I got a new fly-through birdfeeder and barely the first night and a raccoon was casing the joint, trying to see what it could get. You can barely see in the back ground.
Bad raccoon!
Then it heard (?) smelled (?) Stinky and came dashing over to see what that was all about.
But Stinky stood its ground with super smooth moves.
There was a full-on showdown but it’s not clear whether anyone won. Mostly a lot of hilarious posturing.
I don’t know how I always manage to be out taking photos in such ghastly light. Sorry.
The apple tree seems to have a million apples on it right now which is about 999,975 more than it can handle.
I have to keep an eye on it and read up on apple trees. Hopefully it’s smart enough to drop off a bunch itself.
But already we can see it’s leaning. We gotta devise a system to prop it up.
I’m sure YouTube will have more info than we know what to do with.
Last year we had 5-6 apples and they were delicious.
This is Percy in their first year which was already 5 years ago. (GULP!)
And here they are now!
So many figs in our future.
We have a super busy couple of weeks coming up (or probably most of the summer) but I’m going to schedule a few posts to hopefully cover until I can get back to it.
The Project of Forever, Part 2 of 3:
11336 / 40000 words. 28% done!
The bro house across the street was empty for a couple of years and now it’s an Air BNB. It can fit a lot of people so almost every weekend there are lots of cars over there.
I’m not complaining. So far it hasn’t caused any trouble.
This weekend there were 2-3 cars, 2 big pick-ups and 2 flatbeds – is that what they are called?
This morning I heard funny noises out front and peeked out the window and they were loading up classic cars on the flatbeds.
Not like olde timey cars and not like muscle cars.
Like slicked out 80s Chevy Monte Carlo or 80s Cadillac. (I don’t know cars, that’s my best guess.) I thought it was kind-of cool. There are a lot of car events around here so maybe that’s what they were up to.
This represents about 90% of the gardening I have done so far this year.
I was inspired by my husband’s coffee system so I started a new tea system.
I make my tea in my cup. I use leaf yerba mate in a tea ball.
When the first cup is ready, I transfer the tea ball and boiling water into the travel mug. Then when I’m ready for more, it’s all ready to go.
I can’t believe it took me this long to try this amazing and life-changing approach to morning beverages.
Here is a view of the tea ball in the bottom of the travel mug but you can’t really tell. Trust me.
Last time I was in Orleans I left my travel mug so when I bring it home I’m going to adopt this new system at the office, too.
I bought another bird feeder — so now I have four.
The bird feeder store is a dangerous place. You go in with a thing in mind and end up with a nice man helping you load all your stuff into the car. I even bought “squirrel baffles” which the guy said would not keep squirrels out but would help with the rain.
Now my birds can stay dry while they snack.
See? It says Birds’ Choice. Is there a possessive apostrophe? I can’t tell. I hope there is.
I was disappointed that no birds showed up (while I was watching) for 2 days! But Bob said he saw Squirrel out there and the peanuts are gone.
Actually after I first put it out I was outside doing yard work and blue jay landed on top and checked things out but did not go for the peanuts. Is he really too big? The blue jays seem determined but maybe they don’t like this one. They still scare the other birds away when they pick up tidbits underneath.
They also appear almost instantly if I go outside. They know me as the lady who brings out the peanuts.
I have never attracted a hummingbird to a feeder. This is my third time trying over the past several years. I remain hopeful.
Progress report: project of forever, part 2 of 3:
9612 / 40000 words. 24% done!
I spotted one last scraggly daffodil out under the bird bath. I thought I took a photo of it but I don’t see it on my phone so I must have just thought about it. Here’s a tulip instead.
I dug up a bunch of irises because they mostly aren’t pretty and a pain to weed around and when the flowers finally show up they only last about a week. But here’s some blooming.
There are slowly more people coming back to work downtown.
We have been the only business on our floor for almost 2 years.
Our floor was only half full before the plague. The building used part of it for storage and a non-profit had just moved to another location.
The tulips nearing the end. They are pretty for so long. Even when they are blowing out they are kind-of pretty.
Then there were 2 businesses left besides us.
The insurance people went completely to work-from-home and the finance bros already had plans to move into a building they bought.
Then it was just colleague and I. Mostly I like it. It’s very quiet.
But if an ax murderer shows up, and colleague is on travel, I will be on my own for survival.
We almost have the restrooms to ourselves.
Except, I don’t know how it works but somehow the word is out so people come to our floor to use the restroom.
Workers in the building, the UPS guys, people with shy elimination systems (?). Sometimes it startles me to see someone on our floor and I usually say hello. But it seems like people sneaking to other floors to use the restroom don’t want to be seen. They don’t say hi back.
These delicious sandwiches and fries are from Lardo in downtown Portland.
It would make sense to include a photo of the couch with this story but I don’t have one handy and don’t want to take one right now. It’s one of those couches that has a little motor and button so it extends into a lounger.
I love this couch. It’s comfy. It’s held up well.
But if I’m going to complain, if you drop anything into a couch crevice — like you have the remote on the armrest and it slides into the couch. Or maybe you’re doing a crossword puzzle and you set your clipboard down on the seat while you go make some tea and come back and the pencil has fallen into the crack — those things are lost.
This delicious sandwich is from Taylor Street Market in downtown Portland.
I was fiddling with my wedding ring. (I do this all the time knowing full well what a bad idea it is) and dropped it in the couch crack.
I had to completely extend the lounger and then crawl under the seat with a flashlight and dig deep into dark crevices, squishing my fingers in where they barely fit with dust bunnies and who knows what might be in there.
I did retrieve my ring.
But this process is super inconvenient when you drop the Roku control and you can’t do anything until you can crawl around on your stomach and find it again — all while you just wanted to relax for a half hour before you go to bed.
And every time I remind myself — don’t leave stuff on the couch where it can fall it. But then I forget and do it anyway.
I’m moving the camera around trying to get a close up but maybe they monitor the environment and if it looks weird they lay low?
I’m going to leave the camera by the apple tree for a week and see if we get anything exciting.
Here’s a picture of the setup with a helpful arrow so you can see the entrance of the critters’ den. My Photoshop skills have atrophied — it took me forever to remember how to make an arrow and get it pointed in the right place.
On my way home from the match last week I saw an opossum scurrying along the street. It was in our neighborhood but not near our house. “Don’t be afraid, I’m your friend!” I shouted out the window while it rushed for cover.
I have always wanted to see a soccer match with our men’s and women’s teams play together.
Finally! My dream came true.
This match was a fundraiser for children in Ukraine. It was on a Wednesday night and I went back and forth about attending and decided not to.
Except when we were at the match on Saturday I changed my mind and planned to only go to the first half and then hop the bus home.
When Bob heard I planned to attend he wanted to go too so he met me downtown. I’m glad I didn’t leave early.
Tickets were free but a suggested $10 donation. Attendance was over 16,000. Lots of kids. I would say the women’s team fans outnumbered the men’s team fans. During the match they announced they’d raised over $400K but later I saw it was over $500k.
The ref was from Ukraine — first time in history I saw a ref get a standing ovation at the park. hehe.
The players looked like they were having so much fun. They were competitive but also goofing off. They rotated players about every 15 minutes to get everyone in there. (60 minute match). At the end all the players were on the field. Everyone wanted to score — no one helped the goalkeeper.
It was a really fun event. So happy we went.
