breakfast on the porch

We love this time of year because we can relax and eat our breakfast on the porch. It is a great way to start the day! Sometimes we sit out there longer than we should because there is always so much to see. And we get so few days in the year that we can sit out there, we like to take as much advantage of it as we can.

Here are a few of the feathered friends that join us in the morning!

Mr. and Mrs. Swallow

Goldfinches

Rose-breasted Grosbeak

Blue Jay

Baltimore Oriole

Brown Thrasher

We have this beautiful old apple tree just on the edge of the creek, Vince looked out and said "That finch looks like a little apple in there!"

So I zoomed in to see if I could get a closeup...

It is a little blurry, but I thought he was so cute, and it kind of looks like a soft painting.

Someday I will have to figure out how to add sound to this post so you can hear all the birdsong!

They are just chirping away!

what came first?

I know I said I wasn't going to talk about food (much), but since I approach cooking pretty much the same way as a craft project, which is to dive right in whether I know what I am doing or not. I usually will try doing my own thing and if it doesn't work out, then I look to the experts.

Recently some friends gave us 3 frozen chickens, they had some of their old hens that weren't laying many eggs anymore butchered. I really had no idea how to cook them, but I figured I would just roast them and make soup out of them. So I thawed one out and stuck it in a roasting bag and cooked it the recommended amount of time. I thought I could use some of the breast meat to make chicken and biscuits, then use the rest of it for soup.
 HA! That bird was so tough, I could barely cut through the skin to even get to the meat! Even my sharp, heavy duty kitchen knife had trouble with it. All I could think of while wrestling with it was "This must be what it is like cooking a dinosaur!". When I finally got to the meat and could hack off a piece, I tasted it.

And I yelled down the stairs to Vince "Hey! Guess what dinosaur tasted like? A 4 year old laying hen!"

so what came first, the chicken or the dinosaur?

I did make soup out of it, and it came out really good. I then proceeded to do some research on line on how to cook these tough old birds. The key is to cook them long at a low temperature in a dutch oven. I did that with the 2nd one and it came out great, actually edible before making soup out of it.

this was the third try, I forgot to put the recommended cup of water in it before roasting it for 3 and 1/2 hours! It was a little dry, but again, made awesome soup!

sachets and seeds

The weekend before last was a little too cold for me to work outside, so I went and played in my a craft room for a few hours. I made these sachets and seed tags to sell, I have some things on consignment at a little shop in Owego, NY., called The Left Bank. The next time I go down there I am going to take pictures of the inside and do a post about it. It is a great shop!

 The sachets are made out of little pre-made muslin bags that we had left from when we used to do trade shows, they come with a drawstring in them, but I pulled it out because I wanted to sew them shut. I ironed them flat, then stamped on them. Then I sewed the lace across the bottom. I filled them with lavender buds (mom had a bag left from some project), then sewed the tops closed after inserting a piece of narrow ribbon for a hanger (I sewed the rayon ribbon on at the same time, scrunching it as I went along), then hand sewed a silk flower and old button on. They were fast, easy and fun to do, it took me longer to pick out which stamps I wanted to use than to actually make them! You could just as easily make them from scraps of fabric, what a great way to utilize your scrap bag stash!

yes, you really need all this stuff!

This is a test tube filled with sunflower seeds, attached to a large manila tag that I made from an old IBM punch card. A friend gave me a huge stack of these cards, probably 20 years ago! I still have a lot of them, and this is a great way to use them. You could also use a manila folder or cardstock as the tag. After I stamped the flowers on there, I sewed a piece of decorative paper to it (I cut mine out with my sizzix machine to get the scalloped edge, but you could use fancy scissors if you have them).
Then I cut a piece of tissue box out, stamped on that, punched holes in it, and cut up a rubber band and tied that through the holes to hold the test tube.
For the test tube, (which I got a bunch of from the other Donna, she had bought them from a scientific supply company, and got a lifetime supply because if you buy that many, you get a really good deal!, so we are always trying to come up with creative ways to use them) I cut a circle out of parchment paper and glued it around the edge of the top of the tube to hold the seeds in, and wrapped some heavy thread around it to help hold it on, then tied on a sunflower charm. I wrapped a small scrap of paper around the center of the tube an tied it with ribbon.
You could use different kinds of flower seeds, but I chose the sunflowers because they are easy to grow, are large and fill the tube up fast, and I got them out of our bird feeder supply can that is on the porch!

I computer generated planting instructions and sewed that to the back  of the tag, then stamped it.
I thought they would make a fun gift!

spring cleaning

 It is finally nice enough outside to clean up the flower beds. On the way out to the far fence line, I walked past the pussy willow tree and the light was shining on those puffy little buds and I wondered if I could take a picture that could capture it. So I went and got my camera and this what I got...

this honey bee was in there!

achoo!!!

this is the tree. Vince accidentally mowed over it the first year we had it because we forgot to put a marker on it. It didn't hurt it much!

ok, time to get to work! But I decided to keep the camera with me in case I found something blog-worthy.

smart move, because I almost immediately dug this guy up while removing a clump of weeds. I'm glad I didn't skewer him with my garden fork!

He wasn't too happy about being pulled out of the cold dirt and put in the sun, so I put him right back after I took his portrait. I found another one about 20 feet away under one of the pussy willow trees. 

After I got done cleaning up the fence line, I walked over to the pond and took some pictures there...

there are hundreds of these salamanders in the pond, I love to watch them, they just hang there in the water, so peaceful

These minnows showed up last year, the first fish we've ever had!

a salamander and a bullfrog tadpole (or pollywog, which is more fun to say!), it takes one to two years for bullfrog tadpoles to become frogs!

I wandered over to the purple primroses, they just looked so pretty with the yellow daffodils looking down at them that I had to take their picture again.

This the fence next to the driveway, I was able to clean this up a few weeks ago when we had the first nice weekend weather.

After dinner we were sitting on the porch enjoying the early evening, and this robin was sitting on the fence for a long time. He is so beautiful with the setting sun shining on his red breast.

It started to get chilly out so we came in and I started to clean up the kitchen, but when I looked out the window, the moon was shining through one of my favorite trees, and there was a red winged blackbird on a branch, so I grabbed the camera one more time and took these through the window....

It was the perfect ending to a great spring day, the first weekend in May!!

the garden awakens

 Yea! The sun finally came out for a few days and things are turning green!

this is the same garden that was under all that snow! You can see the whole frog that was once buried up to his neck in the white stuff.

the garlic looks good!

signs of spring!

I don't know what these are, they just showed up one year. They must have been in with something I transplanted. The color is spectacular!

purple primroses

I don't know what these are either! They are the same color as the other ones.

they look like fairy flowers!

Enjoy the Sunshine!

oh, deer!

These deer wandered through our yard a few weeks ago before all the snow was gone. We were happy to see that so many survived the winter, and they looked in pretty good shape. We love to watch them, sometimes in late spring and early summer a doe and fawn (sometimes twins!) will come and munch on various plants. We do chase them away if they start to eat any of the perennials, but overall they don't bother too many of our plantings.

this is the whole herd in the field next to our house

they were eating some of the twigs and branches

they are standing behind one of my red twig dogwoods here, they didn't eat any of that

they came across the creek to check out the birdfeeder

I took all these pictures from inside the house, through the window