Of clouds and books, and other things...

Books, books, books! Can't get enough of them! I just ordered The Big House. Gretchen Joanna's review of the book has piqued my curiosity.

I also ordered this book on my Kindle. I have a couple of his writing books and they look good, though they're still waiting in line to be read!

I love taking pictures of beautiful cloud formations. So here goes!

We've had lots of good weather for cloud watching. ;0
I've been playing with my new Prismacolor pencils, but I got frustrated trying to find the ones I wanted. I made this ingenious tray for them. It's actually the top from a plastic tote! Works great!

My favorite time of day is when the sun is low in the sky and shadows are long.

 

I'm enjoying Gladys Taber's Stillmeadow Calendar. I think her writing is special to me because she, too, is living alone and is making the best of things. Her life was very creative and full. It's inspiring to glean ideas from her books. She has mastered the art of contentment, which is something we all need.
I still have several hours of my evening in which to do some art and read. Tomorrow is a day off and a big day for me. I have an appointment with the USDA lady to see about qualifying for a loan to buy my little farm. I'd love to stay here. I think it's a good spot for a life of contemplation. But wherever the Lord leads me, there I can find contentment. His will be done! :)

Blessings on your week!

Getting acquainted with GT...

After reading about so many of you enjoying Gladys Taber's books I went over to Amazon to see what they had to offer. They had such a great selection of her books that I bought several! These two have arrived already. Fast service!

I'm reading this one now, mostly on breaks at work. But it's more fun to read at home where it's peaceful. :)

 

It was cloudy and cool when I got home from work today. Just starting to sprinkle, but I took a few photos. This is my backyard. You can see on the right where my yard ends and the "meadow" begins. (Taller grass.) My kids took down all of the pasture fence, so now I call it a meadow.

Sumacs give me lots of privacy. The Heartland Trail is just on the other side of these sumacs, but you wouldn't know it.

My little Prairie Smoke flowers are back! May they continue to bloom and multiply! I think they're so cool!

I was going to say these were Tansy, but no. I'm not sure of the name, but Tansy is more of a little button shaped flower.

Very tall sumac in the background.

 The view of my house while standing by the sumac bushes.

 I'm one of the few people in the civilized world who actually plant box elder trees on purpose!

The little light green plant in the lower right part of the picture is another box elder. I like them because they grow very fast. I haven't had a problem with box elder bugs.

My very slow growing garden. We've had a lot of cool, rainy weather, which seems to be slowing the growth of my garden. I suppose we'll have a burst of heat soon and it will take off.

I thought this little whirly-bird's spinning tail might scare off some bunnies and deer. Unfortunately, it takes quite a gust to get it to spin! I bought a pink one for Audrey and Hazel. I'll plant it in their yard the next time I'm there.

There are some sunflowers and peas growing around the cream separator.

 More peas...

 My cute old watering can...

 and some petunias peaking out from the cream separator.

 This was taken a couple of days ago when it was much sunnier. I had just rearranged the living room furniture. I like it this way. It's nice to sit on the couch and blog and the swivel chair by the window gives me a good view of the back yard.

It's doing a bit of thundering and lightning-ing outside. I think I'll work on an ATC or two. I haven't been doing much of that lately. It was a hectic day at work today, so I'll kick back and relax for a while.

May God's blessings and peace surround you all!

Bike ride!

I went for that bike ride mentioned in the last post. I took gazillions of pictures, hoping to find something to use for a drawing. I tried to get some close-ups of plants to try with my new colored pencils. Here's a sampling...

Heading west.

 

 

 

We used to have a nice old wooden railroad bridge. But, alas, somebody thought it was dangerous, so it was replaced by this monstrosity.

Pistachio waits patiently.

If I stand on my tiptoes I still can't get my nose over the top. Bob and I used to rest our elbows on the top rail of the old bridge and enjoy the beautiful view. Not possible now. (But NOBODY's gonna fall off this bridge!)

I love this pretty spot by the bridge.

This was my first scribbled attempt with my pencils. Would you believe out of the two sets of pencils there was only one grey?

If I'm smart I'll go to bed soon. It's getting dark, 9:26 p.m. and I have to get up at 5. I sure enjoyed my first long journey on Pistachio! One and a half miles out and the same distance back. And uphill both ways! :D

Good-night and peace to all.

Look what I just got!!!

Can't WAIT to play with them on my new pad of Bristol paper! I'm also told they work well on book pages.

I bought these a week or so ago and then found out from The Frugal Crafter that she doesn't recommend these because they are a harder "lead". That's when I ordered the set at the top of the page. I'm sure they will be terrific when used together. Now I just have to settle down and try them! :)

Woo hoo!

Shalom for now. Going to play and maybe take a bike ride.

Another glorious garage sale day!

Micah brought more stuff for the garage sale, so our inventory is still quite impressive even after a busy day like yesterday.

See the big bird in front of the tractor? It's a vulture! You don't see too many of them around here. I think they're probably common, but very wary of people. My daughter drove up to the house and he flew away. What a wingspan! I was curious about what he was eating out there in the pasture, so we took a walk down there. It was a little fox that had been killed or died there for some reason. Makes you wonder. It was such a small, dainty animal. Maybe female? Nature is interesting in all its facets. No, I didn't take a picture! Yuck!

I'm working on mowing the lawn a little at a time today. The interesting part will be putting everything away this afternoon! Come on people; BUY STUFF! :)

Have a great day!

Shalom.

Junque and clutter sale!

I had planned to wait until tomorrow to have my sale, but the sun came out and I decided to go for it!
I quickly carried boxes full of junque/clutter outside and arranged it on a tarp. (The ground is damp from yesterday's rain.)

I just got inundated with garage salers! I've had about 10 vehicles and one guy on foot in the last couple of hours. They started almost immediately after I posted some signs. Wow!

This cute little washtub went for $5. I know...I'm getting jipped, but I'd rather that someone took them and enjoyed them than having to get rid of them some other way. One of the scrub boards and four horse shoes, plus a ceramic Christmas decoration went for $10.

Whoops! Here's another customer! I'm sitting at the dining room table blogging and keeping an eye out the sliding door. Works great!

They bought a vintage letter holder and an old grain scoop for the whopping sum of $5.10. The 10 cents was for a little jar with an antique lid.

A young mother-to-be and two fellows bought 2 iron wheels and a ladder. Another young family bought a snow scoop and the little girl shyly asked about the rabbit watering bottles. I gave them to her. (There goes my profit!)

One lady bought a tractor seat, 3 milk cans, 2 gallon jar butter churns and 3 large iron wagon wheels. I won't tell you how much. Jipped once again. But she said they would go to a good home and Bob was friends with the people she works with. So why not?

I'm also trying to sell Jordan's collection of old video game systems. He said he'll never get around to taking them all the way to Texas. :)

My first customer of the day was a little girl from across the street. She came along with her two yellow labs. I heard a clattering noise outside and when I went to check I realized the noise was caused by one of the labs walking through a box of dishes. I managed to gently ask her to please take the doggies home. She returned later with a lady of about my age and they purchased a couple of items. I was glad to see she wasn't offended and the dogs were left home. The little girl bought a gallon Ziploc bag of colored pencils for $1. (I just bought some new ones and realized I had TOO many! Glad she'll enjoy them!) The lady lives nearby and is the little girl's Kinship partner. Kind of like the Big Sister/Big Brother program. She bought a mirror for $2 and was so thrilled with it. It had been sitting in my closet for a few years, so I was glad it finally found it's mate! :)

Finally, time for lunch! (It's 2:00!)

 

I'll have a slice of this lusciously moist Bundt cake later!

 

 

So many interesting folks stopping by. At present (not very accurate) count there have been 13 vehicles and one guy on foot. The last man who came was about my age, shoulder length silver hair and trimmed beard. Baseball cap and T-shirt tucked into his jeans. He just looked like my idea of a veteran. He stayed about 30 minutes and was very talkative while he carefully looked through all of the old rusty stuff. He bought a few small items and visited a lot. Glenn, something about his manner reminded me of Jeff. Nice guy. There have been lots of older folks poking about. This has been a lot of fun! It was supposed to rain today, but it's turned into a glorious day for a yard sale!

Tomorrow Micah will probably join me and bring some of her own stuff to sell. That should be even more fun!

I'll update this if anything truly amazing happens. Otherwise, have a great weekend, everyone!

Update! Something truly amazing happened! Four bike riders pulled in to look at stuff. One of the girls just had to have a big old cooking pot, so she strapped it on the back of her bike and we all had to tease her about riding 11 miles back to Park Rapids with that funny looking pot on the back of her bike. :)

And then there was JERRY! This weather-beaten little man came rolling in and proceeded to stay for about 3 hours. Well, he did leave for a while and then came back. He bought so many things! Antlers, a milk can, a pulley, a pressure canner. Then he left to call a lady to see if she wanted to buy a saddle from me. He returned and bought 3 saddles, 3 lamps, an old welder, a sawhorse, 3 tractor seats and a few other small items. He may come back another day to wheel and deal on some of the old farm machinery in the pasture. Oh, and he left his number because besides being a flea marketer, he also repairs mobile homes. He was quite a character! (Daughter Micah stayed around until he was gone, just to be proper.) He was spinning yarns the whole time and, I have to admit, I was getting a little tired of standing around. But he did spend a lot of money, so I won't complain! :) Oh, he also gave me two large tomato plants. I've already planted them in my garden!

I've taken down my signs and tomorrow, if the weather holds, I'll put them back up and we'll do it again. Whew!

Shalom and good-night.