Glens Falls (NY) Online Book Discussion Group discussion
What are U doing today?
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What are U doing today? (Ongoing thread)
Nina wrote: "I didn't know Magnolias came in bushes also. I also didn't know dogwoods came in bushes but they are beautiful. We used to live next door to them."Some magnolias can get as tall as 80 or 90', I think. Even the bushes can live a long time & get quite large.
There are a lot of different kinds of dogwoods, too. Most people are familiar with the various types of flowering dogwood, although what I think of as flower petals aren't really. Close enough for most of us, but I think they're called brachs or something like that.
There are a lot of less showy dogwoods around & most don't realize they are. The gray dogwood is one such native around here. It's more of a bush with a lot of clusters of little white flowers. Mom has some red & yellow dogwoods that don't flower much at all, but are bushes that she cuts down every spring. In the winter, their new growth is highly colored bare branches. Very pretty.
Dogwood is a really good, hard wood. I love it when I get some to turn. It's almost like a fruit wood - very smooth, small pores, & dense. Very hard & heavy. Makes good wooden tools. I use one as my club with my fro & I've had it for most of a decade now. Might have that left in it.
Jim What is "my club with my fro"?If I remember correctly, the Taconic Parkway in Westchester, NY, has beautiful dogwood trees alongside the parkway roads. They are beautiful during the flowering season.
A froe is a tool used for splitting wood, Joy. It's a blade at right angles to a short (16" or so) handle that sharpened on the lower edge. The back of the blade is hit with a wooden club so the metal isn't deformed.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Froe
Jim wrote: "A froe is a tool used for splitting wood, Joy. It's a blade at right angles to a short (16" or so) handle that sharpened on the lower edge. The back of the blade is hit with a wooden club so the ..."Thanks, Jim. That's a new word for me! Thanks for the link too.
For those of you who like a true life ghost story, it seems as if one might have taken place at the Hunt Cup this year. Mom was telling me about it this morning.http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/s...
If you're not familiar with the Hunt Cup, it's probably the toughest timber race in the world. 22 jumps over almost 4 miles, & some of the fences are almost 5' tall. It's the last & toughest of the April timber races in the Elkridge-Harford & Green Spring Hunts. The Voss & Manor races are held in the Elkridge-Harford area (The Manor now takes place on the Club land, but when I was a kid it was run along Markoe Road.) the first 2 Saturdays in April followed by the Grand National & the Hunt Cup in the Greenspring.
Spooky! Horses and horse-racing are another world to me. It's amazing when I think of so much going on in the world... each area is a world unto its own.
Really interesting story..I believe every word.
It probably had a lot to do with the gal that helped Bethany tack up, the fact that she was carrying a LOT of weights, & that the 19th is almost 5' tall as well as far along the course. There are only 22 fences & the 19th is well known for taking contenders. Still, it makes a nice story.
Today I inadvertently clicked on an icon by mistake. I found 5 old photos which I had posted at Photobucket back in 2011. They are pics of a turtle we saw at the beach. He was heading for the water. You might appreciate them. In one you can even see his tail. In another you can see our dog looking very interested in this creature! :) Click on the links below:http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj...
http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj...
http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj...
http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj...
http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/jj...
Those photos are cute, Joy! Thanks for sharing them.
Joy, not fond of turtles but they are good pictures and your dog is darling.
I was amazed at how big the turtle was.
Not sure what Lily got into, but she has a gash in her side that is huge, about 6" long & the vet was sticking his fingers way in toward the back of her ribs. She peeled the skin & meat right off. It looks to him like she cut, then ripped it open, hitting something as she ran. The wound was clean & he decided not to put in a drain, although it was close.She might have cut a nerve since she didn't yelp or whine when he stuck his fingers in there to poke around. I hadn't realized she was hurt when I came into the house. The big clue was she didn't sit or want a biscuit. Since then, she's stuck to me like glue. No need for a lead at the vet's. Her head was stuck at my knee unless I told her to do something else. They know her at the vet's, but were amazed how close she stuck to me & well she obeyed.
She's home again & asleep on my bed, but I had to get her to lay down there & not sit with her head on my leg while I type this. Lots to do & I shouldn't be typing this. Friends are coming over for the Derby & I need to seal the back gates so Lily won't jump out of the yard. No need for a cone yet, but I should get it ready now that Marg found her collar. I couldn't & forgot anyway. I took her into the vet's office with some baling twine tied around her neck that I had in my back pocket.
Poor Lily! I hope she'll heal quickly without any complications!
Oh how sad. And it is doubly hard because you can't say, but maybe you do, you'll feel better soon.
Lily is now in the cone of shame. She's feeling much better & wants to do stuff. She helped me weed around the back yard & I noticed she was starting to pick at her side, not just lick it. Now she's miserable & bored.
Poor little thing! Give her a scratch, a get-well scratch from me and Romeo.
Poor Lily but good she is able to move about.
Had a nice ride on Chip & Marg came along on Indy. So did Pip & Amber. Poor Lily stayed in the yard locked in the cone of shame. She voiced her disapproval quite certainly, if not all that loudly. It was plain bitching, though. I took her for a walk afterward & even took the cone off to let her eat. Then she helped me put out the trash, still without the cone. We're watching her closely though. She's now laying on that side & trying to chew at the stitches occasionally.
I hope Lily isn't in any pain.
Seems to be just mental anguish at being made to wear a cone & not being allowed to run around. Otherwise, she doesn't seem to notice that huge gash except that it itches. She's had the cone off for the past 2.5 hours, but I'm going to put it on before I go to bed, so she won't sleep well.
Can she drink her water with the cone on?
Yes, although it's easier out of a bowl rather than the water thing we normally use which is a dish with a 3 gallon jug in it. She now has a water dish by her food dish & another one out on the porch.
I think animals adapt to difficult circumstances better than humans.
Nina wrote: "I think animals adapt to difficult circumstances better than humans."I disagree. People just whine about it more, although Lily is certainly complaining a lot. Sounds almost human at times.
;)
Some animals are long suffering and do express their feelings. Like Lily.
Had a short, hot, but nice ride on Chip with Marg on Speedy. We kept telling Lily to heel & she did, never went in the ponds at all. She didn't like it, but came in & ate some of her dinner. No pain pill tonight, just the antibiotic. Hopefully the exercise & lack of a pill will get her stomach back on track.
Jim, I love the way you enjoy and love your animals. They bring such joy to our lives.
Thanks, Joy. Lily is back in her cone this morning. She was licking at her side a lot & I caught her chewing on a stitch. Poor thing. In other news, it's our anniversary, today. 33 years. I posted this for my wife on FB. We're kind of there already...
Happy Anniversary! Enjoy your shared life as often as you can. Swiftly go the days and nights.
I took off work early yesterday, came home & mowed the lawn. Today & mowed the fields. Just need to break the little tractor out again to mow Speedy's paddock & edge the fields. I've had the drip hose on the asparagus & vege garden. After almost a foot of water in April, 3 times the normal amount (Half of that was in the first 3 days!) we've been dry as a bone in May.
The hummingbirds are barely touching the feeders. For a few days, they were draining the 16oz one every 2 days, but now the Black Locusts are blooming. Gorgeous white blooms that just reek of honey. Most of the year they blend in & stab everyone (except the goats) with their sharp thorns. They sure shine now, though.
My clematis are huge and glorious above the blooming pink azaleas but a nasty squirrel has been trying desperately to got the lining out of my flower baskets that are on my fence. I am try just as desperately to deter him. Wish me luck. Also, the bunnies have been chewing limbs off my hibiscus bush. Ah, nature. Not always glorious.
Happy Anniversary to you both, Jim! Cute saying!We're having a heat waved here! The days are best in the earlier part of the day. It's glorious! As it gets later, it gets hotter and I start to remember the downside of summer. :)
Those animals can be a nuisance!I bought some bright pink potted geraniums. They are so beautiful! I love their earthy scent.
Your weather is like ours here in one respect as our days too, get warmer as the day gets later. I envy the western states where the later it gets the cooler it is. But, I too, love geraniums and especially pink ones.
I'm wilting with the heat, Nina. Yesterday I worked too hard. Now I have to rest. Shopping wears me out too!
Nina wrote: "My clematis are huge and glorious above the blooming pink azaleas but a nasty squirrel has been trying desperately to got the lining out of my flower baskets that are on my fence. I am try just as ..."They are big & pretty blooms. My clematis are the same color, but the blooms aren't as big. I'm happy to see they're growing at all this year. Last year they got a fungus that killed off most of them. Do you trim the old growth off yours every year?
It's hot here, too. 86 now. Yesterday hit 88. I've now got the whole place mowed, but poor Lily is bored. Marg took the Jacks to the Bluegrass Terrier Trials, so we've been here alone all day. She got some excitement this morning when she caught a chipmunk that's been terrorizing my shop. It got into seeds, buckets with baling twine or anything that it could chew. She chased it up a downspout, so I took the bottom off & caught it by the foot. I tossed it about 20' away into the lawn & Lily had a lot of fun pouncing after it. Didn't take too many Tigger type pounces before she was on it. Unlike the Jacks, she was happy to let me have it. They prefer to eat them. Munchkin used to eat them in about 2 swallows. You'd think we never fed him.
Marg just called & is on her way home, but is an hour away. It's 5:30, so Lily & I are going out to feed the horses & goats shortly.
Poor little chipmunk! He shouldn't have gotten into things like that. (They need people like me to mourn them.) By coincidence, I'm currently streaming from Amazon:"Still Life" 2013
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2395417/?...
"A council case worker looks for the relatives of those found dead and alone."
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00S...
"A government worker, charged with finding the family members of those who have died alone, is assigned to his final case - and finds himself on a liberating journey that allows him to finally start living his own life to the fullest."
http://dvd.netflix.com/Search?v1=stil...
I wish Lily was here to chase away the squirrel that keeps getting into the lining of the basket hanging on my fence.
Squirrels are very persistent! LOL
They ate the just before blooming tulips in my daughter's garden. I wish they would go back from where they came from..the ones' here were introduced to this area by a man from Colorado over one hundred years ago.
We gave up on Lily's cone or even keeping her in much this weekend. She's going nuts, so we keep trying to let her out & keep a close eye on her, but that hasn't worked very well. Yesterday I took her out to put away some stuff in one of the barns & she stuck with me. I stopped to fix a bit of fence & she was right there. I turned to get back in the truck & she was gone. I found her a few minutes later down in the pond playing with a frog she'd caught. Oy! As Marg says, she's like a toddler - there one minute & gone the next. Worse, she runs as fast as a deer. There's no keeping up with her. I'm still keeping the gates fenced off so she can't jump out, though.Her side is looking very good & she's not chewing at it. Still some heat in it. Marg wants to take out the stitches today. I'll look tonight & see if there's any overgrowth on the stitches. If not, I'm going to hold off until tomorrow. That will be 10 days. Dr. Ballard originally said 14 days which is really long. Dr. Oliver was over the other day & said he thought 10 would be plenty. That's pretty normal.
I'm almost tempted to take her in to the vets' so I can see their new facility. They were supposed to move in this weekend. They're a young bunch, all in their late 30's & early 40's. Their prices are very reasonable. Lily's 18 stitches were only $225. They're not the best, but they try hard & know when they're over their heads. A couple of times they've referred us elsewhere, but generally they can handle anything. Very friendly, too. Of course, they should be with us as we're probably some of their best customers. I have no idea what we spend with them each year, but it's a lot.
Glad to hear that Lily is on the mend.
Lily must be grateful you listened to her wishes.
Mom found a pretty plant in the middle of a woodland horse trail last year & moved it so it didn't get squished to her place. It's really pretty, but no one could identify it. She sent me a picture & I put it on FaceBook where I have some friends who are Extension agents or into other areas of horticulture. One of them, Travis Mohrman, managed to figure it out.http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/plan...
I had no idea that orchids were native to the eastern US, but am not surprised they're endangered. They're too pretty & delicate, I guess.
Jim wrote: "Mom found a pretty plant in the middle of a woodland horse trail last year & moved it so it didn't get squished to her place. It's really pretty, but no one could identify it. She sent me a pictu..."Great research, Jim! Orchids are so lovely. Orchid corsages were once so popular. I wonder if they still are.
So interesting, Jim. I think I might have seen something like that in our woods in the Ozarks.
Glens Falls (NY) Online Book Discussion Group
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Nina, yes, I would say my dad's magnolia was large. I'm guessing but I would say it was about ten or eleven feet tall and about 8 feet wide.