Dan's Ramblings

Dan here ~

It certainly cooled off after the weekend. Monday and Tuesday were very chilly but was not too bad walking when the wind wasn’t blowing. The dirt road I walk on is mostly in the woods and is out of the wind. Where I notice the wind blowing is at the house. It seems like it is always blowing down one pond or the other, trying to pick us up as it goes by.

Tuesday night picture taken about 9:30 with a 3 second time lapse.

It would have been a nice night for a walk out on the ice, but alas I don’t really trust it. The pond was making a lot of noise as I snapped it’s picture. Cracking and belching (at least that’s what it sounded like) During the warm spells we saw spots where there were apparent holes in the ice. I’m sure it’s fine but I don’t know as I want to go out and walk around in the moonlight and see if I can fall in one. Maybe that is something to do during the day, walk out and drill some holes. But then again it’s going to melt soon anyway, Spring’s coming.

Moving on. A little reminder of spring. 

I also found this picture of Big Bertha, our huge Jade plant. 

This was taken January 1, 2014 in my old greenhouse. It loved it in there in the winter, (as did I) lots of sunlight and cool enough temperatures at night to blossom. It was beautiful in full bloom.

When I opened the window Tuesday evening to get the picture I showed you earlier, there was a raccoon at the bird feeder. It was shy and did not let me get his picture. Luckily the feeder was pretty empty anyway. The food I have been using this season has a lot of black hull sunflower seeds in the mix. I have always shied away from them and spent the extra dollar and bought sunflower hearts instead. Less mess and still liked by lots of different birds. The other big advantage is that for sunflower seed to germinate the entire seed is needed, hull included. I will be curious to see if I have a jungle of sunflowers on the beach etc. this coming season. There are black hulled seeds aplenty all over the ground and out onto the snow on the beach that is up to the level of the top of the retaining wall. I guess it will depend upon how high the water is this spring. It seems like there will be a fair amount of snowmelt come spring. Time will tell.

No new project yet, I’m still cleaning up scrap bins and filling different bins with the now “sized” pieces. 

Also ruminating over ideas based on a size that I appear to have an over abundance of. This size has 2 large and 1 smaller drawer packed full and that is…. 5” charm squares. There must be tens of thousands of them.

I would really like to see some of these either get cut into different sizes and used, or sewn into something as is. Thus making room in the bins for additional cleanup. I found a couple of Carol’s older quilt books for some ideas, “Nickel Quilts” and “More Nickel Quilts”by Pat Speth. I don’t really know if I need ideas, I can probably come up with more than enough on my own. We’ll see.

Enjoy your week.