Some Things Plus Some Things Not on My Bingo Card (Long Post - Sorry)

Made this using the new Sharpie Paint Markers - love them!

Just about the time I made my last post in April my brother called to tell me that they were taking my mother to the hospital.  Her legs were swollen and she was having shortness of breath.  In the hospital they confirmed that she was in the beginning stages of congestive heart failure and she was admitted.  She was there for several days and she basically told me not to come to visit because it was too far to walk (still using a cane and rehabbing my back surgery) but we spoke on the phone and they were getting things under control.  They decided that she needed to go to a rehab facility for physical therapy to rebuild her strength before she could go home.  Some crazy things happened when she first got there and on the second day there she slipped out of the recliner she was sitting in and was very disoriented and not making sense.  I was able to visit her there and asked if she had possibly had a stroke and they said they did not think so, that dementia patients are often disoriented at first and it was probably a UTI.  We reminded them that she was not a dementia patient.  She has a hearing loss since childhood making it difficult to talk to her without her hearing aide, and she didn't have any difficulty speaking before she got there.  She hadn't broken anything when she slipped out of the chair as was determined by x-rays, but 5 days later, after confirming that she had a UTI, they sent her back to the hospital for an MRI to see if she had had a stroke.  We had had a meeting with the social worker, physical therapist, and nursing supervisor that morning and had agreed that she wouldn't be tested until the UTI culture came back, but later that evening the hospital called to say she was there - no call from the rehab center telling us she was going.  We still don't have an explanation of why we weren't notified first but were only told that that was not their policy and it would have to be further investigated.  

The MRI indicated that she indeed had had a brain bleed and they also found blood clots in her lungs.  First they put her on blood thinners for the clots, but the neurologist stopped that for fear of another brain bleed.  She was in ICU for several days then moved to a step-down unit and this past weekend transferred to another rehab facility that has acute care.  My mother lives with my brothers so they are her primary contacts but the three of us have had to make some decisions as to further care.  I've been visiting her in the hospital and the rehab facility when I can but it has left me exhausted on some of those days.  She's able to make sentences at times, but her hearing is worse and there's really no pertinent conversations - her words are confused at times but she is happy to have even a short visit.  We're not sure how long she'll be there or whether they'll send her to another facility once she gains more strength.  She's got three types of therapy each day there - occupational, speech, and physical.  

We did take an afternoon early on to take a ride to Buck's County Pennsylvania to follow the first loop of their covered bridge tour.  Just a few pictures below of a couple of the bridges and the insides.  I think there were 8 in total we went through that day - we got a late start after I had visited my mother in the morning.  There's a second loop with 4 more bridges, but I think we might wait until the fall to complete those.

Maverick turned 5 earlier this month and he got to go to a Monster Truck Show with his parents.  The following weekend we took him from Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon and he had a lot of fun with the tractor and playing on the rock pile (another thing not on my bingo card but I'll explain that at a later date).  I made him this card......

Since he fell asleep in the car on his way to our house on Friday, he was up quite early on Saturday - like at 4:30 - when he walked into our room and told us that he had had enough of sleep.  Papa had to go lay down with him for another hour - until the sun came up.  Then they went downstairs while I got a few more winks.  It was a very busy Saturday.  We drove him home on Sunday and I got to see the little guy who is walking now and who just celebrated his first birthday last week.

He is Officially 1 - so he got this card.....

They'll be having a combined family birthday celebration next weekend.

Mr. & Mrs. Blue fledged 3 of their 4 babies (one egg remained unhatched).

HWNSNBP helped me gather redbud blossoms and I did make some jelly.  I screwed up the first batch and it came out more like syrup (even after I reboiled it and added more pectin).  But the second batch was good.  I also was able to freeze enough of the "blossom tea" for three more batches in the future.

Last Saturday, even though it was drizzling, since we were at the condo for HWNSNBP to do some morning surf fishing, we took a ride to 7 Bridges Road to look for turtles, but saw none and I only got a few bird shots with my cell phone as I didn't bring the good camera with me.  I believe the first is a peregrine falcon, the nest has ospreys, and the last is an egret taking flight.

The night before we were able to enjoy a sunset in the back.

We made an early trip to the nursery (before Mother's Day) to pick out plants only to realize after HWNSNBP planted them that we got the wrong plants - instead of vinca which the deer stay away from, he picked up impatiens.  After he had potted up most of them he was complaining to me that something had eaten some already and pulled them right out of the pots.  It was then that I realized that neither of us had looked at the tag on the flat - I was just going by color because I couldn't bend down to pick them up, so when he asked if those were the right color I said yes.  So we had to add another trip to the nursery to get the right plants on a day when I had had PT and been to the rehab and just wanted to chill out, but he was determined to get the planting done by this weekend because of that project coming up I can't talk about yet.

I know I have many blogs to catch up on and I will eventually.  I've finished the 100 Day Project ahead of time and will post that later and I do intend to do ICAD again this year which starts on June 1st.  I'm thinking I might ask for some outside help on part of it - still mulling that over.

We'll be doing our annual Table 7 planting expedition on Saturday and spending time with our good friends.  Something I think we both need. 

Birdtober - Day 22 to the End

Happy to say that these are all done and I do think that I'll be doing it again next year except I may use colored pencils and a larger format, but time will tell.

Day 22 - Bohemian Waxing

(for bird info click here)

Day 23 - Black Headed Gull

(for bird info click here)

Day 24 - Ornate Hawk Eagle

(for bird info click here)

Day 25 - Mandarin Duck

(for bird info click here)

Special thanks to Sabrina at My Miscellany for the inspiring photo on this post from her blog.

Day 26 - Emu

(for bird info click here)

Day 27 - Blue Penguin (Little Penguin)

(for bird info click here)

Day 28 - Galah

(for bird info click here)

Day 29 - Artist's Choice

I chose the Southern Red Bishop because it looks like it's dressed up for Halloween.

(for bird info click here)

Day 30 - Allen's Hummingbird

(for bird info click here)

Day 31 - Spotted Owl

(for bird info click here)

Of all these last 10 I think it's most likely that I've seen a black-headed gull IRL.  I believe that the galah is a parrot a little larger than a cockatiel and hails from Australia also.  They, like the cockatiels can become nuisance birds when they flock together.  If I were younger, I might want one, but we're too advanced in age to care for a parrot now only because the parrot is likely to outlive us.  I've heard that if you buy a parrot now, some breeders make you provide information on who will take care of the parrot when you're no longer here.  When my sister passed away, we rehomed 3 cockatiels fairly quickly, but it took a little longer to find a home for her African grey (which I would have kept, but we had a few cockatiels of our own at the time and no room for a bigger parrot).

We've (I've) been hearing an owl nearby at night both when I'm going to sleep and early in the morning.  It's not a spotted owl.  I believe it's an eastern screech owl.  I tried to use my Merlin app on my phone to identify it by sound but it wasn't picking up inside the house and I didn't feel like going outside, so I did some googling to listen to owl sounds of New Jersey and narrowed it down that way.

The moderator of this challenge Andrea Holmes has offered a sticker and postcard to anyone who completed the whole challenge so I did add my info.  She said it may take a while to get them all out because of all the participation.  But I don't mind one way or the other.  She also is asking for ideas for birds for next year and I'll have to give that some thought.  I don't know what's been done in the past so I may investigate that a little first.  But there sure are enough to choose from! 

Turtle Hunting and More

I've had my daughter's brand new, unused wedding dress stored at the condo since 2020 when they were supposed to have their wedding ceremony and since it is finally going to be happening this summer (they got married in July of that year but weren't able to have anyone present except their parents during the lockdown) it was time to retrieve the dress and bring it to her to be altered.  So on Saturday we got a fairly early start to go to the condo to collect it to take to DE on Sunday.  

On the way there we got behind this vehicle pulling a trailer that had glitter on the floor and each time they stopped and then pulled away, the glitter would fly up behind it.  I wish I could have gotten a picture to show the sparkle.  I don't know if you can see the pile of glitter on the right side.

We had some time in the afternoon to wander after we returned a gardening implement that HWNSNBP accidentally brought home last weekend after helping some friends do some planting.  It's turtle crossing season so we decided to take a drive down 7 Bridges Road (aka Great Bay Blvd.) in Tuckerton to see if we could see any turtles crossing the road.

As we started down the road we should have realized that it would be a challenge with the line of cars that were also going in our direction.  But HWNSNBP pulled over so that those who wanted to move faster could get around us.  The only problem with that was this one car in front of us who was also watching out for the turtles and getting out of her car to help them across the road - so we didn't see any in that direction.  (Note: They tell you it's okay to help them across the road as long as you put them on the side that they were going to and not back where they came from.)  

When we got to the "end" of the road I looked up to this nest atop the utility pole there and thought that I saw something peering out.

And I knew it was more than just an errant stick when I got the full profile.

The osprey decided to stretch it's legs.

Or so I thought until it lifted it's tail and, if you look to the left you will see that it was talking a bathroom break.  I'll call this the "Poop Shot".  So glad we weren't on that side of the pole.

After we turned around we both commented that there weren't a lot of "white" birds in view.  This one was the only one close enough to the road to get a somewhat decent capture.

But we did get lucky on our turtle hunt on the way back and saw 4 of them.  This one was just entering a little parking area where some launch their boats.  We watched it for a while go towards the water and a young boy picked it up and put it in the weeds by the water to hopefully keep it safe from cars pulling in there.

You see the pictures that I could get were of their backsides because these guys move faster than you think.  They also have a tendency to stop and pull into their shell if they see/hear you coming so I wasn't able to capture any from the front.

There are seven bridges on this road (thus the name) and two of them are one lane and situated on a curve so you can't see from one side to the other and have to stop at a stop light and wait for it to turn green to make sure that there aren't any cars coming in your diretion.  There are signs on both ends of these bridges that clearly say No Fishing, Crabbing, Swimming but as you can see from this photo below the rules apparently don't apply to everyone.  Down aways you can see people sitting in chairs and as if that wasn't enough of an obstacle, they had their poles propped up agains the rail across from them so you not only had to worry about running over their toes, but also knocking over their poles.  And they just look at you like it's a dare.  We barely made over that bridge before the light on the other side turned green - the driver that was waiting there was already beginning to move.....and they do give you a decent amount of time to get over it.  

The smoke from the Canadian fires had dissipated by Saturday but there were some local forest fires that still kept the sky a little hazy.  This was the best that I could do with the sunset that night.

Wrapping Up May

I'm still in a struggle with my computer to upload pictures.  I got some good suggestions to use my e-mail and I have resorted to that on more than one occasion but the only problem I have with that is when the number of pictures that I've taken is in the double digits... but thinking about that, it would probably take less time e-mailing them in smaller groups than it has taken trying to download them.  I'll stop complaining and get on with this as it's already the 5th of June and I haven't wrapped up May yet.

The wildflowers I believe called Dame's Rocket bloomed profusely down the road near the brook.  I took this picture from the road coming home one day from an appointment.  This appears to be a new area of growth as I don't remember seeing them on this side of the bridge that's there.  Nonetheless, they were so pretty in the dappled sunlight.

HWNSNBP treated me to a couple of chocolate covered strawberries for Mother's Day.  Don't you just love that pink one!

This was a project that I started back in late October when the swallowtail caterpillars were pupating in our patio table enclosure.  They were very late in the season and it was getting very cold and we were going to put the netting and umbrella away but I didn't want to kill these chrysalids so I read up on it and found that I could gently remove them from the netting and store them loosely covered in the refrigerator for the duration of the winter which I did.  There were 4 of them that I was able to find.  I took them out on the day that our SIL called to tell us that the baby was going to be born that day and put them into a butterfly tent that I had purchased for this reason.  

I made little "cots" out of pieces of paper towel that I pinned to the netting so they would have something to climb up on when they eclosed.

The day we came home from Delaware was when HWNSNBP, who entered the house first, noticed that there was something fluttering around in the tent and quickly came back outside to tell me that I had a surprise inside.  At first I didn't want to believe him as this would be something he might tease about, but he assured me that he wasn't making it up and I came in to find that 2 of them had, in fact, eclosed while we were gone and were frantically trying to find a way out.  

I took the tent outside and was hoping that I would be able to have them step onto my finger first, but they were much too nervous at this point and flew out of the tent almost immediately.  Luckily I got a picture of one of them before that.  I know they must have been hungry.  There are two more in their cots and I also have a Luna Moth cocoon in there in the hopes they will eclose soon.  

I thought I saw something orange in one of the smaller trees in front of the pool the next day but it flew off too quickly to get a picture, but I was very lucky to have this beauty catch my attention when I was eating breakfast the next day.  An Oriole!  I have never seen an oriole in our yard.  Actually, I don't think I've ever seen one IRL anywhere though I know that they're around here.  I quickly grabbed by phone to get this picture through the window as it sat on the little fence by the birdbath outside the window there.  I'm hoping that they'll become regular visitors.

We picked up this plant at the Great Swamp Nursery because it promised that it was deer and rabbit resistant and so far has proved to be.  It wasn't flowering when we got it but we liked it so much we went back to get another one for another area and sadly, they no longer had any more.  We do know what it's called though so we can keep looking if we go to any other nurseries.  (Which I'm sure we will.)  We've really tipped the flower budget this year but HWNSNBP is the one who keeps saying he wants more - so why argue with him!

Here are two handmade cards that I received this month.  The first from Sabrina with one of my favorite quotes on it.  

And this one is from LeAnne who helped me out tremendously with some SU supplies that I needed to finish Rachel and Ryan's wedding invites which I'll share at a later date.

And here is a birthday and thank you/Mother's Day card that I sent out during May.

Well, that pretty much wraps up May.  I'll be back to do a wrap-up of The 100 Day Project and also a post about beginning ICAD 2023.  I've got a couple of birthdays this month and also Father's Day to make cards for and the Jingle Belles have a new challenge theme this month which will have busy.  

A belated welcome to June!