A normal kind of week.

Thursday:

I got a new pair of binoculars.  Polaris 10 x 42. HD  I tried them in the back yard, a huge improvement to my oldies.  Sharp and easy to use.  I dropped my old ones on concrete and they have not worked smoothly since.




 Friday: Mom's bathroom faucets had to be changed due to leaks, so I did that for her.Saturday & Sunday
We framed the "mower storage side of the shed", and have the roof almost finished.  We started putting up some trim and it is a big improvement to the over all look of the building.  Now it sort of looks like a shanty that needs to be torn down. LoL....but its very strong, in fact it's probably the strongest shed in SC, no in the USA, no make that the World, it's like very, very, very strong, it's the strongest, and we are the very best shed builders, the very best!
Just a little fun with some words...there it is cuter than it looks in photos...lol 

Monday the Carolina Wren started sitting on 5 eggs, she used the same house she had her last yrs nest in, she added some more dog hair to the lining...we know that because she has some fresh Jimmy hair in there too. 

And 4 deer were wandering around in Sundance's  old pasture...can you pick them all out? 2 does' with 2 yearlings. You have look hard for that last one. 


                                                             
In the Afternoon:
I put up this new very spacey looking antenna. It rotates with a remote control.  It was a blast to assemble. Actually I enjoy a challenge. It's fun, tinkering, is my favorite thing to do when I'm hanging around home.

This Friday:
Jimmy has to have a fat tumor removed! I was playing with him a couple weeks back and felt this large lump...its irregular in shape, and about the size of a small summer squash. It's located just between his front legs at the base of his chest.  The vet suggested it be removed, he said  normally it just pops out pretty easy. Hope it's that simple...keep Jimmy in your good wishes. 


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Story Time:  Was that a plane or superman?

I love to go birding, or just birding in my yard or along whatever path I am traveling.  But before I got seriously interested in birding I didn't know jack about birds.  I knew a few of the birds that hung around in my yard, like Cardinals, Blue Jays, and the Northern Mockingbirds.  But that was about it.  I was more into horses most of my life and I knew about horses more than I did birds.   Sundance, was the last horse I had (1975-1996)  and we enjoyed our rides, he would nearly run over me to get his bridle on, he loved going on trail rides as much I did.

Sometimes we met up with other riders,  a couple neighbors who also rode,  we would arrange to meet on the trail and ride together.  Sunny liked hanging out with another horse for a couple hours and getting out of his pasture.  I enjoyed being on the trail and enjoying being in nature it's from a very different perspective up about 5 ft from the ground on the back of a horse.  

We went out a couple or three times a week.  He was a good natured and happy go lucky horse. He was also a spooky horse.  I don't mean he had a "dark side", I mean he spooked easy! When you talk about a horse spooking it means he will quickly jump to the side, because something surprised him.  He would normally spook and jump sideways then stop, raise his head and have a good look at whatever scared him before loudly swishing his tail.  Once he was satisfied nothing was wrong he would move on like it never happened!

Horses are born with this instinct to run as fast as possible if some prey gets after them...so some horses will spook, whirl, and run.  Sunny didn't go that. When he spooked he would literally jump out from under you to one side or the other, away from whatever spooked him. I had to always be ready for anything to happen! He could jump 6 ft to the left in a blink of an eye...and if he caught me off guard, I could end up on the ground! I rode him for 20 yrs and he never threw me! He was not trying to throw me, if he really wanted me to fall off he could have easily made that happen.

One day we headed down the dirt road on the way to our favorite woods trail.  Sunny was  taking long relaxed sure footed strides, swishing his tail happily as we made our way down the lane.  He knew where we were headed and he was excited to be on the way.  THEN IT HAPPENED! Some huge gray "thing" that looked like a flying dinosaur suddenly burst out of the trees and flew right in front of us.  Sunny spooked so hard I had one foot out of the stirrup and was way off center, one more centimeter  and I'd be on the ground.  He swooped left and stopped dead, lifted his head up and starred at the monster flying away from us.  I was in shock, I'd never seen anything like this huge grey winged thing, and it squawked loudly as it took flight clumsily. 

It took a few minutes for us to regain our composure and shake off the scare.  The rest of our ride went off without a hitch and when  Sunny was back in the barn groomed and relaxing afterwards I told my husband about this huge bird that had spooked Sunny and surprised me.  He seemed to not believe my identification of the monster, so I drew a picture of it!!  He agreed he had never seen anything like it either.

So one day after work I headed to the library to find out what this monster was I had seen...The World of Birds was the title of the heavy reference book I plopped on the table and began my first bird ID search.  I compared my drawing to the amazing birds in full glossy color.   I turned a few pages and was enthralled at just how many kinds of birds there were.  THEN there it was, the huge monster, the gray dinosaur, the bird that put a 900 lb horse and me to quivering...not quite a speeding bullet, but the Great Blue Heron.

That was the first bird I used a book to track down and the interest sparked from that encounter.  My friend Sunny opened up a whole new world for me and I am never disappointed by the world of birds!

PEACE

Eleanor Roosevelt: You must do the thing you think you can not.

First Post this year!

What happened to the Sunny South?  It almost never shines in winter anymore when I look back through my blog and emails to friends I see over and over yr after yr how I comment on the gloomy weather!  No wonder I can't make any progress on my shed project I should have started in October but it didn't cool off this yr till a week before Thanksgiving! NOW this-

And the high today will be 32 with a wind chill making it feel like 22.  I guess all you can do about the weather is complain, and it won't do any good! Did see a couple sweet birds come in for food...

pine warbler

Between the rain and snow I got through the pile of 2 x 4's and pulled out the nails, saw off the rotten ends etc. and stacked them is a neat way...this is before!

                          (shed in process of being dismantled)

PHOTOS MISSING! Since I lost most of my Photos of the Shed prep,....I put one of the finished Project at the bottom of this post. 

these photos are low resolution so hope you don't mind the fuzzy...trying to stay within my "data"confines... I went through the pile some got the toss....others I pulled out the old nails and sawed off the rotten ends if it had any...some are good all the way.  Here is a tip if you ever find yourself needing to bang out old nails..
First I lay the board on my workbench and hammer the nail back through the board so it looks like this with the head up.

Reusing all I can of this:

It's easier to pull them out if you have them on the ground...more leverage that way and the longer your crowbar, the better! (TIP: if you have a piece of metal pipe longer than your crowbar that will slide over the handle of your crowbar you can make it longer and pull out LONG -- BIG nails with ease)  I use a wood scrap about 28 inches long to hold the board down with my foot on it and put it close enough to the nail I get even better leverage by putting my crowbar on top of the board like this...

you can pull it out with very little effort using this method....and if there's any nails on the edge of the board,  turn it on edge and do the same thing....holding the leverage board down with your foot really holds the wood steady for you to pull the nail out easily with the crowbar

No Nails!

Now, I've been known to straighten a nail and reuse it, not hard to do just lay it on a smooth wood surface you can hammer on, and put it with the arch of the bend UP rolling it with your index finger until it is firm and then not too hard hammer it till the crook is gone and it looks straight.  
Another tip for sawing off the rotted ends: to me the chain saw is fast and makes a straight cut! SO that's what I used on the 2 x 4's I will be making another cut when I determine which ones will be used where in the project. 

here is a rough draft of my "blue print"  The part on the left is where the riding mower will stay so I want a brick ramp for ease of driving it in and out..I have old bricks here and there probably enough to do the project and if not I know where an old house burned to the ground! The mower area is where the sliding barn door will go.  

I have "felled"one more of the big trees that had to be cut down...There is ONE more shown here that may have to go I'll see when I lay out my foundation...I think it's going to interfere with getting the tools in and out of my "Office" as I call it where all my yard tools will hang on the right...So you got your Right Wing where things get hung and Your Left Wing where things are mobile. Pun intended.....Cutting this tree will be tricky see how its bent... that's a 10 ft ladder in the background...so it is really tall. probably 60 ft?

              Reused the the siding by cutting it into 12" pieces
                                       And overlapped it 

...and now a new idea for my blog I enjoy telling stories, so this is my first installment of 2017, it won't be an every blog thing but heck it could be--probably should be another blog altogether but it will be as a footnote when one pops in my head for now.  You can or you don't have to read....
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story time

I find myself thinking of Old Ms Hopkins a lot lately...here is her part in my life...
When we moved to SC from TN I was just a wee girl of 6-ish back in 1960  We played a lot with the two boys who lived next to the duplex we rented.  Just across and down the dirt road a bit was a house covered in grey asphalt siding, a little house surrounded by shrubbery, fruit trees, and a fence.  You could not see much of the house for the overgrowth. Inside this little tangle lived old Ms Hopkins. She had 2 daughters already out on their own, who came on weekends to visit their widowed mother. 

 They took her to church and brought in some necessary supplies. She was for the most part, a self sufficient woman. She had no car. What she did have was a large vegetable garden, a flock of laying hens, a well for water, and a simple existence.  She worked from sun up till sun down on her two acre place every single day even on Sunday...chopping wood, hoeing the garden, feeding her chickens, canning in the summer, and doing repairs around her place. She did all her wash by hand and hung it on the line about twice a month.  

Rumors of area kids stated, she is a witch!  She always managed her daily chores wearing a straight formed dress belted at the waist that hung well below the knee, a scratchy looking grey cardigan sweater, (way too big for her), some type of woolen hosiery,  and a sweat stained straw hat...she reminded me so very much of my own Grandmother back in TN who dressed the same and worked harder than any farm hand ever did. 

When we kids went veering through the shrubs to see "the witch" she would always yell the same thing, "GO SCAT YOU KIDS,"  and we ran as if she had a blasted us with that shotgun we knew she kept by the back kitchen door. We knew that because on occasion if a snake or a stray dog got near her hen house she would go a blasting till the danger was gone! I witnessed her kill a rattler with her hoe, then toss him into her chicken yard for the hens to eat!

We thought she was an evil witch, but when that duplex we rented caught fire and we lost most of our clothes, (a bedroom fire) she was the only neighbor who came with a cardboard box full of clothes that had once belonged to her daughters. My sisters and I worked on hemming, taking up sleeves, and making the odd bits of hand me downs work for us! I wore my share of those clothes for several years to come. Ms Hopkins was the only neighbor who understood the immediate need of three sisters of meager means who had school to attend and just lost the very clothes off their backs.

 Every time I hang up my work hats I think about Ms Hopkins, I wonder what ever became of her? Just in case you're wondering about who my role models were growing up...she was one of them.

                                                                   

PEACE
Eleanor Roosevelt: You must do the thing you think you can not.