Our First Winter Blast & Crows & Catch Up

   Good morning Friday

     Well we knew it was coming, our first cold blast of winter is upon us this morning. The temperatures dropped significantly over the last hour.  I put mail in the mailbox to go out-it was chilly and the hill and steps were wet. 30 minutes later i gathered up all the trash to take up and Wow the temperatures had dropped quite a bit and now we have the wind as well.  I waited another half hour or so, and yep the wet pavement was beginning to freeze-so I threw salt out on the hill and steps.

  I may not be able to get up there to check the mail today-and I do love mail-smiles.

We had a little of the homemade granola I had made left, but I decided to put it on the railing for the birds. The tupelo honey was too strong of a flavor for this recipe, and both of us got stomach aches from it if eaten a couple days in a row. The honey did not go bad, I just had forgotten how strong the flavor is.  However, the crows loved it-and came back for more. I am always amazed how large crows are when seeing them up close. I have always loved the crows-very intelligent too

   Sorry if the photos are a bit grainy-when I zoom in with the camera this is what I get sadly The crows really enjoyed this granola and came back several times I stayed in the kitchen to take the photos so I wouldn't frightened them away

Of course the squirrels are always eating all the bird food if I don't chase them off-but they were leary of the crows (ps those of you that are good with English grammar-I thought leary was the right spelling but google says no, so I looked it up and can be leery but most think that is the wrong spelling- thoughts?)

  I am thinking this will be a good day for chicken soup, perhaps I will make us dumplings too-not sure yet.

 I keep being tired during the day, thinking it is our crazy up and down weather along with my allergies that have been off since mid December.  I want to be more alert before getting back to ties on my quilt.

 I may just finish the book I am reading about Galileo today-I learned allot about his life. The end of December Amazon had a big sale on kindle books-I grabbed this one as the price is usually close to $10.00 for the kindle version. The book Is Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel Well written

  Larry had a good week, the physical therapist was happy and a bit impressed yesterday. We decided it would be better use of the medicare money to take two weeks off of therapy. We needed the new lower mattress, and Larry needed more time to heal. The doctors in the hospital never took x rays on the "good" leg, even though Larry kept telling them there was something wrong. This was really a horrible hospital experience-worst ever we have encountered. What ever had possibly cracked on the "good" leg is also healing now. He had an injury a couple years ago the cracked his pelvic bone and hurt is right leg-we think that got re injured from the fall.

   With the new mattress he can easily get into the wheelchair, and since last week he can finally get back into bed first try. Another week yet before he can put full weight on the broken leg that he says feels pretty good except for the hip area. Next week the supervisors of the therapists will be out to recertify for 8 more weeks of physical therapy and medicare will pay for that again. So I am thankful that our insurance has covered everything.

  I watched a little bit on the weather channel and looks like a lot of wintry weather all over the states, and southern states getting tornados.

  I am feeling better finally about getting back to crafts and projects. I am going to coffee dye the grown cotton I received with coffee. The black walnuts I would love to use but that needs to be boiled down outdoors-the smell is too strong to do indoors. I think the coffee will give a stronger brown color than teas. I know when Larry spilled his fresh coffee over a month ago on our bedroom carpet-that stain is Not coming out so far ugh.  Here is an easy how to for coffee dye   If Elizabeth sees this-what do you think of the recipe?

Made us a pot of homemade chicken soup-turned out delicious

Grabbed handmade pottery very large mugs-perfect for this-and fun to use

  Stay safe everyone-Happy Friday and weekend

T Stands for Tuesday

     Doesn't seem possible but we are headed towards the end of April already, and I think the last T for Tuesday for the month as well. Find link in my sidebar for Bleubeard and Elizabeth's T-where we share a post with a drink related photo.

  I haven't been able to get back outdoors do to the cold weather here, although I did get all the grass cut. No needed rain though. We did get a light frost Saturday night, and another expected Sunday night. I have a big stack of older bath towels-that were my Mom's- all made in the USA-that I used to cover up all the bottle greenhouses.

  Tuesday morning I have a dentist visit-my 6 month-and I think I may head out to the Amish greenhouse after that, it may be a bit early for the petunias but if the weather is nice will drive on out there since I will already be half way there. Oops Monday morning  I realized my dentist appt was on Monday not on Tuesday, I did a few errands but didn't make it to the greenhouse-hopefully sometime this week I can do that.

 I have been enjoying scanning through photos and videos on Instagram this past week. I search for my craft interests, Yellowstone and a couple other topics and have found several to follow for inspiration. There are quite a few for slow mending and sashiko too.

  For my drink share this week I am sharing a photo I found online. Years ago I used to buy quality flavored coffees, hadn't done that in awhile so I bought a couple for Larry for something different, and I bought one decaf for me.  One of them was a chocolate flavor-smelled so good while brewing.

I captured a couple lake photos this past week.

  This one was taken early morning but after the sunrise-rough waters most of the day Allot of white caps most of the day-never would have thought there would be white caps on a lake

Sunrise

This one below-you can just make out the sun in the clouds.

  I have been spinning allot of the Nash Island wool-have 4 spools spun up already. I need to check out dyeing these white handspuns. I will have more than I realized of whites, as I am spinning several different breeds. I have enough of the black walnuts for one dye batch I think.  Most of my dyes are for cottons that I have on hand. I don't want to use natural dyes for these, something more permanent-need to check out Dharma's site soon. Now that I think about it for wool cloth In the past I have only dyed with my own natural dyes.

  It was quite chilly over the weekend so I make a big pot of chicken soup-I added veggies, garbanzo beans, a little gluten free pasta, sun dried tomatoes, and dried veggies and herbs. I used unsalted beef and chicken stocks. It ended up being a large pot so will freeze allot of this

  Those of you that feed the hummingbirds-has yours arrived?  Usually for this area these sweet little birds arrive around April 15th. We have only seen a couple of the scouts so far so they are late arriving for sure-perhaps these storms slowed them down or moved them to a different area. Most of us I am reading on the lake group on Facebook are anxiously waiting for their arrival.

   Update: Monday we have seen another orchard oriole, a Baltimore oriole and a couple hummingbirds-so they are arriving now

  Happy T

T Stands for Tuesday

  Good morning friends,

      Just a note I took down my last post discussing censorship. I appreciate everyone's comments very much. It was good to discuss and not accuse and most of us did that-so thank you all.  

     Due to the massive censorship by big tech-including Google, I took down the post as a precaution so none of us would face any possible discrimination by them or feel concerned about expressing ourselves. 

   Tuesday's brings us to T with our hostess Bleubeard and Elizabeth, find link in my sidebar. Any one is welcome to join just share a drink related photo in your post.

       I did get the quilt pattern book in my mailbox Saturday. I was so happy I did the splurge and bought this-I feel it was worth the money. There were stories of pioneer women that I hadn't read about before, all the patterns for the appliques are at full size-loved that, and there are several more quilt patterns included besides the featured quilt. One being a fish quilt-I think I need to make that one for sure 😀

  I am thinking I want to make this a wool quilt. I still have Lots of felted down recycled wool clothing in my stash. Just need to go through it and see what colors and patterns I have. Especially for the appliques in wool as it will be easier and more fun for me to stitch instead of the needle turn with cotton-that's a bit more challenging for me.  So using wool appliques I will need heavier flannels for the blocks,which I would need to buy or I could make the blocks with wool as well and I should have plenty for that as well.  I could sew the blocks together crazy quilt method or with seams-will decide when I get into it. Before I get into this quilt-gathering the wools, I need to get my big woodland quilt layered with backing and batting, basted and ready to hand quilt. I am going to order perle cotton #8 and quilt with big stitches.

    I started doing that over the weekend, then I decided the backing-which is all one piece-needed to be washed, and then laying out the wool batting ugh it's been in the bag tightly rolled up and needs time to get flat. I did read that I can mist it lightly with water and then fluff in the dryer with no heat or a low setting. So will work on that this week.

  This latest quilt adventure actually started when I was looking for this book, that was written in 1947 as part of a trilogy. Hoping this book comes in today Most  of you know I love the time period era of the late 1700's to the  mid 1800's and would gladly time travel back if possible

   I didn't get any photos but one morning I got to view eagles-lots of them very exciting. I was looking out to see if the eagle pair was there and I got to see them circle and land together on the same branch. That was awesome-but then looking up I noticed several large birds flying around overhead-no not crows but at least 6 eagles--that made my day very exciting!!

Most days here are still very cold and dreary, but we did get a few hours of sunshine on Sunday

   I made me a cup of green tea a few afternoons last week.

and I made us a pot of homemade chicken soup one day. I used organic chicken bone broth, added lots of herbs and spices for soups, threw in handfuls of dehydrated soup mix veggies, jar of my home canned tomatoes, frozen mixed veggies, Bob's Red Mill flaked potatoes-to thicken, and a large can of white meat chicken just before serving-yum

    ( just noticed my handle on the pan looks awful-these are revere ware copper bottom pans made in the usa that are at least 50 years or older now and the handles have seen their prime-they don't scrub up to black any more.)

 The Canada geese have been "hanging" around on the lawn in front of the lake. One morning a crane (oops per David thank you blue heron) was sitting on the edge amongst them. I decided to carefully and quietly open the door to the deck and take photos. It was going pretty well til the crane saw me sqwaked loudly and flew off. Half the geese jumped in the lake and the others just looked around-what's going on haha

Happy T everyone