TAKING A BREAK
I hate to dwell on the snow week after week, but honestly, that is all that has been happening around here for about two months. As I type this it is snowing again. The snowfall count so far this season is now at 40" for Yakima. This is most likely way more snow that I ever saw fall in North Carolina for the entire 55 years I lived there! So enough, already. We are so ready for Spring!
As you have seen on my blog lately, there is nothing much to take pictures of except the snow...and the birds in snow. Of course, everyone knows that birdies are one of my favorite things. I thank my mother for this, because she sure did love her birds.
I've been going through some old photographs that I have transferred from our old PC computer to the new iMac computer, and it has been a bittersweet undertaking. I have been taking a walk down memory lane looking at these old photos. While wading through hundreds of pictures I took of flowers and birds in the distant past, I came to the conclusion that the pictures I like the best are the ones with people in them. I thought I might share a few of my favorites this week on the blog, as a respite from all the snow pictures (although there are some of those here, too).
Below is a picture of my mother not too long after she and my father got married, so this is probably from the mid or late 1940's. They had visited a place in Miami, Florida, that had lots of macaw birds, which were very tame.
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| Colorful Macaws |
Here is a picture from the late 1970's, when we had a big snow in Lumberton. Momma was filling up her platform bird feeder in the back yard, assisted by my doxie Siegfried.
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| Gotta keep those birdies fed! |
Here is a picture of our house during the big snow. We usually only got an inch or so of snow each year in Lumberton, if we were lucky.
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| Our house on 14th Street |
To take a break from snow pictures, I thought you might enjoy seeing my mother's "Happy Place." This was our mobile home that we had at Holden Beach, NC. She loved going there, and in the summer spent most of her time there. I love this picture of her because she looks so happy...smiling, and sitting there bare-footed.
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| A little piece of heaven |
When she was spending time at the "beach house," this was her favorite thing to do...
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| Collecting shells |
I have many happy memories from those days, and I am thankful that I took so many pictures. This was back in the day when you had to buy film, and then you had to get the film processed into photographs or slides, which wasn't cheap. I probably spent a small fortune back then on my photography, but what I am left with today is priceless.
BACK TO THE PRESENT
I have been struggling to get some good pictures of the Varied Thrush and Spotted Towhee. Getting the exposure right with all that snow in the background is proving to be difficult. Also, I am taking most of my pictures through a window, so that doesn't help with having a sharp focus. Still, I don't think I am doing too bad in either department.
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| Spotted Towhee |
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| Varied Thrush |
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| Checking out the feeder situation |
The snow has been melting a bit, off and on, but doesn't make much headway because it continues to snow and add to the pile already there. Still, it does create some beautiful icicles hanging off of roofs. Check out this short slideshow below. (Sound up!)
I hope you enjoy the music on the slideshow above. It's something I made up on a new program I found on the iMac, called GarageBand. Let me know what you think!
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| My little raccoon statue is covered up |
Speaking of raccoons, a couple of weeks ago I was reading before going to bed (and by reading, I mean collecting recipes), and I thought I heard a commotion on the back porch. I went to investigate and when I turned on the back porch light, I could not believe what I saw. There were three of the HUGEST raccoons back there, just messing around. When I started opening the sliding glass door they scampered away. I called for Summer Girl, who was hiding out in the vegetable garden area, and she came running up, all covered with snow. I sat out there with her for a few minutes just to make sure the raccoon gang wasn't coming back. I wish I had gotten my camera to take a picture, but I was more concerned with making sure that Summer Girl was okay. Trust me, though, they were the biggest raccoons I have ever seen!
MAKING KIMCHI
Last week I decided to try my hand at making kimchi. I got all my ingredients at the grocery store and got out my DIY Fermentation Kit that I got for Christmas. It wasn't a hard process to chop everything up....
...add salt and massage it in....
...put it under pressure so the salt would drive out the liquid...
...and cram it all in a jar...
...then wait 3-4 days for it to ferment. It sure did look pretty.
OH YUCK! Let me tell you, it was awful! I haven't had a food fail this bad in I don't know when. Down the garbage disposal it went. I don't know if it was just a bad recipe, or if I did something wrong, but I took one bite and spit it out in the sink. Terrible! So, today I am going to try my hand at pickled fermented beets. Hopefully that experiment will go better. I will report back on it next week.
PUZZLE UPDATE
Linda has been doing most of the puzzles lately as I am keeping busy with the computer project. This past week she picked out one of her favorite puzzles. It also happens to be the HARDEST puzzle that we have, due to the fact that the pieces are tiny! I tried to help her out a little bit, but I'm afraid I wasn't much help. Still, she got it done in about a week, so I am proud of her.
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| The Barcelona puzzle |
PARTING SHOT
Summer Girl is giving the birds a fit from inside, and they just stick their tongues out at her because they know she can't get them!
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| Get 'em, sweetie! |
That's all for this week, join us again next week!
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