You Can't Make this Stuff Up

My neighborhood has a Facebook group where we communicate with each other. Here is a recent exchange.
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W.   A dark bluish grey SUV drove thru the neighborhood around 6 and was dropping off chickens. If you have noticed any contact the Carey's at the end of Mullberry. they already came by and got mine but too dark to find any others.

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C. I’m lost. Chickens?

Manage

W.  yes live chickens

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W.  Saw 3 so far

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A.  Just randomly “dropping off chickens”? That’s really weird! I wonder what the chickens think of that? Gives sort of a new twist to dinner delivery. I wonder if we can get some random vehicle to drive through dropping off dumplings, oh man that would be great.

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L.  Daisy and Emma didn’t find any here. Young man searched my yard. How very strange!

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 W.  L, you have one and it will show up.

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L.  I have a chicken?

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C.  I’m still trying to wrap my head around this. I mean, how hard is it to find a home for chickens? I’m sure much easier than rounding them up, driving to an unsuspecting neighborhood and sprinkling them about!

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A.  Oh yeah! What a great thought! Chicken seeding!

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A.  This is fantastic! What a great diversion in the middle of harvest!

Manage

A.  I wonder if the government is experimenting with “chicken seeding” now instead of cloud seeding.. it’s been raining enough for God’s sake. I wonder if “chicken seeding” is a new drying technique to wring the clouds out before they get here?

Man

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I can't tell you any more than the above exchange. 

It's all still a mystery.

Thankful Sunday--September 9, 2018

I am thankful for a routine day.

Recently things have been intense, so I am happy to have a day to just deal with regular things, i.e. see below.

Another thing for the list. Enjoy the rain.

Today's To Do List

1. Find out what's stinking in the kitchen. For a couple of days now, something has been stinking in there. I have looked in all of the obvious places, but no luck yet. Today needs to have some serious looking into the dark recesses and maybe even some cleaning. Wish me luck. I really hope I accomplish this.

2. Plant my terrarium. Last Christmas, my sons got me a big glass container to make a terrarium. It was a great gift because it was going to be a way to enjoy some house plants without worrying about whether the cats were going to eat them and get sick. As it turns out, most traditional house plants are toxic to cats. Yesterday, I found some plants that I think will work. I am bound and determined to get this project done before Christmas rolls around again.

3. Finish the laundry.

4. Go to work. I have to work one Sunday a month and today's the day.

5. Ponder deep thoughts. When an important person in your life passes away, it's hard not to do this. I'll let you know when I figure everything out.

The Service

My mother died last Monday. It was time. An infection had taken over her body and she died peacefully in her sleep. Since then it's been a whirlwind of activities and emotions filling every minute. I will be processing this for a long time, but today I've been thinking about one thing in particular. My mother gave us the final gift of letting us have a service for her.

It seems that it is becoming more the trend these days to not have a funeral or memorial service for the deceased. I can understand some of the reasons for this: expense, privacy, emotion, etc. But that was not my mother's request. Funerals were a part of her entire life and in death we honored her with one.

My mother did not have a service planned as some people do, but we knew what she wanted from comments over the years along with the things she chose for our father. We planned a short service that was lead by one of her friends from church. Each song had a meaning as well as each reading. I gave a 10 minute eulogy of her life that I actually made it through.

The service was upbeat, positive, and was about her. Just what we wanted and just what she would have wanted. So among the tears, I think back on her send off and I smile. Thank you, Mother, for letting us honor you in this one final way.

Thankful Sunday--August 19, 2018

Today I did an experiment. I gave myself one minute to do a brain dump of things I am thankful for and below is what I came up with. There may or may not be significance to what ended up on the list, but I'm not going to analyze it right now. Normally that would be something I would do, but right now I'm going to go outside and work before the heat and humidity take over the day. Actually, I just read the list and my mind is racing and reading all kinds of things into it. Gotta stop that because I think the way our/my brain works is much too complex to look at a simple list and draw great meaning from it. Ahh! Can't help myself. The analysis continues and the typing continues, but I'm not going to share all my thoughts. Right now, anyway.

What is on your list when you do this exercise? But forget the analysis. Just use this as a way to put a little positive in you day. There. I'm getting up from the computer right now because my agitator washer just finished. I'll tend to it on my way outside.

I am thankful for

Good insurance
An agitator washer
My sisters
My kids
My husband
A day without rain
Only one mosquito bite
My leftover salad in the fridge
My one level house
My employed sons

While I Was Gone

I went away for a few days recently and after a long drive, we arrived home after dark. The next day I was curious to see what had happened in our yard while we were gone. That's part of my routine after we go away. Unload the car, scan the mail, and check out the yard. A Second Look, so to speak. We were gone less than a week, but it was surprising to see some of the changes that happened in that short amount of time.

Here is a tour of some of the things I found.

The weather was hot and humid while we were gone with lots of rain. The begonias in front of the house thrived and had grown.

However, the pumpkin vine in the back did not survive. This was a volunteer and we had decided to let it grow wherever it wanted. It was a beautiful healthy vine when we left. 

But the zinnia along the same walk took off while we were gone. Other zinnias, planted in pots on the deck, looked only slightly better than the pumpkin vine.

The dill in the same bed also had a lot of new blooms. Before this, I had been trying to cut the blooms so it wouldn't go to seed too soon. However the bees are enjoying the new blossoms, so I may just leave them. This was also a volunteer that I transplanted from another spot.

Around the side of the house, I found grape hyacinth leaves that were coming up.

Close to there, I found the first coneflower that had all of its petals intact.  Something has been munching down on all of the coneflowers' petals making them look like Morticia Addams has been around.

In the same bed, more Black-Eyed-Susans had bloomed, but something is starting to eat the petals. Maybe our muncher has moved on from the coneflowers.

Moving away from the house, I went to check on some newly planted hostas. There I found the deer  had visited while we were gone. Another place they ate a tomato plant until it looked like no more than a stick in the ground.

Also in the back part of the yard, mushrooms had sprung up.

Moving up to the deck, the sunflower had several new blooms. This was a volunteer, too, from the bird feeders.

The bird feeders were empty.  So I filled them and made new nectar for the hummingbird feeder. 

There will be seed in the feeders as long as this squirrel and his buddies are content to eat sunflower seeds dropped into the grass. But I don't expect that to last for long. Why should they work at picking seeds out of the grass when they usually lay on the bottom of the bird feeder above and munch away?

I don't have pictures to show you everything else I found such as new poison ivy, half of an azalea bush that had died, and nearby canna lilies and marigolds which were doing well. I also found an empty bird nest, so I hope the babies successfully fledged while we were gone. And the most interesting thing I discovered was a sled filled with rainwater and hundreds of tadpoles swimming in it.