? I've been pondering this since I decided to try my hand at blogging. I'll have to admit that I am behind the technology curve that has the trend of shortening everything. I don't regularly text. I tried to open a Twitter account, but kept having problems with my password. I usually use complete words in emails. In other words, it's easy to tell that I'm over thirty. I remember when I was in college, I was introduced to the book,  "CDB" by William Steig. I thought it was very clever. The entire book was just line-drawings and letters that sounded out words.( “CDB=See the bee.”) Who knew years later, that this style of writing would be commonplace.

I looked around a little* and found that different kinds of blogs, on average, have different lengths. Gossip blogs are usually the shortest (~100 words) and reference blogs are the longest (~1500 words.) Most blog entries are 100-500 words. Also, the average person spends about 1 ½ minutes reading a blog post. As an experiment, I asked Ward, Wally, and Theodore to read a well-written long blog post (not mine) for 1 ½ minutes and see how far they got. Theodore read 500 words, Ward read 371 words, and I read 411 words during our 90 second experiments. Wally said he was busy with an online meeting. It seems, from this totally nonscientific project, that bloggers have figured out how long they have an audience and write a length to match this.

What does this mean? I'm not sure except Theodore says that writing about your blog in a blog is odd. That's the short of it.

*How Long is the Ideal Blog Post?
  Post lenght-How Long Should a Blog Post Be?

 

 

A Second Look--June 26, 2013

It had been a hot week with several days in the 90's. Fortunately, we've had a couple of thunder storms that have cooled things off in the evenings. New flowers are continuing to bloom, especially the day lilies.  But today I also found a trumpet lily. (However, as most of you know, day lilies aren't true lilies, so really my first lilies just started to bloom today.) I have figured out that there are four baby blue birds and they seem to be doing well. They certainly have a very attentive mother. Every time I open the box to look at the nest, she dive bombs me. You would think that I would get the message, but every few days, curiosity gets the best of me and I check on their progress again.

Here's what I saw this week during a Second Look.

Day Lilies

Balloon Flower

The bees love the milkweed blooms.

Trumpet lily (Lilium regal)

Day lily

Notice all of the cattle are in the shade trying to beat the heat.