Saturday, August 20, 2011

Random pix

The older neighbor whose wife had a stroke last week has been the recipient of tons of food from all the wives in our neighborhood. We're convinced this smart, efficient, intelligent businessman is entirely incapable of feeding himself, so we've all banded together to bring him easy meals. This apple pie is for him. (My name is on a piece of tape on the handle so he'll know whose dish it is when he's finished.)


In truth, feeding the man is our way of helping out. There's little we can do for his dear wife except pray and occasionally visit (she's in a hospital an hour's drive away). She's improving greatly due to therapy, but she still has a long road ahead of her.

Older Daughter making a notation on a new piano piece she's learning.


Lydia in "play" mode. Older Daughter has dashed behind my chair and Lydia is trying to figure out how to get to her.


Aha! Gotcha! Attack!


While Lydis is clearly just horsing around, it demonstrates one thing: this dog would viciously defend us should we be threatened. Frankly if those teeth were around a stranger's arm and Lydia wasn't horsing around, there wouldn't be much left to the arm.


We have one last cow, Jet, who still hasn't had her calf.


She is massively pregnant.


The other day we noticed she was bagging up (meaning, her udder is filling) and she had a string of mucus hanging from her vulva; so, thinking her time was close, we pulled her into the barn.


False alarm. For three days we watched but nothing happened, so we finally let her back into the pasture.

103 tankards, ready to ship out. The Kansas City Renaissance Festival (where we own a booth) opens on Labor Day weekend, and we're frantically making pieces to stock the booth prior to opening. It's our goal to get our booth managers about 350 pieces by opening.


On Thursday I re-applied for my concealed carry permit, which had lapsed. The sheriff's office is located in the courthouse building. I'm pleased to live in a county where the Ten Commandments are still able to be displayed on the courthouse lawn, and I hope the ACLU never sees this blog post.


In the Sheriff's office where I had my fingerprints taken, I noticed this sign.


Afterwards, the girls and I joined some friends and we went to the county fair. It was opening day and not crowded... though "crowded" is a relative term. Our county is nearly the size of Rhode Island. For purposes of comparison, Rhode Island has about a million people. Our county has 10,000, only 2700 of whom live in the county seat. So the fair is small -- but charming.


Here's the 4-H display for my friend's daughter's group.


Here's the display for the county animal shelter, where my girls have volunteered for the last two years.


This town's economy is heavily dependent on logging, and a few years ago the city put up a beautiful monument to the loggers who have died in the line of duty. This photograph was taken on Memorial Day when someone had placed roses on some of the loggers' stones. What you see is a photo of the photo (click to enlarge), but it was so touching I wanted to record it.


I was pleased to see it got a blue ribbon.


An outstanding piece of needlework. The canvas was only about 10x12 inches.


In the livestock barn, the fellow in the blue shirt caught my eye -- typical small town rancher.


This young boy was lounging with his prize-winning pigs.


Early morning sunshine across hay bales.


We had one final stretch of fencing along the road that needed to be reinforced with sticks. Yesterday the girls and two neighbor boys finished that task. (A very distant photo, sorry.)


Here, Younger Daughter and one of the neighbor boys are going back to the fence after fetching another load of sticks from the woods. The reason I took this picture is because the girl is carrying the sticks, rather than the boy. These boys are usually quite gentlemanly, so I wonder what was up? I never did ask.


They did a fine job on the fence.


I promised all four kids some fresh chocolate-chip cookies in exchange for their hard work. But after finishing the job, they all piled into the kitchen and preferred orange sherbet (since it was such a hot day), so we made that as well. I was also working on chicken pies for dinner. Suddenly the kitchen was another disaster. I tell you, I have the most amazing talent for being able to dirty every dish and countertop in the kitchen, over and over.


I was trying to get a photo of a hummingbird at the feeder, through a screen.


In this photo, the camera focused on the screen rather than the hummer, but I liked the way it turned out.


Someone accidentally hit a deer on our road, a young buck whose antlers were still in velvet. Another neighbor stopped and claimed the head from the carcass. No sense wasting it, I guess. I didn't ask what happened to the meat.


"You know you're in the Lewis household," observed Older Daughter last week, "when even the mice are Preppers." She opened one of her dresser drawers...


...and found a tidy stash of rice grains.

2 comments:

  1. OK, I'm very impressed with older daughter's reaction to the mice "preppers" in her dresser drawer. I have shot, wringed the neck, butchered, etc animals over the years. I HATE mice and get freaked out with I see one in my house. I can handle bugs, kill a snake, I can't stand the thought of a mice touching anything in my house. Call me silly, it's my freak out issue. My 8 yr old daughter is just like me. When she even thinks there is a mouse in the house she jumps from one piece of furniture to another to not touch the floor. Your daughter is amazing in my eyes :-)

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  2. Recently I pulled a pair of boots I hadn't used in a while out of the closet - I put my foot in and they didn't feel right; I dumped out a handful of rice grains, noodle bits, and other stuff that a mouse must have been saving up!

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