Thunder in the Kitchen and This and That

I started my morning up by getting up at 3:00 am instead of the 4:00 am I usually use on Saturdays. I harvested a bunch of my herbs from the garden yesterday and the first batch was due to come out of the dehydrator early this morning, to be replaced by Batch #2 while I processed Batch #1. I wanted that extra hour to be able to get everything processed quickly. Well, I got everything processed, but Thyme is my usual bad child - it's SO time consuming. It's worth it for the freshly dehydrated herbs over the winter months, but it took 90 minutes instead of 60 and I gave up on the treadmill this morning. 

Rosemary is an herb that is a joy to process. It strips off 
the central branch with ease. It also pulverizes in my 
grinder very well. I love rosemary. 

To accompany my endless stripping of thyme, I listened to a lot of thunderstorm on the other side of my kitchen window. We were under a thunderstorm watch, and it was quite intense there for a while, even causing my lights to flicker on and off several times. The worst of it is now headed towards Wisconsin, and the thunder is a low growl in the East. But when it was overhead, it was gnarly. 

Thyme, on the other hand, is my bad child. It's a 
lot of curled and clustered stems with VERY small 
leaves. It takes FOREVER to get the leaves off 
from their stems and into the grinder. I think it 
took me almost an hour to get my thyme stripped, 
ground and put away. But it'w a lovely taste! 

I now have my second batch of herbs in the dehydrator. I'll pull those out tonight and get them processed either tonight or tomorrow. This batch is Lemon Thyme (which will be every bit as time consuming, I'm sure), and Oregano. It's the first time I've had Oregano in the garden and I'm looking forward to seeing the differences between freshly harvested and dried vs store bought. 

I've never had oregano in my garden before, and since we 
didn't have a pot for it, it never grew very large. But it did 
bush out, and I got a nice first crop. We'll see how well 
it releases from the stem tonight when I'm dealing with 
today's dehydrator load. 

I ordered a frame for a larger water color yesterday. It's a black frame which will suit the picture, and this time I'll be doing the assembly on my own with a couple of new pieces of joining hardware that I've never used before. In days past, I drilled holes and used nails that were then disguised with colored pastes. Rook will give me a quick tutorial when I pick the chopped frame up next week. The proper frame can make or break a piece of artwork, so I'm picky about my frame choices. Cost is one factor, but appearance is just as important. 

I'll be using something similar to these to stabilize the 
corners of my frames. They chop the frame for me 
(which I could do, but it's worth the extra cost to have 
one less thing to do). They also make any cuts in the 
corners necessary for the type of hardware I've chosen. 
I've never used the fastening style Rook advised for 
me, but I'm willing to learn. He'll teach me how to use 
the pins properly. 

So, the storm has passed, the dehydrator is dehydrating, and I've showered and dressed for work. I guess I should grab some breakfast and see what the day has to offer today. I hope all of you have a great weekend and I'll be back on Monday morning. Slava Ukraini. 

A Drought, A Tree Update and A Mitzvah - Such Goings On!

I'm awake, my morning meditation completed, and the first load of laundry in the washing machine. The thunderstorms which were very busy overnight, have moved away from my direct area, so we should be fine for the outdoor pool today. Yippee! It was quite the light show at 1:00 am or so, though. A very definite heavy storm running through. Hopefully we got some good rain from it. It's been a very dry year and the grass is looking horrid. 

Our lawn has been looking more yellow than green lately, 
with our drought. It looks terrible. A little rain and it will 
come back a bit, but we're behind on our usual rainfall 
amounts too. For a land with 10,000 lakes to be in a 
drought is rare, but we've had one for the past few summers. 

My next door neighbor, Chris, texted me last night to update me on the tree removal. Remember that huge branch from his silver maple that came down into our yard a bit more than a week ago? Originally he had arranged for a tree company to remove it on Monday last week, but that didn't happen. I don't exactly know why, but it's not hurting anything, it just needs to be removed. So Chris said he had three different tree companies out to look and bid on the job, and has chosen one. They are waiting on a sign-off by the local utility company (utility lines run on the south border of our joint properties), and then they can begin work. 

My poor next door neighbor. Not only does 
he have to come up with money to remove the 
tree branch, but he also has lent his in-laws 
one of his cars since theirs was stolen. He has 
three kids in private school, and I know he 
doesn't make a lot of money. It's going to be 
a hard year for him. 

I texted back that I was relieved to hear it, and thanked him for keeping me in the loop. Then told him I thought they might be on vacation or something since one car was missing from their driveway. No, it turned out the car belonging to their in-laws was stolen! They have been loaning their second car to the in-laws until they can either find their own car, or get a different one. It never rains but it pours,  poor guy! But, DH did a kindness (because the weeds were annoying him) and mowed the strip of ground between the sidewalk and the street yesterday in front of Chris' house. Good reason or poor one, it was a mitzvah. 

What is a Mitzvah? Unless you're Jewish or speak 
Yiddish, you might be unfamiliar with the term. 
Basically, it's doing a kindness. Chris did a mitzvah 
for his in-laws by lending them one of his cars, and 
Jim did a mitzvah for Chris by mowing his strip of 
land. The world would be a better place if more of 
us did a mitzvah every day. 

So, I'm off to the pool. Since the thunderstorms are south of us and things look clear to the west, we'll be able to swim outdoors, which will make me very happy indeed. We might even have a really fun sunrise if there are any interesting clouds in the sky. I've got a super busy day today, starting with a 7:40 am mammogram, so I'm out of here and off and running. Hope you have an excellent Wednesday and I'll be back tomorrow. Slava Ukraini. 

A Memorial Service is an Odd Way to Spend a Birthday - But It Was Actually Really Nice

The memorial service yesterday actually was quite nice. I arrived to find my oldest niece already there, so we had a chance to catch up for a few minutes, then my middle niece drove up with my sister-in-law in the car with her. I hadn't seen any of them in person since pre-Covid, so it was delightful to get hugs and catch up a little while we were waiting for the cemetery person to escort us to the graveside. Of course, none of the family had seen my tattoo except in photos before yesterday, so everyone took a good look and my sister-in-law was over-the-moon with joy at how well it was done. Rodney is indeed a tattoo master. 

The vase for the cremains was quite nice - reminiscent of 
a Chinese Ming vase with that lovely blue and white 
color. The white tulips were requested by Sara who wasn't 
able to attend, the other white flowers were from Janet. 
After asking, I found out that the cemetery uses an auger 
that drills down about 3-1/2 to 4 feet deep. The container 
is then placed at the bottom of the hole and it is filled 
in. When the headstone is ready, it is put on top and the 
sod is allowed to regrow up to the stone's borders. 

We followed the cemetery dude and cousin Janet (the daughter-in-law of Aunt Phyllis) to the prepared plot. The man carried the urn Janet had chosen into the cemetery grounds and it was a very slow ride over to the far side where they do combination burial and cremains in the ground. The "headstones" are all footstones in this area, so it looks unmarked, although there are dead planted everywhere. There was a small platform covering the hole where the dude placed the vase and then he left us so that we could spend whatever time we needed. 

This part of the cemetery uses flat grave markers for 
almost all of the gravesites. I suppose it's easier for 
maintenance purposes (mowing the grass, etc), but 
it's also less expensive for the family. Janet's husband's 
stone was a few rows before the place for Aunt 
Phyllis and her husband, Uncle Gene. 

I'd say we spent about 230-25 minutes between the four of us (my sister-in-law opted to stay in the car because her legs were bothering her and the ground was uneven). My older niece kicked things off by speaking about an eagle that had flown around her car that morning on the way into the Cities, and a song that had come up on her radio that seemed appropriate for the circumstances. We talked about the other relations Phyllis had known and loved, including Sara who lives in New Zealand and (obviously) didn't fly out for the service. We dove into memories and shared experiences and basically remembered Phyllis and the larger family. 

To my surprise, actually to almost everyone's surprise except Janet's (she was the one who mentioned it), Elly, the wife of my mother-in-law's brother, is still living. She's now 105 years old, still living in the Denver area. I think we were all shocked, thinking that all of that generation was now dead and gone. I always was fond of Elly - she was a spitfire and not one to mince words, but I found her delightful. (Elly's son, on the other hand, was an idiot. I knew him in college - we were in the same dormitory for our first year at Colorado State. I think he spent the entire first quarter drunk.) 

I'm switching my Swarovski crystal photos from a 
4x4 grid to a 3x3 grid. This allows me to have one 
overall photo and then detail photos of each of the 
nine colors per page so that the customer can easily 
see the specific color they are interested in. I think 
it's a better format, although I had to retake all of 
the 8mm photos. 

After we wrapped it up and I was invited to lunch, I politely declined, returned home after returning a package to Amazon at my local Kohl's, and dove into taking product photos of the 6mm Swarovski cubes. I worked until the last possible moment, then put my stuff away. I'll continue this on Friday. 

So, I'm off and running again today. The pool, then work, then home. We had some serious weather run through last night with the sirens going off for almost 10 minutes close to 9:00 pm. It wasn't a tornado, but was some serious straight-line winds. DH will be cleaning gutters today before we get the next round of storms running through tonight. Have an excellent Thursday and I'll be back to celebrate Friday with you tomorrow. Slava Ukraini. 

Power Off, Power On, Life Goes Onwards

We finally got our power back after almost 24 hours. I suppose it could have been worse, but we're still working through the food, figuring out what needs to be tossed and what survived (barely). We did buy ice and put most of the refrigerator "must save" items in a cooler, but that was probably too late to actually save most of them. We should have done it right away. 

We have at least eight Coleman coolers, most more modern
than this one. This Coleman ice chest dates from the 1960's.
We took the food out of the cooler late Saturday night, and it
still has unmelted ice it in as of this morning. If I have
time I'll try to get it emptied today, but carrying it is really
a two-person job. 

I think the most frustrating thing was continuing to go onto the "Lights Out" section of my utility, see that I was identified on there, but get absolutely no time frame for when we might have a repair. DH was quite frustrated, and I was quite grateful that I was at work. Most of my friends in the area were unaffected by the storm - a storm that spawned quite a few tornadoes and hit the Twin Cities with straight-line winds in excess of 70 mph. Unfortunately, when we get winds like that in my area, more often than not, we get blown transformers. This time it was down the line from us - but still affected the area in general. 

The electrical lines in my neighborhood go through
a lot of tree branches, so in a stiff wind, we often
will have power issues down the lines. Usually
these aren't city wide, though. On Saturday we
were one of more than 55,000 houses and high-rise
apartments in the Metro Area that had lost power. 

Around mid-day, DH heard a series of clicks, followed by three concentrated explosions. He assumed that the power company tried something and three transformers blew, one right after another. I suppose that's possible, I wasn't there so can't weigh in on the accuracy of his assumption. 

But, 23 hours after we had lost power, we finally had light on once again. What a relief! On Sunday we continued work on the woodshed. I'll share some photos tomorrow. I hope all of you had a wonderful weekend and I'll be back tomorrow. 

With A Crash and Bolt of Lightning, The Rain Came

With a crash, followed by driving rain and lots of lightning, I was pulled from sleep in the wee hours of the morning. We knew we were going to have serious rain with high winds, but the times kept getting switched from 1:00 am onward. In reality, it hit sometime shortly after 3:00 am and lasted for 30-45 minutes before moving onward. DH awakened and moved through the house, checking to make sure we weren't flooding (we've had flooding issues with hard rains in the past). Everything seemed fine, so he went back to bed. I didn't even bother getting up. 

We had been having overflow problems in high
rains, so we picked out larger rocks to frame the
channel with and increased the depth and height of
the banks with more river gravel to
control the water flow. Of course, a hard
rain so soon after he reseeded the
grass probably toasted the new sprouts, 
but we'll know more after the sun
rises and we can take a closer look. 

He's been working on the drainage along our eastern side, between the house and the creek. Last Sunday we pulled the rocks from the bed of our drainage passage and deepened and raised the bank where we had overflow problems. We got about half-way on Sunday and he finished the job as far as he could yesterday. His back is killing him now - it's a lot of work. But he really did a beautiful job. 

I love attending the MN Renaissance Festival. It's
grounds and layout are almost like a second home
at the end of summer, early fall. We start out with
temps in the 80's and 90's and end up with
temps in the 60's and 70's. We always have a
good time. 

I emailed the folks at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival and they moved our season tickets from 2020 to 2021. The new tickets were emailed to me yesterday and I've printed them out. I'll grab a file folder for them from the shop today so I don't lose them, and we'll be set. We'll probably attend this year's Fest at least once, but now we won't be "obligated" to attend every week. I'm hesitant to commit to the event with COVID still very much a presence. 

So, that's about it for what's happening in my life right now. Hopefully the new waterflow channel did the trick and we'll be set on our Eastern side. It would be one less thing on the to-do list and one less thing to worry about. Have a wonderful weekend, be safe, be kind, and please, wear a mask! 

Thunderstorm In The Summer Can Mean Tornadoes

It's hot and sticky and it's only 5:30 am! We had thunderstorms throughout the night and are looking at rain through today. DH isn't happy because he wanted to continue working on the woodshed. But - Mother Nature won't be denied.

I love thunderstorms. I love watching the lightning. I'm not as fond
of tornadoes, although they are fascinating to watch if you can
see them through the rain. 

Thunderstorms like this are inevitable when we have high. hot temperatures and unstable air masses. Thunderstorms can pop up very unexpectedly. Sometimes they are small, area wide soakings of rain, then gone. Other times they take over a vast territory and bring rumbles, lightning, and sometimes tornadoes along with them. 

Much of the time, since tornadoes are formed from thunderstorm cells, the
rain is so hard that you can't see the tornado with this clarity. I still
remember driving down to New Mexico one summer and crossing a wide
open patch of land in Nebraska/Texas. I saw one tornado on my
right and two on my left in the wide open spades. A bit spooky, trying
to thread that needle. 

We do live in a state that gets tornadoes - most of the USA gets them. Those who don't get tornadoes sometimes get hurricanes. I'm not really sure which is worse ... oh yes I do. Hurricanes are worse - they hit broad swaths of territory and usually move through slowly, so their destruction can flatten and affect large portions of a state (or states). Tornadoes are skip-hop, usually relatively small, and although horribly destructive, are rarely affecting wide and long areas of land or cities. Of course there are exceptions - because we're talking nature here. Nature writes her own rules, and they are always changing.

Tornadoes are beautiful destruction. This one was photographed in
Illinois, and the lighting was just perfect. 

I've lived in states with tornadoes for my entire life, and I'm used to them. I have always been more on the fringes, not in the central USA which really can get slammed. But Minnesota has tornadoes every spring/summer and some of them are quite deadly. There were some tornadoes popping north of us last night, and I just hope that they touched down in places where they didn't harm people. 

This third tornado was photographed in our next door state to the east -
Wisconsin. You can see the wet road here. This photo captured the rain
along with the twister. 

What kind of destructive weather do you have in your area of the world? Whatever you have, I hope that you have a wonderful day and I certainly intend to be back tomorrow. Stay well, be kind.