Hello Christmas...

Seems that the Thanksgiving holiday quickly becomes a memory what with the Christmas sales, etc... well, maybe not, because there will be lots of reminders of the day as the leftovers in the fridge will provide meals for days to come.

My thoughts have turned to the Christmas season and decorations. I think I will make a spray wreath this year. Haven't made one of those for a long time. Time to pack up the Thanksgiving decorations and get out the Christmas stuff. I would like to have the Christmas decorations up before dec. 1st. so I can enjoy them all month.

Kristine made these two cute snow creatures (a snowlady and a snowman) as craft idea samples. I love the hat, with a feather, she made for the snow lady. The snowman has a jaunty hat made with a pipe cleaner.

Today, I enjoyed watching several old british tv shows called Pie In The Sky. The policeman is also a chef and I found myself getting hungrier and hungrier as I watched all that delicious food go by on the screen. Wish we had a restaurant like that around here.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Don't talk to me of solemn days

In autumn's time of splendor,

Because the sun shows fewer rays,

And these grow slant and slender.

Why, it's the climax of the year, --

The highest time of living! --

Till naturally its bursting cheer

Just melts into thanksgiving.

~ Paul Laurence Dunbar - Merry Autumn

Chickens and their Thanksgiving pumpkin.

The chickens have finished their

Halloween pumpkin.

The other 11 chickens are busy

out in the forest

and didn't come when I called.

Morgan likes veggies and would like to try some pumpkin.

The barrel is full of paper kindling.

After Thanksgiving, I plan to get back to blogging everyday.

I'm enjoying my blogging vacation.

Collecting Kindling Before The Rains

Four empty feed bags meant I needed to fill them with dry kindling before the rain got all the fallen dry branches wet.

 After walking Morgan and feeding the chickens I went back in the house and put on my muck boots and headed out to pick up sticks.

I like to wear my boots because I stomp on the bigger branches to break them up into 6 to 8 inch pieces. It doesn't take long to fill a bag.


The forest still looks green because of all the fir trees, but the forest floor is deep in oak leaves. About half the leaves have fallen and I'm in hopes the two storms will knock the rest of the leaves down.

I love being outside in the cool weather and will like it even better after the rains have soaked the leaves.

Raking leaves and trimming trees of dead branches is much nicer when I don't have to deal with clouds of dirt I rake up with the leaves and stuff falling off branches all over me when I cut down a branch.

I'm looking forward to cool days and cold nights with the wood stove warming the house.

Happy Halloween!

Before Holly left for home

since she didn't have time to carve a pumpkin

at my insistence

she drew a face

that I could cut out later.

Miss you, Holly!

And here it is!

Happy Halloween!

This pumpkin fellow is from 1970's or 1980's. Kristine said she has looked for something like this but couldn't find anything.

He looks happy and adds a bit of Halloween cheer to the refrigerator door.

I stuck him up with painters tape... works great.

Iridescent Cloud

I am way behind reading blogs and posting here... but I have plans to get back to posting every day... soon... after the wedding...

I will try to at least write some update posts and get a photo or two.

In the meantime, here is a draft post I never finished about a beautiful little cloud I saw once in San Francisco...

A while back (months?) APOD (Astronomy Picture Of The Day) showed an iridescent cloud. Wow! They really are real.

In the 1960's I saw a cloud very much like the one in the YouTube video in color, but a little smaller. People told me it was from the exhaust from an airplane.

But the shape of the cloud didn't seem to fit with that explanation. I am very glad to find out that there are such clouds.

The APOD has an explanation for why the cloud refracts light and creates the colors.

It's Raining!

It's raining. The rain didn't show up until tonight. But the chickens were confused by the cloudy cold weather. This Wyandotte stayed on the roost most of the day while her sisters were outside in the gloom that looked more like evening than day.

A few days ago I covered the pen with tarps in hopes of making a dry place for the chickens to hang out this winter.

I hooked the bottom edge down with bungie cords and covered the spaces the tarp didn't quite protect. This rain will be a good test.

There are two bales of straw in the coop and the ladders are set up for the chickens to roost on when they want.

Last year I hooked most of the tarp down with wire and that made it difficult to unhook and lift the sides of the tarp up on nice days. The bungie cords will make it much easier.

After I finished with the tarps and the pen I decided to stain the picnic table before it rained. I used an old broom handle to stir the stain. Worked great.

We are going to have to replace the deck so I thought why not stain some of the house. So I did.




Well, not all the house, just the front and I only had to go up two steps on the ladder. I wouldn't want to try to climb a ladder to reach the high parts.



Staining the part over the sliders and below were enough for me and I didn't have to worry about the drips hitting the deck. I found that working with stain was a lot harder than using paint. I love to paint! Stain... not so much.

Kristine helped me move the picnic table and benches to the little deck and I covered them with a tarp too.

And today since I didn't have to do anymore outside work I unpacked the Halloween boxes and started decorating. I had a lot of fun with the spider window.

The storm is supposed to be gone by Friday and then some sunny days are forecast.

It's snowing at Tahoe... above 6000 feet... so we are not going to get snow this time.

That's good. Rain is enough.



I think I will just have a restful rainy day tomorrow and maybe do a bit more decorating. I need Halloween candy!

Barb Wire, Me And Tetanus Vaccine

Lovely yellow blossoms are what I wanted to see this Spring and Summer... except we didn't really have those seasons, so late September is better than never to see the blooms.

Thank you for the pumpkins and seeds, Mary G.!

It is supposed to rain tomorrow a little bit and then warm up again for a while. Hope we have enough warm weather left to have these little darlings turn into tiny pumpkins. Maybe?

I've been doing uninteresting stuff one of which was fixing and getting the barb wire fence ready for winter. I was trying to stake a shaky post and the post got away from me and hit me in the head.

Unfortunately, the part of the post that hit me had barb wire wrapped around it and the rusty sharp prongs got me.

The vaccine got me too. I had a reaction to the shot and was not feeling good at all for almost a week. But, that is way better than getting tetanus. It had been over 10 years since my last vaccination for tetanus so I was overdue for a shot.

The nurse started laughing when he saw my blood pressure record card... the last entry was in 2005... the only entry!

"Don't you go to the Dr. every year and have physicals?"
"No..."
"Why not?"
"Because I don't."

I hate going to the Dr. so that automatically does away with physicals, etc. But, since I'm 70 now I guess I should seriously consider getting a flu shot and maybe a shingle vaccination? I guess I will have to call the Dr. and make an appointment to discuss the shots.

Stuff happens to me, but I just kind of ignore it and that works for me. I remember my women friends moaning about and having menopause problems and then running to the Dr. for hormone treatments.

I don't know... maybe it was putting up with horrid migraine pain and the equally horrid monthly periods that made menopause seem like not much and even rather welcome.

When I was young I remember my mother's people talking about, "I'm goin to keep goin 'til I fall apart like the one horse shay! Sounds good to me!

They really did have an old shay and farm wagons parked out in a back field. Poor things really were falling apart. I only saw them hooked up and pulled by horse teams during the local parade.

My mother was raised by her grandmother who was born in 1866 not long after the Civil War ended, so I am a few generations behind when it comes to a lot of things. I like the viewpoint from back here!

Flying Chicken Tea Cozy

Finished cozy for the new tea pot!

The spout is always ready to pour so I don't have to take the cozy off, the tail pulls through the handle so the handle is cool to the touch, and the wings are pockets that hold a few emergency tea bags. 

Flying Chicken Cozy

In the morning our chickens run out of the coop

flapping their wings

and

they look something like this cozy.

Except...

not quite so colorful.

I started with an idea. made up a pattern and just kept improvising until it was finished. These are the lining and the batting. I'm sure the cozy would work even better if I used the special hot pad batting.

It was easier for me to sew this cozy by hand because I kept making changes that would have been harder to do if I was machine sewing. Hand sewing really does allow for some tricky maneuvers. 

I like my Flying Chicken Tea Cozy.

I'm going to go pour myself a cup of tea.

Have a great day!

The Autumn Leaves Are Falling

Morgan and I were out as usual this morning and I noticed that the oak leaves are starting to fall and are beginning to litter the areas I raked clear.

I collected three bunches of dried leaves to show some of their different colors. There are lots of dried green leaves along with the more expected fall colors. Our oak trees don't develop vibrant Fall colors. This is pretty much it.

I love Fall! I like the invigorating weather, the Fall colors and preparations for winter. I did clean the chicken coop, we do have the wood shed full and I have a new tarp ready to cover the chicken pen. I would like to collect some acorns this year if I can collect them before it rains on them and before the squirrels get to them.

Autumn Leaves is one of my favorite songs. I love Nat King Cole. I was living in Los Angeles when first there was news he was in the hospital, then the news was he was recovering, and then the terrible news that he had died.

Strange maybe, but living in LA, I got so used to living near celebrities and seeing them around that they became in a way extended family. Kind of like distant cousins that you know of but never write to or visit. I was very sad when he died. Miss him.

When I was growing up, I went to the movies every weekend and sometimes both Saturday and Sunday. I saw a lot of movies and shorts, listened to a lot of radio shows and because there were few people in my life celebrities became like those distant cousins.

Movie stars were like distant cousins I cared about, were happy for and sad for when things went wrong. But I was never a movie fan or read movie magazines or wrote fan letters. I was to content to know they were there and visit them in their productions.

I dearly loved going to movies. And the cartoons! The cartoons were the best in the 40'!

I wish I had grown up knowing and being close to my real cousins... sad really that I felt more connected to movie stars than any of my own family.

Someday... I thought, I'll write a book about my life! I thought that until I realized that everyone has a book they could write about their life. Maybe I will write a life history for a genealogy project. Maybe.

Teapot Topper

The rubber band creates a great cool gripping surface!

This is my latest invention... a rubber band wound around the knob on the teapot lid. I left the pink rubber band on the lid because it would show up better in the photo.

There is a white rubber band next to the teapot that I used to replace the pink one.

I felt a bit guilty desecrating the lovely teapot with a rubber band until I reminded myself it was best for the  safety of the tea pot.

I'm very hard on teapots and have broken all but one. I want to take very good care of this new tea pot that Mary G. gave me.

I knocked the handle off the last teapot and broke the lid of the one before that. I try not to remember the other teapot disasters.

This teapot lid was always in danger of being dropped when it was hot and even when cool because the glaze is smooth (beautiful glaze) I had trouble keeping a grip on it.

It may not look beautiful, but the teapot lid has a much better chance of survival.

I wonder if there is a market for little chicken toppers made out of rubber band stuff?

Bear In The Area

Tom told me today that there is a mother bear and two cubs roaming around close to our property and to be careful. The bear was on a neighbor's roof last night. I hope she takes her cubs back into the deep woods.

I found this video on YouTube. Haven't had a bear on our roof, but we have had bears on our chicken coop roof. They haven't been able to get in and made enough noise that we were able to make enough noise of our own to scare them away.

Those cubs sure are cute!
I want to see how the cubs get down.
House attack?

Lovely lawn...

but I don't want to take care of all that grass.

I'm very happy with leaves and my paths.

I really hope the bears stay away. They are more likely to be after the chicken feed than the chickens. It looks like this bear is after the bird feeders. This is one reason I stopped filling my bird feeders.

The other reason was the mess the squirrels were making... they even took one of the feeders apart. They have acres of oak trees, but the bird seed must be like squirrel candy.

It would be neat to have my own video of bears on our property, but I really don't want to have that opportunity present itself! I'll do without that, thank you!

Forest Paths

I raked several paths, but still have about half to finish. The chickens are not a help. They follow me and scratch the leaves back over the paths.

The photos will enlarge if you click on them.

Click the enlarged photo and it will get even bigger.

The paths make it much easier to walk around without tripping over branches and pine cones.

I like the paths because they are pretty, are good exercise and I like being out in the forest.







This photo shows where the chickens have scratched leaves on the path. Sometimes they cover the path back up in places.

Winter Fire Wood

 What have I been up to? Well, this small pile of fire wood was much bigger and has turned into a shed almost full of stacked fire wood ready to keep us warm this winter.


There is still enough wood in another pile that needs to be split and stacked that should fill the shed. This winter we will remove the far wall of the shed to gain access to very dry wood left over from last winter and use it first.

We had a very wet winter last year, not much of a Spring or Summer. It has been hot in the valley, but no triple digit heat waves in the mountains this year. So, are we going to get another wet, cold, snowy winter?

Next job is for me to get the chicken coop and pen ready for winter. I'll start by putting down a layer of wood chips and sawdust kindly contributed by all the fire wood.

The hens like to dust in the wood chips and their scratching in it 

yields them rewards. I watch them scratch and peck, but I can't see what they are finding. 

I did see when they found and chased the lizards that were living under the wood pile. I'm sure the hens would have made a meal of the lizards if they could have caught them.

I found the lizards first. Embarrassing! I was frightened and screamed because I was surprised by a lizard when I picked up a piece of fire wood. Well... I thought it was a snake. We have rattlers up here.


2 pretty brown eggs today.
There are still two broody hens (a Buff Orpington and a Black Australorp) sharing a nest box. They are in different nests at times, but together. There was an egg under them... I think they find and egg and then sit on it... if there were more eggs maybe they would not pair up?

Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road And Why Do I Blog?

This hen is showing proper caution by checking both directions before venturing forth... no cars, dogs, cats or raccoons.

She wants to get to some choice treats on the porch. Watermelon!

I thought I better post something! I'm in the thralls of blog boredom or blog overload. Sad maybe, but I'm not reading blogs or posting and spend my time doing other things. Lately it has been stacking fire wood, raking, and sewing.

And sleeping.


 Yesterday, I had a migraine type episode with fortress lines and pain in the back of my head. The strange outcome is that after the pain wore off my sight improved and I have much more energy... not so tired and sleepy.

So, I could lay the blame for my not blogging on my migraine problem or just feeling overwhelmed.

The truth is that when I started getting over 200 hits a day on my blog it freaked me out! I couldn't handle the replying to comments and visiting blogs and just pretty much gave up. The blog is back down to about 50 hits a day and I feel much more comfortable.

I never thought people would want to read this blog but when they did I started trying to write interesting posts and the blog began not to be fun anymore.

So, I'm going to go back to just writing posts for myself and posting when I have something to record.

When winter shows up I will have much more time for the blogs.

In the meantime I'm going to take a page from Morgan's book and learn how to relax!