Randomday and Family

It's once again Randomday. So since I have figured out how to upload videos (actually, download from cloud, then upload onto blog), here is a random bird that crashed into my bathroom window several days ago, then started squawking about it with a few other friends. I think it was a woodpecker. Hairy or Downy? Any guesses?

This is a potato plant in bloom. I was surprised that I had never seen what their flower looked like before.

Raspberries are in season, or will be for a few more days, and blueberries are starting.

 Quarta is the Washington State winner for the Trig-Star contest, a trigonometry test that is sponsored by the surveyors' association! Really proud of her outstanding math skills, which she definitely gets from her father!

Tertia and I are going to a wedding this afternoon. A good friend and classmate of Daniel's, who is also back in town to be in the wedding party. So we had a family dinner last Sunday. Peter is just back from his annual training, too. It's great to have them all around the table at once!

I've been working on an Ancestry.com family tree for myself ever since I got the test for a Christmas present from Steve. He got his from a birthday present from me, and his mother started it off by getting herself one. She is still looking for her elusive grandfather, Henry M. Brown, born around 1850 in Maine, and died in Florida 1932. He is a mystery man. But my family is pretty easy to trace. For 4-6 generations before me, they were in Ohio on my mother's side and Indiana on my father's side. Early settlers in the Ohio River Valley. Steve's mom did most of the research for it back in the 90's, and I have her notebook. My mom and grandmothers contributed to some notes and charts. But of course when you add the DNA element and computer research, you can find out a lot more. So now I find myself mildly obsessed with one particularly interesting branch of the family that goes all the way back to the Norman conquest. I've joined WikiTree and will probably spend way too much time trying to connect myself to the gateway ancestors listed there. Hey, it keeps me off the streets and away from the knitting thought police.

On the Fourth I found myself wondering, if 50 million American kids lit a billion sparklers all at once, could it be seen from space? We did our small part.

To Ian and Ashley: may your marriage be blessed with faith, love, family and friendship.

Randomday

Randomday is the day the blog eats leftovers.

Daniel is home from Virginia for a friend's wedding! We met him at the airport Thursday evening and took him out for a late (very, for him) dinner at Deschutes Brewery Public House. Excellent burgers and elk-burgers, and you should totally go extra for the garlic fries. It was his birthday so they gave us a little plate of birthday cake/ beer flavored cake-pops.

Daniel is off at a bachelor party beach weekend, and Peter is home from annual training with the National Guard in Yakima! Here's some of what he was up to. Driving a Stryker sounds very cool, but sleep deprivation and only one shower a week, not so much.

I have the Megaquilter taken off the carriage and am going to cut the half-length rails that were included with the Grace Frame set-up many years ago, to fit them onto the carriage length. I found this blog post from 7 years ago about my fears with that, but I think it will be okay. I did it once before. The hardest part was getting Steve to lift it off the carriage for me. I need to dust and clean all the parts that haven't been given any TLC for awhile, and then reassemble it. But first, I'm going to attach the walking foot and try stitching on the binding of Celtic Solstice with the machine alone set up on a regular table. That should give me a good idea if it needs professional servicing.

We have a branch down from the plum tree in our back yard. It tends to prune itself when the weight of the fruit is too much for it. But the fruit that is ripe right now is strawberries and raspberries. The raspberries are especially delicious this year. We have red and golden varieties. I harvested all the fava beans which Steve grew as a cover crop. It is so laborious to prep them, and you really need to do it when they are young... but if you do, they are delicious. 

We have a hummingbird feeder that is right outside our front window and is quite fun. It had steady customers all winter and now there's still one who comes by a few times a day.

Below is the video I took of the tiny bunny we saw on our walk earlier this week. It was one of about 11, and it was too small to be afraid of us. We walked around the entire wetlands loop and he was still there when we came back. (This is also a test to see if I can figure out how to upload videos.)

If this video works, I have another of a suspected woodpecker in our backyard that I can share another time.

In other news, we have successfully gotten both Tertia and Quarta hooked on Monk reruns after watching the first few episodes ourselves. Amazing how many shows we missed out on during the 2000's when they were little. Steve has been watching through the original Star Trek series with Quarta, who is quite persnickety about the lack of good visual effects and generally male chauvinist worldview. They are in 3rd season and so there is some pretty regrettable stuff! But even the Next Gen. looks hokey by today's standards. Okay, I'm feeling old.

Since I Blogged Last, part 2...

I am trying to do a few catch-up posts on the blog, because I have really left quite a bit of life unrecorded in the weeks I have not been blogging.  And because I am avoiding cleaning the house and preparing for the company that is coming.

Let's lead off with this. The other day I was tearing off a box top label from a used up box of cereal, and I remembered being taught the "Up in the air, junior birdmen" song by my mother.  So I started singing it.  This was greeted with absolute scorn by Quarta, but Tertia was receptive to attempting the rather tricky hand-motions involved.  These generational priorities must be preserved, you know.  We had to do one hand at a time and I was a little worried about her poking her eye since I don't think the song is compatible with glasses, but she managed okay.

My dad underwent a scheduled, minimally invasive heart valve repair surgery in June, shortly after he returned home from his visit for Peter's graduation.  It was a successful surgery, although more involved and with a longer hospital stay than anticipated.  On Father's day, I was pretty sure this was how he was feeling as he waited to be sprung from the ICU/cooler:

He is recovering well and as an added plus from the awkward position his arm had to be in during the 5-hour surgery, his painful frozen shoulder has apparently become unfrozen and much less painful.

Supplies for our roof replacement were delivered and then a crew showed up to begin work the next morning. For us in the house, it was just really noisy and messy.  For the Hispanic work crew, it was sometimes 14-hour days, during a record heat wave.  I was really impressed with them and with their work ethic.  But I am glad the roof is now done.

What I am not so glad about is the rogue squirrel that did this.  This is the little enclosed attic space (with no access) just above the front entryway and underneath the gable.  It gnawed through the peak of the roof last summer and we patched that (and then put on a new roof).  Now it's apparently trying to go in by a different way.  Not so happy with squirrels right now.  I go out and growl at it whenever I see it, and I have heard squirrels are dissuaded by peppermint and cayenne, so a special, spicy spray will be in their future.

And this needs to be added to the "call the handyman list" as well.  This happened today, when I asked Steve to squash a spider on the ceiling of the guest room.  It was a very small spider; I guess there wasn't enough drywall in that particular spot.  This old house.  Now, the reason we were making a half-hearted attempt to tidy up the guest room is because we have guests coming, and we'll be fitting 7 more people into the house than usual.  This hasn't happened in a couple of years.  Here's hoping that the cousins are all good sports about being stacked on any available horizontal surface.

 In preparation for days when I'm too tired to cook and/or family gatherings, I spent a few days this week and made a bunch of freezer crockpot recipes, in the once-a-month cooking style.  I didn't do all the prep and chopping one day and all the mixing the next, because of the simple fact that I can only ever chop one onion at a time, and this regime called for somewhere near 20.  But despite the incredibly tight shoulders and neck from doing this, I look forward to having easy meals ready to go. With these plus the 10 gallons of blueberries, our recently-defrosted freezer is looking pretty full again.

 And speaking of things I hope not to have to freeze... the plums are ripe.  Quarta has been setting up a little farmstand, $.50 a quart, and has made a little bit of money while reading The Hobbit in the shade.  Not a bad way to pass a summer afternoon.  The plum tree has sent itself into a crisis this year, with several major branches breaking under the weight of the fruit.  We are going to need a tree surgeon to come in and work on it after the season.

And I think I mentioned last time that my potted plants are the nicest they've ever looked this year.
 

The Raccoon

 I chased a raccoon up a tree last week.  It was hard to get the camera to focus right, at first.

He just sat up there taunting me.  Then Steve came home from work and we fruitlessly threw pine cones at it.  No raccoons were harmed in the process, more's the pity.  We would like it to go away.  Even if it is a little teeny bit cute.

Randomday with Raccoon

Forget everything you've ever learned from Ricky, Pocahontas, or any of the children's literature offerings that glorify the cute little raccoon.  This is public enemy number one.

 Need a closer look?  There you go.  Okay, so I can understand how he might be called cute.  In a "not in my backyard" kind of way.

Steve chased him up the birch tree this morning as he was sauntering casually down the driveway.  Steve was really hoping he'd run into the street and get hit, I think.

He got nervous from all the camera activity and climbed higher.  If I had had a pellet gun I would have tried it on him.  Anybody who lives near us and wants to try for a coonskin cap, be our guest.

 Establishing shot with his approximate location outlined in red.  I guesstimate about 35 feet high.  The Japanese Cedar where he hangs out most of the time is about twice as tall as this birch.

He's not stupid.  He apparently knew my threats to chop down the tree with him in it were not sincere.  I sawed off a large dead branch from a rhododendron this week and that pretty much exhausted my woodcutting muscles for the next month.  He settled down to wait until things got quiet, and he wasn't there when I checked later on in the morning.  We've been vigilant about taking in the cat food after feeding Smudge so I don't think he'll get fat from that source, but he still has the compost pile to dig through.

 Muffball was oblivious.  The warmer weather is making her frisky and she's starting her shedding season.  This morning she ran off with a ball of yarn.

 I've been addressing the organization of scraps this week.  Here are some of the strip bins, and in front is the bin of larger small scraps.

I just finished organizing all the scraps Grandma gave us over the last several weeks.  Some of them get put in the crumbs bin for use in a future crumbs quilt.

 Most of them I have been cutting into squares...

... or bricks, to be used in future "planned scrappy" quilts.  My arm and wrists are sore from all the cutting (plus the rhododendron cutting), but it's kind of fun to have it completed this far.  I'll dig from the two messy bins pictured above to create more squares and bricks until I just can't stand it anymore, and then put away the bins for awhile to work on other projects.  But I'm enjoying the organization aspect of it.  It's time for spring cleaning!

I have plans to share some of the bounty of my scrap bins as a giveaway next week.  Check back Monday!