Trapped!

 

No, he's just keeping cool in the crotch of the pear tree. It must be cooler there than it is in his nest up above.
I don't know why he stays in our yard. L. has quit buying peanuts for him and his friends.
The dogs harrass him and chase him from tree to tree.
But maybe he likes the shade and teasing the dogs.

For all the people who have to work outside in this heat, and for the animals, we are all hoping for a break in this weather.

Bike Rider

 

This guy and his mate were for sale in the hospital gift shop. If he had been under thirty-eight dollars, I might have bought him.
The little red birds were much less - but then the thought came: DUST CATCHERS.

Big airplane and two small boys

This is a B36 bomber parked at Love Field outside Dallas, TX, in the '70's. I don't know if it's still there or not.

A Boy and his Bike

I love the devil-may-care look and the banana seat.  Early 1970's, I think.

Water Bill

I wonder if anyone else had a water bill double last month.  We don't use city water on the lawn but we have a huge jump in the charge for city water.

L. is out checking for a leak now.

Moon Flowers at Night

 

The point and shoot does a pretty good job of lighting up the moon flowers.

The Stencil

These two entries are in reverse order. So read the Graffiti one first. :( I decided not to wait till tomorrow.)
There is a nice article in today's Hutch News about the project. The city and a church cooperated in this project and spread out over the city yesterday. This sign is to alert folks not to dump grass, leaves, oil, paint or other toxic things in to the drains.

Graffiti?

 The dogs were barking. Looking out the front window I saw three people spray painting on our city sidewalk near our fireplug. By the time I grabbed the camera, they were across the street, doing the same thing with a stencil.
They did both corners and then the two women and two old hippies took off north down the street.

I'll show you tomorrow why they were using paint to deface the sidewalks.

Silkless Corn

 Not everything you see on the internet works (or is factual.) When I saw a demo of cooking corn in the microwave, four minutes per ear, two ears at a time, and removing the husk and silks easily - well, I had to try it. L. brought home some corn from the roadside stand.

Let's just say it works and the corn was delicious.

Celluloid Toy

At least I think this is what we used to call "celluloid."

This toy has been around for a long time. I think that 80 years ago this might have been what you bought for a baby (?)  At least someone bought it for me then.

It has a ring for hanging long before there were mobiles. I cannot imagine letting an infant play with this. There are small bells hidden by the strings hanging in place of hands and feet.

The other day I was dusting and noticed that this needed the touch of a dust cloth. Well, the right arm fell off and the four beads were scattered.
This morning L. and I decided we would try to fix it. The string is not exactly rotten but it's not very strong. We found a long needle with a big eye and strung the "arm" back together. How to get it back in the tiny hole. My idea was glue. Not good. What would glue do to that old material?  L. had an idea. A small piece of wood fastened to the string and poked in the hole. The wood could hold it in place.
Toothpicks split when I tried to make a hole with another needle. Metal, we needed metal. Ahhh, Another needle. With excess cut off and the eye squeezed shut to hold the string with a knot in it, we finally got it shoved in and the repair was done.

This only took about an hour and a half.
I wonder if this could be considered an antique.

Makeover

 

We lived in this house for 45 years.  Whoever bought it certainly improved the looks on the outside! 

Supper

We like salmon patties.  So I looked for a new way to make them. (who needs a recipe for salmon patties? Evidently I do.) I found many options called Salmon Croquettes. I guess that is what they call them in fancy restaurants.  My mom called them patties and so do I.
I found one with some added ingredients to make them a little different - can of corn, diced green pepper, onion and ketchup. Everything went well until I tried to flip them. Discovered my one and only spatula was in the middle of a dish washer cycle so I used a pie server and a spoon.

Let's just say we had Scrambled Salmon Patties but they were very good.

 Oh, and I forgot to include the ketchup.

Kitchen Kazoo Band

Somehow the text I wrote disappeared when I posted this photo.
So here it is again.

This is from the late '30's or early '40's. Note how the military look is achieved by the white plastic spoons.

I'm not able to identify most of the instruments but I do see an angel food cake pan and a push-type carpet sweeper.

I'm pretty sure these ladies enjoyed this but in this particular shot they do not look very happy.

The Non-Battle over the Thermostat

It's cool this morning. Furnace is fired up while the other half takes a shower.

Later the A/C will be cranked to keep us cool while outside the temperture flirts with one hundred.

I never touch the control. It's set to automatically control the temperature but someone else believes in helping. A friend said, "Doesn't that thermostat belong partly to you too?" My answer: "May be but I don't touch it."

I know how to pick my battles.

Father's Day

 This is my dad on his way to work. He worked outside as a lineman and later, foreman, for Kansas Power and Light. This photo was taken in the winter as you can tell by the layers of shirts and the coat over his arm.
He was out in all weather, often at night during a storm. He did this for almost forty years.
I miss him. He was very quiet. He expressed his love through actions more than words.
He was a very neat person and a stylish dresser.  He and my mom adopted me, a skinny little baby with some health problems, and nobody could have asked for a better place to land!
A strong union man, he had worked before they had a forty hour week or minimum wage. "Look for the union label" was a slogan we used to buy stuff.
He loved his grandsons and at his retirement dinner he said he was going to have them teach him how to fish.

Happy Father's Day to all those great dads out there.

The Dragonette Gang of Initiates

 

1949
What a bevy of beauties! Hutch Juco freshwomen.

Blessed Rain

We received 2.20 inches of rain officially last night. Our gauge shows 2.5 inches.

In the far corner of the yard one moon flower is blooming. If the sun comes out soon, it will close.

Flag Day

 

Beautiful even at rest.

New Utensil

We received this in the mail to replace an old one with chewed handles that happened to get put in a trash barrel by mistake. That barrel was emptied into the poly cart and then to the landfill.

L. searched our town for a replacement. The pet stores, the big box stores and the hardware stores all had a plastic model with a spring loaded mechanism - to be used with one hand.

We found exactly what we wanted on Amazon. It arrived today so now we can save the plastic bags (recycled from the grocery store) for the times we clean up the back yard.

We wish all the dog walkers would use some type of bag. Our veterinarian stated that he has taken a bag out to a walker who had no intention of "picking up." A good idea but a little worrisome in this day and age. Owner and dog need to be friendly for this to work.

Good Monday

Instead of coffee, our group had lunch at the best Mexican restaurant in our town.
Later in the afternoon I had a trip to see a new doctor. The one I had seen for eight and a half years left town. I chose to stay with his former office mate.

He had very good news. We are going to  continue the same treatment as the last two years - nothing. Almost everything in the blood report is normal and stable. I am a very lucky to have survived with chronic leukemia for thirty-one years.  No treatment was started until 2003. The quote from my (since retired) doctor in 1981 was, "We won't bother it if it doesn't bother you" and "If you have to have one, this is the one to have."

As my friend, Barb, says, Count your blessings. I certainly do.

Cone Flower

One of only a few buds that appeared this year. Maybe there will be more later. Could the "too warm" winter have confused them?

Actual Photo of Poor Little Rose

 

Reverse Colors

This is using the Invert Colors tool in Picasa.

Looks a little more interesting than the real thing.

Lights Out

For the third time in less than three weeks our power went off. It may have been a squirrel.  We heard a loud bang and that was it - computer off during an important scan and lights and A/C gone.

I reported it by phone to Weststar. In less than an hour we were back on the grid. The estimate had been one and a half to two and a half hours. We saw a worker carrying something to his truck in a bag. Perhaps the dead culprit.

My thought is, can't they invent a guard to protect the transformers from the squirrels and the squirrels from the transormers?

In Need of Help

This makes me sad.
I lived in this house from the age of thirteen to seventeen.
It was a lovely house, built when there was nothing north of it but open country. . .
I think about 1890. One of our grade schools in town is named for its builder.
My dad bought it in 1944 for $4000. There is a lovely double front door that opens into a vestibule. From there two doors lead into the dining room and the parlor.
I think it was designed to keep cold air out of the main part of the house. Some of the east windows were cut so that the sunlight made rainbows on the wall. The dining room had large pocket doors so that room could be closed off. We used that as a bedroom for my grandparents who came from Iowa to live with us.
Behind the main parlor was another parlor and a small kitchen completed the downstairs. A beautiful curved staircase was behind the two windows you see above each other in the photo. At the back of the house was an enclosed back stairway (for sneaking out at night? I never did.) There was a small basement with a converted furnace - no radiators.

Four bedrooms upstairs around a central hall area and a large bathroom. There were three doors into the bathroom, two from bedrooms and one from the hall.  My mom  joked about hurrying to close all three doors.  My bedroom had French windows and in my closet was a stairway to a floored attic. It was a dream home to live in as a teen. My friend, Jo, said I could come down the stairway and get married in the parlor.

About three years later after my grandfather died, we didn't need the extra room. The floors seemed to be sagging. So, with full disclosure about the floors, it was sold for the asking price of $8000. The war was over and real estate had increased in price. The buyer arrived with cash and my dad's story was, "I told him, 'Let's go to the bank.' " I guess he wanted a witness to the counting of the money!
If my dad had chosen to prop up those floors, I might be living there today. I don't think it would be in such bad shape if we had kept it in the family. By the way, the people who bought it kept it up beautifully. It is just in the past few years that it has deteriorated

I wish someone would repair, paint and restore this grand old house.

1946

1950

Napping

 

When it's near ninety degrees outside, these two kick back in the A/C.

So do I.

Fox in 1950

This is from the Reminisce magazine. They are sending me a copy to get me to renew my subscription.
I lived in Hutchinson when this happened but I do not remember the event. I must not have gone to the movie that night! (Noticing that the girl in the white dress appears to be quite thin, that could have been me.)

Here is the text from the article by Joan (Long) Nelson:

    I worked at the Fox Theatre in Hutchinson, KS, and enjoyed some memorable promotions, including my night as a stand-in for Elizabeth Taylor.
When the Fox opened in 1931, it was a big deal. The Hutchinson News called it "one of the finet theaters it is possible to build." The theater marquee was said to be the state's first display of flashing neon lights in Kansas. (It still works today and is a colorful part of the restored theater.) A special bonus was "refrigeration," the term used back then for air conditioning.
   The theater also had live midnight music shows after the movies, bringing in Xavier Cugat, Les Brown and His Band of Renown, and other big names.
   I worked at the Fox 30 hours a week at 40 cents an hour in my last two years of high school. That $12 went a long way toward school needs and spending money.
Employees would wear cowboy and cowgirl outfits when a Western was comng to town, and there'd even be horses outside the theater. In those days, movie-going was truly magical.
   My best memory of working at the theater is from the summer of 1950, when I wore a copy of Elizabeth Taylor's wedding dress from the movie, Father of the Bride.
   The dress was on display for a couple of weeks before the movie came to town. Then, on July 29, the night of the first showing at the Fox, the C.O. Mammel Bakery in Hutchinson conributed a wedding cake. And I was the lucky one who got to wear that fancy dress and serve up pieces of cake to celebrate the premiere!

Rose of Sharon

 We have a new, small bush for the backyard.

We didn't know it would bloom so quickly. L. cut a large barrel to put around it for protection from the pups and other critters that might eat its base.

We had a Rose of Sharon bush when I was a kid and our neighbor has a couple of them.

One of my favorites.

Nice Weather and a Search

Well, it did get to 90 but most of the day was really nice...and no wind!
We spent quite a bit of time looking for the door to the dog kennel this afternoon.
Tearing up the garage and throwing away some stuff.

We found the door in the bedroom near the kennel.

The larger picture.

 There has to be an easier way to enlarge photos and get them where I want them to be. The "Help" button was not any help.

Wild Flowers

These flowers were wild in the country. I have no idea what they are called. Just a photo to enjoy while I rant about yesterday.
Woke up at four o'clock, read the paper, ate breakfast and back to bed for a nap before ten.
Up for lunch by twelve because I had to be at the hospital by one for a monthly IV treatment.  During the three hours even caffeinated coffee didn't keep me from dozing.
One of the drugs they give me causes drowsiness.
Home for an early supper and so sleepy that I had to go to bed about seven-thirty.

I plan on being more alert today.