Monthly Archives: July 2014

Give a Wife a Camera……..

Yesterday I was sitting in my girly room, minding my own business, knitting a hat. Suddenly David pushed the camera into my face with this picture.

Okay, I thought. A little blurry and I said take another one and he took this…

Much better. You like my blue fingernails? Then David started to show me more pictures.

Okay, what’s going on? ” I used the zoom lens,” David said. “Here, look.” I looked at my camera and saw the zoom was fixed. You see, last summer on a small trip we took, I dropped the camera in my car and broke the zoom thingamajig on it. I have still continued to use my camera, but couldn’t zoom in. Then, David, bless his heart, bought me a new camera for Christmas. Unfortunately, me and that camera did not get along well. It was heavy, took too long(for me) to focus and I had to change lenses if I wanted to zoom. It’s really a nice camera, just too much for me. I told him he could have it and take pictures for me while I would continue to use my little, broken camera. It’s worked out pretty well. David takes good pictures.

Then today he starts using my little camera again. “Did you fix it?” I said. “How did you fix it? Oh, I am so glad to have my camera working again.” Then he began to laugh and I looked at the camera closer. It was a new camera. Just like my little broken one, only better. And I could zoom again.

David had ordered a new pump for our water fountain and I had brought him the box from the mail thinking nothing about it. The camera was in the box with the pump. He sure surprised me. Soooo, today I went around taking pictures just checking it out. Here they are in no particular order.

Getting ripe.

You know those bulbs I bought at a big box store and didn’t think they would grow? Well, they are growing and blooming. I have several different gladiola right now and each one is so pretty.

This one was almost hidden behind the Shasta Daisies. It’s amazingly beautiful in person.

Gorgeous.

Magic or August Lilies. In the Spring these flowers grow their foliage, but no flowers. Then as the Summer progresses, the foliage completely dies and disappears and then these spikes of flowers appear. Then they turn into this.

What I am wondering is, how do they know it’s August?

I have a lot of these around the garden. Whoever lived here before us planted them and they have come up every year since we’ve been here for thirty-seven years almost.

Last Summer a friend and I went to a shop hop and I won this quilting book. I haven’t made anything from it yet, but I keep looking at it and planning.

I think this is a darling pillow. I would make it with wools and I think I will make this pretty soon.

Isn’t this bee skep pin cushion cute. It’s kind of labor intensive, but I won’t take it off my list to make yet.

I love this purse although the giant bee on it kind of turns me off, but I could put something else there where the bee is.

Right now I am making a quilt from this book.

Yes, I am making a sheep quilt. I am not going to make it exactly like in the book, but I think it will be cute when I am finished. I’ll try to remember to show you when it’s done. I won’t guarantee it. But I will try.

For those of you too young to remember these are insulators that use to be on the top of electric line poles. When the poles started to be taken down, the workmen would often just leave these laying around. My dad collected a few and I have found some at auctions. They are just a part of history and I like history.

My trusty Riccar sewing machine. One of four I have plus I have a few other sewing machines. A friend asked me one time why I had so many sewing machines. I told her it was because I never wanted to be without a sewing machine when I am working on a project should the one I am using break. Plus, we sold these years ago and I brought the leftovers home with me when we closed our store.

I collect old chairs.

I come from creative parents. My dad used to build and paint these little houses and sell them. I was blessed to receive some from him.

He made this little church.

It even has a bell in the belfrey.

This was the last thing my dad gave me before he died. The cow’s eyes are a little wonky which makes me love it even more. Dad had had gall bladder surgery that year and his health never got back to normal. I use to just put these houses out at Christmas, but I keep them out all year now to remind me of my father. I can’t wait to see him again and I know I will.

Shhh, this is my favorite chicken, but the others don’t know it. Penninah always greets me when I come into the chicken yard. Honestly, sometimes I think I can understand what she is clucking. Here she is engrossed in my pants.

Ada and Abby are now in with the big chooks. David said they went into the coop all by themselves last night. He had been putting them in after it got dark. Seems things have settled down and the big chooks have accepted them more or less although there is an occasional peck when the younguns’ get around their food.

The best fertilizer. I’m just sayin’.

Bonnie. I love this dog. She is getting old. Ten years. We are looking to get another puppy maybe this Fall. When we got Bonnie, we had an older dog who got a new lease on life when Bonnie arrived. They played together and ran and had so much fun. That dog, Subaka, lived to be eighteen years old. I hope Bonnie lives that long. Seems that it would be nice if your dog could live as long as you do, but it’s not the way. I have many dogs waiting for me at the Rainbow Bridge. Dogs are the best and the nearest thing to how we people should treat each other. They love us unconditionally, forgive everything and only live to be with you. Sounds like God, doesn’t it?

Belle, the silly girl. She always manages to strike a very silly pose every time I try to get her picture.

Here’s to new cameras and the wonderful husband who surprised me with one. Bye.

Summer

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You know that first day of June when Summer stretches out before you with all its sunny days, times to relax by the pool, read a good book, garden, stay outside until dark and watch the lightening bugs flickering in the trees? It’s halfway over already and I still haven’t done half the things I wanted to do.

We have made a trip to Chicago, spent time in the pool, had the grandkids over, gardened and enjoyed the warm, hazy days. We want to go to the zoo, the state fair, and to Cincinnati before our son moves to Florida(ah, a new place to visit.) We said we would go to at least one auction this Summer. We haven’t made it to one yet. David works so many Saturdays so we can’t go. Already Autumn is beckoning. I see pumpkins and Autumn leaves in the stores. Halloween is just around the corner. I want Summer to last at least two more months. All my grandkids go back to school on August 4th. August 4th!!! That’s taking away a whole month of Summer from them. When I was in school back in the age when we chipped the alphabet on rocks, we didn’t go back to school until after Labor Day and one year we got out of school for the Summer on May 6th. That was a loooong, lazy, wonderful Summer.

But times have changed and the school year is different now. I’m just glad I went to school when I did.

Even the garden is showing me that the last days of Summer are upon us. The sunflowers are blooming. Some of them have already been eaten by the goldfinches and lay on the ground.

The zinnia patch is growing and starting to dry into the seeds I will gather for next year.

Bernice, or is it Dorcas says, ” What’s Summer?” Chickens don’t care as long as they are fed and watered.

By the way, here are the new chicks on the block. This is our new silver laced wyndotte chick. She is so pretty. We’ve clipped her wings. She still manages to fly up and roost in a giant bush by her pen.

The black chick is our new Australorp. When they get separated, they get very nervous. Here Abby, the Wyndotte, is inside the cage and Ada, the Australorp, is outside and neither one likes it. Both will be medium sized chickens and lay medium sized brown eggs. Both have to be hunted at night up in the big bush by their pen. Last night they were in the very tiptop and we could not find them for quite a while.

Our youngest grandson. He is getting really good at swimming. Last year he was afraid of the deep water. This year he swims like a fish. I didn’t learn to swim until we got our first pool. I was always afraid of deep water too. I even took swimming in college, but never got over my fear of going in water that I couldn’t stand in. Now I can swim in the deep end and not be afraid. It’s all in practicing. You can learn about anything if you practice it enough.

Flowers in the garden. Morning glories, perovskia and coneflowers, and hibiscus. The hibicus make my yard look very tropical. They have spread everywhere from one little plant my neighbor gave me years ago. This one is almost eight inches across.

Remember the soda shoppe chair I showed you in a previous post? David chipped all the old paint off it.

He had taken the chair completely apart.

He said it looked like originally there was a copper plating on the chair.

He spent a lot of time getting all the chipped paint removed. That’s why I bought the chair in the first place. Its chipped paint, but through the years it began to look really bad. After all the paint was removed, David spray painted it.

And here it is now. I love it. I also added my touch.

I stuck butterflies on it.

Now it’s a real, girly chair that I will keep in my shop. David had also replaced the old wooden seat that was rotten so the chair can be sat in. He is so handy. He says that’s why I keep him around.

Meanwhile, since I haven’t anything better to do, I have this basket of one and a half inch blocks I have cut out over time and am sewing them together.

I figure eighty of these across and eighty down would make a good size quilt. That’s six thousand and four hundred little squares. Yes, I’m crazy.

I will leave you with a picture of Lunaria Annua, or Honesty or Money plant that grows around our garden. I can see why it’s called Money plant as it glows like Spanish coins when the sun shines through them. See the seeds inside? These will drop and reseed the plant for another year.

Here’s to Summer, industrious husbands and tree roosting chicks. Bye.

Thinking

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I am always thinking. I think of my family, my friends, my dogs, the chooks, quilting, God, what to fix for dinner, our vacations, our next project, the laundry, and my day ahead and that is just in the first ten minutes after I wake up.

One day David was sitting in his recliner just looking ahead and I asked him what he was thinking. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing?!” I said. “How can you not be thinking of anything?” “I just do,” he said.

Well, I couldn’t imagine not thinking about anything at all because I always have something on my mind, am planning something or imagining something, so I didn’t understand it.

Last week at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago there was an experiment you could try where two people sat opposite each other with sensor bands around their heads. They were told to try not to think of anything. There was a ball placed on the table in front of them and the ball would move toward the person who was thinking the most. David and I tried it. We had barely got started when the ball zoomed toward me. The man running the experiment said he had never seen that happen so fast. Screens in front of us had indicated the movement of our thoughts and David’s hardly moved. What? I know he has a brain and is smart. How did he do that? David told me it was really all about relaxation of the muscles in your head and he just sat back and relaxed while I was trying my best not to think of anything. Our grandson and granddaughter tried it and almost got the same results. Like grandfather, like grandson, I guess.

I have tried not to think of things. You know when someone tells you not to think of something and that’s all you think about? Kind of like one time when I was going to a parent-teacher conference and my son told me not to look at the big mole that was in the center of the teacher’s forehead. It was all I could look at. I couldn’t help myself. Or a friend tells me something in church not to notice or laugh and that is exactly what I do.

I have always had a huge imagination. I can zone out by thinking about something so intensely that when David walks into the room and speaks to me I jump. He tries coming in softly and whispering, but I jump even higher.

When I was a child, I was always making up stories in my head. I had a whole family I thought about. They were horse people and everyone rode horses and entered contests. The boy’s name in my story was Thad. Even now, when I can’t sleep I make up stories in my head. One is where I live in a little town out west. My father, who is a widower, is a store keeper and I help him run it. He trades furs with the Indians. A very handsome Indian comes in one day and for days afterward. He wears only a breechcloth and a headband around his long, silky black hair. He just stands in a corner of the store by the pot belly stove and stares at me. I tell my father and he says he’s harmless. He makes me uncomfortable. One evening while I am walking to church for choir practice where my fiance , Joshua is waiting for me, I am captured by this Indian and taken back to his tribe far from the town to be made his wife and become an Indian princess. Meanwhile, Joshua and my father are looking for me and I am afraid if they find me the Indians will kill them. Years go by and I am married to this Indian and have a child and finally Joshua finds me. But by then I am in love with my Indian husband and don’t want to leave the tribe. Heartbroken, Joshua leaves me and I never see him again. Okay, I think this would make a great book. Meanwhile, David is sound asleep beside me oblivious to my imaginations.

I think I like to write so that I can get all this stuff out of my head before it bursts. Does your mind keep busy all the time? I can’t even sleep without having the most awesome, colorful dreams. My brain is hotwired I guess so I will just go with it and continue to write and think.

What do you think? Bye.

Beautilicious Beauty

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Sometimes I get so busy, I forget to notice the flowers in my garden until they have come and gone. Stop and smell the roses, Katie. So I went into my garden to photograph all the beautiliciousness that is going on right now right under my nose.

Zinnias. Next to peonies zinnias are my favorite flowers. They are so easy to grow and come in every color in the rainbow.

Almost like a dahlia. So pretty.

Love, love this salmon color. I think I painted a room that color once. But we called it Pepto-bismo pink.

I get my zinnia seeds from Wildseed Farm out of Texas. I order them by the pound and you really get a lot of seeds in a pound. I can have zinnias all over the yard. How can you not smile when you see this sunshiny color in the garden?

Two of my favorite colors together, pink and white.

Hard to believe this……

Will turn into this in a day. Sunshine from a seed.

Why don’t people believe in miracles? They happen right under our noses every single day. A seed in the ground grows into a beautiful flower in a matter of weeks. That’s miraculous to me.

Cleome. An old fashion flower that I have all over the garden. Some I have planted. Some that have reseeded themselves. They are such good little plants. David does not like them close to the pool because they like to droop over and drop their seeds right by the patio around it. So I try to keep them a good distance from the pool, but they still creep back sometimes.

They look good beside the zinnia bed.

I want to get this imprinted on my mind so that this winter when I am looking out at a foot of snow on the ground and everything is white, brown and grey, I will know that one day there will be an abundance of colors once again. God is good. He sends Spring to us when we need it most.

I found three new plants at a grocery store this week. This I thought was a cone flower or echinacea, but after I planted it and read the message with it I found it was a rudbeckia or black eyed Susan.

It didn’t look like any black eyed Susans I have grown before.

This is a coneflower. A white one that I have never seen. I have a red one, a green one, an orange one and the ordinary pink ones that I have grown for years. I hope this one will multiply like the pink ones do.

I am going to try to grow this crepe myrtle. I always thought they were more of a southern plant, but this one says to mulch it well in the autumn to overwinter it. So we shall see.

I do grow vegetables in my garden. I have dozens of tomatoes almost ready. I can’t wait to bite into that first red, ripe tomato still warm from the sun.

More green beans than we can eat.

Pumpkin blossoms dredged in egg and flour and fried in butter. Yum. What I couldn’t eat, the chickens loved.

We have pumpkin vines taking over the garden and into the flower beds. There are several pumpkins growing.

I’ve seen a couple of these big ones. I never get over the excitement of finding these in the garden. Sometimes I have good luck with pumpkin growing and some years, not so much, but so far, this has been a good year for just about everything. I think letting the chickens scratch in the garden over the fall and winter and leaving their, ahem, fertilizer, has really made the garden the best ever. They will do their work again this year. Such good chickens. I love those little girls. I will have to show you our two new ones soon. They are still being kept in a cage right now to protect them from the bigger chooks, but in a few weeks we will clip their wings and let them out. I let them out one day and they flew up onto the gate. Can’t let them do that with the dogs around.

Do you like butternut squash? I don’t know why I planted these other than I just like to grow them. They are good cut in half, sprinkled with butter, brown sugar and cinnamon and baked in the oven.

This is the pumpkin vines coming right up to the fence saying, “Let us out.” They don’t listen to me and come right on over and spread over everything. The good thing about that is that I have less lawn to mow.

Belle in the garden. I have always said the backyard garden is the dog garden because I don’t get too upset when they walk through a flower bed or eat a few blossoms. Belle likes to smell the flowers too.

Bonnie has been with us for ten years and ever since she was a pup she has been right beside me when I plant and weed in the garden. She’s a flower child dog.

We keep a small patch of clover for the bees. Actually, it’s so I don’t have to mow here!

I’ve given David a new project.

Years ago we bought this old soda shoppe chair at an auction and I have wanted to do something with it. So…..David is taking it apart and I will sand it and paint it(David will sand and paint it)and David will add a new wooden seat to it and then I will add something else that you will have to wait to see when it is finished. I can’t wait to show it to you.

Meanwhile, I am working on this, but cannot show any more because who I am making it for is nosy and reads my blog(you know who you are.) I am really liking how this is looking and I hope I can get it done before Christmas. I have five other quilts looking at me and saying, “Finish me!!!” So many quilts, so little time.

Here’s to gardens, flower child dogs and the One who made them all. Bye.

Give a Boy a Camera………

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My grandson kept asking to use my camera while we were in Chicago, so I let him. Here are some pictures he took. I will leave it at that.

Look, Ma, no tonsils.

Some of them were pretty good. I told him when I replaced my camera, which I am hoping to do this year, he could have my old one. Maybe he will start a blog.

Here’s to grandsons, cameras and the eye to use them. Bye.

Chicago day 3

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Day three of our tour of Chicago. It’s impossible to see much of Chicago in three days, but we tried. We drove all over and saw parts of Chicago most people don’t see. It’s a very busy, active city. People walking or riding bicycles everywhere and the cars. Oh, the cars and the buses that would pull right out in front of you at the last second. But David is a good driver and got us everywhere without a scratch(although we did get within inches of some vehicles at times.) I would say, “David, that car almost hit us,” and he would say, “Oh, it was a mile away from us!” Actually, by day three, we were old hands at getting through the traffic, David with his driving and me not screaming. The grandkids sitting in the back poking each other and laughing and not paying attention to the traffic at all. But why should they?

We saved the best for our last day in my humble opinion. The Adler Planetarium. I have always loved looking at the stars and when I was growing up, I thought I would like to be an astronomer. On the farm where I grew up all you needed to do was walk out the back door at night and you could see millions of stars in the sky. Not like it is today with so many outside lights on at night. Where I live now I can see stars, but not nearly as many as I could on the farm. I would dream of other planets and traveling through space. We could see the Milky Way very clearly in the night sky. When we travel out west, I want to go to as little populated places as we can to see the night sky. I love watching the astronauts shoot up into space and wish I were there with them. So, the Adler Planetarium was the perfect destination for me.

My grandson’s name is Adler, by the way, so he thinks the planetarium is named after him. We had to get him a shirt with his name on it.

In this exhibit, you could move the astronauts around and put them into their capsule.

This was supposed to show you how it felt to be weightless and jump on the moon.

Believe me, I didn’t feel weightless and this was a good leg workout. Wish I had one of these at home.

Okay, I don’t know why this picture is sideways, but this is our younger grandson. He wants to be an architect, though. He likes to build things.

We saw the Milky Way.

We saw a comet.

I didn’t get a lot of pictures at the planetarium, but there was so much to see and read. We went to a couple of the shows they gave. The one I liked best was about the universe and the galaxies. When we went into it, they gave us all a penny and during the show, they asked us to hold our pennies up to the picture of the universe and said that in space the size of Lincoln’s eye there were hundreds of galaxies. We sometimes think our galaxy is the end of the universe. There are so many they haven’t all been counted. Each with their own planets and suns. Seeing this just made my belief in God more confirmed when I think how all this was created. Our sun is just the right distance from earth that we don’t freeze or burn up. The more I learn about the world and the universe we live in, the more I believe there is a great Creator who made all this. I see it every day in my garden. It’s a wonderful world and universe we live in if we just look around. We people are like ants scurrying here, there and everywhere, never stopping to look at the beautiful world around us and how everything works together. How absolutely everything points to a God who made it. I love science and I love God and I believe they are very compatible. Anyway, I loved seeing about the universe. I could have watched it over and over again, but, alas, we had to leave so that others could see the show.

After the planetarium we had planned to go the the Field Museum, but we were meeting our son at a restaurant for dinner so we decided to find someplace to park and walk as I really needed to get out and walk since we hadn’t walked enough. Ha.

So we finally found a little park and David drove by a parking lot thinking in Chicago he could find a “free” parking space, but we ended back at the parking lot and paid fifteen dollars so I could get out and walk. We were at Lincoln Park, a small, free, gasp, park with a zoo and farm animals and it was lovely to walk under trees. It was very enjoyable for me. My two oldest grandchildren were getting antsy as this wasn’t their thing. But, hey, humor grandma for a while. Anyway we had to kill some time and what better place than at a park.

Our final destination to end out trip to Chicago was Ed Debevic’s a popular restaurant there.

Ed Debevic’s where the waiters and waitresses are rude and dance on the tables and in the aisles. It’s a fun place. Our waiter gave us all these hats, threw our napkins at us, asked me why I was eating like a chipmunk, nibbling my food, called my granddaughter a “princess” for ordering a salad and I won’t tell you what the waitress said to David as she delivered his very large hotdog, but we laughed for several minutes after that one. And it was a very large hotdog. We had a good time, but all good things must end and we went back to our motel to pack for the trip home the next day.

Our trip home was called “torturing the grandchildren day” as we took the long way home and stopped at a couple of quilt shops. We were asked over and over again when we would get home and we kept saying, “When we get there.” David and I would have stopped at every antique store we saw, and we saw a lot of them, but well, you know, grandkids. They cramped our style. We decided we would have to come back to these antique stores sans the grandchildren one day.

All in all, we had a great time, but it was good to be home again to my garden and dogs and chickens and less traffic.

Chicago is an amazing city and we hope to go back again. Bye.

Chicago Part 2

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David and I were courageous and took three of our grandchildren touring in Chicago this week.

On day two we went to the Museum of Science and Industry. There is soooo much to see there. One cannot do it in a day. Or at least I couldn’t because I want to read everything and spend time in each exhibit. With three grandchildren who have been there before, we did a whirlwind tour through the museum. We still saw a lot.

There was a circus exhibit with a miniature circus parade.

David wanted me to be sure to take this picture of him by the strong man because, you know, David is a strong man too.

Little circus wagons and the crowds who watched the parade.

Electricity displays everywhere.

A tornado in a bottle.

We saw baby chicks hatching. The poor little things have to struggle so hard to get out of the egg, they almost look dead when they finally get out.

But soon they are on their feet and their fluffy feathers dry and they look like the cute little chicks you see at Easter. As a farm girl, this is nothing new to me, but city kids seldom get to experience this.

There was a fairy castle that my granddaughter and I liked especially. It was started by a silent movie star back in the twenties and grew from there with many people getting involved in its construction and furnishing.

Each little room was furnished completely with what would be needed for the inhabitants. Look at the tiny copper pans and the dishes. This must have been fun to put together.

Even the little glass bottles were perfect and so tiny. Abby and I could have looked for an hour or more. There was so much detail in each room.

My grandson took this picture. It’s a tornado. We got to go in a wind tunnel capsule and feel the power of a small tornado.

We walked and walked and saw so much.

We saw a German submarine that we captured in the second world war. It had sunk several of our ships. This is a representation of some men who escaped their ship. They had the submarine at the museum.

If you are ever in Chicago, get a city pass and it gets you into several attractions, the Adler Planetarium, the Shedd museum, the Museum of Science and Industry, and a few other things. It was worth the price and we still couldn’t see it all in three days.

We saw so much and enjoyed the museum greatly.

When we got back to our room, my feet were so sore. We had walked all day and up and down stairs over and over again. I was hoping I would be ready for the Adler Planetarium the next day. We shall see. Bye.

Chicago

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First I must say, I don’t like big cities very much. I yearn for the open roads and greenery and fresh air of the country whenever I am in the city. That said, I have had a lot of fun in big cities despite the traffic, crowds of people and parking. You have to pay to park almost everywhere in Chicago. We paid fifteen dollars today to go to a park. Crazy. Yes, we were. But I needed to get out and walk somewhere besides between cement buildings or in parking lots. It was nice. We were in Lincoln Park, a free park(faint, faint) which had a nice little zoo and farm animals. I saw the chickens and they made me homesick. There was a grown silver winged Wyndotte, one of which I am raising right now and she is going to be a beauty if she looks like that one

Our adventure in the city began Monday when our intrepid driver took us through the crazy which is Chicago traffic to Navy Pier.

Our grandchildren snug in the back seat. Don’t pay any attention to that boy on the left. He looks scary, but he’s a kind soul.

Driving down Lakeshore Drive, but where was the city?

There it was on the horizon. Lake Michigan on our left.

The John Hancock building can be seen as we draw nearer.

We have come to Chicago many times and every time I have said I wanted to ride the giant ferris wheel at Navy Pier. So, finally, we did.

It was quite the experience. This was looking down.

This was the view from the top. That’s Lake Michigan. It was beautiful that day.

These flowers were planted at the base of the ferris wheel. So pretty. Did you really think I would blog and not write about flowers?

This was another view. Chicago really is a beautiful city, but not that windy while we were there.

Our grandchildren rode this. Only the young can do this.

My younger grandson on his steed. That’s me peeking around his shoulder. I couldn’t resist riding the merry-go-round.

We walked through the botanical garden.

We also walked through a maze that made me dizzy, strobe lights strobbing and music throbbing and mirrors everywhere. If my grandchildren had not been with me, I would still be wandering around in there.

We found a little off to the side room where nobody was where you could play with clay. The sign said to try to make a face. Someone had made one and left it and whoever did it was a real artist. Here it is.

Then my grandchildren and I got to work making our own faces. My granddaughter made George Washington.

My grandsons’ faces were very creative.

Then, there was mine.

This was something out of one of my nightmares, I think.

I guess you can say I am not an artist with clay.

After spending a while at Navy Pier, we headed over to the Shedd Aquarium.

This stone was outside it with carvings all over it.

Interesting

Then we went to the Shedd Aquarium.

Wouldn’t you know it? There were fish there!

Seahorses. So magical.

Jellyfish. More kinds than I ever knew existed. So beautiful. Soothing music played as the jellyfish floated around.

Those are some jellyfish behind my grandson. Or is that a gigantic halo?

We touched sting rays.

We found Nemo. He’s been at the Shedd Aquarium all along.

That was just the first day. More to come. Bye.

People Who Read My Blog

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When blogging began, I didn’t know a thing about it. What was a blog? How do you write one? Who are all these people writing blogs? Then I started reading some blogs, Posie Gets Cozy, Pioneer Woman, Attic 24, Henhouse, Tales From the Coop Keeper and others and fell in love with blogging. I wanted to do it too, so one day I set up my own little blog and started to write. It was about two years ago this summer. I wrote and wrote and learned how to post pictures and wrote some more. Then people started reading it and it amazed me. Then, something horrible happened. David was doing something with the pictures on our computer and for some reason, all the pictures on my blog went away. I almost cried. Then my son set me up with this blog and I am merrily going on my way writing and posting again. He tells me this site will hold more pictures. That’s good, because the last time David checked we had over ten thousand pictures backed up on our computers! You can still read my old blog called I Love My Dogs which I changed to Snicklefritz later, but there won’t be many pictures.

Sometimes I wonder about the people who read my blog. They are all over the world now, which kind of boggles my mind. This little country farm girl who likes to write has people from other countries reading her blog. Hi, all you people. I am so glad you are here. I really wish I could meet every one of you.

I wonder about where you live, what you do, are you married or single? Do you have children? What’s your day like? Do you get up every morning and go to a job? Are some of you stay at home mothers? Or fathers? Do you live in the city or the country? Some of you live in the some of the most beautiful places in the world. Places I will never see except in my imagination. Do you appreciate just how beautiful and wonderful are the places where you live? Sometimes we get so busy with our lives, we forget to look around us at the beauty that is right under our noses. I live in a beautiful state in the United States. My husband and I have traveled to nearly all fifty states and I am always happy to return to Indiana.

Do you travel? Or are you pretty much happy with where you are and don’t go many places? I want to travel to England. I have always wanted to go to England. Some of my ancestors came from there so that is probably the reason why I am so drawn to it. But then I think of exotic places like India and Nepal(where a friend and her family are now doing mission work) and I think I would love to see places like that. It’s a beautiful world we live in. Are you living where there is strife happening? Some places in the world are not very happy places to live right now. Why do men have to be so bad? I see people suffering in other countries and it just makes me know how blessed I am that I live in a country where, at least, I feel safe. I pray for all of you who may be suffering under very poor conditions in your countries right now.

I picture all of you in my mind sitting at your computers, reading my blog and I just want to say thank you. There are thousands, if not millions, of blogs out there and you chose to read mine this day. You are a blessing to me. I hope your day today will be happy and blessed. God loves you and I hope you know Him. I believe in God and His Son, Jesus Christ who came to this earth two thousand years ago. He lived and preached and was crucified on the cross for every single one of us. He took our sins upon Himself. He arose again and sits at the right hand of God, His father. One day He will return to judge us all. He’s my personal Savior. I don’t know how you believe, but I wanted you to know what I believe and that God does love you. He loved you enough to send His only Son to die for your sins. How great a love is that? It’s hard to comprehend.

Well, I just wanted to thank all of you today. You are very special people to me. Sometimes we don’t know how we can affect others, but I hope my blog makes you happy sometimes, makes you think sometimes and sometimes it probably bores you to death, but I will keep writing because I love to write and even if no one was reading this blog, I would still write it for my children and grandchildren to read one day so that they will know their mother and grandmother better.

Have a great day all you people. I love you all and pray for the best for all of you. Bye.

Hoosier Girl Stories

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I am a Hoosier girl through and through. Born and bred on an Indiana farm smack dab in the middle of the state. For those of you reading this who wonder what a Hoosier is, it is anyone who was born in the state. Where the name comes from, no one can say for sure. Some say it happened many years ago when the settlers lived in cabins and when someone would be coming toward their cabin they would yell out, “Who’s yer?” There are other explanations, but no one knows the true meaning.

Over the years I have written stories about my growing up years on my daddy’s Indiana farm and today I will publish one here on my blog. It’s written as me as a little girl and the facts are as I remember them. My brothers and sister may remember things differently. I had a wonderful childhood and remember many fun things that happened while I was growing up. So here is my first story.

Ducklings by the Back Door

It was Spring on Daddy’s Indiana farm. New baby animals were being born every day. The one animal Daddy did not have on his farm was a duck, but that was soon to change.

One day Mommy came home from visiting a neighbor carrying a box in her arms. Inside the box were eggs. Not just any kind of eggs which Katie saw every day. These eggs were duck eggs that the neighbor had taken from a setting duck.

Mommy had gotten an egg incubator at a sale and had been wanting to try her luck at hatching some eggs herself. She carefully placed the duck eggs inside the incubator. It was round and had a lid that raised. It ran on electricity to keep the eggs warm.

“Your job will be to turn the eggs every day,” Mommy told Katie. “You will also have to sprinkle water onto the eggs to keep them moist.”

Katie was excited. She knew that if she did her job correctly, there would one day be some baby ducklings hatching from the eggs.

Every day Katie would go down into the cellar where the incubator was kept and she would turn the eggs a quarter turn. This was so that the eggs would get warm all the way around. She sprinkled water over the eggs then carefully closed the lid. She looked at the eggs through the glass top and wondered how soon the baby ducklings would be poking their beaks through the eggshells.

The days followed slowly one after the other. Each day Katie watched the eggs, but they just lay there. She knew that inside them ducklings were growing and would soon be too big for their eggshell homes.

Then one day it finally happened. Katie went down the cellar steps expecting to see the eggs just laying there as usual, but instead she found that the ducklings were finally being born. There were cracks in several of the eggs and she saw one tiny beak poking out of one of them.

“Mommy, come quick!” Katie called. “The eggs are hatching!”

Mommy hurried down the cellar steps and watched with Katie as each duckling emerged from its shell. The ducklings had to work so hard to get out of the shell that when they finally emerged they were exhausted. They lay on their sides breathing hard, their yellow down still damp from being inside the eggs. Soon they were standing on their tiny webbed feet and stretching and flapping their wings.

Not all the eggs hatched. “That is nature’s way of saying that the ducklings inside those eggs would not have been healthy,” Mommy told Katie.” “They did not develop enough to hatch.

Even though all the eggs did not hatch, there were eight baby ducklings to care for. They had to be kept warm, so Mommy fit a light bulb above a box and put the ducklings inside. Katie fed them baby chicken feed that Daddy bought for the hundreds of baby chickens he raised on the farm. Day after day the ducklings grew. They thought Katie was their mother because she was the first thing they saw when they hatched. They would come running to her to be fed.

Once they were large enough, they were put in the chicken yard with the chickens and lived in the chicken house. When Katie came out the back door they would run to the chicken yard gate and quack at her. sometimes she would take them out of the chicken yard and let them follow her all around the yard. soon their soft yellow down became snow white feathers. They became noisy and destructive and tore up some of Mommy’s flowers in the garden. Mommy said they would have to stay in the chicken yard.

The big white ducks lived for several years on Daddy’s Indiana farm. Mommy tried hatching chickens in her incubator, but never had any luck. Katie sometimes gave uncooked oatmeal to her pet ducks because they were spoiled and they loved oatmeal. The ducklings by the back door were her babies and she would always have a special place in her heart for them.

Hope you enjoyed my little story. Bye.

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