No Time for Living

I think I spent too much time in front of my computer this week. When I do that, it doesn’t leave much time for living. As a result, I don’t have much in the line of stories or pictures to share with you. But I do have a few, so let’s get on with it, shall we?

We went out for Thursday morning breakfast, Mike and I did. I’m driving Miss Rosie’s little blue car and there’s two cars behind me on Route 6. I glance in the rearview mirror in time to see a deer skidding to the far edge of the road.

“I think that guy just hit a deer,” I told Mike.

“Who? The guy behind you?”

“No, I think it was the guy behind him. I saw the deer go down at the edge of the road but I don’t know if it was hit or just slipped.” Fear slunk up from the pit of my stomach and I pushed it back down. Mike hit a deer. I almost hit a deer. And our roadsides are litter with the bodies of dead deer. “I’m almost afraid to drive anymore,” I told Mike.

I’ve been helping Mike with some things he wanted to do around here. I won’t let him lift anything so, with his direction, I hauled rocks and put another layer on his wall around his Rhodies. We mixed top soil with mulch and put a layer of that on top. They’re looking really good, aka, they’re not dead yet.

Mike wanted to jockey some of his equipment around in the barn. His tractor with the backhoe is hard for him to get on on a normal day, let alone when his belly’s all stapled up. So, it was me who got on the tractor and moved it.

I felt sorry for our little Barn Swallows as all those noxious diesel fumes rose to the ceiling. When we were done, we opened all the doors.

I saw, in a web just under a window, a bee and a tiny little spider. The spider was running away from it. I thought he was attacking and retreating until he could get the bee injected with enough venom to incapacitate it. I ran to the house for my camera so I could catch this life and death struggle. Unfortunately, when I got back to the barn, the bee was gone.

Since I was there, I decided to climb the ladder to see if I could see any babies in the Barn Swallow nest. I couldn’t. Before I got down, mama came flying in and landed on the edge of the nest. The babies started crying and that was the first I knew for sure that she had any. Her head dipped, feeding one of the youngins no doubt, and I managed to get a picture before she took off.

I’m coming down off the ladder when I thought of my oldest and much-adored sister. Patti thought she was the whole way down a ladder when she stepped off and she wasn’t. She broke her leg pretty bad. I hadn’t thought of that on the way up.

Geesh! I’m afraid to drive because I might hit a deer, and now I’m afraid of ladders because I might break a leg! I thought. I was up and had no choice but to come down. I bucked up, minded my steps, and landed back on the ground safe and sound.

Mike’s Rhodies weren’t the only thing to get a little attention around here. We picked up some top soil and I went to work mixing it into the dirt already in my planter box.

Tiger helped.

Pretty soon he lost interest and found a shady spot to hang out. I only stepped on his tail once.

I got my peppers and marigolds planted.

I heard the mailman stop at the box so when I finished with the plants, Tiger and I walked down to get the mail. He’s so stinkin’ cute. He’d run ahead of me then flop down some place to wait. He’d let me get ahead of him before he’d come racing past, only to flop down and wait again.

I have to walk past my milkweed patch on the way to and from the mailbox. It makes me sad but there isn’t anything I can do about it.

I used to have such a pretty stand of milkweed here and this is where I got almost all my Monarch caterpillars last year. Look at it now. Hardly any.

We have milkweed scattered all around the property. Up near the six-by-six wall, several milkweed plants grow and they grow so tall! The tallest I’ve ever seen. But look what the deer did to them! I don’t think they’ll recover this year.

I have a beautiful stand of milkweed down near the pond.

I only got a few caterpillars from here last year. (Two views of the same stand.)

Two Cabbage Whites.

Back to Tiger for a moment, if you’ll permit. I know some of you have already heard this story, but some of you haven’t and I know how you like your Tiger stories.

One morning, Tiger didn’t think I was quick enough getting out of bed. The alarm sounded and I turned it off to snooze for a few more minutes. Tiger wasn’t having any of that. He likes to go out first thing in the morning. He reached under the covers and pricked my belly with his claws. I quickly tucked the blanket in closer and was starting to doze off when he did it again.

“You stinker,” I muttered and tucked the blankets in tight again.

I’d no sooner started to doze off when he did it again.

When the Kipps stopped on their morning visit, Tiger sauntered up on the patio which reminded me to tell Miss Rosie about it.

She laughed. “Did it work for ya, Tiger?”

“After the third time it did,” I answered for him.

I hope this doesn’t become a habit for him.

“I do some of my best sleeping after the alarm goes off,” my dad used to say and I have to agree with him.

Whenever I had a little free time in the last couple of weeks, I’d sit on the patio and cut a few more tin can flowers. Friday, I took a little time and spray painted six or seven new ones.

Just underneath is my lavender. I planted it last year and was delighted when it bloomed again this year.

I picked one for my windowsill vase.

Next to my lavender is a weed with a pretty yellow flower on it. If you’d see the leaves by themselves, you might think it’s clover, but it’s not. It’s Wood Sorrel also called Sourgrass. Each heart-shaped leaf is creased along its midvein, folds up at night, and opens during the day. The leaves are most commonly green but can also be purple or burgundy. The flowers are normally white or yellow but could be pink or violet. All parts of wood sorrel are edible including leaves, flowers, seed pods, and roots. It’s rich in Vitamin C and if you pluck a leaf and eat it. It’ll remind you of lemon. In holistic medicine it’s used to treat scurvy, fevers, urinary infections, mouth sores, nausea, and sore throats. I thought it interesting that the seed pods will explode when ripe, sending their seed several feet into the air. I’ll have to try it and see.

Speaking of exploding…

I walked into the backyard and this cream-colored spot catches my eye.

What is that? I wonder and I’m prepared to see something icky when I go to investigate. It’s fungus that looks like it exploded.

Exploding mushrooms in the backyard and a carpet of yellow in the front.

“Dandelions?” you guess.

Nope. Birdsfoot Trefoil. At one time all this land belonged to the Robinsons. I believe it was Sally, across the road from me, that told me Birdsfoot Trefoil had been planted for grazing for the sheep. This place then became a saw mill, then some kind of a heavy truck place. Isn’t it interesting that after all these years it remained dormant until the conditions were right for it to come up again?

I saw this guy on my front patio.

“What is it?” you wanna know.

This is a Banded Tiger Moth. Isn’t he pretty?

On the other end of the pretty scale, I found this guy in my house this week. Since he looked like something that could sting or bite, I picked him up with a paper towel and took him outside. Out in the sunlight, I got a picture of his wings folded over his back, then he took off.

See his long snout? I’m pretty sure that’s a piercing tool indicative of assassin bugs.

I Googled him. This guy is the Masked Hunter and he is in the assassin bug family. But the only thing he assassinates is other insects. These guys are true bugs and go through several instars before becoming an adult on the sixth one. Instar is the period between molts. The nymphs look like the adults except they’re smaller, not sexually mature, and lack wings.

If you see one of these guys before they’re fully mature, you might not recognize him. The nymphs have glands that produce sticky stuff and they cover themselves in lint, sawdust, and anything else they can find. Experts think they do this to protect themselves from other bugs that might eat them, or maybe it helps them look innocent to the bugs they’re getting ready to pounce on.

Assassin bugs can produce sound by rubbing one body part against another, a phenomenon known as ‘stridulation’. In The Masked Hunter, he tips his head back and uses his snout to rub across ridges on his chest. It makes an audible squeaking sound.

These guys are common but only a few will occupy any given home or other building at a time. They are well known for preying on bed bugs, booklice, and silverfish. I’ve had silverfish in the past, don’t know if I still do or not. I’ve not seen any in more than a year, but maybe my recently evicted Masked Hunter was taking care of them.

“Peg! How’s Mike doing?” I know you’re waiting for an update.

I read my story The Big C to Mike while we waited for his release from the hospital. I wrote about things that he didn’t know. It tickled me to hear him recount the story to a couple of people on the phone.

Even though Mike is home and eating foods he likes, he’s continuing to lose weight. He’s at 206 now and he’s never been that low since I’ve known him. That worries me.

It’s funny, you know? When Mike could do anything for himself that he wanted to, he’d get me to help him. Now that he’s not able (or at least not supposed to) do things, he wants to do everything by himself. Something that’s been especially hard for him is putting on his socks and tying his shoes.

Mike had another iron infusion Thursday. I helped with his socks that morning but he wasn’t ready to put his shoes on. When he was, he slipped his feet in himself.

“Peg! Will you tie my shoes?” I ran in the other room. I didn’t really run, but I went as soon as he called. “I’m sorry. I just can’t do it.”

“It’s okay,” I assured him.

“Here, I’ll put my foot up so it’s easier for you.” Mike put his foot up on the weight bench.

I looked at his shoe and it looked funny to me. I glanced up at Mike but he was bent over a little and his shirt tented over the top of his legs. I shrugged it off.

We get to the hospital and Jim gets Mike all hooked up to his infusion, gets him a lap blanket and spreads it over him, then leaves. For some reason, getting an infusion makes Mike cold. He watched TV while I read and sipped my coffee. I’m reading a really good book now. I started to read something else but hated it. Life is too short to read books that aren’t good. So, I quit after the first few chapters. Now I’m reading The Moonlight School by Suzanne Woods Fisher which is based on a true story about bringing literacy to the hills of Kentucky. I knew after just a few pages that I was going to like the story. I just hope it has a happy ending. I don’t care what anybody says, I like happy endings!

My coffee was working its way through me, so I got up to go to the restroom. Mike’s feet are up in the reclining chair and I notice his shoes again. “Are your legs crossed?” I asked.

“No?”

I grinned. “Your shoes are on the wrong feet!” And I laughed.

“It’s not that funny,” Mike quips. “Will you fix ‘em for me?”

I laughed the whole time I was switching his shoes.

“STOP!” he rebuked.

“Couldn’t you feel it?” Steph, our beautiful neighbor lady asked when Mike told her.

“NO! These shoes are bigger than I normally wear.”

We got the shoes online and they didn’t have his size so we sized them up.

I hope that gives you a little chuckle.

Mike did a little mowing Saturday (the doctor said he could) and gave me the opportunity to get his first stuck picture of the year.

We’ll end this week with a moon picture I took the night before it was full.

Remember, you’re all in my heart.

Until next time, let’s call this one done!