Wacky Weather

Friday, August 21st started like any other August 21st, course it was my mothers and nieces birthday, AND one of Madames classmates birthday, later that day she was to attend a party for her. I hope all had a good day, it only happens once a year!
Madame and I transplanted many plants on this day, there were a few I had that needed bigger pots and a few I just received through the mail, ordered more than 2 weeks ago, boy! We were excited. Needless to say, as we were innocently transplanting and before we knew it something was amiss in the weather. Madame and I traveled from the back porch to the kitchen several times before we noticed....Sophia, the street smart stray, was acting weird. She was going in and out at a frantic pace, even jumping up on the deck to find the door closed, jump down and jump back up. Small thunder in the distance, maybe that was bothering her. Soon enough, while waiting too drop Madame off at her party, the outside became very darkened, almost as if it were night. A little rain came, but not bad.
Come time to leave we knew we had to dash to the truck but once we were outside we found it we still humid and NOT raining. Hump!
No sooner had I turned on the truck on....the emergency broadcast tone was sounding. "Is this real?" Madame asked, "No" However it seems to be toning longer than usual....
"This is a emergency broadcast system, beeepp...."
"There is a emergency tornado warning for my county, my town, and western Maine. Beeeepp"
"The emergency tornado warning is from 3:52pm to 4:15 pm, with a tornado watch in effect until 7:00 pm. Beeepp."
I notice the rain pick up and feel it's about 3:50 pm. Okayyy.....
"The tornado warning is 12 miles from (neighboring town) and traveling east, this is indicated by Doppler....."
"The tornado may or may not be on the ground, in the event you have a tornado, take immediate shelter......."
"This means, if you have a basement, place yourself on the western wall, sit with a blanket covering your head....''
''If you are traveling, do not take shelter under a highway......''
''If you are in a mobile home, evacuate immediately...... cover within a nearest ditch, if no ditch is around, take shelter under the strongest entry way of any shelter....." Would he add, hug and kiss your loved ones? Wow...I have never heard a emergency broadcast before, I told Madame we may be staying and to make the short run to the front door.

By this time I had backed my truck up to the front steps, it was raining in sheets and lightening every few seconds, Madame began to cry. I do admit, I jumped while unlocking the door, the thunder sounded and sounded LOUD. We phoned Dad, he was another town away and had not a lick of rain. He calmed Madame by reminding her he was from down south and witness a tornado come across his front yard.
Our trees bent over and looked pretty scary, the rain felt as if it was going sideways and within seconds all our windows has free standing water on the sills.

Madame noticed a waterfall on the stone steps at the back door, poor Tartarus, he was beside himself...never leaving my side and panting so badly I though he would have heat stroke.

Soon, most of the bad wind and lightening was over, here is what my driveway looked like just after 45 minutes.

The other half of the photos clearly shows the flooding to my front door and still lighting and thunder was sounding overhead.

It is suspected two tornado's set down in my area, highly unusual for Maine. This house was lifted and turned, it's in a abutting town to us.

And this is a photo sent to news channel 13 from a cell phone. Looks like a funnel cloud to me! It was in the next county over by this time. It hit my area fast, a lot of people felt unexpected.

I can say that I've heard a emergency broadcast now! Never before had I, unreal. C&G Design

Joe Pye Weed for Pink Saturday

It's PINK Saturday, wow! Time does fly, it seems like a day or two ago I was posting on Buddy Lee. Anyway, my choice for PINK this week is my Joe Pye Weed. I found this lovely growing freely in another part of my yard and moved it to it's permanent spot this year, it has done wonderfully and is a favorirte staple of butterflies.

So flutter over to How Sweet the Sound and see other PINKS! C&G Design

Madame's Vacation

Madame had a nice vacation this summer, she went to the coast with a school mate and stayed for a "week and 2 days". She was a hop, skip and a jump away from her grandmother and visited her a couple of times. She raved about the sunset, I remember the sunrises from when I lived there, they are beautiful. Although the coast of Maine is cooler than inland, she still got quite a bit of color, it's hard to feel a sunburn when you have the ocean breeze all the time.

This is the rock structure they constructed at the end of the point, I guess visitors are in the habit of leaving a creative idea behind. What better way then to use and leave items that are found.

We see she kayaked and I was told by the people she stayed with that these boats weren't really ocean quality. I took comfort the bottoms are wide and less likely to tip. I made several warnings about making sure she wore a life jacket. The host let me know Madame did a real good job boating and mainly it was because she stayed calm.

And a nice picture of Madame in the sand.

Another sunset shot, with alittle modeling thrown in.

This picture should be made into a puzzle.

This rock sculpture is really neat, it even has the creators name painted on a rock, the first year and states "until now."

Here is better architectural angle shots of the same formation.

Her last night at the vacation camp consisted of crab hunting, she talks about clicking noise on the rocks when it was darkness all around, well!!!

They did catch and release, thank goodness. The hunter with the most pinches was the one who had the long pants, shoes, sleeves and mucho protection. She said it was funny.

Until next year, she may go the whole two weeks instead of "one week and 2 days." C&G Design.

Happy birthday to my mother and niece!

Veggie Garden Update-August

I can say with all the rain New England has had this summer, the peas have been prolific, the picture below was taken August 1, we were over run with peas please!

We ended up eating these pictured but further down you'll see where we canned more peas. The peas are all gone now but they were a pleasure to grow and eat them this season.

By the 5 th of August we were getting tomatoes, oh yummy! Honestly! There is nothing better than a fresh tomato just picked from the vine...unless of course it's corn.

More tomatoes by the 8th.

And come the 13th we were lucky enough to share our salad with a fresh cuke. My very first cuke ever! I'd grown them before but they were either underdeveloped or bitter. Not this one, it was satisfying. Madame was gone at the time and missed the excitement about my first EVER (did I mention that!) cucumber. She smudged it in her fathers face, well! It hid for quite a while!

A hundred beans! Understand that my kitchen sink is one big ole' sink! It took hours to prepare these! And as of this update, there are many more.

Here is what we did for the first time, again. It's not the actual canning that exhaust you, it's the prepping of the veggies!

When Madame arrived home we had fresh zucchini and a fresh salad again, we had salad another time between the 15th and today, I have plenty of lettuce for further on....and my husband found another hidden cuke for the next night!

My gourd finally bloomed, three times! Hopefully I'll have a few birdhouses this year but I'm not holding my breathe on it. Pretty flower.

More tomatoes, I forgot to photograph the two large ones we had the other day, I made a zesty tomato and cuke mixture. It was good.
Oh yah, basil for sauce.....

Oregano for the same sauce. Boy! It was delicious! I had no idea what a strong flavor fresh herbs can have.

I haven't picked the parsley yet, can ya tell!?

It'll be a short while and the carrots will need canning. We keep pulling and checking them, if they get to the size they are supposed to....it will be a first for me again. I had no luck with carrots before and gave up on them, at one point I planted them in straight peat moss, only to be disappointed again. These are about 1 inch long right now.

Beans, in dire need of picking.

Plenty of flowers on my tomatoes, although the last row...the one next to the fence, all the plants have creased over and are virtually touching the ground. I have to look closer at them, I think the deer maybe eating over the barrier, and basically.....when we smelt skunk in the middle of the night, we discovered he had crawled into the composter, buried his exit and got irritated, thereby spraying....It was a bittersweet satisfaction at the fact he'd stayed away from my garden and as I was picking a heavy boiler lid up off the ground to cover the composter, I got the general idea how upset he was!

No blooms on the potatoes yet. *sigh* I will change things next year if this experiment doesn't go well. They grew like crazy only to stunt like this for the last month.Some more hide and seekers.

Our buttercup is growing like crazy and has had about 20 of these little fruits, but then they lose the blossom and rot away. What's with that?

AND it has taken forever to get summer squash, as of this post, this is what is growing.

This next crop is doing well,

Did mention corn? Yep, as tall as me, it grows fast!

In a week or two we will be shucking. Madame will be proud.

This is the last photo with everything green and growing, sob. Come September, things will be different for my garden. Hopefully we will still have greenery to look at and maybe a few more veggie.

In the meantime...my grass looks good! C&G Design

Raggedy Ann and Andy Quilts

I found these cute patterns and pictures of Raggedy Ann and Andy quilts, I would like to try the first one some time. I believe the pattern is Daisy Kingdom and it's from the 50's, maybe? The next picture will show how a cute icon can become a 3 dimensional piece of art.

It is from Applause. The last picture is a quilt panel from Daisy Kingdom, it has been discontinued and is hard to find. Raggedy Ann and Andy Express, with a cutie current looking expression, they are taking a ride in their little red wagon.

Enjoy the free pattern, right click on the photo and print. C&G Design.

Dyeing a doll's wig

This is a first for me, dyeing a doll's wig that is real mohair and try it make it the exact color. I went to Joanne's for help. Since I did not bring the wig with me it was a educated guess. I picked up yellow, orange (to tone and deepen the yellow), and brown. I have plenty of dipping samples and more stray mohair so this should be a easy peasy task. Here we see the wig sinking in the dye bath.

So okay,...I remembered everything , I even remembered the salt to darken the color but I forgot the gloves....good thing I didn't have to go anywhere within the next couple of days. My hands and fingernails looked jaundice.

And I guess I went hands in because I had a small panic about my wig, it looked really red, RED! Oh, no ,no. Remembering the newspaper I gathered for underneath my "drip dry" wig, I carried my dyeing disaster to the bathroom 3 times for a faithful cold water rinse.

This was the end results, I knew the wig would dry lighter than the wet color, but I still wasn't sure how close to the original wig I would come. I only knew I was happy with this color.

Not bad. A bit bright but lovely just the same. C&G Design