O Deer, O Deer....etc.....

Here's what I saw out my living room window this morning!  These beautiful creatures were eating up the leftovers of some pumpkins and squash I tossed out in the yard for them.   It's been a long, tough winter for the deer.  I have several squashes and a few pumpkins left from last year's garden that we didn't eat up yet.   I've had the squash in as cold a storage as I could get (an unheated room), but now they are a bit past prime for eating.   So, every once in a while I cut up a few and throw them out for the deer to nibble on.   They love it!   Poor things haven't got much else besides a few twigs and weeds to eat out there now.   But they look fairly healthy in spite of the long winter.   Maybe they spent some time in corn fields around here, gleaning what fell out of the combine during harvest.

Six of my new 'pets'

Mixed Up Calendar

Supposedly this is spring already, but you would never know it by looking outside!  Is it January?  March? Winter?  Spring?  Looks like winter to me........
Will we ever see green grass again?  Maybe in July!  I took a walk outside today and snapped a few photos this morning of scenery around here.  Oh - did I mention that it's also a "balmy" 2 degrees out??  Just imagine what the newscasters could talk about if it was 2 degrees in New York City.

Everything is covered in snow yet!  It IS pretty, though.....

It will be a while before the northwoods takes on a spring look!

 Daisy Mae and Catnip sunning themselves in the "old shack".

 Waiting for mice, most likely.

Susie Q and Domino, front, and Tommy in back, sunning on top of their food dish.

View from my driveway.  You can almost see kitty FlufferDuff coming up the drive. 

I started some plants in the living room for my 2014 garden.   I have petunias and pansies and a few Roma tomatoes already sprouting into seedlings!   Petunias are hard to get started from seed, so I'm pretty proud of the fact that I can actually do it! These will eventually be deep purple and deep pink petunias.

Tiny little petunia seedlings.

A couple Roma tomatoes on left, and pansy seedlings on right. 

Yes!!  There is hope for spring!!

Today I Am An Old Woman

So today is my birthday and I have become a 66 year old woman.  Somehow that sounds so old!  But then, I have to remember that some folks don't even make it to 66 so I guess I should be grateful for being this old.  It was a good day spent doing favorite things:  shopping at little country small town stores, going to get a lunch of my favorite cheese curds and a frosty mug of root beer at the A & W stand,  then a little later on going to the Dairy Queen for a blizzard (Choco Cherry Love, of course!).   Lots of phone calls and cards.   Hopefully this will be a good year, and I will age gracefully................
Here's a photo I found of me and my grandmother Lottie Kulnis.  Maybe I was about a year and a half or slightly older in this photo.  I learned a lot from this grandmother - she taught me how to crochet, and formed a lot of my ideas about cooking and homemaking.   She was influential in so many things, even prayer and worship of the Lord.  I miss her, but I know I'll see her again in heaven.

Me and my Grandma Kulnis in 1949

It Might Be A While

It might be a little while  before I post anything on here, as I think time will be spent at hospitals with my husband Harold.  Some of you may have heard that he was recently diagnosed with a malignant lung tumor - a new cancer, not related to his multiple myeloma.  We will probably go to the Roger Maris Cancer Center this week for a lung biopsy and then go from there.  Hopefully, because this tumor is small, radiation will take care of it.   We truly hope that Harold will not need chemo or surgery.  Please keep us both in your prayers, as this is a very stressful time for us.
     We took a day off today from 'cancer stuff' to attend a gardening seminar that we had bought tickets to last month before all this lung tumor business came into being.   It was in Casselton ND, and we went to it with a gardening friend from the Farm Market we are vendors at, and learned a lot and had a great day of fun and fellowship with other gardeners.  It was good to think about something else besides cancer for at least a day.  It's a long ways off yet to getting this year's garden in, and hopefully my husband will be feeling better and the tumor gone by the time we need to plant.
     This weekend I hope to start some herb and flower seeds in planters, and some green peppers.    They need several weeks to germinate and get going.  I always put up a couple sawhorses in the living room in front of the big bay window, and lay some boards across that to put the trays of seedlings on.     It has been a long winter, and we certainly didn't need this bad news about lung cancer, but we are sure that the Lord will be with us every step of the way on this new journey.  Things WILL be back to normal soon!  Meanwhile, if you don't hear from me on here, you know why..............

Don't Tell the Fashion Police!

Today the "high" for the day was 15 below zero!  It's supposed to get to almost 35 below tonight with a wind chill of minus 55.  I went out today to get the mail and dressed in 4 layers of clothes and then when I came inside my glasses fogged up.  Harold took these photos of me this afternoon.  We dress for warmth up here in the frozen north country - forget fashion! (Now don't laugh too much at my get-up).

Harold took a candid shot of me coming in with the mail.

The problem with glasses is that they fog up all the time in the cold.

Oh, and by the way, those are pies in the background:  pumpkin and pear streusel.  At least the house is warm, even though it's way below zero outside!