A Gift of Trust

Ashley rescued this cardinal from one of our cats and gave it to me to fix. It sat in my hand and let me check its wings and look for injuries. I couldn't find anything that appeared to be serious, so I just let him sit in my hand. After a couple minutes he got more alert and when I decided he was not injured, I opened my hand flat and he flew off into the trees. He let me hold him for about ten minutes and when he flew off I felt honored by his trust.

Roof Repairs

The worst thing about building your own house is that when something goes wrong, you can't go back to the contractor and get them to fix it. When the problem is with the roof it's even worse.

Two inches of rain in about 24 hours reminded me that I had to fix the roof leak before winter set in. I had been putting this off all summer, now it had to be taken care of.

I borrowed a safety belt from a friend, pulled out the rope and realized I couldn't remember how to tie the sliding knot to attach the belt to the rope. A Google search found it pretty quickly and now I know the name because I'm almost positive I'll need it again, The Prusik Knot or Triple Sliding Hitch.

Next was getting the rope over the roof to tie it off. That wasn't as easy as I hoped it would be, in fact I couldn't throw it that high. Even on the top rung of the ladder I was three feet short of the ridge. Getting it over the ridge required a lot of nerve (read stupidity) and prayer, but at least I'm still alive to tell.

Once up on top, the view was great. I really do need a lookout balcony somewhere. Or maybe just a retreat back in the woods where I have the same view of the mountains from the ground.

The problem was two screws that had worked loose. Unfortunately, while I tightened anything that looked like it might work loose, I found several more screws that weren't grabbing anything, so they will probably be problems in a few years. To do it right I needed someone underneath the roof to hold a block of wood under anything loose.

Unbelievable

I don't usually do this, but when I walked past this man kicking the daylights out of this couch to get it through a door that was six inches shorter than the couch, I just had to take a picture. Too bad the video didn't get him kicking the couch.

Wild Turkeys

GEDC0513
Originally uploaded by tormash9

For the past month a flock of wild turkeys and babies near Muddy Creek have been part of the scenery on my morning drive to work. A couple days ago they were across the road on the hill in the afternoon and I was able to get a photo. They were too far away to get a very good photo, but I counted five hens and about 20 babies between them.

Got Curcurbits?

Doesn't that sound like some kind of bizarre disease? Actually it is the family which cucumbers, squash, melons and the dreaded zucchini fall into.

Last year the squash borers killed all my cucumbers, yellow squash and zucchini before I got a handful of vegetables from them. No relish or pickles in the pantry for us.

My sister said all her plants had all died as well. According to her father-in-law it was because she didn't plant radishes in her garden last year. According to him the radishes discourage the borers. Since no one eats them we both skipped planting them.

This year I sprinkled a few radish seeds down the row and now I've got more curcurbits than I can possibly use. I've canned dill pickles, bread and butter pickles, zucchini relish, yellow squash relish, and dill relish and they're still coming on strong. Since everyone loves bread and butter pickles I'll do another batch of them and another batch of yellow squash relish. And I think I'll try drying some zucchini chips and see how they taste.

Anyone need curcubits? Right now everyone sees me coming with a bag and runs the other direction.

Firefox "Too Much Recursion Error"

Since this is the second time this has happened I want to make note of the easy fix that I accidentally discovered, because I know it will take forever to figure it out again in six months.

The thing I like best about Firefox is the ability to customize it with add-ons. One that I really like is the One Click Weather Add-on that shows the weather in the bottom of the Firefox window.

Unfortunately this particular add-on sometimes causes an error message that reads "too much recursion" and won't allow Firefox to even open. After several Google searches and only finding complicates fixes, I decided to uninstall Firefox and try to disable add-ons.

There wasn't an uninstall menu item for Firefox, but there was a safe mode which let me open Firefox with add-ons disabled. From there I was able to uninstall the One Click Weather and re-enable the other add-ons, restart Firefox and everything was back to normal.

Much easier than creating a new profile and copying information from the old profile to the new.

It's That Time of the Year Again

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Originally uploaded by tormash9

Last year I didn't have enough pickles or summer squash to make pickles, so I made up for it yesterday.

• Dill pickles in the back for Ashley from Mrs. Wages Mix
• Zucchini Relish from page 43 of an unknown book
• Yellow Squash Relish from Beth
• Bread and Butter for me from Farm Journal Cookbook

I don't usually have very good luck with dill pickles, so we'll see how the mix turns out. The other three recipes I've used or tasted and they're all great.

Unfortunately the stove top got too hot and I actually caught the counter top on fire. I think I prefer a range over a cooktop or an outdoor kitchen would work, too. Keep all the heat and mess outside.