* WE LOVE TO CHAT 5/14 *

Welcome Julie:

Nice to see a new face. Hope you will like our small group of friends.

thegeema (Geema)

Julie - Welcome! I hope you join us. We are a great little group of diverse women! We offer support to each other and offer a safe place to chat and have fun. You will not meet a nicer group of people than here! Lilly

Good Thursday Morning, Everyone and welcome, Julie....  happy to see that you are back on board and that you accepted my invitation to check us out. 

Rain, glorious rain.  Wonderful rain.  We had about 2 inches all told, on and off for the past 24 hours and a bit more is expected today.  My rain gauge bit the dust so I cannot tell you how much fell here at my house.  Darn yard guy, cut it in half as he was trimming the hedge...    I ordered a new one that arrived yesterday, but it hasn't been installed on a post yet....

Lilly, the young man was, in fact, slumped over the wheel, but not from a medical issue - the opinion is that after he had just dropped off his friend, his car rapidly accelerated, and as the car traveled at a high speed, over the speed bumps, he hit his head on the roof of the car, knocking him unconcious...  He had no history of any illness or condition that would have caused him to black out, and he had just had a physical exam for one of his university activities, and had a clean bill of health.  Tom, my grandson, said, "things happen for a reason, Grandma - he donated his heart, lungs, liver, kidneys to several different people who may not have lived otherwise." 

Coffee is ready, and I am really in need this morning.  Didn't get much sleep last night at all, so after Aune leaves for work this morning, I may go back to bed... 

 

 

 

Good morning everyone. A big welcome to Julie. Beema, so sad to hear about that young man. Well have to go for a mammogram this morning and then back home to do some yard work, finally got all my moss planted in my walkway, I probably could use more but here it is between 2 and $2.50 for a small pot, I  split it but by doing that probably takes twice as long to get growing. Hope everyone has a great day.

Good Morning All:

Temp is 49.4° and sky is light behind the trees. A tad bit early for the Sun to pop up over the trees.

Hopefully after the sun goes down this evening I can put my tomato and pepper plants in the garden. They have been on the deck hardening off - gave them some sun but also some shade under my patio table covered with table cloth. I have 8 Beefsteak, 2 small yellow (golf ball size & yummy), and 4 "Sheila"* tomato plants, 3 bell pepper plants and 5 Hungarian Yellow Wax peppers - med hot (for pickled okra) to put in. *I think they are actually Georgia Peach (but Sheila gave me the seeds - so that is what I call them) - they are shaped like a Beefsteak tomato and are yellow with red (kinda/sorta striped - the riper the more red mingled in).

Learning how to use the "weedeater". It sure is nice and light and does a good job. First thing I have learned is it is only fully charged "when" the green light goes off. Instructions said in one place to charge for 8 hours and in another 9 hours or until the green light goes off (didn't catch "until green light goes off). Duh  Once I get some trimming done it will be easier to "touch up" here and there as needed. AND I won't have to wait on someone to help me!!

Need to go the grocery store (Marsh has some good sales).  Don't need to go to Walmart just yet as Cali has veggies and rolled oats enough for this week. Need some meat mainly and fresh veggies.

CUL

 

Good morning everyone.

A big welcome to Julie and, Kittyrose, it's good to see you back

It is so nice this morning to have decent respose time on here.  It's another beautiful morning, bright and sunny altho' it got quite chilly overnight.  I haven't checked the tomato plants yet.  They have been outside hardening off for the last few days and I've been leaving them overnight this week too.  They're in a sheltered spot by the backdoor so I'm hoping they are fine.  Those 4 plants really are ready to go in the ground, I've just been waiting until it's warm enough and I have another 6, slightly smaller that are in hubby's coldframe and are almost ready to be planted as well.   I love it when planting seeds works out  It's not just the fact they are so much cheaper but there's a sense of acheivement.

I have cabbages, brussels sprouts and peppers all on the kitchen windowsill at the moment - they still are a ways from being ready for transplanting.  I put the rest of the peas and beans in yesterday as well.  If everything grows as planned, we should be well stocked with veggies and fruit.  The strawberries have loads of flowers right now and you can just see some tiny berries

We are invited out for supper tonight as we start to arrange what is becoming the "annual" garage sale for the curling club, so I have some French bread dough in the machine and will also make some corn muffins to take along ( chilli is on the menu).

Glad you got some much needed rain Beema.  Good to know you like the weedeater Geema - it sounds like a very sensible idea and should make it easy for you to keep the yard looking nice and neat.

Have a lovely day,

Tasty

Good morning everyone, It is sunny and cool 5 C That ia about 41F here in Northern Ont. They are calling for rain showers for tomorrow. 

Julie wecome to are little group.

Not much on my agenda for today someone is comeing with 2 pair of pant to hem, and I am working on a quilt for my GD for her birthday July first.

I have my Tops meeting tonight at 6.  Dinner tonight is Tai noodle bowl made of rice noodles veggies chicken. Have a great day everyone 

Kittyrose 

Beema--so sorry about that young man in the accident. He sounds like he was a wonderful young person.

Lilly--I hear you about the formatting part. That can drive you nuts. You're a very caring teacher to put all that together for your class. Tasty--I've had days when the system is slow, too, but I had been having problems with my provider so put it down to that. I'm glad you're not struggling with the site anymore.

Julie--welcome.  I hope you continue to join us in the kitchen. We're a pretty friendly group.

Geema--what brand of "weed-whacker" did you end up buying? I'm glad you're able to put in your veggies this week. It was 39 this morning when I got up. We had frost in a few places last night and tonight is going to be even colder although I don't think the city will get quite cold enough. See what I mean about folks waiting at least until Memorial Day around here to plant their gardens?! On the other hand, by Saturday we will be in the high 70's to high 80's by Monday!

OK, Mac. Here's what you can do with your maple seeds next year. My friend emailed this to me yesterday after I told her about people picking them.

“How to Eat Maple Seeds
Source:  WikiHow

If you have a maple tree, you probably get an overflow of their seeds once a year. The good news is, these are edible. When cooked, they taste like a cross between peas and hominy. They can also be eaten raw or dried, and thrown in a salad. Follow these steps for the best flavor.

Harvest the seeds. They should be gathered when they're full but still green in the spring; run your hands down the branch to gather a bunch in your hands. All maple seeds are good to eat, but some are more bitter than others (a good rule of thumb is: small and sweet, big and bitter). Later, when their shells are brown, they are a little more bitter, but still good.

Hull the seeds. Peel off the outer skin (the "whirlygig" part). Cut the end with your thumbnail. Squeeze out the seed; it looks like a pea or bean.

Rinse out the tannins. Taste a few seeds raw. If they are bitter, you'll need to boil them in water, dump out the water, and repeat until the bitterness is gone.

Cook the seeds. If you boiled them already, just season with butter, salt, and pepper and enjoy. If they weren't boiled, here are a few more options:

Roasting - Place the seeds on a cookie sheet and sprinkle with salt. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 8 - 10 minutes.

Drying - Put them in a dry, sunny spot or in a food dehydrator until they are crunchy. They can then be pounded or ground into a flour, if you want.

Check for a food allergy. The first time you eat maple seeds, just eat a few and wait several hours. If there are no ill effects, eat some more!” 

If you want the truth, it seems like an awful lot of work unless you need them for survival food--but then again I haven't tried them. 

My coffee is almost gone so time to get to work.  Talk to you later.

Birdy: I got the Black & Decker one. It is light weight and my SIL Wanda was telling me about hers and how nice it is sooooooo I decided it sounded good enough to me.  I have a gas one that I can't start and "nobody" has offered to come out and use it!!

No one is getting any younger in my family - my youngest will be 50 in August!!   Besides they all work and have their own "stuff" to take care of (and their own G'kids). Plus I like to be independent as much as possible (more than they all like sometimes).

Well, I do know that the squirrels really enjoy eating the maple seeds.  I always enjoy sitting and watching them open them up and get the seeds out...so cute.  But they won't have as many to eat this year since so MANY immature seeds blew off the the trees with all the wind we had a while ago.  Guess that's why they're eating so much of my bird seeds! 

Good morning to all!

Thanks for the warm welcome everyone.

It has been a stretch of 70 degree days here in the Pacific Northwest. My garden is loving it! I already have tomatoes and broccoli heads beginning. Job searching right now since my arthritis in my back wont let me lift anymore. The job I was at at the hardware store had to let me go. They require 20lbs for every job including greeter! Oh well. I am bugging our JoAnn fabric and craft store every week. I practically live there so might as well get a job there right? In any event I have the farmers market to return to next month.

Hope everyone has a great day!

Hugs all

Good Afternoon, Gang....  I am finally pulling out my slump.  Seeing a young person die early is very upsetting, especially since my own son met an early death in a similar accident, not one of his own doing.  Facing that is when one's faith, regardless what it is, is needed to get through the grief.

Julie, it doesn't seem right that an employer can let a person go for physical reasons.  I'm sorry....  hopefully, there are other good positions available that won't require heavy lifting.  What a bummer.  Hmmm, Pacific Northwest....  a far cry from me here in Tampa, Florida.  I flew over that part of the coutnry on my way to Alaska once about 10 years ago...  wish I could have had a stopover there.  My Finnish mother lived in Astoria as a child.

Birdy, you are becoming our very own private encyclopedia of knowledge....  no matter what comes down the pike, you find just the right information to move us along, to help with the answers, to make us all feel like we know what we are talking about when we have coffee with friends.  Good for you....  but, of course, that is the teacher in you, which is a very lovable aspect of your personality. Everyone needs a Birdy.  And, you are mine.

Geema, the problem I always had with the weedwhacker was the nylon string kept breaking off...  of course, that was 20 or more years ago, so maybe they have a better method now.  Be careful....  I once cut into an ant hill and before I realized what had happened, I had hundreds of ants biting at my ankles. 

Tonight, we are having meatballs and I think in a spaghetti sauce....  but, depending on my mood, it might be an alfredo sauce.  I have the swiss cheese and cream to make it myself, and some mushrooms  ....  hmmmm....  and I have noodles as well as spaghetti, so it is a toss up. 

My lady carpenter, Becky, is here now, fixing a few odds and ends, and I need to go check on her progress, so I will seeyou guys in the morning....  and oh, dear, my Jeep is leaking rivers of bright green coolant...  so I will be without wheels tomorrow.  It's a '94 and has only 60,000 miles on it, so lots of things are just drying out, like hoses, not breaking down.  I'm gonna keep it forever. 

 

Beema--I sure do hope that either you're collecting that coolant in a container or else it is soaking into the ground. Animals are attracted to it because it's sweet, but when they drink it they suffer a painful death. We've been having great weather and the flowers and the vegetable plants are loving it. Many of the pepper plants have blossoms open, the tomato plants are already quite a bit bigger, but still no blossoms on the sugar snap peas. I just have a few more vegetable seeds to plant and some flowers to put in my strawberry jar planter then I'm all set to watch nature take over. If anyone remembers the eagle NX, one of the babies taken from the Norfolk nest after the mother died, you might be interested to know that she was released from the Wildlife Center of Virginia today. For the THIRD time! The first time she was released with her two siblings and two other eagles but was still too immature so she was recaptured. Then when she matured a little more she was again released but was later hit by a car so was brought back to the Center. Now that her injuries have healed she was again fitted with her gps transmitter and released for the third time. Everyone's hoping that this time she'll stay ou of trouble!

Beema--I seem to be a trivia magnet and some of it sticks, some doesn't. The internet is a wondrous thing--even the most trivial information seems to have a spot somewhere. My friend Betty has the same disease and we egg each other on! She's the source of the maple seed recipe! 

Busy day today--I went to buy a new wireless WiFi router for the house.  My old one has been acting up and it is old. So, visiting a place like Best Buy is like browsing a candy store for me. I found my router and convinced myself that it was time to buy the printer I've been lusting after for 6 months. It's a cloud printer--with a wireless connection which browses the internet and allows me to plug in a peripheral drive so I can save from my laptop anywhere in the house instead of plugging one in. What's really cool is that I can use my computer or tablet on the internet away from home, save a file, send it to Google Cloud Print, and it goes to my email address on the printer at home and prints. It'll be waiting for me when I get home. How cool is that!? Actually, it's an all-in-one which my old printer wasn't so I really needed to upgrade. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Yes, everyone, I am a geek. They didn't have it in the store so it's being sent to my house this week.

I also went to pick up two family pictures that I had digitized and restored by my friends at the photo shop where I've been mentored by the owner for almost 20 years. I have very few pictures of my mother and father and two showed up at the funeral that I hadn't seen. In one, they cut my parents out of my sister's 1952 wedding party picture and gave my mother a new left arm by copying and reversing her right to replace where my sister's arm covered hers. It's so good you'd never know the difference. The picture is wonderful--I'm so pleased.

The other is the only picture I know about of my father in his later years. My brother took the black and white of him in natural light holding his pipe and developed it himself. Over the years it had deteriorated so that it was very dark, faded, spotted--you name it--it was a mess. The artist brought it back to a beautiful moody shot with just enough funkiness to show that it was old. I just love it. I have to confess that I got emotional when I saw them. The young man who did the work had a big grin on his face when he saw my reaction.  He knows I'm picky and felt pretty proud of himself, I think. I took them over to my SIL and the two of us shed a tear or two wishing that my brother could have seen them. Now, I'll be able to give all the children and grandchildren copies--digital photography is wonderful.

Well, I do run on. I just wanted to warn the worriers here that I may not be online tomorrow.  Betty and I are going birding and it is supposed to be a beautiful day. Have a good evening.  Talk to you later.

Good Friday Morning, Everyone....  and I do hope it is a good Friday for all. 

Birdy, what a nice touching story about the photos of your parents.  Treasures, for sure. 

Carole, luckily I have been able to catch most of the coolant dripping from the Jeep - when I first saw it, my concern wasn't so much that an animal would get to it, but that it would stain my new parking pad...  I had just received a package and the box was full of "popcorn" so I stuck the box under the leak...  and then I remembered that animals like the taste of that stuff (icky pooh), so as soon as I got the Jeep to the repair shop yesterday I put all the popcorn into a plastic bag and then into the trash container which will be picked up this morning. 

I dilly-dallied here a bit this morning, reading posts on some of the other forums, so now I am running a bit later than I should be...  time to get the show on the road, get Aune awake and pointed toward the coffee pot, and get my paper from the front driveway.  But, fear not, after a while, I shall return to see what's happening here with all of you.  Have fun today, Birdy -