What memories are made of....

Give me some grass string bailing twine and it is the thing of memories for me.

This is the old walnut tree down home...it has swung more children and provided more hours of entertainment than any store bought item ever could.

It is in poor health now, and covered with ivy. It seemed a giant when I was a kid...we almost always had 3 or 4 swings in it. We all played on them...played tag if you can believe that. All the grandchildren swung in that tree at one time or another. Any cousins that came swung in them. Or any other kid....you could swing as high as possible and never have to worry about a swing set turning over.

Of course, they were made of grass string...usually the first few feet around the tree limb was a piece of chain. And not just light-weight chain either. It was stuff that had weight to it....I don't remember how they were attached to the limb. Then we would double or triple the length of grass string, I think sometimes we braided it, and tied it to the end of the chain.

I do remember playing in one one time, by myself, and the chain came loose and hit me in the head. I do remember crying, but I don't remember if I told mom or dad.

Our seat was a length of board, with notches cut in each end....

Now when I am out, I cannot help but see trees and think what a great place to put swings, or a tree house. Some are just made for children...but swings in trees are very seldom seen these days. They are there in the corner of my mind though...just one of those thoughts that are a pleasant to think on.

Morning song

Every day we were home, I awoke each morning to incredible birdsong. I think you would have to be there to believe it. I did managed to capture a couple of the main ones--the mockingbird and the cardinal. I thought the above photo a catbird, but not so sure.
Even though this one of the cardinal is blurred, I still like it. It is a cropped portion of the original photo.
I did not manage to capture the wrens though, and I think they were the most vocal of all. They had babies somewhere but I could not find the nest...even though I was close to it. The first night there one was really scolding me....but after that no matter where I looked I got no reaction. But I did see it come from around the house carrying the messes from its nest....

I also saw a couple chickadees, indigo buntings, bluebirds, and two or three types of sparrows. Oh, and what I assume was a swallow of some kind had a nest under the eave of the garage. I could never see it for more than a few seconds.
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Roger and I have both been exhausted since getting home. Yesterday and today has been sunny and beautiful with bright blue skies. There is a chance of thunderstorms moving back in Saturday night...which is the last thing we need. I heard on our local news that farmers are so far behind in their planting because the ground is so saturated.

I also have a flip side to the piece I posted for yesterday, but it is so negative I just haven't had the heart to write it. One of these days I will though...just not now. I have for the most part put it behind me and would just as soon forget it, but feel like I would not be truthful if I didn't tell that side.

Home to the hills

As we travel down the road that drives away and will follow us back home, no words can express how it feels as the mountains rise up to meet us....it has rained recently. Some highways are still wet, while other places show a few puddles. With an overcast sky, the sun only shows itself briefly a time or two. With no sun, the mountains are a richer green than they might appear otherwise....and in distant places there is a mist.

There is a mental mist that settles over me. Tears come to my eyes, but I blame them on my bangs getting in my eyes. It has been almost four years since I have been embraced by these green, green mountains of my youth.

I wonder what makes us the way we are. Of us children, I think I still feel a part of this land more than any of my other siblings that have moved away. For sure of the girls....my brother that lives close to Sarah feels much the same as me, but I am not sure it claims him as much as it does me. At other times, I think it is even more so with him.
So much has changed in some ways....in physical ways. The road by home has been paved....even the old rocky hill is paved. That is almost a miracle. Prior to paving, it was almost like trying to a car up a set of steps. No exaggeration. And if your car wasn't dirty when you turned down the road, by the time you drive a mile...it would have a thick coat of dust on it.

There are homes built in fields that I once played in...barns have burned down...fences have been removed. Other places have been taken over by a wild growth of weeds, bushes, and briars.

But the things that matter have not changed. People are still good neighbors, they are glad to see you, and willing to give a helping hand.

I must admit I hate seeing houses in fields I once was free to roam, but I still love the good hearted people that make up the majority of the population.
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We have been in Tennessee the past few days....I wrote the above and took those pictures the day I got there. I have been on line a few times, but never for very long and not on my on computer, so I did not mess with trying to post it till now.

Christmas re-visited

This little yellow house is in Bridgeton, Indiana. This shot was taken a few years ago....I ran across it the other night and thought I would publish it. And yes, that is a purple house beside it. I think I have a photo of it somewhere around here, and when I run across it I will publish it. Or, better still, go take a fresh picture of it.

Blooming bushes

The bushes are blooming around here...have been for a few days but today is the first day I have taken any pictures. We were gone all day yesterday, and the day before we had enough rain to float a battleship.
It has stormed two out of the last three nights...not last night but the two before. Night before last, I just unplugged both the surge protectors that the computers, etc were on. I like having surge protectors in case we aren't here and it storms, but even with them if it is storming bad, I unplug anyway. I am lost without the computer, even for a few hours and cannot imagine if I had to wait days to replace them.

I have been busy the past couple of days and not been blogging...I plan to try to visit everyone tonight but going to be pretty busy the next few days. Blogging here is going to be hit or miss, but I do have pictures scheduled for my Time Stand Still blog. I will try to pop in here and there, but if I don't get you every day I will get back to you...

A quick post....

I ran to the strip pits tonight...it was a little cool...did not hear a single frog nor see a single turtle....but seen all kinds of male ring-necked pheasants. Well, it was under a dozen but still seeing 6 or 8 is a lot for me. And the minute they see me, in my Rav4, they take off at a fast walk. When I get near, they first duck down till it is almost impossible to see them. BUT, if I just pause a few seconds their heads come back off and they take off running again.
There were several killdeer....they must have nests the way they act. Or else are very close to nesting. I think they are such a pretty little bird.
Every night for the past week, at least on the nights we were home, the lower the sun has gotten, the more stunning the sunset has been. That is why I ran out there tonight...but this right here was as pretty as it got. Mind you, I do think this is beautiful....but usually if I am out there it is like watching a picture show with the sky changing dramatically over the last half hour or so. It just didn't happen tonight.

It was worth going though....I saw deer, geese, blue herons, and one of the swans...Oh, and I saw the American Bittern but only got a quick shot of it as it flew away. I saw from behind sitting at the edge of the water from several feet back....so I pulled up with the clump of grass between us, and got out of the car and walked over within 5 feet of the clump of grass and could not spot it.

I forgot and had on nice shoes, and Roger had cleaned the Rav so I really did not want to get real muddy. I turned around and headed back the Rav...and turned around to look one more time and up it flew right from where I knew it was but could not see. That shows how well camouflaged they are.

Been gone a couple days...

I haven't been blogging for a couple of days simply because we went to see Lorelei and her mommy and daddy...
Sarah finally cut Lorelei's bangs but still cannot bring herself to have the rest of her hair cut....
Other than right after her bath, her hair is just always wild! Notice her little nose--it is a couple steps to get up and down off their back deck and she fell coming up those steps. Her nose looks so sore in real life, but she didn't seem to notice it.

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Roger has been working on this little knife....for our younger daughter....it was her birthday today. He was making it anyway, but decided to get busy and have it finished by then.

She was quite happy with it...

Roger held it in his hands to kind of show its size...but keep in mind his hands are not big.

A record of our days....

I have been sitting tonight weeding through email...I am not one that deletes something soon as I read it...I keep it...if it is personal...not saying how long I keep it, but I keep it a while. I don't know why....I very seldom go back and read it...but sometimes if I want to know when something happened, I can do a word search of my email and have the answer. Cause I share most of the happenings in our life with my best buddies.

I have a couple friends that I grew up with...that we email back and forth. One more than the other most of the time...but still the one that is more like once a week still knows what is going on. I would be lost without email now. Before email, there was snail mail.
I didn't save a lot of snail mail....but above you see a collection of letters from my younger days. Before our first child was born, even. I was not quite 25 at the time I received most of the letters above.

I have been thinking about getting them out and reading them for a while now, so tonight while going through emails and re-reading them, I thought about these old letters and thought it a good time to drag them out. I only read a snitch here and there while I was taking these pictures, but oh, were we ever young then! Now keep in mind that this best friend also became my sister-in-law.

In one of the paragraphs I read, my niece who was not a year old, had had them up most of the night, and at 5:30 was yelling Mommy! Bottle! Daddy!....so that was how their day began. When I start to read them in earnest, I am thinking I will laugh and I will cry...I will probably need kleenexes...there will be more memories than my heart can hold.

The day is closing down...

I'm sitting in my recliner, feet up, and looking at wonderful lighting out the windows...but simply too weary to get up and take advantage of it. I should get up and go to the strip pits...I have not been out there at sunset in a while...but I am not going. So I am showing this photo that was taken from my back door the other night.

I haven't did a whole lot today, but did get the chairs on my front porch scrubbed, and washed the side of the house that is under the awning. You just would not believe how dirty it was. BUT, I did not scrub the porch itself. Maybe I will do that tomorrow.

This got me to thinking....does anyone do spring house cleaning like they used to do? I know one woman that still does...she literally goes over each room in her house with a fine tooth comb. Other than this lady, I don't know of anyone that really does a thorough job. I know I sure don't, even if it does need it.

We used to always go through the house each spring. I don't know that we did it all my life every spring, but I do remember taking the mattress and box springs down and I think we took them out to have them in the sun while we cleaned the rest of the room. And the old box springs used to not be covered...so they would need to be dusted.

I remember washing walls...I think mainly in the kitchen....I don't know how often we painted. For sure not every year...probably not even every other year.

I think now my spring cleaning is when I scrub the lawn/porch chairs...and I do usually wash windows and curtains. Then the rest is hit or miss...

Gobble, gobble!

I saw these three ladies last week...on back in the edge of the woods were a couple of toms but I could not get a shot of them for all the weeds in front of them. Just in a couple weeks it will be turkey hunting season here...along about the time of morel mushrooms.
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We are getting ready to head to Walmart....I have put off going as long as I can. I need to pick some supplies. I hate to think about what my bill will be....but it would be so much worse if not for Walmart. We do not have Meijer near here at all, and really only have a Kmart on the south end of Terre Haute. So it is Walmart for us.

I would not mind the shopping so bad if I didn't have to come home and put everything away!

Here's the first part

Sarah thought she had sent me this part, but she hadn't....and I didn't know it existed so I went ahead and posted the video below, but this is the first part of it.

She makes up her own songs and just sings and has the biggest smile on her face....but you cannot understand a word she says.

When out driving, Lorelei done tells Sarah and Jeremy to turn here, or turn this way, tells them to 'Go!' when they are at a stop light, and a few days ago Sarah had taken her for a drive to try to get her to go to sleep. She finally just gave up and turned back into their neighborhood and Lorelei said, "No, Mommy! Go, go, go!' So, Sarah just passed through and she went on to sleep in just a few miles.

A sure sign that spring has arrived....

We got up to thunderstorms this morn...they rolled around, left and then came back a time or two. Everything got a good soaking...in fact, some places still have puddles of water even though the sun was out before noon.
You might think the sure sign of spring I was talking about is the thunderstorms, but in fact, I meant that the buzzards are back in full force. Roger worked around in his shop all morn, while I fooled in here...playing on the computer and making a meatloaf...about the time we got done with lunch a friend of mine stopped by. I ask her if she wanted a bite to eat, but she didn't care for anything. We took our Cokes and sat on the front porch in the shade and visited for a few minutes.
After she left, Roger and I decided to go for a drive. Any direction we looked, we saw buzzards circling. I do not know what about this area draws them, but there are just so many of them. Last year they were like this, and we went down south of Terre Haute at least a couple of different times, and hardly saw any. We both just could not believe the difference in the number.

Now, I saw a few along all winter on the way to Sarah's house...but it would be like one or two. And only that...oh, and speaking of Sarah's house....here is a little video that she sent me of a new singing star. Enjoy!

Hanging around....

Though I really don't see a lot of people hanging out clothes these days, other than the Amish, most times if I see clothespins on a line, they are like the single one above...that one that is pinched on the clothesline....not the ones hanging upside down. Then, this morning I was blog hopping...actually looking at quilting blogs for a few minutes....just trying to get a little inspiration and one of the girls had a picture of clothespins on the line, and they were hanging upside down...like mine below.
I have just spent 30 minutes trying to find that blog again, and cannot for the life of me find where I seen it. But I had been meaning to do a post about clothespins for a while now, and being that Roger re-set my clotheslines posts this week, I thought now would be a good time to do it.

Anyway, there is a method to my madness....I always keep mine hanging upside down, their 'jaws' around the line for the simple reason they are easy to slide along as I need them. You know how sometimes you hang out socks and need one every 3 or 4 inches, then other times it is towels and you need one every couple of feet....if the clothespins are just hanging there like above, it is a simple matter to just slide them along in front of the towels. Or if you need a lot and they are more scattered....you can just walk along sliding them back to where you need them.

Now my mom, nor my BFF's mom never, ever left their clothespins on the line....I don't know why. I think because of how weathered they become...they wear out quicker. Back then, they did not have money just to throw away...they took care of what they had. A few cents here and a few cents there really adds up.

I went to plastic for outside because of the organic nature of wood...if I leave them out, they get really, really nasty. I think because of all the traffic, being that we are in a small town...it stirs up more dust that settles on the clothespins and they get just black and gritty. But even the plastic ones wear out quicker being in all the extreme temps....I will go to hang something up one side of the pin will simply break.

And notice the size of the clothespins above...I needed some new plastic ones, so one day Roger was headed to the store. I told him to pick me up a new bag of plastic clothespins...those huge ones are what he came home with! Our local Wal-mart does not carry the small ones any more. The big ones do not have as strong of a spring and are not as good. No matter how I pinch them over the clothes on the line...if it is windy, it seems like they slide together.

So, I was looking at Wal-mart at the wooden ones....all they had were the ones made in China. I have been that route before, and if things have not changed, they are not worth carrying home. They come apart at the spring at the least little thing. Several years ago, I either read it in Heloise's hints or heard Martha Stewart tell to make sure to get the ones Made In MAINE...mind you not the Main Stay brand that Walmart carries. So, that was what I done several years ago, and I am still using those down in the basement.

When we went over to Arthur, Illinois at the beginning of the week, we went to this Miller's Dry Goods that is out in the country...I found two packages of the wooden ones made in Maine and I grabbed them up too quick to talk about.

There now...isn't that the longest thing you have ever read on clothespins????

Not my usual roadside shot....

I made it back by this place yesterday evening...I had passed it a couple weeks ago and could not get a decent shot. It is located where it is not very convenient to stop....and there were several cars. And even yesterday on first going by, there was too much traffic but on my way home I wound my way back by and got a couple of hurried pics.
These are not the best...the only little, little lamb I captured is in that black one in the last pic....but on farther in a corner were these little, woolly bundles....just so little. I have never been around sheep, but I think I would really enjoy them. I just love to hear their little bleating calls.

It has been another nice day here...with the clouds gathering a few times but dispersing for the sun to shine again. Now, I think they have returned to stay. We are supposed to be getting rain over the next few days. I am not sure about the percentage of chances but I do know thunderstorms are predicted over the next several days. Hopefully I won't complain too much.

Does anyone besides us watch American Idol? Is is one of the few shows we like to watch...and some years are not as good as others. Read that as some years I really, really get into it and others I just watch it cause it is better than anything else. Well, this year, in my opinion, they have a group of really talented contestants...there is only one I really don't like but I won't say his name. And there is a girl I am not crazy about, but it is more her personality than her singing ability.

Anyway, it is one year, that is sort of hard to choose who I want to win. I think this makes the fourth season we have watched it...I think I know who I want to win though I sort of waver between a couple of them, but if he don't so long as the one guy does not win I won't be mad.

Getting ready for spring....

This photo is not the best I got, but the other shows the Amish boy's face, and I won't post it. I am of mixed feelings about this...I know they don't like their photos taken, yet in their shops here, I see them sell stuff that has photos of Amish. I won't get right in their face with the camera either...and have gotten permission to take photos at one of their places. I would have been just as happy with this photo if it had not had the kid in it....
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This was going to be a photoless day, but went ahead and uploaded the one above. I really need to go on a good drive to see what I can find. I am about out of things to post, unless I do repeats.

We have been to Wally World as we call Wal-mart. Just to pick up a few items...then we came home and Roger has been moving my clotheslines over. The posts had to be reset, so he moved them over. We had put them up long before we built our garage. When we built the garage, it took my gardening spot, and the only place that was left was under the clothesline. Well actually right beside the clothesline...but we have gradually widened the little strip till one of the lines was actually over the garden.

While he has been doing that, I have gotten a load of stuff together for the Light House Mission. Roger dropped it off when he had to run pick up some concrete mix....but I need to go make some more decisions about what to get rid of. There is just so much stuff crammed into this little house. I am amazed it does not burst at the seams.

I have several year's worth of a couple quilting magazines....I think about getting rid of them, but I hate to. I do look back through them...and more than once a year. Usually a couple times;-) I do not receive any magazines at all now...I figure I can find what I need on line....whether it be inspiration or instructions.

Well, I need to get busy with something...the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. Sunshine does me a world of good...makes me feel like getting into something. a

To the top!

I don't remember when I first started noticing architectural features of buildings...I know I didn't think much about it when young. Probably didn't think anything about it at all then...
but as I have grown older, I have really come to appreciate the work that has gone into it.
These were in Rockville, Indiana, around the square. I love the ones with the rich colors most of all.
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Lorelei and her mommy spent the entire weekend with us. Kay came over yesterday and talk about making a kid happy. Lorelei would laugh and laugh at just anything and everything. Kay had been here probably an hour and went back home and got her little brother who is about a year older than Lorelei. Mitch is quiet and gentle...Lorelei just loved having him here.

She still has a runny nose and has a cough....the doctors say that it just hangs on and hangs on. She doesn't let it slow her down much. She wants to stay outside all the time...and it was warm enough till she could, thank goodness. Cause she cries to be out...it is very hard to distract her from it sometimes when it is bad weather.

It won't be long!

It shouldn't be long until we have some views like this for real.....this is from a year or two ago. I ran across this last night and had to just sit and look at it a while.
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The toot and her mommy spent the night last night....she has a birthday party to go to after while. I have got to get busy and make some biscuits and gravy here in few minutes....Lorelei loves them. She has been one busy little girl this morn. Her bright little voice is so much fun to hear first thing in the morning.

I best get busy...will visit everyone later this evening....just know I am having fun till then!