All posts by verily sherrilee

Directionally challenged, crafty, reading mother of young adult
2024, animals, Farming Update, home, Nature, Seasons

The Rabbits

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The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

The weather is warming, the chickens are back out in the grassy areas, I can work in the shop comfortably again, and I turned off the well house heater and unplugged the tractor block heater. Whew. It felt like January in Minnesota. For a week. And now it’s not dark yet at 5:00 PM, and we just need some sunshine. I don’t want to get too anxious or excited about all this, we still got February and March to get through, but there is hope on the horizon.  

When it’s so cold the chickens don’t come to eat the corn we put out down by the barn, there are deer, pheasants, and rabbits that still come around to clean it up. Plus, a variety of birds. I really hate the deer eating that corn, I feed them enough out in the fields, they don’t need to eat this corn, too. At least we haven’t had so many wild turkeys around the last few years.  

I’ve never been very good at identifying animal footprints. Yet again, an example of missing our Steve. We could use his help on this. It’s not hard to know the deer tracks, but Steve would know male from female tracks, and how old they were. He’d know what a pheasant track looked like, and probably know the difference between the tracks of a crow, robin, and mourning dove, as well as how many, what they had for breakfast, and where they were headed next. I can identify rabbit tracks, they’re not hard. No details mind you, just, you know, ‘wabbit twacks’*. And of course, if there’s rabbits, there’s rabbit pellets.  

When I was a kid, I had several different sling shots. Homemade ones that never lasted, simple wooden ones, and I think I had a couple different versions of the ‘Wrist Rocket’ sling shot. Those little rabbit pellets made good ammunition. They were all over the backyard. And they were perfect little balls for shooting! I didn’t know they were rabbit poop. Until my big brother told me. (Older siblings, they spoil everything.) When I see all those pellets down by the barn, I remember that. I googled ‘wrist rocket’ to see if they were still around. They are! My gosh, slingshot technology has advanced! Names like the “Laserhawk”, the “Daisy B52”, the “P51” (The B52 and P51 are well known airplanes). They have molded finger grips and can have multiple ‘launching’ bands! And magnets to hold steel pellets in the pouch! And mounted flashlights!! You can buy targets, or you can buy clay-based shot called “Clod Poppers”.  

The most expensive slingshot I could find was $99.99, the “Scout LT PRO”. According to their advertising, it comes with “additional thumb screws because they look awesome”. Well, there ya go. It looks awesome.  

There are Slingshot tournaments.   There’s a Slingshot Association International. 

Say it like Elmer Fudd

EVER HAD A SLING SHOT?  WHAT TOURNAMENT DO WE NEED?  

2024, Mysteries, Nature, Travel

Getting From Here to There

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It’s never a great sign when they close the plane doors, the walkway pulls back and then the plane just sits.  When I was headed to St. Louis it was pretty cold here.  Pilot came online to let us know that we had to get in line for de-icing.  I’m still not sure why we sat for an additional 45 minutes before we headed over to de-icing.  Then after de-icing, we also waited another 15 minutes before heading to the runway for take off. 

Not the end of the world… it was a direct flight so no anxiety about missing a connection and I had a good book.

On my return trip it was really cold and a lot of flights out of St. Louis were cancelled.  I’d checked all the flights to Minneapolis (my direct flight and all the connectors) and while most of the connectors were cancelled, my flight was still showing on time.  The plane wasn’t towed to the gate on time then a water hose was frozen.  They made us de-plane at that point for about an hour.  Then they put up back but we still sat.  Apparently hose was in running order but the computer had to be alerted that the maintenance was finished.  Then it turned out the plane had been put “out of service” and only somebody in Houston could correct that.   When we were finally all unlocked the pilot came online again to tell us that unfortunately due to the extremely cold weather, the drinks pod had sat outside too long and all the various pops and juices were frozen; they’d made the executive decision to forego beverage service so we wouldn’t have to delay longer.

There were audible groans heard throughout the plane at that point.  Me?  I laughed out loud. 

What do you consider a necessity when you travel?

2024, Family, Food, Gatherings, holidays, Travel

Macaroni Conundrum

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The last time I was with my whole family for the holidays was 1978.  Some years they gather without me, some years they don’t gather at all.  So when I announced that I was visiting Nonny two weeks ago, they decided that January Christmas festivities would be a grand gesture.  By the time I got the first text the week before my trip – the plans were so far down the road there was no turning back.

It was a potluck at Nonny’s little condo (truly the best choice considering the options) and all the obligatory dishes had been claimed.  My baby sister had three things on her list and since I knew she would be starting a new second job that week, I volunteered to do the macaroni and cheese.  She immediately sent me a recipe that is apparently my nephew’s favorite. 

Now I’ve made many a dish of mac & cheese over the years, using many different recipes, but looking at this one made me put my head in my hands.  It was two fully-typed pages and included four kinds of cheese, two kinds of pasta, garlic, green onion and quite a few spices.  In addition to the fact that Nonny has next to nothing in the way of kitchen utensils or baking dishes, I wasn’t even sure if she had the spices.  (I mentioned this last week when I was thinking of taking the spices in a bag in my luggage.)  I confirmed my suspicions – no big pot for pasta, no casserole dish to bake or serve it in, no grater for the four kinds of cheese.  In a funny turn of events, she DID have all the spices.  We could purchase an aluminum casserole, a grater and all the ingredients, but unless we also sprang for a big pot, I’d have to make two batches to have enough for everybody.  Not to mention the cost.

That’s when I remembered that YA had purchased macaroni and cheese from Costco for our Thanksgiving gathering and it had been pretty good.  I know there is a Costco about 5 minutes from Nonny’s place so the day before the party, we headed over there and picked up a pan of the stuff.  I doctored it up with some garlic powder, onion powder and paprika.  Via text that morning YA kept asking me if I had told my sister I was buying instead of making the mac & cheese.  I know my audience.  If I had fessed up that I was going to get it from Costco, my sister would have thrown up her hands in exasperation and said “Fine… I’ll just do it.”   One of my mottos has always been “it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission” so that’s the route I decided to take.

Turns out my sister didn’t care at all…. but my nephew did.  He kind of made a big deal about the fact that I should have let them know so HE could have made it. Of course, when we were divvying up the leftovers, I noticed that he heaped quite a bit into their Tupperware!  But I was happy to have not gone to too much trouble and Nonny was happy to not have more utensils in her teeny weeny kitchen.  And truth be told, the macaroni and cheese was really good.

I expect it will have to be another gathering for us to buy it again – it’s way too much for two folks, even folks who like macaroni and cheese as much as YA and I do.  But now I aware it’s there, you never know!

Do you have a favorite pasta dish?  (Either made or bought…)

2024, Family, home, Nature, Seasons, TV

Freak Out!

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I spent a week with Nonny in St. Louis the second week of January.  While I was there, they had some bad weather.  First there was “wintery mix” the night before I arrived which necessitated my brother-in-law picking me up from the airport instead of Nonny.  As far as I could tell, the wintery mix was a dusting of snow.  But a dusting of snow in St. Louis is a much bigger deal than it here.

Then as we headed into the weekend, the forecast was for “bitterly cold” temperatures – in the single digits with some below zero wind chills.  Again, for St. Louis this is out of the ordinary and very alarming.  St. Louis was freaking out.  On Friday night, Nonny had the tv set to local news for about 90 minutes and at least 60 of those minutes were spent on the weather.  What the temperature had been, what temperatures were predicted, instructions to stay in, recommendations for how to be prepared if you need to go out. 

As a Minnesotan of 45 years standing, it struck me as funny although I kept my mouth shut.  If we’d had weather in the Twin Cities the last few days like Renee experienced last week, we’d be freaked out too.  It’s all about what you’re used to. 

My sister, who has appointed herself the arbiter of what Nonny should and shouldn’t be doing, made sure to give me advice about keeping Nonny inside and making sure Nonny had enough food “stocked up”.  This was even funnier; if you know Nonny then you’d know that even at the age of 91, nobody gets to be Nonny’s arbiter except Nonny.  In fact, when I did a quick run out to the hardware store for some magnetic catches (fixing her bathroom cabinet doors), she insisted on coming with me.  So then we went to the grocery store as well.  The roads were pretty well deserted, even at noon.  St. Louis was indeed staying inside!

Caroline sent me this picture that day – what a great laugh since I was actually in St. Louis.    Of course it’s photo-shopped.  While ice does form on the Arch (and is actually a danger as it sheets off – they sometimes close the area underneath the Arch because of this), it never looks like this.  Too bad, it’s pretty this way!

Anybody remember who said “if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs…”?  How do you keep calm when everyone else is freaking out?

2024, Family, Games, Health, home, Mysteries

I Will Not Finish the Puzzle….

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I will not finish the puzzle today.  I will not finish the puzzle today.  I will not finish the puzzle today. 

I have an obsession problem when it comes to jigsaw puzzles.  I have trouble stopping once I sit down in front of a puzzle.  There have been times that I have not walked away for hours.  I’ve skipped meals, I’ve been late to work, I’ve lost sleep.  YA has inherited this from me.  During the pandemic holidays, we worked 8 hours on a puzzle, taking turns picking movies to watch on tv.  Sad (although we DID finish before bed).  Because of this, sometimes I shy away from starting a puzzle if I have things that need getting done.

Over the holidays I did an Advent jigsaw puzzle.  It was 24 little boxes of 42 pieces; one little puzzle a day that made one big puzzle at the end.  It was wonderful… it was a fun and relaxing start to my day throughout the season and the fact that each day was in its own box kept me from jumping ahead.  I will definitely do it again.

So when I started a new puzzle last Thursday I told myself that would have a two-hour limit.  I figured if I set a boundary, like the little boxes had been boundaries, then I could avoid sitting at the table for hours and hours on end.  I even wrote it down on my daily “to-do” list.  Thursday turned out fine; it took me right about two hours to sort out all the edge pieces and put them together.  I spent 2½ hours on Friday; aided and abetted by having my Zoom book club for close to three hours. 

On Saturday, I was making good progress and watching tv and I felt myself sliding down the slippery slope.  The two-hour mark came and went.  “I’ll just work until this tv show is over”.  Then the next show.  As the next show started, I began my mantra.  “I will not finish this puzzle” today, I will not finish this puzzle today”.  This worked; I stood up from table after a little over five hours.

You know how this is going to end.  I spent 5 hours yesterday and finished it as it was started to get dark.   And just what happened to the two hours yesterday?  I excused myself from the rule because I was feeling sorry for myself… still coughing a bit much to hang around with healthy folks.  I can  come up an excuse with the best of them!

Do you ever have to set limits on yourself?

(Thanks to Jacque for the puzzle!)

2024, animals, Family, Farming Update, Nature, pets, Seasons, Weather

Almost There

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The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

The chickens and us survived January’s cold spell and the only casualties were my truck batteries and the electric bill. The truck, being a diesel, takes two batteries. I’ll replace them next week when it’s in positive temperature digits. Last Friday, as the storm was winding down, Kelly and I took the truck up the road just to see how bad it was. (It was only bad in spots) Then Tuesday when I needed the truck, it cranked pretty slow, but I ran it for a few hours and figured it would be fine on Wednesday. Nope. Just the dreaded click. Changed my plans and took the dog to the vet in the back of the car. (Humphrey tore a toenail and needed that trimmed off).

The chickens did fine hanging out inside and waiting for me to bring them more food and water. They didn’t seem to mind either way. Egg production went down a bit; 18 eggs per day rather than 24.

From this photo, you’ll see many of them seem to prefer this one nest box. They still like their groups of 3 and I often find nest boxes with three eggs in them. And nine is a variant of three, so it still works I guess. Production will recover as it warms up. I was taking corn to them by their pen as they didn’t venture outside very far. Above zero and a nice calm, sunny day and they do pretty good. Below zero and they just stand peeking out the door.

Kelly saw five male pheasants down by the barn and it’s always so fun to see them. There should be about 10 or 11 or, at least, there was last year. I assume the rest will find the corn eventually as word spreads in the pheasant community.

The deer community has come together in this cold weather. Here’s a picture of a herd spotted in our fields this week.

And a little further down the road, another group this large. I’m telling you, we have too many deer. Stupid deer.

This fall I put a smaller tank heater in the water tank down by the barn. It works fine when it’s above about 10 degree’s. It isn’t worth diddly in temps below that. When I put a frozen water bucket in the tank, I have to chip it out of the ice again in the morning, but the bottom will be thawed and I can knock the ice out and refill for the chickens.

I think by Monday I’ll be able to turn off the wellhouse heater. (see electric meter) I put 25 bales of straw around it last Thursday before it snowed.

Doesn’t seem to help hold the temp above freezing when it’s less than about 10 degree’s outside. Which makes me wonder: I’d think with the cement floor, the ground inside should be warmer, so am I losing that much heat out the roof? Should I put bales on the roof too? I rebuilt three of the four walls in 2013. The fourth wall is against a tree so it was too much trouble to rebuild.

I am lucky I didn’t need any tractors this week, but I kept the one plugged in just in case. (again, see electric meter). Kudo’s to all the people working in this weather and doing what needs to be done.

Next week I’m going to wash the car!

WHAT WILL YOU DO NEXT WEEK?

2024, Business, home, TV

No Purchase Necessary

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Now that I have a little more leisure after the holidays, I’ve had more time in my studio which also means more time with the tv on.  It’s astonishing to see what some actors are willing to do in commercials these days.  I will admit to a bit of snobbery about seeing quite famous folks doing commercials but even so….

Drew Barrymore and Sarah Jessica Parker are both hawking gaming apps right now.  (I’m not sure I want to know where these apps are getting the money to make/run these commercials.)   SJP’s commercial isn’t too silly but I’ve seen three DB adds so far and she acts like a moron in all of them. 

Ty Pennington, who used to do those makeover shows is also doing ads for a casino app.  Luckily I’ve only seen one – he is hanging upside down in a chimney wearing a Santa hat.  Idiotic.

John Travolta is selling something by wearing a Santa suit and doing disco, although his age is really showing as he dances.  It’s probably problematic that I’ve seen the commercial a couple of times in the last week but can’t remember the product. 

I’m not the target audience but I do wonder how much money these folks are getting paid to act stupid on national/international tv.  Part of me thinks they couldn’t pay me enough to do this but part of me thinks that if some product wanted to cough up a TON of cash, I might weigh the pros and cons.  I think “well, it would only run so long” but then I remember some of the old commercials we’ve dredged up here on the trail (“it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature”)… maybe my ad would go viral and I’d become famous and then where would I be?  But an infusion of cash wouldn’t be so bad either. I suppose it’s a good thing that I’ll never have to make this decision in my lifetime!

Any particularly heinous ads bugging you these days?

2024, Family, Food, Mysteries

Much Ado About the Birthday

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Today is YA’s birthday.  A whooping 29 years old today!!

YA is one of those folks who likes a little fuss but doesn’t like to admit they want a fuss.  This is hard for me because #1: I love making a fuss and #2: when you don’t want to admit to wanting fuss, then you don’t admit to what you actually want.  I have to figure what she MIGHT like and not go beyond that!

The first thing we have is a banner that says “Happy Birthday” that I made a few years ago; I hang it up across the arch between the dining room and living room.  I added two big balloons, one on each end of the arch.  A “2” and a “9”.  (YA’s dog Guinevere is twenty years younger than YA so we will keep the “9” for the end of the month!).  That’s it for décor.

Goodies are harder.  Most of the time YA is not a cookies/cake/cupcake kind of person. Most of the time.  But you can’t count on her birthday being a day that she’s in the mood.  She does however like brownies most of the time – as long as they don’t have frosting… so I can make those.  I have two big candles (again a “2” and “9”).  I did get a can of cream cheese frosting so I can write “Happy Birthday” on the brownies.  That will be OK with her. 

For a gift, she’s saving up for a new laptop so there is a giftcard for her.  Not exactly original but it’s what she really wants.  She is fairly particular about what she wears, so I would never buy her clothing. I can never guess what she might like to read so no books.  Between us we got four jigsaw puzzles for the holidays so that’s out.  Giftcard it will be.

All this fuss will be set up during the day while YA is at work so she’ll come home to the fun.  Hopefully I will have gotten the fuss to non-fuss ration correct!

What kind of birthday fuss to you like?

2024, animals, holidays, Mysteries, Travel

Risky Business

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A 22-year old from Taiwan was apprehended at the Bangkok airport before Christmas after he was found to be carrying two Asian small-clawed otters and a prairie dog.  The man has the critters in socks, taped inside his boxer shorts; security officers were suspicious of the big bulge below the man’s waistband.

If I were a man, I’m not sure I’d put anything with claws and teeth (much less three of them) in my shorts.

I noticed this because I was just thinking about taking a small bag of spices with me to St. Louis last week.  I needed to recreate my sister’s mac and cheese recipe while I was at Nonny’s and was pretty sure that Nonny might not have all these spices.  I didn’t want to buy whole jars of them in St. Louis.  Putting spices in a ziplock made me think about another time I had spices in my suitcase.

About twenty years ago, my bag was the very last one to arrive on the luggage belt after I had come home from Thailand.  The sniffer dog did not alert on my bag but the fact that I had stood there so long waiting brought me to the attention of the sniffer dog’s handler.  Of course this was the one time I ever had something a little suspicious in my bag.  I had purchased some spices at a road-side stand while in Thailand… just baggies of powder with no labels.  Luckily none of them were white and one of them was filled with whole nutmegs, so it was easily explainable.  I was very glad I had the nutmegs and had not purchased anything even remotely white!           

Have you ever transported something you probably shouldn’t have?

animals, Art, Mysteries, Travel

Helping the Javelina

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This is the last post about Nashville.  I swear.

When I did the blog last year about Henrietta (my stuffed javelina) going to Madison, it was kinda funny and I enjoyed it.  So I thought it would be fun to do it again on my trip to Nashville.  What I didn’t expect was that others would take on the cloak of silliness with me.

My friend Pat was absolutely obsessed with getting a photo of Henrietta wherever we went – zoo, Strawberry Café lunch, shopping, pizza place, the winery.  You’ve already seen the photos at the Goo Goo Cluster store and the Moonshine distillery and the breakfast place.  But she wasn’t the only one concerned that I get a good photo with Henrietta. 

A complete stranger at the zoo volunteered to take a photo of me and Henrietta with some flamingos that we out doing “meet & greet”.  Is demurred, not too sure how close I wanted to get to a huge (they are much bigger up close than you think) strange bird.

The woman working the bookstore at the Belmont Estate also noticed Henrietta in my bag and asked about her.  We were waiting for our tour to start so Pat was happy to go on and on about all the places that we had taken Henrietta over the past couple of days.  The woman got all excited and led us to a spot we would never have seen on our own… under a staircase on the second floor of the mansion.  There was a small statue of a pig, complete with a red bow.  This was a photo I couldn’t resist. 

Although it’s been fun, I’m not sure I need to keep it up.  I will probably take her to Tucson in March; it is after all her birthplace (my friend purchased her for me while I was there last year) but I’m not sure she will go to St. Louis with me this month.

Do you take selfies when you travel?