Home Half of the Day.......

It is cold out there.  The house you see across the street was always a mystery as I lived in the house 15 or more years before I ever saw who was living there.  One day an elderly Italian women, I was told she was Italian for the Granger area,  was out clearing her leaves from her sidewalk and I realize that the women did actually live there.  Eventually she went to a nursing home and her granddaughter lives there now.

When we got up this morning the thermometer was registering -5 degrees F. and by 8:00 it had gone down to -8.9 degrees.   School is delayed and some other schools are closed.  I was suppose to go in for the afternoon arriving at 11:30 but now I am awaiting to see if I will go in earlier.  The person I am covering for must have an appointment and I have to cover her class that start just before noon.  We abbreviated schedules on late starts so I may have to go in earlier because of the schedule change.

While moving through the dining room I decided to give you a shot of this Disney character from Beauty and the Beast.  When the boys were young, my wife received gifts that were from the Lion King, 101 Dalmaitions, and other movies that they liked. I think this is Mrs. Potts and she had the voice of Angela Landsbury. I assume that this may be a collector item but it really has no function as it isn't a small teapot.

A blurry side view shows that it almost looks like an elephant with here little maids hat.  She had a little son in the movie who was a small cup and saucer.  His name was Chip and he did have a piece of his cup chipped out from some fall from a table.

I shared the other day that I had found a lot of old newspaper clippings that my mom had collected.  I didn't really take the time to go through them as there is a whole garbage sack of them. When getting the house ready for sale I grab a sack and cleared off a whole shelf full of these things from the linen closet where she had stored them.  I can still see her clipping and walking over to that linen close door and pile it in on the other newspaper articles in the closet.

While looking through the top few I noticed an obit of a neighbor lady named Ella Deahl.  My parents liked to visit her and her husband Earl Deahl. They were many years older than them but they had known them for a long time and it was a good friendship. I usually always went along and enjoyed see them. They were avid gardeners and Ella had lots of great flower beds which I admired as a young kid and grew up learning garden plants from her.  She gave me  plants and I would take them home and plant them in dry dirt under the house eaves and they would die.

Anyway, one day after I was in high school, my mom visited Ella and she gave these small glass pieces to her for me to have.  I think they were making a move to town and she was handing out keepsakes.  Seeing her obit and then the very day I glanced over and saw the glass set in the cupboard,  I had to share the story and a photo. I was told later in life that I had a middle name that was the same as one of Ella's son. Just to add to that story, my mom dated her son for a while.  I remember my mom keeping letters from him in an old trunk and telling me he was an old boy friend not boyfriend.  Never too old to find out things about you middle name Dean.

Well the woodpeckers still like me and they keep feeding.  I don't know if there is a big difference in suet but I think this one has less goodies in it than the other brand that I bought.  I may have to go back to it as they are eating on this one at a much slower pace. After finishing this blog I am going to dress in a lot of coats and sweaters to go out and fill the feeders.  I have an hour to get ready to go to school for the afternoon.  I guess we are going to have school in spite of the temps. It is a very bright day today so it makes it look a lot warmers. 

Thanks for stopping in today.

Big Job Done.........

We had displayed art at the library for a few months and due to new carpet being installed they asked us to come remove it.  The paintings have leaned against the wall for quite a while so yesterday I started the task of rehanging and rearranging.

Mission accomplished even though it took a half day of adjusting and placing the works back onto the wall.  We need to repaint the wall as we hang things on small brad nails and as things get moved we just put in new nail holes.  It is the only way to do it with so many different sizes.

Most all of the work that you are seeing was done by my wife.  If you see a stray barn on the wall you know it is mine.  I haven't painted now for almost 3 years as my working at school takes most of my time.

It is fortunate that a lot of Della's work is sold on line so we don't have to frame it.  It gets sent in a flat form with mats on them ready for the buyer to have framed.  We have never had a single complaint about damage so we are successful send things through the mail all these years.  The pastels are always the most difficult to send as the medium gets sprayed with a fixative, lightly, to hold the work to the paper but not too much fixative or it changes the colors and turns dark. It has to be sandwiched in a way to keep things from touching the pastel surface.

I will post a few iris to get everyone anxious for spring.  This is an acrylic painting.

This is an amazing painting that my wife did.  The colors create a really rich mood with all the deep colors of purple contrasting to the greens in the background.

A final finish with some color.  The weather continues to be typical but it is going on for a long time.  I am in the high school today doing the Social Studies class again. I was in here on Friday. I think illness is hanging on for a long time whatever form of flu that it is.  Teachers come back too soon and have to return.  The person who calls me from the office to notify me of the job for the day has been home three days.  Her variety of illness is severe coughing and temperatures.  The other variety is the stomach variety.  The news keeps saying we haven't been hit very hard in Iowa but they really don't know except by doctors reports.  There are a lot of people sick in this school but they don't go to the doctor. 

Tomorrow we go down into the deepest freezer to enjoy the -6 degree F. I hope the rest of you are keeping safe and warm. I appreciate you coming by today.

A Day Off........

 On a whim last night I grabbed this one violet and placed more soil in its pot.  I had transplanted it there a year ago and the soil had all settled down.  When I would pick it up to water it the plant would wobble around like a spinning top as it was not supported well. The above bloom fell off while I was working with it.

Because of the spiraling condition parts of the blooms seem to be not getting enough water as they come out all faded.  Since I installed a new plant light for the violets I now have one other violet setting up some buds.  I try to leave the light on them all the time now as they don't require any sleep.  It is like living in Alaska when they have full 24 hours of daylight for a long season.

I was taking some decorations upstairs a couple of days ago and while there I found a new project.  I found it but I am not going to do it right now.  I discovered a sack full of newspapers and  other clippings that my mom had collected. The pile is dated at least back to the 1965's with photos of one of my brother's weddings that was in the Osceola Newspaper.  The clippings she chose to collect were always of family members living and who were then dead. There are also anniversary booklets and funeral cards.

Also I see by the one clipping there is a picture of my Grandmother sitting at a workshop for elderly women.  I don't remember my Dad's mom being very functional but somehow she ended up with a large group of ladies in a neighboring town.  She is the one sitting in the foreground and was the only one named in the article. The nursing home must have taken them for the afternoon from the neighboring town in which she lived.  I found a Des Moines Register article about the town of Hopeville, Iowa. It never had a railroad come through it, so the town eventually faded away and the majority of the citizens are all now buried on two rolling hills south of the town.  The writer of the article was a flowery writer and I may share some of it down the way as my blogging continues. The town was actually settled by a traveling religious group, not Morman, even though their route went through the area, but another religious group that wanted to create a perfect society.  Hopeville is south of Murray and it is near where I was born.

At one period in our married life, we would buy two plates of a smaller size to eat on rather than the everyday ones that we always used.  We stopped doing that when  my wife's dad moved in with us.  I found these the other day and we are using them again.  They are a break away from the norm with their brightly hand painted designs. It really isn't that good of a painting but it is fun to put a grilled cheese sandwich on it with a side of chips or salad.  They are just the right size for two empty nesters.  We have a collection of five different smaller plates that we use whenever to give us variety in our lives.  Some are Martha Stewart plates and others are hand painted modern designs. The plates were always a closeout of a set that was sold and they were individually prices sometimes down to a dollar each. The bargain tables at big stores are fun.

I will share one more of the AJ  the grandson's photo today.  I don't think the hands are in focus but he is just busy checking out the new world while finding things in wrapped packages.

I didn't have work today so I am just doing those odd jobs that need to be done.  We are having the severe cold again so going to feed the birds and getting the mail is all that will be happening for us. We went to get meds last night and as we returned the snow fell for a while and the temperatures took a nose dive.  We were in the forties most of the day Monday and by this morning we were at -6.8 degrees F.  The whole week is to stay below the 20's in the daytime.

The State inspectors investigate and evaluate the school for the next three days.  I am assuming the teachers were told not to be sick and gone no matter what as the school has to put it's very best face forward.  Any dust that existed has been cleaned up and every floor double duty shined.  There are always things that they find wrong with the classes offered or the workshops the teachers are not attending so it is not possible to get a perfect report.  It is more like the "law and order" people coming in to evaluate, complement and sight flaws in the system.

It happens every five years and they do look at the past evaluation to see if improvements and corrections have been made to make it a school up to snuff.  Our school is one of the second fastest growing schools in the state, population wise, so they can't find too many faults if people are moving into the area. Declining enrollment is a major problem in most of Iowa's school. I may get work after this first day invasion as they have two other schools in our system to evaluate and they do that Wednesday and Thursday. 

Well it is time for me to move on to my next projects for the day.  I have things to do and since the birds are again not eating out of my feeder I will move on away from the dining room table.  I hope everyone is not getting the cold we have but I know some of you will be getting our snow and others our cold.  Take care and thanks for stopping by today.

Monday Again.............

Well,  I had to move in an older vhs player to sit next to the dvd-vhs player.  The vhs part of the player went bad. The few times we tried to use it the tapes were chewed and jammed in the player.  I am happy to move on to the dvd era but we do have some classic movies on vhs that we could pop in if we are desperate to watch something..  The Titanic movie we own is on vhs as well as some of the Star Wars.  I won't list them all but we do have a shelf full of movies we could go back to if we could play them.

When we first got the VCR it took me at least 6 months to get it hooked up correctly to tape from the television.  Once we learned that it took time to figure out how to tape shows while we were gone.  Other advances included taping some shows while we watched them stopping and starting to eliminate the commercials.  Since times have changes so much I decided to clean out some of the vhs's and send them to the basement.  The pile has set there for a day and now I have come to my senses.  Every garden show that I ever watched the past 14 years is going to the landfill.  I won't take them downstairs to prolong the decision to later throw them away for good.  It was good to watch them over again during the winter but I have watched them too many times now.

The birds still haven't forgiven me much  for letting their feeder go bare for a couple of days.  The woodpeckers always had suet so they didn't dislike me but the regular birds have hardly shown up to feed.  They must have a much better feeder down the stret that just won't quit its supply of seed.  Tonight's weather may bring them back as we start to get snow and cold winds this afternoon.

Don't you wonder if the little girl is buying what the guy has for sale or if they are just greeting each other. The winter figures and houses don't get taken down until we tire of them.  It is nice to have them out longer than just Christmas time.

I find it interesting that I can see new things with the different pieces as the sit out for display.  I had never noticed before this year that the lady is holding her dog as she travels in the sleigh to deliver a present.

I am not looking forward to the next wave of cold weather as the votex deiced to take another deep slide down into the United States.  We were 55 on Sunday and I think our low tonight will be 6 degrees F. We have always had weather like this as a kid but I think the older we get the more frustrating it is to not have consistent steady weather. 


I am in the middle school today teaching 6th and 7th graders social studies..  The flu bug is selectively hitting and missing throuth out the building.  The person who calls me to assign me work, was home sick with the flu.  She was also upset because her daughter had a baby girl this morning and she knows she can't go near the hospital for a few days.  Her first pictures of her granddaughter will all be by cell phone.

I missed blogging yesterday. I know some would know that and others are ok with that.  Again the world didn't stand still.  My timing for things depend on photos not taken and the time of day that it is.  After six in the evening I decided it was too late to put up the blog.  I am glad than I am back and I thank you for stopping by today. 

A Two Seater.........

I did get my little project done after blogging on Thursday.  I took down the old corn feeder which was hanging by a nail.  The squirrels had eaten away the platform in protest of their not being any corn to eat.  I didn't put much thought into the design of the feeder other than I knew it had to hold a squirrel and be braced somewhat to hold the creature.

I went through my wood scraps and visualized the product from the available pieces in the pile.  I found walnut pieces in my pile as well as birch and red oak.  All three of those would be too hard to drive a nail.  So I took wood pieces from scrap projects of the past.  I had to think long and hard about the platform board as it was a cabin siding wood piece with tongue and groove.  I finally figured out that it was leftovers from the siding on my garden shed which was made over 10 years ago.   I pulled the scrap pile out recently to have in the basement for emergency burning in the fireplace.

Once constructed I took the new feeder out and nailed it to the tree.  It took an hour before the squirrels discovered it.  There could be two creatures sitting on it at a time but that won't happen as the are too competitive for that.

By the way the corn was consumed and or stored I can see that I will be buying more corn in a couple of weeks. I does seem to keep them out of my bird feeders  right now but I am sure they will like the millet and sunflower seeds too and will still invade them.

We had wind yesterday and it did warm just a little but then it dropped again to 6 degrees F. last night. This morning we are on the edge of a snow that gave us a good coating of white stuff but now it has calmed down.  We are promised high winds this afternoon so we will be staying home.

The sparkle tree shown at left is down but I am accumulating boxes to start working on the rest of them.  I am in Saturday school again this weekend.  Teachers who do work all days of the week really don't want to come back for a half day more.  I didn't work on Thursday so I automatically volunteer to do it if the competition (full time staff)  doesn't want it.

I had a crowd of 12 last week serving Saturday school but this week I have only 4 boys.  The young ones are already bored and even technology isn't keeping them entertained.  I will give them a break after the first hour to go run off some steam. 

The ever changing weather is making me weary.  I don't like the severe cold and the wind is frustrating.  Sunday we are expected to get up to just freezing, 32 degrees, and I will believe it when I see it.

I use to hear from older people than me say that people waited until winter to die.  It has been a tough month of people who have passed away December through January.  Not having close family around we hear of deaths through the internet papers and usually the death is reported two to three weeks later than the death.  I had a first cousin whose husband died at the age of 56 years early this month.  That was a shock as I don't have contact with them much except seeing them at funerals. I didn't know he had died so I didn't make any funeral.  They live in Corning, Iowa.  I still have to make phone calls.  My mother died in 2008 and this past few months two of her Bridge card players have passed away.  I follow the local paper in the  Osceola area on the net just to see who is passing away.  I know a lot of them as members in the communities where I use to live.  My parent's friends or neighbors show up and I have to dig into the obit to see if I do know who they are.  I have a lot cousin's whose extended family, not related to me, who have passed away. 

All of this reminds me of my Uncle Donald's funeral many years ago when a handful of people were at the top of the hill of the Murray Cemetery.  It was 4 degrees, snow was everywhere on the ground, and the funeral tent was flapping madly in the 35 mile and hour wind.  Some just stayed in the car. When the casket was brought to the grave it was myself, my dad, my cousin,  the wife, a neighbor women from the farm and the minister were all that were there.  I guess the pall bearers had to have been there but they were few and they went back to the cars to wait for the final farewell. It was almost more of a surreal experience rather than a real one that happened that day.





Getting off of the death scene I will share a new life.  He is doing well and continues to grow.  I expect to see him walking in pictures before I see him walking again. His chattering also will be close to words as we heard some words from him over Christmas.







Well I will close this down for today.  I will head home after Saturday school duty and hunker down at home.  It is a good day to drink coffee and watch the birds or tv.  I don't have any major framing to do and that is good.  I have to deliver the diploma frame job but the weather has to be better.  I am hoping all of you are doing well and thanks for checking out my post today.

Friday.........

The benefits of a squirrel eating corn above another is the squirrel shells corn in a sloppy manner.  They can shell off an ear of corn pretty quickly but kernels do fall rapidly onto the ground and the don't have great control while they are stuffing their cheeks with corn.  This is another one of the photos my wife took a few days ago.  I did get the  new squirrel feeder built but those photos are on the camera right now.

We had a 2 to 3 inch snow yesterday in less than an hour.  It stopped then and the wind is still blowing it around.  It says that Des Moines is 9 degrees but we had 3 degrees on our thermometer.  It is cold out on the prairie. The city of Des Moines received this snow exactly at the same time people were trying to go home.  The interstates were shut down in places as the mess kept being complicated with blinding snow.  I was glad that I was at home. I did venture out into it to retrieve the  neighbor's garbage cans in the alley and to take my container out for garbage pickup for today.

The begonias really like the windows in winter.  It is cool enough that they can stay healthy and their need for light isn't as demanding as other plants. This plant is in its second year now. I didn't get it planted out into the ground or into a planter.  I just set it on the patio and kept it watered.

Because of the blowing snow and the severe cold the school gave us a two hour delay.  It makes the classed be about 27 minutes long and all classes do meet.  I am in the social studies room today teach three classes of 8th graders and five classes of high school students.  It is a screwing schedule as they have to readjust lunch into the shortened schedule day. 



I hope everyone is doing well and staying safe.  Some of my blogger friends have no snow and others are buried in snow and are freezing in the wild winds.  Thanks for stopping by today.

Thursday.....Where's The Food?

It was like a gift from heaven when an ear of corn just showed up one day.  The first ear to be on the broken down feeder for the whole year.  I do think he is looking up to see when the next ear will fall.  I live in the corn state and I don't like to spend 8 bucks or more for a small bag of corn which we use to pick up off the ground for free after a field was picked.  I did buy a 4 buck bag and was ok with that.  My goal today, right after I finish this blog is to go make a new feeder.  They have chewed up the base and the nail holding the platform has rusted away.  My wife took this shot out of the gallery window.

Can you guess what it is?  I had to take it out of the package and turn it around to see that it is an owl.  The Chinese designers are good about making copies of our traditional ornaments but this guy is not from our culture.  I didn't get a back side view of it but the owl has a tail at the back and he is wearing a scarf tied at the back. He looks more like one of the electronic creatures that Japan or China makes as a remote toy. 

I confess now that it came in this package of 18 ornaments. I had seen them at full price and a lot of the pieces are just like the ones I already have. I don't need any more of these. I had looked for these during all the sales at Wally Mart.  I didn't see them the two times before now but yesterday one was laying among the pile of leftovers.

Seventy five per cent off of everything and most everything was junk.  It's cost was almost free so I picked them up so my kids can throw them away when I am gone.

We are windy again today with 20 degree temps.  The wind makes it miserable to be out there.  I didn't get called in today so I am shuffling around doing odd stuff.  I saw this view and I thought it does give you a taste of the out of doors.  My walk is shoveled and a warm spell melted away some of the snow.  We still have plenty of snow but there are spots where we don't. 

 

One last shot and this will be it for a year.  I won't, I promise, to carry on about this stuff anymore. I lined up all the snow men to see what they had done in making the set as seen above.  One snowman was a Santa Claus.  I do know when  you look closely at these that the cheap means conveyer belt painting.  I don't look close at them or you can see the parts are painted quickly.  Those who paint them are doing a thankless job as they paint the blue mittens continually all day for a lot of days. I have one small Santa in the set that the person was like a portrait artist. They painted exact detailing of the eyes and eyebrows on it unlike the dots that they painted on these snowmen.  

No birds today at my feeder.  I get what I deserve.  I hadn't put out food for a couple of days as it was too cold and it is getting dark when I would get home from school.  I had one downy a little while ago but even with fresh food out there I have not seen one wild bird at the feeder all morning.  That is repayment from the birds for not staying on the job feeding them.

The sun almost shines but the wind stays strong.  Tonight we are to get down to 7 to 9 degrees F. and tomorrow the wind is predicted to be back into the 50 mph range. Wind chills will be freezing our faces again.  One of my blogger friend fell on the ice the other day and it is tough when you fall.  I had not mentioned earlier that I fell on ice twice in a two  week period.  I didn't have severe injuries but the one wrist is still sore and I do think my rib cage was jolted a lot.  We ran into an employee at the Wally Mart with an arm broken and she told me the day was December 22nd, the same day I first fell.  She fell walking out of a store. With the wind, it adds to distraction walking outside so I am super careful anymore.  I walk around like an old man now just like that in which I am. 

Thanks for stopping by today.