Fight Night

The Bag Lady went for a walk in the pasture the other night and a fight broke out!


The bigger calf on the left was the last calf born last year - she was very late, born in November.

The little guy who is challenging her is about a month old. He has supreme confidence in his own ability!Fortunately, the fight didn't last long, but the little guy did manage to hold his own against the bigger calf!


Calves do this kind of mock fighting all the time. Full-grown bulls do it in all seriousness, so perhaps the little guy thought he should practice taking on bigger critters!

D-Day

June 6, 1944. The day the Allies launched the Normandy invasion.

My dad served in the RCNVR (Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve) as a communications operator on a corvette.


I wish I had paid more attention to detail, because I cannot recall the exact date he joined the navy, but do know it was 1944.
(he is second from the left in the second row in this picture)








Take a moment today to remember the sacrifices so many young men and women made during the Second World War.

Just Dandy

Here is proof for those doubting POD Thomases out there that the Bag Lady really is making dandelion wine!

First, you pick the dandelions.
Then you wash them really, really well (especially if you have a dog.... eeeuuuwww!)


Then you pour boiling water over them and let them sit for a couple of days



Then you add some fruit and sugar and spices

And boil it for an hour




Then you strain it, let it cool, add the yeast, and let it sit overnight (the Bag Lady forgot to take a picture of that, but it was boring anyway - all it was doing was sitting there, bubbling occasionally like a miniature lava pool)

Then you pour it into bottles. Poke a few holes in some balloons, fit them on top of the bottles (easier said than done!) and watch the balloons rise up like little black condoms....

Then you put them in a dark place for three weeks. And hope they don't explode.


Oh, and here is the (aforementioned dog) Princess, relaxing after a hard day helping the Bag Lady in the yard. (Chasing sticks and barking at birds and squirrels is exhausting!)


Have a great weekend!

Slap Happy

The Bag Lady completed the second stage of her dandelion wine building yesterday. Keep your fingers crossed that it works as it's supposed to.

She has been working on some furniture refinishing, too.
(Before)

The table doing the dead turtle impression is one she found at the landfill site many years ago. She took it home and slapped a coat of white paint on it, but it sat in the porch for a time, and the porch roof leaked. When the Bag Lady and the Rancher built their new house holy crap, has it really been 12 years already?, the table was moved into the dining room and used as a side table. Unfortunately, the time it spent sitting in the damp porch had caused the paint on the table legs to blister and peel. The Bag Lady is finally holy crap, has it really been 12 years already? getting around to repainting the legs.


The smaller table is one that the Bag Lady "inherited" from a friend when she was a teenager. Her friend was redecorating her bedroom and decided she no longer wanted that little drop-leaf table, so she gave it the Bag Lady. The Bag Lady took it home and slapped a coat of white paint on it (do you see a recurring pattern here?), and has used it as her bedside table ever since. Her friend has tried many a time to cajole the Bag Lady into giving it back (there's a name for people like that, isn't there?) but the Bag Lady loves that table, and she's had it far longer than her friend did. (Do the math. The Bag Lady and her friend were 16 when she received the table.....holy crap, has it really been more than 30 years already?) Umm, forget math, we were talking about furniture, remember?
(During)


The Bag Lady, silly thing that she is, thought she could strip the white paint off and restore the table to a glorious wood finish. That has turned out to be not as easy as she thought it would be. The white paint has permeated the wood in places to such an extent that there is no way to get it out and still have any wood left! The Bag Lady also discovered that whoever built the table originally didn't do a very good job of hiding the nail heads. Plus, notice the little "V"-shaped corners in the supports at the bottom of the table legs? Really, really hard to get the sander all the way into the corners. So the Bag Lady is re-thinking her position on restoring the glorious wood finish. She might just slap a coat of white paint on it.

Day on the Ranch

The Bag Lady spent most of yesterday outside, working in her yard. It was one of those gorgeous days - warm, sunny, reasonably calm winds. She mowed the lawn, then tackled a messy spot around one of the big spruce trees in her back yard.

The tree is close to her firepit, right behind her outdoor oven and the area around it had, over the past few years, become the respository for all kinds of things - firewood, rocks that were discarded when she built the oven, pieces of old fence boards, chicken wire and all manner of detritus. All of it grown over and around with wild rosebushes and a few poplar trees! She forgot to take a picture of the mess before she started, so you'll just have to use your imaginations. She isn't done yet, but it is looking a whole lot better. The Rancher even got in on the act and lent a hand by cutting down some of the larger trees for her with his chain saw.

When they finally played out, they lit a fire in the firepit to burn up all the dry bits of wood and such, and settled in with a beer. The sky was that perfect shade of blue that makes it look like it goes on forever. There were gulls flying far overhead, nearly invisible, they were so high. A squirrel spent a good portion of his day chattering and chiding them from the top of a pole nearby. There were birds singing in the trees and flitting around the feeder, and occasionally they could hear the American Kestrel babies in a nearby tree, cheeping as their parents brought them something to eat.

All in all, one of those perfect summer days.

Babble Post

The Bag Lady is really scraping the bottom of the barrel for something to post about. There is a lot going on in her life, but none of it very blog-worthy. She's got half a dozen projects on the go, as usual, but none of them are at a stage where she can blog about them (unless, of course, y'all want to see pictures of furniture with the paint half scraped off, or scraps of fabric that will eventually become something functional....)

She has a Pileated Woodpecker hanging around her place, and has been trying in vain to photograph him to show you, but she doesn't have the right kind of camera skills. She watched him the other day for quite awhile, and was quite amused at his antics. He was probably just doing what he needed to do to get at the bugs in the dead tree stump that he was attacking, but it looked really comical to watch him pecking away, then stick his head inside the hole and turn it right around, searching for bugs. She did film some of it, but had the camera on the wrong setting, and there was a lot of foliage in the way. When she did finally get the camera set properly, he almost immediately jumped down onto the ground out of sight. Silly bird.

The Bag Lady did spend a portion of her day yesterday picking dandelions, then preparing them for the transition from annoying weed to wine. She took some pictures (which are still trapped in her camera) and will probably take a few more of the next step, which takes place in a couple of days. It's a long process - you soak the flowers for a couple of days, then boil them with sugar and a few other ingredients, strain them; add the yeast (or add the yeast and then strain them - guess she needs to look at the recipe again!) and let the strained liquid sit.... it takes about 6 months after you bottle it for it to be anywhere close to ready - they recommend that you let it sit in the bottles for a year. We'll be damned thirsty by then, eh? (Had to throw a little Canadianism in there)

Now she needs to get rid of the rest of the gazillion or so dandelions left in her yard. Or, at the very least, decapitate them with the lawn mower! And, one of these days really soon, she needs to go to a nursery and find some bedding plants - tomatoes, peppers and a few flowers for the pots on her deck.

So much to do, so little... ambition ....err.... time.

Love Flowers

T'was a busy weekend for the Bag Lady and the Rancher. Friday night they went to a friend's place to help move some furniture. The mosquitoes have hatched and were out in full force. Friday had been a very warm day with no breeze, and the mosquitoes were swarming.

Saturday, the Rancher and the Bag Lady went to a birthday party for a friend. The plan was to enjoy an evening outside, sitting around their backyard firepit. Unfortunately, the wind had started to blow, and was blowing so hard it made it too dangerous to have a fire. It is quite dry in this area, and they didn't want to take a chance of any errant sparks getting away on them. The only good thing about the cool wind was that the mosquitoes were blown away! The wind did eventually die down, so they lit a small fire (and yes, the mosquitoes came back!). All in all, it was a lovely weekend. Good food and good company.

The Bag Lady needs to get some yardwork done. If she had any ambition, she could supply half the county with dandelion wine, made completely with the dandelions in her lawn! She does not like to use chemicals on the ranch, so puts up with the yellow flowers that a friend once told her are "love" flowers. When she asked why her friend called them that, she was told it's because they are the first flowers a child gives to his or her mother....

The Bag Lady has a lot of love flowers.