Friday, August 31st, 2018
The rodents must be moving around more with the cooler temperatures overnight.
This Red Tailed Hawk has stopped by every evening for the past few days, and I haven’t seen him since spring.
It’s interesting how routines change for all beings during seasonal shifts.
Thursday, August 30th, 2018
This was the only photo I took today. The day got away from me, but I can give a little patch update today.
I was out in the pumpkin patch this morning pulling weeds, and I saw this beauty. Not as large as others in the field, but a gorgeous orange color, nearly perfectly shaped, just the right amount of ribbing.
We have so many great pumpkins out in the patch this year. We always do, but this year’s growing season seemed to be just the right amount of rain and sun. Both the plants and the pumpkins are massive; I attempted to walk out across the patch today, and the plants were very dense – they were waist high!
The vines are still healthy and pumpkins are still growing, so it’s hard to see just how many pumpkins are out there (especially when many of them are still green!). I’m looking forward to when the vines start to die back and we can really see what we have out there.
Wednesday, August 29th, 2018
Wispy clouds have me day dreaming today.
Summer always brings the best sunsets, but fall brings the best cloud texture.
Tuesday, August 28th, 2018
I’ve never captured an image of a hummingbird. It’s on my photography bucket list.
Today, I was able to cross them off when this sweet little male Ruby Throated Hummingbird came to visit.
The bonus to this image? I never thought I’d catch one perched – especially in a natural scene, with nothing man made.
Paul actually spotted him first, and this guy hung around long enough for me to get myself together and get my camera ready.
Honestly, it was kind of exhilarating!
You all know just how fast hummingbirds are; usually I can spot them, but seconds later they’ve up and disappeared. So the fact that I wasn’t the one to spot it, that I had to first find him with my eyes and then my camera, and I still caught him – exhilarating.
I also didn’t bait him in with a feeder- this is him in his true natural habitat.
I’m really proud of this image!
Monday, August 27th, 2018
Today was a day of weird weather.
Overcast, but steamy.
Sun starts to peak through.
Back to overcast.
Large storm system moves through with massive winds and heavy rain.
Then blue skies and sunshine as the sun begins to set.
I guess when I write it out, it doesn’t seem so weird, but trust me – it felt weird all day.
Anyway, when the storm came through, I put my camera on my tripod and set it up for a longer exposure time so I could get the movement of the trees as the wind moved through them. It was really blowing for a while.
Luckily, no hail – that’s the last thing our pumpkins need!
Sunday, August 26th, 2018
Have you all been noticing that the birds are beginning to flock up?
This last week I’ve seen ponds full of ducks.
Geese are beginning to fly in formation.
Small birds (such as these Barn Swallows) arranged, hundreds at a time, on power lines.
For those of you who have bird feeders, you’ve probably noticed the birds are frequenting your feeders less and less. At least I have; a full bird feeder would last maybe a day, tops, a couple weeks ago. Now I’m looking at a feeder I filled a week ago and is still half full.
It is a sign of the soon to be changing seasons.
Saturday, August 25th, 2018
Hazy Saturdays are for creating.
When my grandma was here last weekend, we were brainstorming other fun items I could start making. She suggested lotions, liquid soaps, and candles.
I did some research on candle making, and found that much of what I needed overlapped with soap making. Both ingredient-wise and supply-wise.
So I ordered some wicks, dug up some small jars, and got to work today.
Friday, August 24th, 2018
I’ve always loved textures.
Photography is such a great way to not only document moments, but is a also a great way to evoke the senses.
Food photography can evoke your sense of smell and make your stomach grumble in anticipation. For me, I see a shot of a horse exhaling in the wintertime, their breath lit up, ad I can hear them breathing. You see someone jumping into a lake on a hot day, and you feel their relief (or at least long for it).
Today, I saw this GORGEOUS sheep’s coat, and I was so drawn to it.
Talking about evoking your emotions, I’m hoping it makes you want to touch it. To reach out and grab one of those perfect curls, watch it unfurl, and see how long it really is. To feel how all of the curls tickle your palm as you run your hand over it. To experience it’s softness.
When we left for the fair this morning, I had visions of big, broad views of all of the people, animals, rides, and foods. But I came home drawn to this single moment with this individual animal. God whispered in my ear to look closely, to savor.
It was wonderful.
And because it’s my blog, and I do what I want, here are a couple more of my favorites from the day 😉
If we’re all being honest, I only go to the fair for the animals. So if you’re looking for the ferris wheel, hoards of people, or food, you’ll have to look elsewhere (although every year I always think I’m going to be that person (as noted above) – we all know better ha!).
Thursday, August 23rd, 2018
We can talk about this now, because she’s doing fine.
But this girl got walloped by Buck on Tuesday.
Slammed.
Pummeled.
Hammered.
A lesson she hadn’t learned yet, and one that could only be learned the hard way. One that definitely isn’t fun for anyone to go through.
She always helps bring horses in in the evenings; she enjoys bringing them up into the paddocks. Her herding style tends to lean to the Border Collie side, so she stands back and uses her body and eye pressure to move them, which I don’t mind when she’s out with them. The horses will move off of her pressure, but no one gets riled up.
On Tuesday, however, the horses came running in. As Henna ran out to meet them, Buck dropped his head, snapped his front feet at her a couple times, and I saw the look of Australian Cattle Dog come out, and she met Buck’s challenge head on.
Cattle Dogs are tough, confident dogs – they’re herding style is more aggressive; bred to take kicks of a thousand pound animal, and go in for bites to the nose of a stubborn cow to get them to move. They are much more physical. So when Buck gave her attitude, Henna was on Buck’s heels like a magnet. He tossed his back legs out a couple times to tell her to back off, but she didn’t. It only egged her on. So by the time they made it up to the barn she was barking at him and ran him up into the paddock – and cornered him.
That was a mistake on her point. You don’t corner an animal who survives on a “Fight or Flight” mentality. He couldn’t flee, so he fought.
It happened so fast – Buck’s back leg shot out like lightning and solidly connected with Henna’s left side.
It was like slow motion, and then it all came quickly into regular time again. She was screaming like something was broken, and as she turned to run into my arms, she wasn’t putting any weight on her limp front left leg, and my heart stopped.
I tried to calm her down, but she screamed for 30-45 seconds. Which may not sound like a long time, but stop and sit in your chair for that long and imagine an animal in pain desperate to be in your lap, looking to you for help.
Once dad and I finally got her calmed down enough to check her over, I started down at her toes and worked my way up her leg, looking for broken bones or a reaction from her to tell me what hurt. I made it up to behind her shoulder, and onto her ribs, and while I found a swollen spot, she didn’t flinch at anything. She had started putting her weight back on that front leg.
At that point, I was satisfied nothing was broken, so I went in and grabbed a bag of frozen peas and she let me hold it on her side for a bit to hopefully help with any swelling.
She laid low for the remainder of the evening, and enjoyed all of the extra attention she was getting because no one was really willing to leave her alone.
A couple hours after the incident she had a healthy appetite and was drinking water, so we put her down for the night.
I called my mom the next morning to check in on her, and mom said “It’s like nothing ever happened! She’s running around with no limp, and happily went to check on the horses in the pasture. She’s bringing me all of her toys and wants to play.”
When they say Cattle Dogs are tough, they mean it.
They’re also smart – I’m happy to report that she did indeed learn that tough lesson – Buck now gets a wide berth, and she keeps her wits about her when walking around them.
And I’ve recovered from my near heart attack, so we’re all on the mend.
Wednesday, August 22nd, 2018
For me, it always seems as though summer is over when the state fair starts.
So, since the state fair starts tomorrow, I can easily say that this was the most memorable last day of summer I’ve had.
Our friends Cody and Dana leased a plane through our local municipal airport this summer, and we got to go up last night! We’d been talking about it all summer, but it finally worked out for us to go. The weather was absolutely perfect!
Both Cody and Paul are commercial airline pilots, and while they’ve been able to fly together at work, it was fun for them to fly this little Cessna together tonight. Although tonight, Cody was sitting left seat, and Paul took a seat in the right. (The captain always sits left seat, so at work, they normally sit the opposite way).
I expected to be nervous (because really, when am I not), but we took off, and I didn’t get butterflies once. It was such a smooth flight, and I had nothing to worry about with two commercial pilots at the controls. I had a ton of fun.
About 500-750 feet off the ground, it’s easy to follow familiar roadways and recognize houses and farms. So when I saw we were heading east over Beebee Lake, then over Hanover, I figured we were going to fly over the farm.
I had never done that, and it was SO FUN!
And here’s an aerial view of our house (right smack dab in the middle of the image):
When we landed back at the airport, Dana and Brooklyn hopped in with us to taxi back to the hanger. Brooklyn enjoyed the ride!
Tuesday, August 21st, 2018
Grandma and I were busy today – 27 bars of soap made!
And it was a perfect day to make soap too. Low dew point, lower temps. We were able to open the windows while we experimented this morning.
Grandma and I had talked about my soap making earlier this weekend, and as our conversation drifted to fall-like scents, we started talking about how good those would be as soaps. Pumpkin pie, apple cinnamon, coffee cake, etc.
So to Amazon I went and ordered supplies.
Today, with everyone gone at work, grandma came over to my house and we got to our own kind of work.
Pumpkin spice soap.
Apple cinnamon soap.
Oatmeal apple spice soap.
Lavender clay scrub soap.
Embedded lavender and rose petal soap.
Many different molds, many different textures, many different scents. It was a blast!
The fall scented soaps were especially successful, so I’ll be making more and selling them down with the pumpkins this fall! So if pumpkins weren’t enough of a draw for you to come visit the patch, the soap should be!
Monday, August 20th, 2018
Life has to keep you on your toes, right?
Even in small ways, like when you come home to shattered glass all over your bedroom. All thanks to a robotic vacuum who knocked over your bedroom lamp.
It’s one of those things where Roomba isn’t very graceful (he runs into things), and our lamp wasn’t overly stable, so it wasn’t meant to be.
I’m actually surprised it hadn’t happened before today.
So, alas, I spent a good hour and a half cleaning glass particles out of my carpet this afternoon.
Not what I planned to do today, but could’ve been worse!
Courtney Weinreis // A Borrowed Likeness 