Driving Around the County

I showed you this picture of flooded fields from Stranger Creek the other day. 

Here it is today: 

Hmmmm kind of a hazy picture.... 

but... you get the picture.  The water has receded. 

I actually drove out there after Jax's game tonight... and went all the way to the bridge. 

There is still a LOT of water in the creek, but we are not expecting rain for a week or so now. 

I know a lot of farmers who are happy about that. 

I took this the other day. 

Actually, there were three. 

I am trying to remember to check my settings before snapping that first picture! 

This absolutely GORGEOUS bird is a green heron, my first ever! 

I ran over to the Ag Hall on Monday to check on the chickens, and 

saw him.  I could not believe my eyes. 

The straw bales are doing... okay.  I am going to work on them tomorrow. 

I think I am not watering enough, and was depending on the rain. 

Tomorrow they get water and fertilizer. 

(The grass growing is okay) 

I have only lost two plants, a cucumber and a watermelon.  

Actually...

Even though it was bitten off.... it is regenerating.  See that hole????  Hmmmm. 

My faithful Jester is on mouse patrol.  Since I took this picture on Monday, 

I have removed more of these things from the patio.  We are trying to follow the 

mouse man's guidelines, and I am cleaning, cleaning, cleaning.  

I am VERY close to stopping feeding for a few days while I am 

gone to the Blogville Awesome Retreat in Indiana from the 8th thru 

the 12th. 

I had to run to the store on Monday afternoon, and I took the camera. 

I stopped at Angel Falls Trail and walked down to see how the creek 

was flowing since the rains. 

I could hear it before I saw it. 

(Holy cow, I have NEVER Had a video load on Blogger as fast as that one! 

Turn it up if you can, so you can hear it. 

So... we have hired a company to get the mouse situation under control here. 

I can't bear killing ANYTHING, let alone a mouse.  I told the young man we could not do sticky traps, I can't torture.  He is snap trapping and coming daily to empty them. 

We are not winning at the moment.  We ARE down about 20 mice in the last week. 

I took it outside.  I'm sure it's back in here somewhere tonight. 

Thank heavens I am plugging the drain and the garbage disposal at night, and 

now you see why. 

Catching Up

Friends, I did not know it had been a week since I last posted. 

Sometimes life just rushes past us. 

Yesterday was the second anniversary of our loss 

of Brandon, Keith's youngest boy. 

It seems as if time  has rushed these last two years, with this 

loss and our move, and Keith's illness. 

Anyway, I will try to get caught up. 

Here is a big-eared little friend enjoying some bird seed 

on the patio. 

Oh, if only his friends weren't invading the house, and 

making me realize that the feeding must stop for a while, and 

traps be set again. 

If I just didn't like to watch the birds so much! 

The babies are doing well, at least three are moving around and vibrant, 

and unlike this past year, I am seeing mother there daily feeding them. 

Yesterday was the Tractor Cruise at the Ag Hall. 

There were all kinds of old tractors, restored and not restored, all running. 

The participants (some were ladies) had driven them to Tonganoxie, and back... and were loading 

so they could go down to the barn and have a good dinner. 

While all this was going on... a troop of boy scouts was setting up shop to camp out 

last night.

They had other, smaller tents set up near the tree line. 

What a wonderful place to camp. 

And interesting companions. 

The scoutmasters (four dads) were 

overseeing the boys cooking on the grill. 

I hope they had a good night, because it has been storming here since

mid-morning this morning. 

I have been trying for many weeks to get a picture of a cardinal. 

This is a MUCH cropped picture, I was trying to get a picture of the mockingbird, 

and when I saw it in the camera I realized I had got him picking a bug out of the air. 

Serendipity. 

That's the National Farmer's Memorial mound behind him, throwing so 

much white in the picture. 

Look what I was working on yesterday! 

In the morning, I went to Leavenworth, where I bought tomatoes from a young 

woman who raises them in her basement, as I did last year. 

I bought four different kinds.  She also was selling geraniums she had started from slips... I bought ten, at a dollar apiece!  

I will be pulling the grass from the bales, but it also signifies that there are no herbicides in the bales (and that's a good thing).  

Then I stopped at Home Depot and got four pickling cukes and two watermelon slips. 

As you see, I filled the well in the middle of the bales and put the watermelons there, 

I will train them out the sides. 

See the tomato supports?  They are simply protecting the tomatoes for a few days, 

because they will not hold in the bales.  I am going to have to bite the bullet 

and build a trellis system, with some tee poles and some twine. 

I wish you could have seen the black gold that was happening in the 

bales, it was incredible.  I will try to get a picture this week. 

There were also lots of mushrooms that had come up and died off in the bales, 

also a good sign that they are working inside. 

While I was working, we had a flyover.  The Nascar races were this weekend at Kansas Speedway, about ten miles from our house. 

They actually flew over and back around at least six times.  

I wish you could have heard them! 

My feathered friends were chattering non-stop trying to hurry me along. 

The dogs had been out there, but it was very humid, and I soon took them 

back in the house. 

I will be working on the patio this week and will take pictures. 

Okay, this was odd.  

I turned a corner this morning on the way to church, and there were two hens walking down the road. 

The only people I know on this road that keep chickens are the people that sell eggs at the road, and these hens were about a half mile from that house.  

Strange. 

They were nice birds. 

I am not so sure that isn't a rooster above, now that I look at it.

I passed the little pasture pond I have shown you so many times: 

There are three birds in that picture. 

I turned the corner... 

Uh huh.  It's that time again. 

The sun was short-lived... and we expect storms off and on all week. 

It's storming again now, so I am going to end this long, long entry. 

I hope everyone had a grand Mother's Day! 

Lots of Pictures on a Cold Day

We start off with one that made me laugh. 

You know that we are fighting a mouse infestation. 

That's a begonia plant I am trying to overwinter in the spare bedroom.

I'll be darned if it doesn't look like a mouse has tunneled down into it. 

There is a hole on the left, by the withered stalk. 

Now I don't know whether to water or not. 

When we lived in the country, I often restocked the feeders up to six times a day, 

and I went through thousands and thousands (NO EXAGGERATION) of pounds of 

birdseed for the wildings every week of the winter. 

Today was the first time I restocked six times and on a far smaller basis. 

I also refreshed warm water. 

It was horribly windy, as well as bitterly cold. 

This was our side yard pond yesterday, after a few days of off and on rain. 

It was frozen by this morning. 

We had lots of visitors. 

Including a woodpecker eating on the ground. 

Because these guy's friends were hanging on the feeder eating the suet (starlings). 

I looked back through the pictures I took from the bedroom window, and realized I got none of the purple finches, there were MANY of them. 

Hundreds of these were flying back and forth over our house... we are surrounded by bean and cornfields. 

You see how cloudy it was, I could not get a good picture. 

I left for church early so I could take some pictures.  I get vertigo a little, and I was scared to get too 

close to the railing over the bridge over Stranger Creek. which is really running high. 

The Big Ditch was half frozen, half thawed. 

The clouds had finally started to move a little. 

I saw these two in a field, I think the one on the left may be a buck, but they were far away and it was almost dark. 

And then.... I went along the road where we passed the mallards yesterday, and where I picture the Angus cattle all the time. 

And then, beyond the little pond... FAR beyond the little pond... 

I saw a group of something. 

I finally decided it was the Angus herd, let out in the cornfield behind their pasture to clean it up. 

I thought it was pretty good of their owner to let them out to graze on the leftover corn. 

It was almost dark. 

Can you see them????

I counted fifteen, and they were not cows, they were deer!  I couldn't believe I was 

seeing so many at one time. 

I have some classes to take at the camera store, and I hope to learn how to take 

challenging pictures like this. 

Wow. 

What Jess and Lil did most of the day, and what Jess and I are about to do together on the couch in front of the tv.  

Have a quiet weekend! 

I went back and lightened up a picture of the deer herd... 

Thoughts for Tuesday

I just read all the comments from 

yesterday's Mouse Post. 

I laughed out loud at some of them... 

Yes, Stella Rose Long... I would GLADLY 

take Kevin's 951 cats, I miss having a kitty... but

Lilly. 

She won't tolerate a cat.  She tolerated Nicky and 

Gwen, and ALMOST tolerated Josie and Jenny. 

When we lost Jenny, she ran Josie off when she 

got outside one day, and never let her come back. 

I found two dead half-grown kittens in the yard at the old place... 

not Josie... but my point is, she won't stand it. 

As she is ten this year, I am not going to bedevil her. 

Keith has found these: 

We tried them last night. 

Yes, I had to kill them, or facing driving out in the country 

daily to dump mice from the humane traps. 

It was finding "mouse pills" in the dressers that did it. 

So... we tried these, and they WORK!  They are a 

snap trap, the mouse dies pretty much instantly, 

and you pull back the lever and drop it out into 

your trash bag.  

We got three last night, and I have two 

baited traps up here right now, and 

Keith got me two more today. 

So... we are trying. 

Someone (Jaz?) mentioned the poison... we are 

scared the dogs will get the mice as they die. Three months 

ago I used the poison in the pantry behind everything, and two mice came out and 

died in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor. 

I'm hesitant to use it again. 

I also used expanding foam insulation to seal off one wall 

where we had to strip the drywall two months ago.  

I know some were coming through that way.  

We will get nephew Brandon here in a couple of weeks 

to re-drywall that wall for us. 

I can't put that (flammable) foam near the furnace, so I am 

putting chore boys around the pipe run there. 

We are not going to have many new pictures over the next few weeks... tomorrow we are going to have a little snow/rain mix... though we may get to go walking around noon. 

Rain the next 3 days... and then Saturday COLD and rain, and single digits at night. 

I won't walk the dogs in the extreme cold. 

I say this is a Cooper's Hawk, seen on a pole on Leavenworth Road.  What say you, 

Friend Jill? 

Here he is in flight, gorgeous! 

You know my favorite pond, and little herd of Angus cattle... 

I noticed today that 2015's calves are gone. 

However, I drove past all the cows, noted the pond was skimmed over with ice... and then saw Big Daddy in the far corner of the pasture by the road. 

You don't wanna mess with these guys. 

He almost seems to be saying that! 

Now I have a comment to make about our wide world, and 

how fantastic the internet is that has brought us together. 

Saturday night, I was sitting in front of the tv, but 

actually just reading.  

My phone pinged with a message on Facebook Messenger. 

It was my friend Nell, from New Zealand! 

8 years or so ago, Nell and I became friends through 

our love of theater, she is an actress, and I house-managed 

a theater in downtown KCMO.  We have stayed in touch all 

through the years, though on opposite sides of the world.  We 

don't "talk" regularly, but we do stay in touch. 

She knew I used to scrapbook (and am starting again), and 

had questions, so she shot me a message.  I was able to answer

her questions and send her examples. 

My point is.... this would never have happened without the internet, which can 

bring so much happiness into our lives if we use it wisely. 

Another case in point... 

I just read Dean Jensen's "Queen of the Air", about 

Lietzel, the top performer on Ringling Brothers Circus in 

the twenties and thirties.  

She married Alfredo Codona, who himself was a top star, 

and was the first to perform the triple somersault regularly. 

She died in a fall from her apparatus in Copenhagen at a music hall;  back 

then, when the show went into winter quarters, many of the performers went to 

Europe to perform.  One of her swivels crystallized, and came apart. 

She was famous for one armed planges, where she threw her body up and over itself, over and over, 

I think her record was 250 times at one performance. 

Her shoulder would dislocate, and then go back in.  She had NO fear of heights... 

and was an amazing acrobat.  I especially love how she descended on the web, got to the ground, styled... and wripped her wrist wrap off and threw it before she bowed.. Such a performer! 

(Alfredo Codona married again after her death, to Vera Bruce, 

who was in his act with his brother and he... and he 

shot and killed her in an attorney's office when their marriage broke up, and 

committed suicide the same time) 

I am going to TRY to embed a short video featuring her from You Tube... 

because here is my point again... 

I sat down at the computer after reading the biography... just out of curiosity looked to 

see if I could find a video of both the Flying Codonas, and Lietzel. 

Lietzel died in 1931. 

THERE WERE TWO OF LIETZEL.  

Here was this woman who died 88 years ago... and we can watch her, albeit on a scratchy tape... 

but we can SEE her.  

https://youtu.be/kermOBHeGUA

Lietzel tape

If you click on Lietzel tape, it will give you the option to go to the short video clip. Remember, there is another taken during a Ringling performance.  

Incredible. 

There are also several of the Flying Codonas.  The Codonas were in the Wintergarten in Berlin when Lietzel fell in Copenhagen. 

So... a third point, and 

sorry that this is getting to be so long. 

MDH Keith just walked upstairs to tell me he has 

just spent 30 minutes on the phone with a man with whom he served almost 30 years ago in the Army.  They got re-acquainted on the web about 2 weeks ago... and the man, a CEO of a huge major international corporation, just called Keith to yak about old times. 

It turns out the man grew up in KCK, where I did... belonged to a parish where I went to church for a while... so you see, folks, the world is a very small place.  Keith might never again have spoken to his friend , were it not for the web. 

Yes, it can be a wonderful agent for good. 

The Mouse House

This picture represents a pickle we are in at present. 

We have been invaded by mice, I mean invaded!  They are in 

our dressers... not, so far, the cupboards where our plates 

and tableware are... but in our clothes dressers. 

UGH.  

The pantry, where everything I have is now in plastic.  

You know I can't kill anything, and we tried humane trapping... but I 

was facing a trip every single day to release mice out in the country. 

We have decided we have to kill them. 

One (or more) has been chewing between the sink cabinet and the dishwasher, and 

I have cleaned up numerous piles of what you see here, and I am afraid we 

are going to have a mess with the dishwasher.  As of today, we are 

using Tomcat traps that kill the mouse inside FAST, like a snap trap... we 

don't have to touch it, and can open the door and drop it into the trash. 

YES, this hurts me.  I can't kill anything... but since putting one down 

an hour ago, Keith has killed one, and I think I just heard the trap under the 

sink snap. 

Ugh. 

I hate doing it, but I hate mice ON our beds, etc. etc.  Keith took a nap in 

our spare bedroom today, and when I went in to wake him up, 

I found a mouse poop on the next pillow over. 

This is where it stops. 

These guys are amazing.  They have walked in the cold for a week now... this morning, Keith had an early doctor's appointment and he told me to stay in and keep the dogs in, because of the cold. 

I was already at the post having blood drawn, and told him I would stay in after errands... but...

we walked at noon.  So proud of the dogs, we are not working a full mile but we ARE walking!

I have seen this little guy in the rafters of one of the picnic shelters at 

the city park in Basehor, and after I loaded the dogs in the car, I 

grabbed the camera and went back to look. 

It looks to me that it has been living here for a while, instead of a nest in a tree. It is actually protected from winds, where it is living. 

The only hawk we saw close enough to get a picture! 

These two guys were in one of the Bradford Pears in our front yard as the dogs and I got home... and Saturday night, there were six males and four females on the patio, among the last to eat. 

They were last in the country, too. 

There are actually four males in this terrible picture taken with my phone through the window. 

I just took this ten minutes ago, 4:50 PM. 

I took this on the way home from church on Saturday night.  There was hardly any light left, and I was actually following a bird in the sky when I saw these.  If you click on this picture and make it bigger, you will see a nice surprise on the right! 

I have Christmas down, except for the spare bedroom tree.  I like it so much, I'm leaving it up!