Lyra

 On Monday, November 15 at 6 pm EST my sister's yellow lab, Lyra, whom my brother and I picked from a litter in October of 2008, and I got to raise for 5 weeks, passed across the Rainbow Bridge. She was a sweet dog, loved riding in his dad's truck, hanging with my sister while gardening, loved walks. 

A few short months ago she was diagnosed with cancer of the spleen and my sister was told she could go at any time. But Lyra kept hanging on, her heart too strong and she was starting to suffer at the end so she and her boyfriend made the heart wrenching decision to take her to a vet to end her suffering. Took numerous phone calls to find a vet willing to do it that day. Their own vet, who told them about the cancer in the first place, said they couldn't get her in for a week! I don't care what kind of excuses they had, covid, or whatever, that is sickening.  But they did find someone and she is no longer suffering. Here are a couple photos from happier times, Christmas 2020.

L to R: Kaylee, Ziggy, Lyra

Lyra always looked so serious in photos!

She is missed.

It's Done, We're Moved, The House Sold

So we did close on August 28th and took 5 days to finish moving out and cleaning the house. We were out on the September 2nd and the new owners arrived the next day. Heard from the wife a couple of times about internet and how to turn the heater on, they used the thermostat for the wood stove rather than the propane furnace, I forgot to mention they were separate systems. 

We are in the farmhouse that was Hal's parents' and is now owned by Hal's older brother, MSS. Plenty still left to unpack but things are a little tight because the small kitchen attached to the family room as well as a part of the family room has stacks of things purchased for the vacation home MSS and wife are building right next door. Hal's sister, C, is also staying here for a bit (leaving today) and has been extremely helpful with the cleaning of the old house and and unpacking and finding places for things. I'll have to take some photos later of the chaos.

The dogs are a little confused. We've been here a week but I'm pretty sure Ziggy thinks we can go home anytime. Kaylee seems to be handling it a bit better, but she only lived there  2 years, Ziggy, more than 9. But they got to see my neighbor and Seamus 2 days in a row when they came for a visit, so that helped. Plus as there is no fence around the house, they have to stay in the old pheasant pen which is very large and grassy but as they can't run in and out of the house anymore, they spend a lot of time barking, howling and whining. I hope they get used to it, but we're too close to a busy road to leave them loose, and Hal's cousin, who has lived in the mobile home across the driveway for more than 20 years, seems to be afraid of dogs and threatened to pepper spray them, so, better safe than sorry. Just makes things more stressful.

Hal is finally getting back to work on the new house today, he rented a trencher for laying the electric cable between the utility pole and the house, so that is a good thing. He hopes to have it done soon so the garage floor can be poured and the large doors attached so we can heat it in winter and work all winter long. We shall see.

Time for a walk.

The Ketogenic DIet Attempt

When my brother visited last November we somehow got talking about weight loss. I have been unhappy with my weight for a while and for the past few months I just really couldn't get "into" dieting, there is just too much tasty stuff to eat. And of course, there is wine and beer. And juice, love my morning glass of juice. So even though I would buy low fat or nonfat items, and then walk the dogs 3-4 miles a day, the weight kept creeping up and the holidays totally nuked me. From June to mid January I gained at least 6-7 pounds.

My brother mentioned the 3 week Keto diet and that you lose a lot of weight. When I saw my physician's assistant (PA) on January 2 I asked her about it and she said it was a lifestyle change. That is certainly not a 3 week plan. She also says I shouldn't eat bacon every day and often she's seen peoples' cholesterol skyrocket. I told her as she's been wanting to put me on pills for that anyway, so this should work out fine. She did give me the go ahead to give it a try though.

I did a lot of research on Keto, found a lot of conflicting information, (2 week plan, 3 week plan, lifestyle change only, tomatoes are bad, tomatoes are good, etc, convinced Hal to go on it with me, though he thinks he's going with a 3 week version, which will be hard if I decid to continue it, but I'll figure that out later. So after getting over the nasty stomach bug that I saw my PA for, and Hal and I finished up the holiday cookies, etc (dang, we forgot to finish the egg nog!) we started this past Monday, January 21.

I forgot to weigh myself that morning before I ate, as did Hal, so we weighed ourselves Tuesday. As of this morning he has lost 3 pounds and I have lost 3.6 pounds. If I go by my regular weigh-in the previous Friday, I have actually lost 7 pounds! Now I know this is all water weight so far and the real test will be how much I've lost (hopefully) in another week and another week after that. If all goes well I want to keep going because ideally I'd like to lose 25 pounds, hit a weight I haven't seen since I moved away from Virginia 19 years ago. Hal would like to lose 20 though I think he could go a little more than that.

So far I have to say, I'm not craving the carbs and sugar that I've dropped from my diet so far, but I am getting mighty sick of eggs for breakfast every morning. Skipping breakfast today was a bit of a relief. I'l try to post my progress now and then as I go along.

Thanksgiving 2018

Thanksgiving was fun. It was my first one in this house since I moved here 18 years ago. Till now it has been with Hal's parents every year. I invited my neighbor John and his dog Seamus. And my brother was here, too. Hadn't seen him in a little over 3 years. He seems to really like Kaylee, who likes him a lot, too. Ziggy was not ignored either. There was plenty of puppy love to go around.

Dinner was turkey, of course, and mashed potatoes, stuffing, corn (forgot the green beans and the corn, but managed to get the corn done at the last minute). gravy, mushrooms, and wine. Then blueberry and pumpkin pie. Everyone was well fed. The dogs got a bit here and there, too.

I know someone took photos of the table but I can't find them, so you'll jusst have to believe me that it looke good.

Christmas 2018

Christmas was AWESOME. The 4 of us humans had absolutely nothing to complain about and the 3 dogs seemed to have had a good time too. Here are a few photos.

Hal got lots of flannel

There was venison roasted over an open fire, caveman style

Kaylee and her best friend Seaums on top of Seamus' dad

6 month old Kaylee is as big as 10 year old Lyra

little sis enjoying unwrapping her big present

me and my gift box from big sis

wrestling with Kaylee, Ziggy and Seamus

My neighbor John and Seamus, his furry friend, joined us for dinner with was a ham with pineapple stuffing on the side and , green beans, asparagus and mashed potatoes with a pinot noir and a late harvest riesling.

Speaking of Christmas Trees..

So I mentioned a few moments ago that my sister and I looked at balsam trees on our first walk yesterday. Of the hundreds out in the swamp, from 3 inches tall to 40 feet and up, we found 3 that would do including the one I had selected in November.

First up, the tree I picked out last month and was approved by my brother. This one is the farthest away from the house unless we put on waterproof boots and drag it through the swamp, As my boots leak badly it would have to come back along the trails, about half a mile.

The Original Choice

Second is this nice little tree right by the driveway, it's cute, it's small and probably isn't strong enough to support some of my heftier ornaments. Perhaps next year assuming we are still living here.

Perhaps Next Year

And now there is this third tree we discovered in the apple tree clearing out in the swamp that I probably ignored on my initial scouting trip in November. It's tall, probably close to 15 feet and nicely shaped. We have chosen this one, we shall cut it down today. This ought to be interesting as the last time we did this with a shorter one it sort of fell on me. Wish us luck

THE CHOSEN ONE

Back for the Holidays

My younger sister, boyfriend and pup Lyra, Luna's niece came back to the swamp for Christmas on Friday. Lyra had her head out the window and was making all kinds of noise, she knew where she was going, it was funny. And when Ziggy heard her he started doing the same thing, running about like a maniac like his long lost friend had come home. Here is a video of the insanity when they met.

The next day we went out on our first walk and surveyed possible Christmas trees including the one I had originally picked out a month ago. And then Lyra found a good spot to sniff. and Kaylee had to join her.

On our second walk, later in the afternoon while Lyra ranged ahead, Kaylee found a stick and Ziggy decided he wanted it, too.

February Really Sucked

Besides me being sick for the last 3 weeks of it, on the 8th my father-in-law died. He was 83. I'm not going to go into detail, but essentially he got sick, wouldn't go to the doctor till things snowballed and he just gave up. So he's gone, and it feels really weird.

Nothing much is happening otherwise, though Hal started tapping trees for maple sap, and I started crocheting a hat. Maybe I'll have something to post on a cheerier note in a week or so. In fact I forgot to post this and I finished my hat last night. Here it is.

And it snowed a lot, there are 8.5 inches plus of snow out there. Oh joy.

Tiger Game

Went to the baseball stadium the night of the 9th. The Tigers were playing Pittsburgh. The Tigers haven't been doing well but we were treated to a near no-hitter. Justin Verlander was pitching and the final score was 10 to 0!  Had a blast with Hal's sister, older brother and his wife. Tried out my ZS-50 from our seats in row 13 behind the Pittsburgh dugout.

Hicks hit a standup double and advance to 3rd on an error

What's Been Happening?

This is sort a catch up post, probably won't be that detailed but more of a list of things that have happened or are going on etc., whatever I can think of in the next half hour before I go to bed.

In no particular order.

Tonight one of my upper right molars, one that had a root canal and that broke a year ago and was rebuilt and recrowned by my dentist the first time it broke, fell out. Knew it would happen, just didn't know when. I have opted to get an implant because I refuse to need dentures some day. Have to pay fot this whole thing myself as we don't have dental insurance. Ah well, it's a lot of money.

Bought a used small camera last month from a guy on dpreview.com who at first had offered to just give me the same camera I already had because he saw my post about mine have dust on the senosr. Instead I got the Panasonic ZS-50 for a very good price. I haven't been able to do too much with the camera outside because of extremely lousy weather in th month I've owned it but I'll keep trying. Here's a photo I took with it.

metal chicken on the plastic tree

My younger sister and her BF and Lyra were here for 2 weeks at Christmas. We had a very good time. There was food and the men hunted and there was more food. Looking forward to their next visit.

I bought another camera Sunday night and it was delivered yesterday. This one is the Panasonic FZ300. It's almost one  f-stop faster than what I had, 2.8, is weather sealed and has been getting very good reviews. I've seen lots of excellent photos. It's not perfect but for a fixed lens camera with a 600mm zoom for the price I got it for, I'm pretty happy. The weather has been lousy of course, but I managed to go outside with it and take a few photos but they're still in the camera so there won't be any here tonight.

We're dumping DISH as our internet service provider and switching to Exede. Ever since we both got Windows 10 installed on our laptops, the only reason I can think of, we run out of bandwidth less than a week into each month and end up with our download speeds throttled down to somewhere around 128 kbps. It's ridiculous. Five, 5, GB a month? We can't watch you tubes, photo heavy sites are killers. I take photos I am a member of a photo heavy site, both Hal and I are on Facebook. Exede claims we will get 150 GB a month for barely much more. So hopefully, they come tomorrow and internet will be fun to use again.

I bought a shock collar for Ziggy. He has been bad. I won't go into the things he has done but I determined in mid December it was the only thing left to try. It is my second brand, the first was dead in the water when I got it. The new one works great. It has a beep mode, a vibration and the shock. I have not used the shock once. not once! The beep works. I've used the vibration a couple of times and now it's just hit the beep and he comes running. No more screaming my head off for him to come. He's such a well behaved boy now. I hardly even use the beep. I blame the stubborn beagle half of him for having to resort to this but it works. Now Luna is less well behave on our walks.

Okay, it's possible the satellite person could be here at 8 am so I must head to bed.

Good night and Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas

Hal and I, my younger sister (YS) and her significant other (SO) had a pretty great day today. We started with some Pillsbury danish for breakfast, orange and cinnamon, coffee and tea. Then YS and I brought out the stockings and mine was quite the surprise as SO had his mom knit me a new stocking to replace the one that one of my aunts made me when I was a baby. I now have a stocking bigger than Hal's which is very large indeed as it was the first one I ever knitted modelling it on my old one. All I have made since are 20 stitches narrower.

Then we opened the presents under the tree. The tree with presents photos are still in my camera, for now here are the empty tree photos.

No flash

with flash

YS mostly decorated it for me. I usually leave it till she arrives. Call me lazy but I thought it looked great with just the lights and garland.

Dinner was made by SO, a venison tenderloin experiment using bitter chocolate whisked into the au jus. Mashed potatoes mashed with leeks and my green beans made with garlic and oyster sauce.  And dang it! I just remembered we forgot to cook the rolls!

Now we are watching a DVD of Led Zeppelin, Celebration Day. Then we will have chocolate cream pie for dessert.

Yes, a pretty good time. And so did the dogs. Lots of goodies for them, too.

A Quilt for my First Grand Niece

I gave it to her and her dad Saturday after a little birthday party when they stopped at Hal's parent
s home on their way through town. I couldn't mention it till now on my blog the very, very slim chance someone from Hal's family actually read my blog, saw it and spilled the beans. But now it's safe. I used 99% new fabrics, a few I had laying around used in other quilts. Only 2 squares have fabrics used in clothing I made, two aprons last year.

This is one of the many variations of a star square. I used the quilt as you go method, in other words I made each square separately with the batting and backing (in this case flannel) which I then quilted and then stitched together with narrow strips. This is the second time I tried this method, it went a little better than the first time.

I did not do the traditional method of quilt making, i.e. make the whole top in one piece, then the sandwich and then the quilting because I discovered flannel is very stretchy and would bunch and pinch and roll and do horrid things because I just couldn't pin it tight enough so it would not move. It didn't help that I used a fluffier batting than I usually use which made the bunching even worse.

Here it is, very colorful because I have read babies like primary colors. There are twenty 10.5" squares total.

I found 2 coordinating flannel prints that I thought would be great from the back as the family has a golden retriever called Henry who is very much a part of the family. Here is a closeup of the back.

I like it so much I'd like to make a colorful quilt for myself someday.

A Few More Photos from Tower Hill

Henna coleus

I wouldn't mind getting some of this coleus for my garden

 They call this area the Court. That is my older sister way back there on the left.

garter snake

 A denizen of the gardens

young pine cone

 Lots of pines out there.

 I think this is part of the Lawn Garden

 This was definitely out in the Lawn Garden, I love that yellow green tree in the back

 The turtle fountain as seen through some of the fox tails

The turtle fountain in the rain. This is part of the Winter Garden.

Tower Hill Botanic Garden

In June I went back to Massachusetts with both dogs. Stayed with younger sister again and visited with her and my older sister for 2 weeks. One of the things the 3 of us did together was visit Tower Hill Botanic Garden in Boylston just a hop, skip and a jump from where we grew up in Worcester. I'd never been there before because it didn't exist till 1986 and I had left in 1981.

It was a warm day with a short fast storm in the middle but I managed to take a lot of photos. Unfortunately my photo taking techniques were very rusty so for some bizarre reason I upped the aperture 1/3 instead of down 1/3 so I have a lot of photos with blown hgh lights. Still, here are some of the better ones. It was a nice day.

courtyard entrance

near parking lot

 I would love some of these poppies.

grape poppy

I wish the turtle fountain was turned on. Don't know why it wasn't unless there were some sort of water restrictions, there might have been. Oddly, there was a cloud burst in the middle of our visit.

Turtle fountain

large succulent near the turtle fountain pool

another pool

tall water fountain

cool unknown flower. a lot of plants seemed to be missing tags

Hope to go there again someday.

We Did Move that Table

Back in April I showed pictures of the plan to move the dining table into the kitchen assuming the temporary table sized obstacle did not prove to be annoying. After a week or so, we did it. Moved it with help from one of Hal's brothers.

It's been in the kitchen since May 8th and I have not regretted it. That is a very good thing as Hal is not interested in moving it again. It's heavy.

It's a Hat!

I've been very busy all summer. And it's been a hell of a hot one up here. Many days in the 90's, high humidity, and then a weeks long drought that took it's toll on the farmers in the whole state as well as many of my plants. Then there was the deer in the vegetable garden that has essentially killed any chance at decent home grown vegetables this year. Not that I've had many bumper crops in the past, but this has been the worst. But that's for another post assuming I get back to making them. In the meantime:

It's a hat!

This hat is a gift for a SIL and since very few people check my blog at all, I am sure it will be a total surprise when I give it to her. I also took it and 7 other items, both crochet and sewn, to the county fair this week. This shawl is one of them, it's called Leafing Out by designer, Vicki Mikulak at ravelry,com. It's made with Red Heart Unforgettable in the Springtime colorway. This shows it unblocked and with the ends still hanging off of it. I don't expect to win with it as it's pretty simple and the judges don't seem to be fond of variegated yarn, but we'll see when I pick them back up this weekend.

But for now, back to work.

Photos from Christmas 2015 and Early 2016

I have been so busy I haven't been posting. I know I play too many Facebook games and am trying to wean myself off those. I get so much more done not wasting time doing stupid things!

While looking at my photos I and past blog posts I realized I haven't posted any of the dogs during the holidays or really any other time. So, here are a few from then and later in January.

The Christmas tree

I had bought Luna a nice Serta dog bed from Sam's Club because it was a great deal, it has great cushioning for the arthritic older dog, and also cooling gel. I should have bought 2 because Ziggy decided he wanted it for himself.

My wonderful sister-in-law, Hal's sister, went and got me another at a different SC, when the first store no longer had any. Now they are content.

 Although, occasionally, Ziggy still wants to be wherever Luna is. Especially if she is eating something.

 Lyra came to visit at Christmas, of course.

  Ziggy snoozing happily on his bed.

For some reason I can't remember, Luna panicked Christmas morning and just had to climb onto my lap to be rescued. Poor thing is such a nervous Nellie!

Luna in my lap