Crazy, just plain crazy......

The year was 1967, the fall of my senior year, and the pressure was on.  Our class had won the float contest the last three years, and this was our senior year. I had helped design the float.  Snoopy was usually fighting the Red Baron trying to shoot him down during the war and this time he was shooting down Russell High School in the big Homecoming game.  You can see  the bullet holes in the side of his house. I now see we forgot to put on the airplane wings to the dog house. I really don't remember if we won the game, but they were a smaller school than us.  Our class with 29 members did win the float contest.
As a side not Russell was closed down a few years back because it school got too small.

In a 1937 country school textbook I found this. It is the illustration for our  prehistory. The rino has two natives stuck up in a tree. They are going to have to use those clubs to get anything to eat.

This is my computer monitor before I found the right connector to my laptop computer. This is a photo of last years cactus at my neighbors house. There were no greens but lots of red and purples. Best Buy sold me a connector with a vega end to give me correct feedback to the new screen. My new monitor is an ACER and it is an LCD screen. It is better than the original one on the old laptop.

This is my neighbors flowering crab apple tree.  I remember when it was planted by a previous owner 20 years ago or more, as he got it free from a bank promotion.  The present neighbor had to cut the back half of it down as the storms took out a major one third of it.  This is what my new monitor looks like now.

As a last bit of craziness, my cousin has found an article on the internet that was from the newspaper the Osceola Democrat dated Jan 9, 1908:
Mrs. Thos. Turner grew a lemon on her dwarf lemon tree, measuring 11 inches around one way and 10 inches around the other way.
WoW!!  She would have been my Great Grandmother Sarah Turner, married to Thomas Turner of Murray, Iowa.  Thanks to my first cousin Joan Callison of Murray, Iowa for this little bit of news. She and George Washington liked growing citrus fruit.


Thanks for stopping by.......

Thursday's things........

I bet you thought you were looking down a path in New England, but it is our underdeveloped alley. I snapped the lilac and thought you could pretend you were someplace more exotic than Woodward, Iowa.

I found my Grandmother's old cookbook, but while digging for Sepia photos, I found two other cookbooks of hers.  They were spiral notebooks and she has put every kind of recipe in there that she has found in newspapers or magazines. Also some of the relatives, who are all gone, have their recipes recorded.  They are given proper credit at the top.  We found my Great grandmother's sugar cookie recipe in there. We are going to have to make them to see if the compare as good as everyone else's grandma's sugar cookies.

I just thought I would share some other pages.  It is the first time I have seen these and I had to go looking for clues to see who had owned them.  It is really going back in history when I see some of the things she has either stowed or glued down on the pages with wallpaper paste.

As a teaser to my readers, I found another country school book . It is an old one that explains things in a very traditional and biased manner.  They had not heard of "politically correct words.   I will show later more illustrations and share some text.  It is a third or fourth grade history book of prehistory, colonial times, and Indians.  We now of course know they are talking about Native American Indians.
It is an interesting piece of history in itself.  Thanks for stopping by.........

Wednesday's wanderings......

The apple tree is really putting out the blossoms.  I have another one that is doing well also but the third tree by the garden shed has about six blossoms on the whole tree. I don't understand that one, but plant to prune it way back anyway.  I don't know if my neighbor sprayed something to take way the blooms, it is really a mystery.

The pear tree is also putting out more blooms than it normal.  We have bumble bees out there but I am not seeing any honey bees as of yet.

I have rhubarb ready to be used.  In fact I have a large seed head already set on the one plant.

I have just noticed that blogspot is changing the way we download photos.  They have put all of my past photos into a Picasa folder for each of my blogs and they aren't allowing me to download anywhere but from out of Picasa.  I find that very much not an improvement as it causes me to leave my blog and open up Picasa.  I hope this is a temporary glitch as I really didn't need to add an extra step to my blog master work.

Working on the house again today, putting in Wainscoting, molding, and new floor tile in the bathroom. I sure hope the old truck gets us there without problems.  It is suppose to rain on Thursday but today is going to be a warm day.  Thanks for stopping by...........

Spring Shots........

This taken from the northeast corner of my property. The birch is branching out and the goutweed is doing well.  My redbud tree is coming out and you can see the slice of my blue gate in the background.

I bought this with a redbud label but I am not sure why it does not look like everyone else's trees in town. Mine is very pink even though it is putting out buds in the same way and also the limbs are of the right form for a redbud tree.

I have a terra cotta sauce that sits among a hosta and a sedum. It has dirt in it but I could never get anything to grow in it.  The round rock is a North Shore variety and the white quartz rock is from Iowa. I noticed this year that the wild violet decided to plant their own kind inside of the saucer.  It looks great so it stays.

One summer when I worked at a grocery store chain, selling out of there greenhouse,  and I learned the name of this tree.  It blooms early and then gets red berries on it later on.  It has been slow growing and I thought at first that it was a shrub.  But it is tree and I must have picked it up at a late fall sale a few years back. I must keep better track of the tags or get a brain that remembers the name of it.

As you can see, I am back.  I am working off of a new screen and a portable keyboard.  I am having a hard time to getting use to the tall keys.  My laptop keys were flat and I had used that for over eight years.......I didn't have to buy a new computer, but found a screen to attach to my laptop that will give me true color.  I can now view your posts and enjoy your photos.   Thanks for stopping by..........

Merry Christmas......

While sorting through things yesterday, I found an old Christmas card.  It was my Grandmother Burgus' card sent in 1928.  I have a counsin who gave great info about who it was sent to.

My Grandmother had parents who were on her father's side, Turner, and on her mother's side, Abernathy. The mother of my grandmother had ten brothers and sisters.   She was a true Britt in every sense of the word.  Her Uncle on her mother's side was Henry Abernathy.

Even though this is family history, I thought it quite creative to put in my creative zone.

My computer screen went down again and I am limping along with a  side screen that comes up  in bad colors.  I don't know if I will continue to stay on schedule or take a rest until my new computer comes. If I order it today, I can see it in two to three days. We will see, as they say, what happens.  You will see me when I figure out all the details. 

Thanks for stopping by............

As a footnote, my screen looks orange and gray, and if I sit at it long enough I see blue when I look up.  My eyes are seeing the compliment color and tinting everything around me. 

Friday's findings...........

 This is my view from the patio looking toward my old fish pond. The field lilies are taking off, in the foreground.  I moved that red brick right after I took the photo.

This is the view of my chokecherry tree and the row of peonies that are covering up the row of tulips now.

Tulip row as seen on the other side of the peony bushes.

I missed show and tell of the butterfly that  my mom had made later in her years. I remember her doing this, one pink and one blue.  I have not found the pink one but maybe it has already been brought home among other things.
I have a busy day ahead of me for a Friday but I hope to get all the frame jobs done and get the orchard mowed.  It is supose to rain for the next two days, so I will have to hurry to get the mowing done.
Thanks for stopping by.......

Thursday's tidbits.......

I planted a chokecherry tree in my yard five years ago.  I didn't quite know what to expect but I remember seeing them growing in our timber on the farm when I was young.  It really is a beautiful tree. The blossoms actually have a great smell almost as good as lilacs.  The birds tend to get all of the chokecherry berries eaten before they get too mature.

I kept putting off bringing these things home, but I did today.  I don't need a craft collection but I won't throw them away either. The boys will have to toss them or maybe their wives will appreciate them.  I believe my mom created all of these. The one on the right is cloth appliqued to the towel. My mom loved to crochet. When in doubt, she would crochet around the edges of about everything.

This was a dresser scarf or cloth.  It would fit the top of a large dresser.  It is an interesting white on white design.  I do remember this but I don't think it was out on a dresser for long once they moved to town.

This was the very first afghan that my mom ever crocheted. She bought it as a kit at the same time as her sister in law bought one and they learned together how to make them.  My aunt Mary's was the exact same pattern but her colors were all repeating pastel colors.  If you would have known my mom these were her colors for everything. The afghan spent it's years, many years, on the back of my parents couch for decoration.

I mowed my parents yard yesterday and on the way home we stopped at Best Buy to buy a computer monitor to attach to my laptop.  My old laptop screen crashed  and all I could see was this very grayed visual.  I could not see the cursor so it was a sad situation.  I have repaired tech problems at school a lot of times but I didn't have a clue what was wrong.  So my wife and I spent over an hour trying to get this very nice monitor, Acer, to open up a visual from my laptop.

Finally I got it to open up a window so I could see the computer laptop screen on the monitor but it was all redish.  I messed with it for quite a while longer and then I thought, check the resolution settings.  You can make your screen have a very high resolution if you tell it to. It makes the pictures clearer.  While messing with the settings while viewing it on my new hundred dollar screen trying to get my laptop in view, I changed the resolution settings and kapow, my laptop started working again.  Smiles!!!  Happy, happy day!!!

Apparently I had been greedy years ago and had it set to a very high resolution, and the computer decided it was taking too much memory.  The screen was doing battle trying to come up but not enough power to work.  I lowered the resolution and my old laptop is just humming along now. Anyway, I am happy and I will return the screen.  When we bought it the sales person, a very nice young man,  told me to carefully unpack as it might not work.  He was right  as it wouldn't ever had worked. I could have seen everything in red to  rose colored glasses.

At school, I would have to attach computers with bad screens to a projecting device and we could get to all of the commands on the computer because the actual screen would project out.  It would give us a chance to burn all their files to a disc or transfer things to another computer before shipping it off for repair.  I guess I had forgotten that but am now very happy I went exploring with the borrowed screen.

We had a gentle rain yesterday afternoon and it is nice to greener grass.  Thanks for stopping by......

Wednesday's offerings........

It is good to see such color.   We are fortunate to have such a successful tulip showing.  Ironically I had four stands of daffodils that never put out a flower.  The newly planted ones bloomed but the older planted daffodils are only foliage this year.  It is always a mystery.  Thanks for stopping in to see the tulip world in color........

Tuesday's tattle........

I posted these earlier as an unusual form of tulip.

This is what they looked like when they partially opened. They are a short tulip but they are really pretty flowers.

 I have four of them here for you to see as they are very showy.

My stick pile is large but I think I have most all of the storms handywork cleaned up as I have started mowing.

Our memorial sculpture for our manx cat, Nala, is a little faded from our winter weather.  It will be fun to repaint her this fall.  Unfortunately, we didn't have Nala for very long, as she had a condition called Manx syndrome.  She is buried under the apple tree.

Nala the cat, she changed our lives so much and blessed us with all that she taught us about ourselves. The patience it required and the love required to keep her alive for as long as we did was a blessing to us.

The lilac's are getting ready to show their stuff.  The white lilacs will be the first to bloom. My allergies will know when they are fully in bloom.  Thanks for stopping in and checking out my things that I share.  Have a good Tuesday........

Monday's wanderings.

I have these very richly colored tulips that the camera just doesn't like to focus on.  I read that digital's actully read color like a heat sensor would and I have found that red and orange for me are not easy to take. I have some distant pictures of these I will show later when you can see how deep the color of these really is.

I have seen a lot of bumble bee's this year and it is a very buggy year too as I find bugs showing up in alot of my flower photos.

A new purchase for me.  They are a quick buy when you don't feel like shelling out a lot of bucks for a great plant.

I am going to plant these soon as I tend to plant glads too late in the season.  They can be planted throughout the spring, but it is nice to get them up and blooming before our summer heat really kicks in and dries out everything.

Here are a set of fancy shaped tulips. They close up at night then reopen in the morning. Can you spot the  wasp the seems to like the flower too?

I mowed a few sections of my yard today. I couldn't see where I had mowed in some areas so I just didn't mow there.  It is 71 degrees today and we are having a nice spring. I have a lot of cleanup yet to do from the winter weather.  I framed prints this am of paintings of deer and ducks and still have a lot of things to do with the frame business.

We will start cooking meat on the grill as the weather is so great for that. Thanks for stopping by........

Sunday, show and tell time........

I was working at the dining room table and looked up and there among the roses was laying a downed soldier.  He didn't make it back into the box.  It is a different company that made this one as it is made out of plastic, the helmet on this guy is a WW 1 helmet. I don't know if I will ever understand that one as plastic was not being made then or at least not during the wars because it used oil.

I brought home a sports bag from Osceola that was stuffed full of crocheted things and embroidered things. Lot of odds and ends also and at the bottom of it, my friends who had been down to help us one day, must have stuck this into the bag.  It is an ivory handled button hook for the leather shoes that they use to have to fasten all those buttons on them.  I am sure it came from the house that my dad demolished in order to build the house.

The Woodsmith store in Des Moines, is a high end lumber yard with lots of saws and other woodworking  things.  In the summer they set up a nursery for about four months.  They have very good quality products and  I buy special things there once in a while.

Today I replaced a variegated leafed iris that I lost to rot a few years ago. Mine had a light lavender blue flower on it. I mentioned that to the salesperson and she thought the purple iris could be misleading marketing as it looks like that iris has been stuck in there in front of the foliage. It doesn't matter. It is one of my new plants to go in the garden outside of the dining room window and the foliage is one of the main reasons for me to buy it.

I was going to save this for my  "photo a day" post but I will go ahead and show it, as it is the best one to show the leaves of this plant. We were suppose to have frost in low areas last night but we don't get that cold in town, so I will plant this very soon, today!  It will survive our weather now. It is well developed in the pot and I think it should actually bloom because of how mature that it is.

I will finish with one more tulip photo. I like how the complementary colors on this are so striking.  Thanks for stopping by.......

So many photos, so little time.......

It will be late summer before I get all my springs photos posted. We had a nice rain and it made everything better for the blooms that were ready to open.

My wife and I went to my parent's home today and worked way too hard finishing up a bathroom remodel.  We have to put in a fake wainsctting and a tile (stickdown) squares for a floor and we are done!!!!
I quickly dug a plant for a northern blogger and also dug these tulips in mom's garden.  I have mixed feelings about selling the place because of the flowers but I can't bring them all home.

Back home, the hosta plants are starting to pop.  I like the variegated leaves most but I have a couple others that look great too.

This is that multi headed daffodil.. they actually have multiplied and I have more of them.  I have a very pink rose the grows up and out above the daffs after they bloom.

Another closer view of these flowers.

My violets are blooming all over the property.  This is a lone two colored wild violet.

The purple wild violet looks a little faded but the sun shining on them made them look lighter in value than they really are.

Saturday is here and I hope to go with my wife to a bookstore. We have achy muscles from rolling paint in the bathroom remodel project.  I rolled the ceilings while she rolled the walls.  I did all the edging painting and then helped with the second coats on everything.  The shower stall turned out great with the dry wall surround that I created for it.  I think we have definitely turned the corner on getting this first bathroom done. We have another to do with a lot less problems than this one.   Tearing out a shower and  replacing drywall where the mold had taken over, then installing a newer bigger shower was a challenge but fun.  It feels good to finally feel like the end is in site on this particular room.  When I put the door back on the bathroom and shut the door, it will be officially done. 

Thanks for stopping by......