Helping a Friend

We have a friend who will be sending her firstborn off to college in less than a month.  She is....  It is gonna be....  Oh. My.  It isn't easy.  I think she knows.  She told us that Jesus was coming back and her son really wasn't going to have to graduate.  Oops.  And he isn't going around the corner to school, it is a good day's drive away from home.  She will be fine.  It sounds awful, and the dread is the worst part, but she can do it.  And we are here to help! 

She needs to know some things about the fine educational institution to which her son will be matriculating.  I think she might have visited there once.  Or twice.  So there is much to be learned.... like where her son will be living.  Right here.  Bennett Hall, one of the finest in the nation.

I mean -- if you are going to have to go and live in a dormitory, wouldn't you want it to be a traditional, nicely landscaped one?  It is going to be a nice backdrop for his studies.  I have heard that lots of studying gets accomplished there. 

There are all kinds of things that he has already been able to teach his parents about his new school.  Like the fight song, and some of the motions to go with it and other chants -- and then there are the little bits of history and famous alums.  He is excited about it, and I think that is what she has going for her.  You know, if he is pleased with how things go, it will make it easier for her, no doubt. 

I am doing my part to try and distract her from this impending separation.  My plan is to get her out of town for a few days.  Maybe with some friends....  Maybe to an undisclosed island location.....

Not to be bragging or anything....

One of the most amazing phenomena of having only two adults in the house is the laundry.  Don't jump ahead of me here....  socks still disappear mysteriously, stains don't always get treated as they should, but for the most part, there is less laundry.

Not surprising, I know.  But it was a task that used to take me hours in a week, and it had to be maintained.  Now, a week's laundry can be knocked out in less than two hours.

What do I do with all this spare time, you ask?  I have yet to find the spare time.  I am obviously SAVING it.....  but I don't know where it is! 

My house is empty of everyone except me for the next three days.  So I decided to really get some things done.  You know, those chores you neglect until they become embarrassing...  yep, I was going to mark them off my list.

So I start a couple of small loads of laundry.... thinking, I will be caught back up in NO TIME.  And apparently, laundry is something you have to keep practicing to be good at, because I seem to be losing my touch.  I started with a load of some delicate items like a swimsuit, a new blouse, you know... stuff like that... and I proceeded to fill the detergent dispenser with fabric softener.  Nice.  *$^#@

No turning back.  It had already started dripping into the washer.  I just grabbed the laundry detergent, and I filled up every cup in the dispenser.  And then I just slammed it shut.  Like that is going to help anything.  I will probably have to wash it all again after it finishes, but good grief.

A normal day at my house.  I could probably tell you three or four similar stories about myself -- all from today.  But that is why God lets us all live in different houses......   :)    He takes care of me today and every day.  He gives me ENOUGH time.  He gives me ENOUGH memory.  He gives me every day what is needed for that day.  What a miracle!  He has a plan. 

No promises....

Okay, I know you think you are tired of hearing about these baby birds in the nests in my backyard, but I just HAVE to show you a picture of how they look today.  They have doubled or tripled in size, and the mom stays on the nest almost all the time.  If I go out there to try and get a glimpse, she might fly off of it and try to distract me with one of her injury acts.  But it's a little like she knows me now, and she knows I am not going to hurt her little ones. 

And as usual, every time the camera snapped, these poor little things thought they were fixing to get lucky in a "Mama's here to feed me," kind of way.  I didn't bother them very long.  I had other business to take care of in the yard.  There were plants, flowers and trees to be watered and cared for.

Like this lovely pot on my back porch....   if you are one of my sons, you know where this came from, and I am enjoying it every day this summer!  Muah!

But on the way back to the house, we found this little critter wandering around in the grass.  Of course, someone picked him up and chased me around the yard trying to make me hold him.  "Horned toads are just the coolest things ever!" I think were his exact words.  Well, that they may be, but I have no need to carry one around.  Don't need to touch one.  Nothing.  Over and out.

A Few Trees... Or A Forest?

Where we live..... let's just say, there are not an abundance of trees.  Anywhere.  I mean that in our area of the world, there are not a lot of trees, and I mean that in our neighborhood, there are not a lot of trees.  In fact, you could almost say that nearly all of the trees in our town were planted, or there are a few that might have blown in and grown after the Dust Bowl.

So we are doing our part, I mean, Mike is doing our part, to get some more trees established around our neighborhood.  He started with about 35 trees and quite a few shrubs in our yard after we moved in a few years ago.  Since then, he has teamed up with my mom, who saves trees -literally- and has planted about 17 more down in this draw and in the far reaches of our yard.  Mom finds trees that blow into her yard or flower bed, digs them up, starts them in a pot, and babies them until they grow too big for the pot or she finds someone to give them a new home.

So we, I mean, Mike has stepped up, and I mean it was a job.  I just hope to goodness we can keep these things alive because he even purchased a couple.  He always teases that he has to buy big ones because he wants to see them grow as much as possible, he doesn't know how long he will be around.  It's funny, because they are good-sized trees, but you can hardly tell it from these pictures.

But someday, I want you to come back -- okay, I will keep the pics and repost them -- and see how much shade we are enjoying out in this neighborhood with all the blue sky.

And no matter how many trees we plant, and no matter how big they grow, we will never get tired of looking at these beautiful sunsets.........

Mid-Summer Goings On

I could hardly leave you with the pics of the baby birds in the first nest without showing you the eggs that were about to hatch in the second nest.  It is up high enough that it is hard for me to get pictures without dragging a metal ladder out there.  Again, I can hardly believe that birds would put a nest in a tree with as little protection as this one provides...  But another mother Kingbird laid four sweet little eggs in this average-looking tiny nest.  She flew up above my head, squawking and trying to distract me.  She landed on the ground about 20 feet away, flipping and flopping, acting injured -- it was surprising the extent to which she tried to get me away from that nest area.

We caught these as they were hatching!  I didn't want to jinx anything, so I just snapped a few pics and left.  It was quite a sight.  Poor little things looked so pitiful, it is surprising they can survive at all.  It looked like a pretty big ordeal to get out of that egg and into this world.  Probably no different than every day of their lives after that...  just gotta keep fighting and moving forward!

Today was over 100 degrees, so I didn't even go out there.  If the mother was on the nest, I didn't want her to move her body and the shade that it was providing for all those little ones. 

Ornithology 101

About a week ago, Mike found two bird nests in the two smallest trees in our yard...  I mentioned this before.  I even showed you a picture of one of the nests with four little spotted eggs in it.  Well, a lot has been learned to me about birds since then, and I feel I must share.  *me being silly*

Here is the giant tree that the mother kingbird (found out it wasn't a meadowlark) thought would make a good home for her four little babies.  It is 3.5 feet tall at the most.

And here are the beautiful little eggs laying in the nest....  I didn't touch or breathe, or anything on them.  This was yesterday.  The nest is so tightly placed in between the branches, I just couldn't get my camera in any closer without risking moving something.  My camera was acting up, and it kept trying to focus on the branches or the other parts of the nest.  I have been taking pictures of the birds in my backyard everyday for about 10 days now.  I bet I have 1200 pictures of birds, feeding, flying, sitting, -- and about 95% of them are blurry.  You may not know this, but birds move fast.  Really fast.  They move lots faster than I am a decent photographer....

Then today, I got this picture of the mother sitting on the nest.  Can you see her in there?  She absolutely fills it.  Covers the whole thing up.  Wanna guess why?

 

One day later.  All those eggs have hatched, well, we think they are all hatched.  This was as close as I could get, and I was afraid it was too close.  Everytime they heard the camera go off, they opened their tiny mouths like they thought they were going to be fed.  I felt like some kind of fake mother bird.  :(

I want them to grow up and fly out of that nest so they can eat insects all over my yard!

I Love It When.....

I love it when other people do my work for me!  Like one of my favorite bloggers, Big Mama.  She is the bomb.com.

She has this super cool thing she does on Fridays called Fashion Fridays, and she just shops and shops, and she finds all the best stuff, and she passes it along to me (us)! 

I don't know what it is about internet shopping, but usually I lose interest with waiting for pages to load, or moving the cursor around to try and get to where I want to be.  So when someone wants to do my shopping for me, and show me the best stuff, and she has similar taste to mine, it is just a bonus!

Her writing is sarcastic and hilarious, I just *heart* her!  You will too!