Quilting

Last year for Christmas, I asked for fabric scraps, and Granny and Aunt Glenda sent me a bunch of neat ones. Granny included a lot of Christmas scraps. So, this week I started doing a crazy quilt tree skirt. I intended to post a picture, but digital images have been really inconvenient since I gave the school's camera back. (Hmmm... digital camera, Christmas item?)

Aunt Glenda also included some neat scraps from flour sacks that came from my great grandmother (I think). I have been saving those for something special, and I think I'm going to start a baby quilt soon. I don't want it to be all crazy quilt, but I thought I might do a patchwork puppy, like the story book Mom has. Anyway, I will hopefully get started on that soon and post pictures.

Halloween

I got a pumpkin for us for Halloween, and (I think this was Sunday afternoon) Laura felt well enough to carve it. We roasted the seeds with some wershteshier sauce (that's how it's spelled in my mind) and butter.

For Halloween we bought some candy, just in case some kids came by. We placed the lit pumpkin precariously atop a bale of hay on our front porch as a beacon to any candy-searching youngster and their suv-driving parents who happened to be tearing past our house at 79 miles an hour, which is the usual means of travel round these parts. But nobody came. Gary, our pumpkin, was noticeably saddened.

Green Eggs

Thursday night I was up late, and at one point I went outside and I could hear the chickens squawking in the woods, which usually means something's out there. I ran out to the woods to see what was up, only to realize that it was night and I couldn't see anything. I went back for the flashlight to find the chickens pacing around the coop, anxious and nervous. But I didn't see anything. I trained the flashlight all around the coop and under the hen house, and then I heard a snap on the other side of the pen. It took me a while, but eventually I started pointing the flashlight in the trees, and that's when I found a large possum about 12 feet up a tree next to the pen.

Laura won't let me have a gun in the house, so that's when I went back for the baseball bat.

It took two throws, but then I connected. The next day I went out to check on the chickens, and that's when I discovered that our second hen, "Penny," had just started to lay eggs. And they're green.

Really the two stories aren't related, except that for the briefest of moments, when I first saw the green egg, this thought went through my mind: "Maybe the it's the possum's."

Subbing for Laura

Laura has had the pukies for a couple of weeks now and hasn't been able to post much; or eat, go to town, juggle, speak French - though some of those things she couldn't do before the morning sickness, in all fairness.

We got prescription medicine for her yesterday, and so far it's been promising. In the meantime, I (John) am subbing for her on our (Laura's) blog. This is a picture of me at my desk doing just that.

Wooden Hook!

My cousin Michael visited us a couple weekends ago, and he brought me this really cool crochet hook that he made. Now I've forgotten what kind of wood it is. I'll have to ask. The picture isn't so good, but the two rings on the end make neat tinking sounds when I crochet.

Regrowth

When we went to visit Granny earlier this summer, John and I pulled up some of granny's excess peppermint and potted it in a little paper cup. We've been wanting to plant some at home but have been having trouble finding any.

The morning we were leaving we stopped at the hospital to visit with Granny and say goodbye to everyone. It ended up being kind of a stressful day and we stayed longer than we had intended.

By the time we got back to the car, the poor mint had dried up. By the time we got home 11 hours later, it looked like a potted stick

I planted it anyway, since I hear its hard to kill, I thought maybe it would come up next year.

Now, just a few weeks later it has sprouted new leaves and is on its way to recovery. Soon I'll put it in the ground.

I was thinking about expounding on one of the various metaphors for life I could draw from this little experience, but I'll let you draw your own. I'm just enjoying my new little plant.

One year, Three months, and Many Dollars Later...

We finally got eggs! We realized our old hen was never going to lay, and so this spring John got two new hens. They were still young and weren't expected to lay until this fall. And FINALLY, last thursday, we looked and found two eggs! There were two more when we got back from our weekend and one more on Monday morning. I didn't check this morning. But we've got plenty of eggs now, so we're going to be eating omelets like crazy.

Painting

You may remember that I don’t have an office any more, so today when I was reading my cousin’s blog on one of the library internet computers, it was a little difficult to disguise my sniffling.

Listening to my cousins talking about saying goodbye kind of struck me. I didn’t say goodbye. I just visited with her about our trip and the birds we had seen lately. I just wanted to be with her. Her eyes were so bright and she was smiling so big. I thought she looked so beautiful.

Now I have these two paintings sitting in my studio. They are a couple of Granny’s paintings that she didn’t finish. I told two of my cousins I would finish them. I thought I was going to go straight to work on them when I got home, and I almost did. But then I was walking through my living room one morning, and I looked out the window and saw a hummingbird at the feeder on the porch. John got me a porch swing for my birthday, and I have a bunch of my favorite plants out there, and I put up some pinecone bird feeders. I’ve begun to enjoy my little porch the way Granny enjoyed hers. So I stopped there and set up my easel in the living room and started painting my porch as it looks from the living room.

Now that I’ve hesitated I’m not sure when I’ll start on Granny’s paintings. (But I promise I will do them.) But, after a painting dry spell, I am glad that I am finding beauty in things, even if it is bittersweet. I don’t want to be so distracted by my expectations of what a good artist should be that I quit enjoying painting. I guess, living is kind of that way too. I think living a good life is probably a lot simpler than I make it out to be. I want to live a good life too.

Sam

Our sweet, perfect dog Sam, died last Tuesday. John and I feel very lonely at the house without her. She lived at our house longer than any of the previous owner's, so we felt like it was more her house than ours. We're really missing her.

Make a non-toxic home cleaning kit

I decided to accept Josh's poo poo attitude as a challenge to do more.

While I dislike the attitude we've developed of constantly buying things and then throwing them away, I accept that giving up some disposable products may not be the only way, or the best way, to reduce waste (though I do contend it's a good start).

I found this interesting site produced by the Minnesota office of Environmental Assistance which offers suggestions on reducing waste in your home. They also have a page for reducing waste at the office, school, during the holidays, etc.

As Josh pointed out, one way I haven't begun to consider waste is the chemicals I use. Though John and I do enjoy some Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day products (which are eco-friendly and smell good too) that we received as a wedding gift, for the most part we just use what's on sale.

So Minnesota is offering suggestions for a non-toxic home cleaning kit, involving products seen here: Baking soda , Vinegar , Plant-based detergents , Vegetable oil with lemon juice. I would also like to add that they suggest using cloth rags rather than disposable "bleached" towels.

They also suggest, specifically for laundry:
"Instead of more complicated detergents, try using a combination of washing soda and borax in your machine. These are usually as effective as more complex formulas and are also usually cheaper."