Simple Things....

Rain...

Yesterday it rained, and rained, and rained.  Hazel Peach and I had some good fun walking in the rain  splAshinG with our boots.  Needless to say we were soaked when it was time to go inside and warm  up.

Fresh, air-dried sheets...

As you know, Monday is laundry day and when its nice, I like to hang the sheets and things out on the line, but it was no day for hanging out laundry so I postponed the washing of bedding until today.  It was still cloudy and cold (42*) but there was a gentle breeze so I hung out the sheets for most of the day.  I gave them a 10 minute fluff in the dryer to take the dampness out, but the nice clothesline smell remains.

White cloth napkins...

I cut out sixteen big squares of white muslin way back in November, thinking that I would hem napkins before Thanksgiving Dinner.  I only got four of them hemmed before the big day and the squares have been on my to-do list since then.  I finished them up yesterday and washed and pressed them today.  Cloth napkins are such a simple but nice luxury.

One yard of cute fabric...

The other day I took a little time to visit my favorite shop,  The Bakery.  It is an actual store in my hometown, but the owner sells via Ebay too.  I had a "recipe" for a purse organizer that I wanted to make for my Second Mom so I needed something cute.  I found lots, of course, and decided on several fat quarters along with a yard each of four other prints I loved.  Having an extra yard (or four) of fabric in my stash can become a blessing.  In fact, a friend of mine who I saw at a graduation party this weekend, just had her second baby and casually mentioned that she really wished she had a nursing cover-up.  Ding Ding!!  Enter, fabric stash!!  Thankfully, I had  time to make it and send it along before they left town.

Birds...

I am a bird watcher, bird listener, bird lover, bird feeder, bird nut.  I love this time of year because all my favorite birds (and they're all my favorites) come home to roost, so to speak.  Latest sightings:  Spotted Towhee, American Avocet, Dowitcher, Blue-winged Teal, Cinnamon Teal, Red-headed Woodpecker, Flicker, Brown Thrasher, House Wren.  I have the darndest time watching the house wren dart here and there, and I doubt I'll ever get a photograph of one.  They are so speedy and quick.  How do they do it?  Here's a nice online bird guide from Cornell.  I love listening to the calls.  Sometimes the call clinches the identification for me.

Field Binoculars...

To go along with bird watching.....a couple decades ago, I asked for a small pair of field binoculars for my birthday and the same Leupold binocs have served me faithfully since.  I hang them on the wall in the dining room so I can quickly grab them to look at birds, fox, cows, or whatever catches my eye when I'm looking out the window.  They also go with me when walking or driving somewhere interesting.  I can hang them around my neck or slip the case through my belt loop. 

 

DMC Cotton Perle embroidery floss....

 This is the best stuff for embroidering redwork.  It's got a nice feel and texture, it's shiny, it is non-divisible, doesn't tangle like regular embroidery floss and you'll have enough on a spool (95 yards!) for several redwork pieces.  I like the #8 size in color 321 (red).   I've been doing some tea towels in the evening.  Fun!  

Best Flour Sack tea towels....

I buy mine at American Chair Store. These tea towels are thick enough, but perfect for embroidery and they hold up nicely under heavy kitchen work.  I buy the 30x30" towels.  I like having a stash of these on hand at all times.  They make lovely gifts when you've embroidered on them.

Migration of Swainson's Hawks...

Hubs called me on the two-way radio while he was out feeding the cows yesterday,  "There's about 200 hawks roosting in the shelter belt in the bull pasture.  Come in the ranger and see it!"

So I did.  And of course, I brought the good camera in hopes of taking some good photos.

Hubs has lived here 48 years and has never seen a hawk migration like this.  Surely it has happened, but no one has seen them in a flock like this.  He's such a good man to call me about it.  He knows how much I love all-things-nature.  

Update:  I have learned today that the Swainson's Hawk is also known as the "grasshopper hawk" which makes me a bit nervous.  The extension agents are warning that this could be a big "grasshopper year" for us.  We had hoppers last year, but not nearly as bad as some.  I wonder if God is sending them to us for a reason?  Do the hawks know?  Here's a blip on the hawk and it's migration and etc.

Swainson's Hawk from the Cornell Site

Snow.....it's for the birds

Brewer's Sparrow  (I think)

We woke up this morning to 5-6 inches of wet snow.

All day long it has been snowing on and off

but melting underneath

into a slushy, sloppy, mud.

Poor man's fertilizer is what this spring snow is called.

It's full of nitrogen and melts slowly into the ground,
nourishing plants and grasses.

White-crowned Sparrow

I took these pictures through the windows.

  There's a little garden outside my laundry room window

that was a perfect place to watch and take close-ups.

Spotted Towhee

I had a nice video of the Towhee doing it's Scratch-Dance

where they kick up dirt and things to find bugs to eat.

It's so cute, but the electricity is dipping and I didn't get it downloaded.

More Towhees and White-crowned sparrow

Swainson's Thrush

This little sweetie gave me plenty of adorable poses.  

He's a Swainson's Thrush (I'm pretty sure)

.

What's not to love about this face?

And this one too?

It's still snowing this evening. I don't know when it will quit,

but I know that once it melts off, there's going to be

lots of green showing!

itibit sampler is finished!

The itibits of stitching are complete!

I had great fun doing this and it was amazing

how many ideas for one inch squares popped into my head.  

Now I am considering the Counting My Blessings Stitch-Along.

One hundred is a lot of squares.

I wonder if I give myself a year to complete it, if I will?

Or maybe the key is to stitch a square a day?

As with this project, some days I stitched 2 or 3 squares

and other days none.

I'm itching to stitch some vintage dish towels...

dancing forks & knives

 tomatoes with eye lashes

like these. 

I'm thinking redwork.

Branding and other interesting things....

Branding...
It was a really beautiful day yesterday and so we saddled up and brought in the cows and calves to brand them.  The weather is supposed to get extremely windy and cold and even snow by mid week so Hubs felt it was important to get this job done.  I know it seems like I talk about the weather all the time, but weather is very important when your livelihood depends upon it. 

We branded 85 head, vaccinated them, tattooed their ears for identification, and took blood samples for their DNA identification.  We use a calf chute/table so it is much easier to get all these things done with each calf.   We also think it is much easier on the calves to go through the chute rather than being roped and thrown as is the traditional way to brand.  We have approximately 300 more head of calves to brand in the coming month or so, but the calf chute allows us to brand small bunches of calves at a time which takes much less man/woman power to do.

One of my jobs is to help gather up the cow-calf pairs, and as you know, I always choose old, faithful Pete to take me out.   He's just my caliber of horse:  trustworthy, gentle, cow-smart, steady.  I can't say that I'm an expert rider even though Hubs and I have been ranching for 28 years together, but an extra rider is always a bonus to keeping cattle moving in the right direction.  Baby calves have a tendency to bolt out of the bunch and so there can never be enough riders to keep them rounded up.  We had four riders -- Hubs, me, and two sons.  We didn't have too many troubles.   I tell the guys that they ought not count on me to go chasing those stray calves, and they don't.  I just don't want to get hurt at my age.

I also keep track of the record book during branding.  I click up the ID number on the tattoo-er and hubby presses it into the calf's ear and rubs it with green tattoo ink so it sinks into the holes.  The tattoo number will be readable when we need a positive ID.  I've never been to a tattoo parlor so I don't know how they do it, but this is the cowboy-way of tattooing.  I also help with the DNA cards.  I write the calf's mother's number on each card.  Then Hubs or son draws the blood from the ear and fill in the microscope-sized circle with blood.  We'll send in these cards to a laboratory and they will tell us the sire of the calf.  We need this information when we sell bulls and to keep registered heifers.

 After the branding was done, we took the cows and calves to Dick's House Pasture.  It's a cozy little place down in a dell where Dick& Tiny once had their house and corrals.  It is out of the wind, for the most part, and full of lush grass.  It'll be the perfect spot for them to graze and rest before they are moved to another pasture.  Today we have 60 mph gusts of wind with more cold and wind predicted, and I'm glad they are all settled in that spot for the next few days.  By the way, I spied the first bluebells while riding home on Pete.  They are hard to see because ours are the low-growing, prairie variety.

Hot Pepper Spray for Insects...
On another note, I have come up with a recipe to keep away insects and small animals away from your houseplants and outdoor garden plants.  It as of this writing, untested at my own home, but I am going to give it a try.  My daughter, G, who used to work at a flower shop said that they often would spray houseplants with a type of hot pepper spray.   I went online and found many recipes for such a thing and also noticed that it supposedly works to keep nibbling rabbits and bugs off the garden shrubbery so I'm definitely going to try it out there.  So if you're interested in that recipe, you'll find one here.  I didn't happen to have any hot peppers on hand, but I did have a big bottle of crushed red pepper in the spice cupboard that I use regularly.  I thought I could probably make something similar so here's what I did.  I mixed 4 teaspoons of crushed red pepper with 2 cups of boiling water.  I let it sit over night and then strained off the pepper and poured the peppery water in a pint jar.  Before I bottled it, I tasted it to make sure it was good and hot.  It wasn't overly hot for my taste buds, but I hope that it's hot enough to bug taste buds and to bunnies and moles.  We'll see.  If it's not, I can always make a stronger batch with another teaspoon or more of red pepper.   To use, all you do is spray it on your plants and reapply when you water or when it rains.  I'm really hopeful it works.  I'd rather use a natural pest control in my veggie gardens rather than chemicals.

Strider Running Bike...
My brother recently bought his 2 1/2 -year-old son this very cool Strider.  It's a bike with no peddles.  You have to see how it works to appreciate it.  I'm thinking this will make a smart 2nd birthday gift for our Hazel Peach!  Check out the clip below.



We'll never catch up with HP when she starts riding this!

Jars & bottles & memories...

I was putting some canning jars away that I had just emptied of chokecherry syrup and apple sauce and  took special notice of them.  I like canning jars and jars that once held foods from the grocery store.  I have a thing for collecting special jars.  The ones you see in the picture above, are not old jars; they are jars I saved   because I liked them and planned to re-use them.  The tall skinny jar on the far left had Trader Joe's Blueberry Syrup (so good!).  I thought it would make a nice bottle for my own syrups.  The one next to it is a maple syrup bottle, and the one on its right once held tapenade.  I like the square shape of it and will likely use it for jam or jelly this fall.  In the front row you see the smallest jar on the left.  I brought that one home from England in 2005.  My daughter and I made a two week trip to England and one of the train rides we took was to  Chartwell, Kent, Winston Churchill's home.  We had tea there, and this little jar held a smidgen of jelly for our scones.  The middle jar, filled with chokecherry syrup, was also a jelly jar given by a friend, and the last jar in front is a half pint from the Elite Collection by Ball.  I love the wide-rim, squat shape.  I might use these for bee butter.  My jars and bottles are a collection, but a useful collection.  They continuously serve me.

 

This picture shows some of the older jars from my canning cupboard.  On the left, you see a blue jar that isn't as old as it looks.  It was amongst the jars my mother-in-love gave me many years ago from her fruit room (that's what she called her basement canning storage room).  The blue jar is a commemorative of the bicentennial in 1976, so it's not old, but it's unique and I use it a lot to hold garden flowers.  The next bottle to the right is a honey jar.  It has a beehive on it and says "Pound Pure Honey."  My boys found it while out riding horseback near an old sheep camp spot in our pasture.   They also found the short jar there that says Hormel.  Does anyone ever remember opening a jar of Hormel?  Not me. The middle jar says "Magic Mason Jar" and it has a trademark sign near it.  Have you ever heard of such a thing?  The jar on the very right side says "Brockway Sur Grip Mason."  I've never heard of that brand of canning jar either.  I thought Mason Jars were like Ball or Kerr canning jars, but evidently there were many brands of canning jars to be had.  I have one that isn't pictured called an Atlas jar and several jars that have no distinguishing marks on them at all.  They are just clear, regular-mouth quart jars.  Again, all of these came from my mother-in-law's stash.  I'm so glad she gave them to me because whenever I drag them out, they make me think about her.  I wonder about the past.  I wonder if she and her mother or mother-in-law put up preserves in them?  

I owe a great debt of gratitude to my mother-in-love (her name was Hazel) because she taught me a whole lot about putting-up. We canned crab apple juice, jellies, pickles and canned beef, and together, we used some of these very jars to do it.  I still own and use the pressure canner we always used to seal the jars, and I have some of the pickle recipes and pressure canning booklets that were handed down to me.  Later on I experimented on my own with book Hazel gave me, The Ball Blue Book.  In my opinion, it's the best canning book out there.  My copy is a 1987 model which is very worn and well-loved.  Now there is a Ball Complete Book of Canning which I bought my daughter-in-love.  It's a 400+ page monster.  I'm sure it's full of good things, but I prefer my slimmer 112 page book.

Something I've noticed about new jars these days is that they tend to crack more easily.  I have put up a lot of tomatoes, applesauce, juice and salsa in the old jars and rarely have I had a jar crack during the processing, but the newer jars I have bought recently and used tend to crack.  I'll bet I had a half dozen cracked during applesauce making this past fall.  I wonder if the glass is tempered differently nowadays?  You'd think with the technology we have today that new canning jars would really be top-notch.   Have any of you had troubles with new jars cracking when processing under heat?

I have some of my special jars set aside.  Some of them have cracked rims and so I can't use them to preserve foods anymore.  Those jars turn into flower vases and silverware holders and whatnot jars.  But some of the oldies are still usable for preserving food.  When I use them, I don't give them away easily unless I know that the recipient will send the jar back to me.  I don't want to be stingy, but I have a bit of a love affair with these jars.  They are more than glass.  To me, they are windows to the past.  They carry memories of hot autumn days with family and friends, cranking out applesauce, boiling down chokecherries and crab apples, baking apple butter in the oven and standing at the stove waiting for the timer to ring while listening to the weight on the pressure canner  jiggle over another pot of tomatoes.  I don't need a jar to remember those days, but still, I love them.

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A good canning site I have discovered this year is Food In Jars.  It's a fun blog--not for canners only.

For your interest:  Mason Jar History

"...steam was generated beyond the power of the canister to endure. As a natural consequence, the canister burst, the dead turkey sprang from his coffin of tinplate and killed the cook forthwith."~News report of an early canning industry accident (1852)

"We eat what we can,

And what we can't, 

We can."

~Susan Branch's Grandma

Sunday dinner....

In the country, most folks call the noon meal "dinner."  It used to be the biggest meal of the day, and might consist of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, rolls, a veggie, jello and always a dessert -- probably pie.  But traditions have changed some.  We are an on-the-go culture even in the country where one would think life to have a slow trot, but not so.  Cowboys and cattlemen want to keep moving and get their work done before sundown and so now the noon meal  is a quick meal consisting of left-overs or a sandwich, a taco or a hamburger and chips.  No more the sit-down meal with a 10 minute nap in the easy chair like I remember my grandpa doing back on the farm.

In the good ol' days "lunch" was a snack.  I remember going to Ladies Aid with my mother-in-love  when I was a young bride.  The hostesses reminded us that after Bible study they'd serve lunch.  There might be tea-sized sandwiches and always a sweet dessert and iced tea or coffee.  Today, we'd call it a snack.  The 70's-and-over country folks still call a mid-day bite "lunch."  I like it.

I call the Sunday noon meal "Sunday Dinner" because it's the main meal of the day.  The rest of the day we snack or make popcorn or have dessert and coffee instead of a meal.  It has been this way at our house for a long time and I like it.  It gives this country cook a little breather in her three-square-meals-a-day routine.

Today we had A & J and lil Hazel Peach over for Sunday Dinner.  I made some typical things and a couple  new-to-me things.

The Menu 

Romain & Olive salad with mock Olive Garden Dressing

Grilled Sirloin Tips

Ravioli Alfredo

Buttered Rosemary Buns 

made with the Shepherd Bread from Joyce

And for dessert

Creamy Lemon Crumb Squares 

from Pioneer Woman's collection

HP decided she liked the bread best and ate mostly bread.  I would have been happy with just bread and salad, but I ate the other things too, of course.

When we were done and cleared the dishes, we sat down for a bit and listened to HP's  new word collection.  She turns two in July and she's yakking up a storm.  Some of her newest releases are:  star, moon, side (outside), bubbles (while doing dishes), flies (flowers), wing (swing), ush (push), JoJo (uncle Joseph).  It's so much fun to hear all the new words she comes up with day by day.  

Next it was time to crank up the stereo and dance.  "Dance" is another favorite word Hazel Peach likes to say and do.  I turned on one of our favorite CD's, You are My Sunshine by Elizabeth Mitchell.  It's simple, sweet, and I never grow tired of it.  She danced whilst we all nodded our heads and tapped our feet to the beat.   I'm So Glad I'm Here is the first song, and it is one that I love more and more every time I hear it.  It reminds me to be glad right where God has me.  Click the playlist below if you'd like to hear some of HP's and my favorites.

First mowing of the year....

I know.  It seems like a dumb blog post.  But really, I do look forward to the first mowing of the year.  When you live in what I call "winter country" where winter can stretch from October through April or May, then you understand why I look forward to getting the mower out.  When the mower comes out of hibernation, it means there are green things growing, and that makes me very happy.

I was so relieved to find that I had actually drained the old gas last fall and so all I had to do was to drain the old oil, add new, add new gas, jiggle the spark plug, give the cord a pull and zoom, it was running!  Sure, I should have had my son sharpen the blade and put in a new spark plug and a carburetor filter and all that before I began my first mowing, but he is really swamped with mechanic work in the shop and I just wanted to mow.  So I did.  And it all worked just as I had planned it.

I mowed our yard and the side banks and then I mowed Grandpa's yard, and today I mowed around the buildings and out by the fence where we sometimes park.  I fired up the weed whacker today too with hopes that I might be able to "mow" the tree patch near our house.  It's too thick and jungley for the mower.  I really am not fond of the weed whacker.  It hurts my arms and shoulders, but I needed to do the job.  So I did.  It was a big job, but I was so thrilled to accomplish it that I continued on and trimmed around the shop, the barn, the fence, and everywhere else that had tall barnyard grass growing alongside it.  Why the mowing and whacking frenzy?  Well, it is supposed to rain tonight and then rain and snow for the next few days.  I don't think we are going to get "measurable snow" like we sometimes do in the spring (look here and here to see what I mean) but we are supposed to have a couple of inches or so.  Snow and rain on already-green-grass means that it will grow, grow, grow and I didn't want to be cutting two foot high grass instead of six inch grass. 

I picked a big handful of daffodils and a few tulips to bring inside, just in case the snow ends up being more than we thought.  Besides, I love bringing a little outdoor beauty indoors.

My outdoor work is done (whew!), the clouds are moving in, the sun is hidden behind them, and I'm having my afternoon cup of coffee and some fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies.  No, I didn't make a batch of dough.  I have frozen cookie balls!  This is the life!

The men are gone tonight to the Big City to hear Coach K, championship basketball coach of Duke, speak.  I'm staying home, eating left-overs and might watch a movie.  I'm thinking a Jane Austen movie, Sense and Sensibility, my favorite.  I watched a movie last night which I loved called Return to Me.  It's a love story about a man who falls in love with the woman who received his wife's heart.  He must decide which woman it is who holds his heart.  Add it to your Netflix queue.

This and that....

It's been raining here and cold here lately, but I was in the mood for some sunshine!  This lemon cake, served with homemade lemon curd and whipped cream, was like eating sunshine from a fork.  I sent some cake and curd with my college boy to share with his friends and we've been nibbling at the rest.  If you've never had real lemon curd, you are really missing out!  It's pretty easy to make if you have plenty of eggs and lemons.

LEMON CURD

2 1/3 c. sugar

2 tsp. cornstarch

1 cup fresh lemon juice

4 large eggs

4 large egg yolks

4 T. butter, cut into pats

3 tsp. lemon zest (or more)

In pyrex bowl mix together the sugar and cornstarch.

Whisk in lemon juice and eggs and yolks.

Put in the microwave for 2 minutes and whisk, continue to cook at 2 minute intervals and whisk until the lemon curd becomes thick.  Add butter lastly and whisk well.  Allow lemon curd to cool and then refrigerate.  This recipe makes about 3 cups.  You may store curd in jars in the frig for a week.  I like it on everything from cake to biscuits to toast or straight off the spoon.

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Today was another windy, cloudy day so I didn't get to hang my bedding on the clothesline like I usually do on Monday.  The laundry all went through the dryer.  Since it was an "indoor day" I decided to make another bonnet to stay at my house for the days that Hazel Peach comes to visit.  This way we always have a sun hat for working and playing in the yard.  I really like this one.  It's reversible.

I also spent a chunk of time with my itibit sampler.  I embroidered three more squares and am about ready to go stitch some more tonight.  It seems some days I get the bug to stitch, and I don't want to quit.  I'm looking forward to finishing my sampler and then possibly starting another.   Amy from the 39 Squares Stitch-Along is going to have another stitch-along called Counting My Blessings.  The idea is to embroider one hundred square inch blocks, each one representing a blessing or a prayer.  I really like this idea.  It might take an eternity for me to finish, and it's not because I don't have enough blessings, I do, I just don't always keep up with everyone in the stitch-alongs.  But  that's okay with me.  I'll just begin and see where the project takes me.

Another item of interest is that BW, the calf, has a mommy.  He hardly knows what to do with her since his birth mother didn't lick him off, let alone feed him.  The men had to suckle BW on her so he would get the idea of where the milk comes from.  He thinks it comes from us!  This particular mama cow lost her calf to a fast-moving strain of intestinal disease.  The vet posted the dead calf (did an autopsy) and found out what it was, and we plan to vaccinate the young cows' calves as soon as we can get the vaccine.  In the meantime, BW and his new mama are getting to know each other.  I think he'll enjoy sucking real milk from the cow much more than drinking that icky powdered milk we were feeding him, don't you?

Earth is crammed with Heaven...

 Sagebrush Buttercup

Ewes and Lambs

 
Daffodils

Rain on the Range

Lord
Rain on Me

Reign in Me

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Earth is crammed with heaven

And every bush aflame with God

But only those who see

Take off their shoes.

~Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Shout joyfully to the LORD, all the earth."
~Psalm 100