If you're not gonna fill it...

Photo 281 - June 30

...then we're gonna build something in it. I'm not sure who or what is trying to nest in the bird feeder, but there is quite a bit of stuff in there that I know I didn't put there. I guess that's a hint - use it or we will. I'll have to find them some more sunflower seeds.

I've been waiting to find a good reflection picture to play with. I took my camera along when Trinka and I went walking tonight, and found this shot at the bridge over the Milwaukee River. I think I need a little more sunlight for the next one...the sun was just setting and I'd like it a little brighter.

Today's wildlife

Photo 280 - June 29

If you haven't figured it out yet, my camera is pretty much sitting at the ready next to my desk while I'm at work during the day. Most of the time I even share the pictures I've taken with my boss...who is as enamored with the wildlife as I am. When I was out visiting Kayla when Evelyn was born she texted me pictures of the turkey outside the window. I watch the goldfinches flit back and forth in front of the window all the time, and there's a thistle feeder hanging outside of my line of vision that I know they hang out on, but very seldom will they sit on the feeder in front of my desk long enough for me to even pick up the camera, let alone get off a shot. But today was the exception. I love their color...they are just a flash of yellow when they're flying past my window.

Girlfriend status

Photo 279 - June 28

Yes! I have achieved Girlfriend Status! I have been telling Dale that you must have to be a girlfriend to get anything sent to you from Kosovo, because the girlfriends of the guys he is deployed with have shown gifts online on Facebook that their boyfriends have sent to them. I told Dale that being a wife apparently wasn't high enough on the list. Well today I got my very own box from Kosovo...so I must have achieved Girlfriend Status. Thank you, Dale! I have some very nice shirts to sport around now of Camp Bondsteel and Taskforce Talon. But that boyfriend of mine...he needs to hurry home. I really miss him...

Summerfest!

Photo 278 - June 27

Thanks to Rick and Joyce for letting me tag along with them to the opening night of Summerfest (and thanks for that ticket, too)! I wish I would have had my camera to take these pictures, but my phone did an adequate job of capturing the new BMO Harris stage, where we caught The Steve Miller Band in concert. At 68 the man still has it...his musicality was awesome and his oldies were great to listen to.

Remembering where things belong

Photo 277 - June 26

Today I put the last coat of varnish on the door trim for the hallway, so one of the next things I'm going to need to do to put it up is to paint the hallway. Anyone who has been in my house knows that the hallway is home to my pictures, which were really hung with no symmetry whatsoever in mind. But that does not mean that each picture does not have its place, because it does. Yes - they are a little crooked. I'm sure that's part of the "adjusting" I've had to do to the walls in order for the interior trim to sit flat. I decided that instead of pulling all of the nails and having to reposition them all after painting, I just took a picture of all of them instead. So rebuilding that wall won't be such a huge undertaking once the paint dries and the pictures can go back up. I had high hopes of painting tonight - either the hallway or James' room - but too much spackling and prep work is still required. Hopefully all of the walls will be ready for painting soon.

New Guilty Pleasure

Photo 276 - June 25

After colorizing my first flower pictures yesterday, I have started looking at some of my flower photos differently. I'm starting to compose them with just colorizing in mind - what flower can I include, and keep the background as free of clutter as possible. And my next project is to try to turn one of my pictures into a watercolor...Kayla is excited. We've decided that we're probably going to have the same artwork hanging in our houses. She said no worries - she'd hang them in different rooms.

New Tires and New Projects

Photo 275 - June 24

I finally went ahead and got new tires on Saturday. I knew that the next time I went in for an oil change I would hear about it if I didn't. All of these guys have Dale's back while he's gone in looking out for me. And I know that's good. I was just really fortunate that we had such a mile winter so I didn't notice how bad the tires really were. Here they are, Dale - and they don't look much different than the old ones.

When I was at Strawberryfest yesterday there were some people selling flower prints. I was amazed to see that they were charging $20 for an 8 x 10. And Laura said that mine were better anyways. That's always nice to hear, but I'm not sure I always believe it. One of they styles I saw was to only colorize the flower, and leave the background black and white. I figured with the amount of flowers in my garden, and Photoshop, I could give that a shot. My first attempt was good, but there was too much distracting background. My second attempt I'm really proud of. It will probably find a spot on my wall, as well as Kayla's wall.

Strawberry Festival

Photo 274 - June 23

I would have loved to take my camera with me to Strawberry Festival, but that would have just been too much to carry. The people were wall to wall, but after a little bit of strawberry blush wine, I did come away with some treasures. And for the record, Laura didn't finish that bottle all by herself.

Color Conundrum

Photo 273 - June 22

Well, I'm in the last bedroom...one more to paint and trim. James' room has been my working storage area, so the first thing I had to do this week was move all of the closet doors out to the garage. And those 36" suckers were heavy. I still have a few more things to move before I start painting, but they can be tucked into Laura or Kayla's room. The biggest problem I'm having is my "color conundrum" over which color to paint the walls. My tactic has been to get the bedding, and then choose the paint color to match. And up until now, that's worked really well. I haven't been torn - the color I wanted pretty much jumped out at me...until now. I confess that I am leaning heavily towards the blue on the right, but the green on the left keeps nagging at me too. There are so many colors in the quilt that I have a lot of choices. I agree with Dale's comment that the green blends really well with the bedding, but there's just something about how that blue looks when I leave the paint chip sitting on it. The vote so far has been overwhelmingly blue (sorry, Dale)...and I'm thinking that's probably the way the coin will fall. The biggest excitement, though, is last bedroom!

Busted...

Photo 272 - June 21

Cindy has kept complaining at how the deer keep cleaning out her bird feeders. And it's not like she has anything special in them that they should be attracted to - just straight sunflower seeds. Today I caught the doe in the act...as she nonchalantly emptied probably half of the feeder right in the middle of the morning. She did not look very concerned that anybody was going to bother her.

More decorating

Photo 271 - June 20

One more wall hanging in the house! This one was on back order when I found it, and what I really liked about it was that it used real gemstones as accents. It's going to need a little rearranging of branches, but all in all I think it's going to look very nice when it's hung up. Right now I'm leaning towards putting it in Laura's room.

It's sprouting!

Photo 270 - June 19

When Dale and I were in Hawaii, I found some native plants that were prescreened and available to bring back onto the mainland. Otherwise, there are some pretty big fines involved in smuggling organic material without it being inspected first. After 3 months, I have two of the three plants that I brought back finally sprouting, and I'm most excited about the plumeria! I'm hoping the summer gives it a good growing start!

At the feeder

Photo 269 - June 18

We keep getting new birds at the feeder, and neither Cindy or I know what they are. I seriously think I need to invest in a bird book to keep in my desk drawer just to be able to identify them when they come to hang out. I swear he's staring me down in this picture.

Plus the orioles have been visiting regularly since Cindy is feeding them jelly.

Revamped

Photo 268 - June 17

I was happy to go outside this morning and find that first, my beans were intact, and second, so were the plants that I put in my flower garden yesterday. A couple of my lillies were broken off, but that can also be attributed to Trinka chasing the rabbits out of the yard. Unfortunately, they know that she's not out there 24/7, and know when she's not they pretty much have free reign to claim any snack they can find. I know that without a "before" picture it's hard to see how much actual effort I had to put into revamping this garden, but suffice it to say that this is 100% improvement over what it looked like, and I am excited to see how everything grows this year.

Busy day outside...and #*&@%^+ rabbits!!

Photo 267 - June 16

Today's photos are courtesy of the iPhone...a very handy tool to have along when your camera is still at home and a photo opportunity presents itself. What I really should have done today was thought to take before and after photos of the garden I entirely revamped. It's hard to appreciate it unless you can see how invasive the plants were that I pulled out. Oh well. It looked pretty awful, so maybe it's better if I document the finished product instead of the nightmare it was. That won't be until tomorrow, though, because I wasn't done until dark.

This morning when I went outside, I was very unhappy to find that the rabbits must have been pissed off that I anchored the fencing around the bean pole, and they couldn't get at them. So they chewed through the fencing instead. Mind you, we have used this fencing for years, and once upon a time it enclosed the entire garden, and not once did they decide the chew on it. Apparently the aroma of my bean plants was too much for them to handle. My wonderful neighbor, Barb, gave me some chicken wire to use, so now I am hoping that my beans will be intact in the morning.

After the flower garden was cleaned out of its pests, I had to take all of the remains to the Village compost pile, since there was way too much to fit in my little mulching box. Imagine my surprise when I stopped to gas up the truck, and found a wasp nest behind the gas door. It didn't seem to be too heavily populated, so I pumped my gas, closed the door, and proceeded on with my business. All in all it was a pretty productive day, even though I didn't get anything accomplished inside. The poor outside needed some attention. Now if I could only get the stupid nozzle disconnected from the hose, maybe I could get some grass watered too.

Got my bone back

Photo 266 - June 15

Trinka loves to chew...so much that she's a destructive chewer and all of her toys eventually become virtually annihilated. We used to give her nylon bones, but the way she chews on them, they get lots of edges on them that like to grab the carpet. And since we have berber downstairs, plus a berber rug in the living room, once she got a pull started it was game on. Luckily, there's only a small spot downstairs she pulled, but after going through two living room rugs, the bones were banished. Lately, Jeff gave me a great idea, which I should have thought of on my own a long time ago. He puts the bones outside for the dogs. So I retrieved the three nylon bones that had been living on top of the refrigerator and threw them outside. Trinka's thrilled...although, as you can see, her biggest goal right now is to peel all of the green rubber off of the outside of the bone.

So why couldn't I get this shot the other day?

Photo 265 - June 14

Why couldn't I get the shot? Probably because the light was wrong and the wind was blowing...and any other number of things out of my control that screw up the shots I want to take. I took a bunch of shots of the center of the purple clematis earlier in the week, but I couldn't get the focus on the center. This morning, with the sun shining on it, it worked out much more like I had hoped. Again - it's going to be hard to whittle down the small number of pictures that will be able to hang in the living room. Maybe I'll have to take the bright ones and share them in the bedrooms too.

Help! There's something in my eye!

Photo 264 - June 13

Watching this bird at the feeder today was very entertaining. I told Cindy that he kept turning his head sideways to get it into the feeder to get just the food he wanted, but in the process, he kept getting seeds stuck to his eyeball. He'd either wipe it off on the tray, or he'd scratch it off like a dog. I cannot say I've ever seen a bird scratch quite that much. And if anybody can identify this little guy - please help us out!

Looks so cool in the camera...

Photo 263 - June 12

I really enjoy my macro photography. It's really challenging to try to get the lighting right, and keep the flowers in focus, because the smallest amount of wind throws everything off. And the shots look amazing on the little 2 x 3 screen of my camera. My hope is always that they look that good when I download them and look at them on the big screen. The more I take, the more difficult it is going to be to choose the handful that will be printed and put up in my new frames in the living room.

Feed us, Mommy!

Photo 262 - June 11

A few years back I bought a wren house at the Fish Day craft fair. That is one of my favorite craft fairs, and a good number of my outdoor decorations have come from my purchases there over the years. I laughed when I came home one day and found that Dale had mounted the wren house on a pole probably 15 feet off the ground, which in my opinion was a bit too high. But the wrens have come, and this year is no exception. The babies are really loud when they know that Mom is outside with food.

Another bedroom!

Photo 261 - June 10

Yes, the walls are really that green. Laura didn't think she'd like it, and has referred to this as the "Circ de Soleil" room since I picked out the bedding and she saw a picture of it. But when she saw it put together today, she actually conceded and said she likes it. And the best part of this? Andy came over and helped move my dresser back in from the garage, so all of my clothes now officially live in the house! They don't officially live in the dresser yet, but we're getting closer.

Today's helper

Photo 260 - June 9

OK, so he wasn't really a helper, he was actually kind of in the way. And he certainly wasn't in too much of a hurry to move - even when I was spreading the mulch.

Love my flowers...

Photo 259 - June 8

With all of the inside projects I have going on (probably way too many simultaneously), my outside is getting more neglected than I would like. This weekend is supposed to be quite warm, so my first project in the morning is to put the last coat of varnish on the baseboards for Laura's room, and then it's off to work outside. Last weekend I picked up a yard of cedar mulch, so I will be cleaning the weeds out of my flower beds and then freshening them back up. I might even find some time for a trip to get some new perennials.

Beans!

Photo 258 - June 7

Last year, I ordered a structure so I could have something for pole beans to grow on, to try to maximize my garden, since I downsized it. Well, the stupid thing was on backorder, and I didn't end up getting it until after the end of the growing season. The beans that I did plant were systematically chewed off by the rabbits, and I didn't end up getting any. This year, I am ahead of the game. I put up the structure, planted the beans, and enclosed it in some of the plastic netting I use to wrap up my fragile rose bushes. As you can see, the work paid off. The beans have sprouted, and once they get a little bigger and start climbing up the cage, I think I should be able to get rid of the fencing. My goal is to be able to grow enough to make dilly beans. This is my first trial and error with pole beans, so I'm pretty interested to see how they turn out.

The turkey's back...

Photo 257 - June 6

We have had more wildlife visiting us lately...but it's been a lot of fun to watch. Today we had a visit from the oriole, who actually landed on the feeder. Cindy says it was probably looking for the dried fruit that is in the bird food she's been getting lately.

The turkey was also back, and ventured a little closer to the house. I am amazed at how fast she walks through the yard. She doesn't seem to be comfortable out in the open, and cruises through the yard looking for a more sheltered spot to hang out.