Hi everyone. Happy Sunday! As usual, check out the last few entries of the previous week's chat to find out who left a plant at the supermarket checkout counter and ate a bag of chocolate donuts for lunch.
Brought Oro for home visit today; was lovely and sunny and daughter sat in the garden feeding him treats. He had a little snooze and then while my daughter took a nap Oro and I went to the beach and walked along the grassy area behind the sand for about a mile or so. (No trash cans to crash into!) Marvellous afternoon with brisk breeze and big surf, but now they're forecasting more rain for Monday through Wednesday!
Oh, weird technology - it looks ok now!!
Ospreys Rule OK, but Goldfinches come a close second!
Good morning. It’s Monday the second day of the week. I hate those calendars that start on Mon. They confuse me as I apparently keep an image of the pattern marked on the calendar. Oh, a message about there means I have an appointment on Thursday (or whenever). Overnight min 15 C, currently 20 C, expecting 35 C. At last I have caught up with the ironing. I attacked the pile while the washing machine was working this morn. I am ignoring any ironing now on the line – it is still wet, so it is not stuff for ironing, so there. I have given up on the tomatoes and washed the sheets that were acting as shade cloths. This season I harvested about 20 tomatoes from 2 bushes. The last one I picked measured half an inch across. All that work for so little.
Diane - I have favourited your Agate video for times when I need to be soothed. It was lovely. I am going to work my way through the others, one a day.
Lindybird - Last week I gathered my credit card & docket, stuffed my purchase in my bag and started to walk away when the assistant reminded me of my purse. I don’t know what happened because I NEVER put my purse down. Must be getting old <sigh>. Nah, I’ll blame the hot weather for frying my brain.
Last night’s nature documentary was penguins, etc on the Falklands. A recent "new" program airing is "Beachcomber Cottage" (Applecross). Unfortunately it is on at 6 pm but I have discovered I can watch on my computer.
Hi everyone.Happy Sunday and a happy new week to all. The whole question of whether Sunday or Monday is the start of the week, is probably confused a little by the fact that Saturday and Sunday are reffered to as the weekend, making them sound like Saturday and Sunday are at the finish of a week the begins with Monday. Although calanders and diaries put Sunday as the first day of the week. So I suppose it's logical to say that Sunday is the start of the week. Perhaps Saturday and Sunday should be called "the weekends" to show that Sunday is the start of a week and Saturday is the end. OG: I always find myself eating quite a lot at the start of a cold then I get fed up with not being able to taste things properly. There is the old saying though: "feed the cold and starve the fever." Glad to hear the furniture moving mission went well.Alan: Hope all goes well with Lady P's ultrasound. Brilliant Estonian boar pic, thanks for posting.Caerann: Sorry to hear John has bronchitis. Hope he gets well soon. Carrie and The shining are both excellent films. Something that the Shining novel has that the film doesn't is moving topiary animals. Brilliantly scarey stuff.Stay safe and happy everyone.
Paul.
Warning! This post contains atrocious spelling, and terrible grammar. Approach with extreme edginess.
Oh well. Lovely morning; now cloudy again. Went for nice drive with daughter and managed to find her a pair of Ugh ripoffs at Big 5 Sporting Goods. Came home and made some cornbread to eat with some veggie chili from Trader Joe's; got busy, forget to cover the cornbread properly and came back an hour or so later to find it covered with ants!!! Disgusting! Depressing! I need some WMADs (Weapons of Mass Ant Destruction)! Had a fit; now OH is off at store buying Boric Acid, but judging from Caerann's tale, it won't be much good. Blech. Still, compared to what the folks in Haiti are going through, a minor inconvenience, right? Right.
OG: Oh right, so you didn't have a big spare refrigerator in the corner of your living room. Well, that's a relief. Funny, folks in the UK seem to use freezers a lot more than we do. My sister has the tiny refrigerator under the kitchen counter, then a massive freezer and a separate refrigerator in the - what? - laundry/kitchen extension room? Many folks here have spare refrigerators in their garages, but we have just the one. Not sure what an "American-style" refrigerator means over there. Ours is a side--by-side (came with the house; opens from the middle with larger refrigerator section on the right and the narrower freezer section on the left) and I don't care much for it since the freezer compartment is so narrow you have to stack things. When it comes time to replace it, I'd like to get one of the new "French door" ones, with equal sized doors that open from the middle for the refrigerator, and a pullout freezer drawer below. The nicer ones have separate trays in the freezer that glide out easily and so you don't have to dig through Arctic-like conditions to see what's at the bottom. A toaster oven is a small appliance that sits on the countertop and yes, combines baking/grilling options with a toasting option, but the latter is never as good as a simple toaster. But they're handy for small stuff. Glad the moving is on course!
Off to cook dinner, assuming the ants haven't got it first. Sigh.
Gosh. Feel I'm hogging the site tonight. Watching last 20 minutes of the Bald Eagle program. Marvellous shots of fledgling eagles reminiscent of our girls. "Underdog" has just fledged and cuts a magnificent figure in the sky. Fabulous shots of eagles apparently passing prey from one bird to another in mid-flight.
Chaotic dinner this evening: New oven has a "start" button, which I keep forgetting to push, so oven was - surprise! - not at desired temp when I went to put stuff in. So baked potatoes unbaked; chicken and brocolli (keep forgetting how to spell broccoli and it never looks right) cooked ahead of everything. Substituted half-and-half for cream in sauce, which looked icky but still managed to taste halfway reasonable. Then, while putting chocolate mint drops in little dish for daughter, managed to knock it onto the floor where it smashed everywhere. But no ants.
Hmmm. Was hoping for Wallender on Modern Masterpiece theatre, but it's yet another version of Emma,
O.G. your post came through loud and clear. =O)
Annette: I love Daphne Du Maurier, in fact the original Rebecca and My Cousin Rachel (starring a young and very handsome Richard Burton and Olivia de Havilland) are two of my all-time fave movies. Also read and think I still have the book Jamaica Inn.
I hope you can catch the Eagle program in rerun as the bird footage, scenery and stories of the three bird families are fascinating. I believe the camera man (Rettig is his name) is the same person in that photo series I had linked you all to sometime back of the webcam being installed in the tree.
For those of you in the U.K. E.U. and Australia, much of the documentary filming took place in 2007-2008 at the Decorah Iowa nest location so it was nice to see the bird's territory from other perspectives. Here is the link to PBS so you can at least read about the program if you like:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/american-eagle/introduction/4201/
Hi, all. Have had the computer shut off most of the day because we are experiencing thunderstorms and strangely warm weather. I think Annette got tired of her storms and sent them to me. :-)
Alan: I hope that you receive the results of Lady P's ultrasound quickly and that she is just fine. I am sending good energy your way. I saw some deer on Estonia Forest Cam 2 earlier. At one point, I saw one lone boar on Cam 1. I wondered if a boar alone like that would be vulnerable to predators. Do they have wolves in Estonia? I'll have to check.
OG: Sounds like you've had a busy day rearranging your nest. Are you trying to get your nest finished before EJ returns and begins hers? :-) Glad you enjoyed the Autumn Leaves video. I thought it was beautiful, too.
Tiger: Sunday is the first day of the week; I don't care what those newfangled calendars say. :-)
AQ: Glad you completed the ironing. Also glad you are enjoying the videos on that Northern Photography site. I am finding them soothing, too. The Snowflake vid is apparently microphotography of the actual unique structure of individual snowflakes. Here's the site link for anyone who missed it and wants it:
http://www.northernimages.com/Video-Vault/Nature-Videos/4153523_bEerT/1/320695049_skxkH#320695049_skxkH
So sorry about your tomatoes! I just watched a documentary about the extreme temps and draught in Australia, and the way that different creatures adapt. Some brutal conditions in your country!
Paul/Heron: I hope you are feeling better. If there's a chance that you've had H1N1 (any fever?), perhaps you need to see a doctor? H1N1 can have a secondary lung infection that's serious. Take care of yourself.
A couple of months ago, I read Cell by Stephen King. Probably not one of his greatest works, but I loved the premise! For those who don't know, in Cell, anyone on Earth who is talking on a cell/mobile phone is hit with "The Pulse", which de-evolves them back to their primal state, and civilisation crumbles. The book continues from there. Now, whenever I am behind someone in the supermarket who is rudely obstructing the aisle while chattering on a cell phone, I think of that book and just smile!
Caerann: I'm so sorry that John is still sick. Does he have the H1N1 lung infection? Do you have access to antibiotics for him? I lost my insurance when I had to stop working, and I didn't know whether you had, too. I hope he recovers soon!
I spent most of my young life in Lafayette (that's where I went to high school), I've been to the Feast of the Hunters' Moon many times. I always enjoyed it. I haven't been able to go for many years, though.
We have an old locust tree that is drooping over our deck. If I'm not hyper-vigilant, the carpenter ants march down that tree and into the house. Not only are they destructive, but they BITE! The birds love to nest in that old tree, and I really hate to cut it down...
Annette: Poor you with your ant invasion! I sympathize completely, keeping them out of here in the summer is a full-time job. If it's any consolation, I think corn meal makes ants explode. So you may get your revenge. Seriously, I know that ants are hard to get rid of. Besides the borax option, ants are reported to dislike vinegar, citrus (esp. citrus dish soap), cinnamon, black pepper, talc, peppermint oil, cayenne pepper, cloves, and bay leaves. http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Rid-of-Ants also http://www.thefrugallife.com/ants.html Good luck!
Having just watched the behind the scenes video on the webpage, if you are able to view it, I think you'll all want to do that as Neil Rettig was able to get within 2 feet/60 cm of a female eagle. This is astonishing because eagles are very shy and skittish birds despite their large size. You'll also be able to see the Upper Mississippi River Valley which is beee-you-tee-ful (as I posted in some detail on our return trip from Minnesota in late November) and also Alaska.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/american-eagle/video-behind-the-scenes-with-the-filmmaker/4286/
Diane: Please send warm weather north! We're expecting snow showers here tomorrow and Tuesday but later this week the temps will go near to zero at night. Ick!
Thanks also to everyone for your good wishes for John. He got sick within 5 or 6 days of my getting a cold just before Xmas and neither of us ever had any fever or body aches. I think it's simply a virulent cold and he's actually doing better since he started taking anti-histamines yesterday.
I'm off for the night now. Good morrow to all!
Caerann: I'm going to have to find the repeat schedule for the Bald Eagle program Diane: Sorry about the t'storms - we've got similar weather on the way, so be prepared. Falling asleep at the computer - pretty pathetic - and will respond to all the good posts tomorrow!