breakfast anyone ~

Not much going on around here.
 

I have a batch of homemade oatmeal berry yogurt started.  You can read about making it  HERE.  I love it with blueberries; but any fruit is good. 

I just got home from picking up eggs from one of our our 'egg ladies'.  One calls her business Dorothy's Happy Hens Farm.  Her eggs look like they came straight from an Easter basket ~ all the original colors.  Different breeds of chickens - different colored eggs.  Please ~ don't ask what color comes from what breed, because I honestly don't have the answer.  My other egg lady is my Mom when her chickens are in the laying mood.

I keep telling Slim I want to raise some chickens; but his answer to me is "what would Dorothy or your Mom do without you? You buy eggs from them every week."  True.  I buy a lot of eggs; but not just any old egg from the store ~ I buy QUALITY FRESH Free Range Eggs and there is absolutely no comparison in flavor from these eggs and those store bought ones.  My egg ladies love their chickens and the quality of eggs they lay prove it.

Tomorrow will be a busy day, as we'll be making homemade breakfast sausage links and bratwurst.  The following are 2 pics from last year:

Guess what's for breakfast?

Note : Whenever I go on to wordpress and try to leave a comment it doesn't go through.  This has been going on for a long time.  Also, many of my comments I leave on blogspot haven't been going through.  I'm TRYING to get this worked out.  

Until next time ...
So it goes in my neck of the woods.
~mel

hammock ~

Ever wonder why your mind wanders?  Well I do ~ because it happens to me ALL the time ... almost to the point where sometimes I have to question my sanity!  I swear.  I'm the biggest daydreamer and can lose my train of thought at the drop of a dime.  I can be doing something and right in the middle of it my mind goes off wandering and before I know it I'm off a totally whole new direction.

I'm blaming it on the hammock. 

It either has to be from all the daydreaming I did as a kid in a hammock or from the knocks on the noggin ~ from all the times I fell out of a hammock.

I was surfing the internet ... I came across this photo:

 Well... that got me thinking about hammocks.  I have many fond memories of laying in a hammock, looking at the clouds and tree tops and daydreaming my time away.  We always took a hammock with us when camping to hang between the trees. 

Then my mind goes wandering off to laying in the hammock once down by my Aunt Margie and Uncle Earl's place one time when I was quite young with my Dad.  I must have been around six or seven years old. 

Dad was always teaching us kids about nature.  Always pointing things out to us ~ teaching us to look beyond the obvious.  Well on this particular afternoon I learned the difference between two trees, the Common Poplar and the Balsam Poplar, aka. Balm-Of-Gilead Poplar.  The hammock that we were laying in was tied between a Balm-Of-Gilead Poplar and a Common Poplar.  The perfect set-up for a lesson to given.

~ leaves of the Common Poplar ~

 ~ leaves of the Balm-Of-Gilead Poplar ~

"The Balm-Of-Gilead Poplar", according to my Dad, "wasn't as popular of a poplar as the Common Poplar" in our area.   

Try saying that ten times fast.  

"The Balm-Of-Gilead Poplar wasn't as popular of a poplar as the Common Poplar."

"The Balm-Of-Gilead Poplar wasn't as popular of a poplar as the Common Poplar."

 "The Balm-Of-Gilead Poplar wasn't as popular of a poplar as the Common Poplar."

 "The Balm-Of-Gilead Poplar wasn't as popular of a poplar as the Common Poplar."

"The Balm-Of-Gilead Poplar wasn't as popular of a poplar as the Common Poplar."

 "The Balm-Of-Gilead Poplar wasn't as popular of a poplar as the Common Poplar."

 "The Balm-Of-Gilead Poplar wasn't as popular of a poplar as the Common Poplar."

"The Balm-Of-Gilead Poplar wasn't as popular of a poplar as the Common Poplar."

 "The Balm-Of-Gilead Poplar wasn't as popular of a poplar as the Common Poplar."

 "The Balm-Of-Gilead Poplar wasn't as popular of a poplar as the Common Poplar."

The leaves of the Balm-Of-Gilead were a tad bit larger than the Common Poplar and not as shiney and showy. 

BUT... there was a big difference ~ the smell.  

Ahhhhhh... the sweet smell of the leaves of the Balm-Of-Gilead and the sticky resin on the back of the leaves.  The same resin that was collected way back in biblical times from the Land of Gilead to be made into perfume and a salve or balm for healing.

That is what Dad pointed out to me that day.  

Laying in a hammock.

Until next time ...

So it goes in my neck of the woods.

~mel

fluffy ~

How do you like my new coffee cup?
I'm not fat
I'm fluffy!

It's fluffy outside too ~

It's been snowing all morning and now into the afternoon.
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!!!

 

The wood in the shed is going down ... but there's still enough piled outside to burn.  We should have enough to get us through this long winter.

 

I already shoveled two times times today to try to stay ahead of the snow piling up ... but darn ... it sure is coming down.  Looks like I'll be heading out again soon to do it one more time before Slim gets home from work.  Poor bugger ` vacation time is over and he had to head back to the papermill today to pay for all that gas we charged on the card on our trip to Texas last week.

I think this snow bank out in the yard will still be there in June!

Notice those two trees ... see how the wind has the snow blown in between them.  This pic doesn't do it justice .. it's about eight feet up that the snow is packed in.

This shot too ... the snow is a good three feet deep yet in the yard ~

Yeppers ... Let it snow!!  We need all the moisture we can get.  Spring will get here soon enough then I'll be complaining about the heat and the bugs and having to plant my garden and pulling weeds :)  So for now I'm not going to complain anymore about the snow.  I think my 10 days in nice weather got me over the cabin fever blues. 

Either that ... or my shingles have completely fried my brain cells and I'm losing my mind!!! Gosh ~ those shingles are a wicked infliction.  A person can't even think straight when you're in pain.  I just grit my teeth and bear it; but honestly, I wouldn't wish them upon anyone.  Just when I think I am getting over with I get a new out break.  Okay... I vented ... I'm mo'betta now.

Until next time ...
So it goes in my neck of the woods.
~mel

I'm back~

Home again home again jiggity jig ~ after our quick little run to Texas and we're back in snowy Wisconsin again.

What a quick trip ... a week and a half is just too short of time for a trip of that caliber.  Dear Hubby and I and our middle daughter, Sara had a wonderful time though.  Catching up with my sister and helping her out in preparation of her moving north to Wisconsin as soon as her house sells down there.  So this was possibly our last run down there.  It was a bitter sweet trip.  My sisters husband had passed away this last December and we hadn't seen her since his passing.

My brother in law used to be in the stucco/construction business and he had a lot of tools and such and a big garage of equipment, etc... that my sister wanted help going through before her sales.  Dear Hubby helped her out going through everything, making sure what worked and what didn't and getting what didn't to work, etc... A lot was accomplished in a short period of time :)  I'm glad he was able to to that for her.

 Despite the short time frame we were able to fit in some of the tourist things though.  We spent an afternoon down in Fort Worth and saw Titanica at the Omni Theatre - awesome!  We visited the Traders Village in Grand Praire ( the 80 acre flea market).  We made it over to Justin Boots where Dear Hubby found a new leather belt and Colleen got the cutest lil' cowboy boots ... 2 pair in fact.  I love the smell of leather in that store!

Coming home we stopped for the night in Branson and took in a Legends Concert.  We saw the Blues Brothers, Elvis, Diana Ross, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Brooks & Dunn ...

Then in Springfield we stopped at the Fantastic Caverns ... very interesting!

There was one stop that I was really hoping for but just wasn't able to do it ... I wanted in the worse way to give TexWisGirl a call and meet up with her - but I forgot to take cheese curds.  bummer!!!  There just wasn't enough hours in the day!

Also another bummer about the whole week ... 2 days before we left I had a flare up with shingles ... very painful to say the least.  I had a swollen face the whole week; but thankfully due to some antibiotics and pain meds I managed.  Thank God Sara and Slim did all the driving!  I couldn't of made it without them.  I hurt so bad and just laid on the back seat with my head buried in a pillow most of the time.

I'm "fluffy" anyways ... but you can see how swollen my face is.  Luckily I didn't break out too bad ... just a few pox behind my ear and up in my hair line.  It was nice though to soak in a few rays of sunshine for awhile. 

So.... I'm still healing from the shingles and I'm recooperating from the fast trip to Texas. 

Until next time ...
So it goes in my neck of the woods.
~mel

snow what ~

Snow what I'm going to do?  Snow away to a warmer place where hopefully there is no snow.  I'm snowing to snow to Texas for a bit to snow visit my sister.  I've seen enough snow to last for awhile.  I think my brain has a snow freeze and it needs to thaw.  It's snowing out right now and I'm snow sick of seeing snow.  My vision is blurred with snow, my lawn is covered with snow, I have snow on my head, snow on the sidewalk and melting on the rug.  I can't find my flower garden because it's sleeping.  Guess where?  Under three feet of snow!  Snowwwwwwwwwwww.... it's time to snow somewhere else for awhile. 

Until next time ...
Snow it goes in my neck of the woods.
~mel

the Big Lake Gitche Gumme

This is a shared email from my friend Tim ~ interesting facts of our Great Lake Superior.  If you look at the map and find the city of Ashland ... I'm located 60 miles directly south :)

Why it's called Lake Superior
 Pretty amazing..... Did you realize
how big this lake is?

LAKE SUPERIOR FACTS
 
Lake Superior contains ten percent of all the fresh
water on the planet Earth.
 
It covers 82,000 square kilometers or 31,700 square miles.
 
The average depth is 147 meters or 483 feet.
 
There have been about 350 shipwrecks recorded in Lake Superior
Lake Superior is, by surface area, the largest lake in the world.


A Jesuit priest in 1668 named it Lac Tracy, but that name
was never officially adopted.
 
It contains as much water as all the other Great Lakes
combined, plus three extra Lake Erie's!!
 
There is a small outflow from the lake at St. Mary's River
(Sault Ste Marie) into Lake Huron, but it takes almost
two centuries for the water to be completely replaced.
 
There is enough water in Lake Superior to cover all of North and
South America with water one foot deep.
 
 Lake Superior was formed during the last glacial retreat, making it one
of the earth's youngest major features at only about 10,000 years old.
 
The deepest point in the lake is 405 meters or 1,333 feet.
 
There are 78 different species of fish that call the big lake home.
 
The maximum wave ever recorded on Lake Superior was 9.45 meters
or 31 feet high.
 
If you stretched the shoreline of Lake Superior out to a straight
line, it would be long enough to reach from Duluth to the Bahamas .
 
Over 300 streams and rivers empty into Lake Superior with the
largest source being the Nipigon River
 
The average underwater visibility of Lake Superior is about 8 meters
or 27 feet, making it the cleanest and clearest of the Great Lakes .

Underwater visibility in some spots reaches 30 meters.
 
In the summer, the sun sets more than 35 minutes later on the
western shore of Lake Superior than at its southeastern edge.
 
Some of the world's oldest rocks, formed about 2.7 billion
years ago, can be found on the Ontario shore of Lake Superior ..
 
It very rarely freezes over completely, and then usually just for a few
hours.  Complete freezing occurred in 1962, 1979, 2003 and 2009.

 The Ojibwe call the lake Gichigami, meaning "big water." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the name as "Gitche Gumee" in The Song of Hiawatha, as did Gordon Lightfoot in his song, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald".

~~~
Until next time ...
So it goes in my neck of the woods.
~mel

door sign ~

Yep ~ I'm going to make this sign to hang by my door:

Until next time ...
So it goes in my neck of the woods.
~mel