I Won’t Be Doing That Again!

I have crocheted many blankets this year and decided to give my hands a rest.

I used up all my yarn stash except one measly partial skein of white.  That was a bad idea!

I quit crocheting for several weeks but sitting on the couch day after day after day after day . . . was getting to me.

Soooooo, what’s a girl to do?  Grab a bottle of hand sanitizer, make sure I have my mask and head for the local craft shop. 

In Kerrville we have the best craft shop in the world!  Hometown Crafts has a huge selection of yarn.  Sometimes I think my life goal is to buy every color of yarn there is.

We also have a brand new HobbyLobby.  I did go into it right after it opened last year.  But, frankly, it looks like every other HobbyLobby. White, sterile, with few helpful employees.

The ladies at Hometown Crafts are extremely nice and helpful.  Ask for anything in the store and they will lead you right to it.  I don’t know how they can remember where everything is in the whole store.

And, everybody says “Thank you for shopping with us”.

B O N U S - Tuesday is senior day - 10% off, even sale items.

So, I picked up a few skeins of yarn. 

Gotta keep myself happy.  And it certainly makes sitting on the couch a lot more fun!

You Want Deer, We've Got Deer!!

The Texas Hill Country is well known for having a large population of White-tailed Deer. In fact, the population is so high that there are far too many for the available food, and they tend to be stunted.

Our area in Medina is no exception, and we are absolutely crawling with deer as summer progresses. Some of the residents here treat them as pets, hand-feeding them corn.  That is really not a great idea as wild mammals should not become that habituated to people.  On our morning walks the deer will often come directly toward us hoping for a handout.

It is cute when the approaching deer are little fawns, but the adult does and bucks are even more likely to approach.  Once this guys grows his antlers out and goes into the rut in the fall we aren't going to want to "play" with him.  Luckily a quick hand clap sends them the other direction.

But we do take pity on their need for water, and our ground-level birdbath remains very popular. I fill it before we go to bed, and by the next morning it is bone-dry.  We've added an additional bucket of water in a different area to supplement the bird bath.

This morning we saw this cute little group at the newly-refilled birdbath. A cropped version will be our new header picture for a while.

We hope that you also have some fun wildlife to entertain you, wherever you find yourself this summer. 

Mark

Happy Birthday Teri! One for the ages...

For the past ten years Teri and I have been on the road in our RV, volunteering and enjoying beautiful, cool places in the summer. Her birthday week has always been cause for celebration with a special trip to somewhere fun.

We have spent her past two birthdays in the Maritime Provinces of Canada, where cool weather, beautiful views, and wonderful seafood were abundant.

Margaree Fish Hatchery - Nova Scotia

We celebrated her 60th with a bike ride in Leadville, Colorado, elevation 10,606 feet!

In 2013 we visited Gunnison and Crested Butte, Colorado and explored that beautiful area. 

Alas, this year we are grounded waiting out the COVID virus and experiencing our first Texas summer in a decade!!  Not what we had planned, but we are making the best of it. This too shall pass, and we look forward to more wonderful adventures and beautiful places to visit together. 

Happy Birthday, Teri!!

I'm A Little Green

My black eye is turning green but feeling much better.

Thank you for all the e-mails and comments. I’m still seeing fuzzy. It will be another 5 weeks before my sight will be as good as it’s going to get.

It’s been 10 days since my surgery:

Day 1:

Day 2:

One Week:

Day 10:

Pucker Up!! - Eye Surgery

On Wednesday I finally had surgery for my macular pucker.

A macular pucker is scar tissue that has formed on the eye's macula, located in the center of the eye's light-sensitive tissue called the retina.

The macula provides the sharp, central vision we need for reading, driving, and seeing fine detail. A macular pucker can cause blurred and distorted central vision.

Here is an animated video of the procedure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQDQ-SiXg7I&feature=youtu.be

Mark took a picture the morning of my surgery: 

We left the house at 11:00 a.m. to arrive at the surgery center in San Antonio by 1:00 p.m.  With very little traffic on the road we arrived at 12:30.

We had our temperature taken at the door and were told to go upstairs.  After handing over my credit card and filling out a little paperwork, we settled in to await my turn.  About 2:15 an aid came to get me but told Mark he had to wait upstairs.

I was taken down to the same area we had entered the building and was told a nurse would be coming to get me.  About 40 minutes later I recognized my doctors nurse and asked her how much long it would be.  I was told it would be a while because I was the 4th surgery and they had just finished the first surgery. 

Apparently, surgeries 2 and 3 went a lot faster than expected and I was called into pre-op about 3:15 p.m. The pre-op nurse was very nice and told me pre-op would take longer than the surgery.  After many eye drops, vitals, more eye drops, IV, and more eye drops I was wheeled into surgery about 4:00 p.m.

I had the fun experience of watching the nurses set up many syringes that I was told would be put in my eye.

Surgery finally started at 5:00 p.m. and I will say it wasn’t fun.  I was awake.  The pain of having needles stuck in my eye was unbelievable.  I was told they had to keep me awake so that I could move my eye when needed.  The anesthesiologist finally gave me something to make me more comfortable and then the real surgery started. 

It was pretty interesting that I could see the instruments inside my eye pulling out the floaters and scraping the macular off.  This part of the surgery took about 30 minutes. 

After the surgery I was given some apple juice and instructions for the night.  Since I had only had to take off my t-shirt (I even kept my tennis shoes on!) it didn’t take any time before they were wheeling me out to the front door.  I think everyone was ready to go home.

We got home about 7:00 p.m. My first night wasn’t too bad.  A couple of Tylenol every 4 hours took care of any pain.

 

Thursday morning I had a doctor appointment in Kerrville.  The patch was taken off, my eyes dilated. The only letter I could see on the eye chart was a big fuzzy E.  It was discovered I had a little leakage in my eye.  

After some very painful pushing on my eye to close the hole, I was told to come back the next day.

I have a clear plastic eyepatch that I have to sleep with for the next few weeks.  I had a very comfortable night and woke up feeling great. 

On Friday morning I went back to the eye doctor.  Not only was I able to read the great big fuzzy E on the eye chart but I could also read about 3 lines under it.  My eye wasn’t leaking any more and I was told to come back next week.  By the time I left the doctor office my eye was hurting pretty bad!

I look horrible!  It will be several weeks before I’ll know how clear my eyesight will be. 

Once in a Century?

One of the plants that grows well in our resort is the Century Plant, Agave americana. 

The name comes from the long-lived nature of the plant, though they really only live 20 - 30 years.  The plant's last act of life is to send up a spectacular flowering stalk, reaching as high as 30 feet.

We have a very large Century Plant at the gate of the resort, and it has sent up its flowering stalk. The plant itself is about 6 feet in diameter, and the stalk is 25 feet tall. Another resident took this picture and I've borrowed it to show the overall plant.

I had noticed as many as four hummingbirds feeding on the flowers, and this morning Teri texted me that she was seeing up to six!  So I headed out to the gate with the camera to see what I could capture. 

Here is a picture of the blooming part of the stalk.  Click on the picture to get a better view.  The hummingbirds were busy chasing each other away, but you can see one here just to the left of the main stalk, about halfway up. They look tiny!

And to get an idea of just how big these flower heads are, and how many blossoms are in each, here is a picture of one "clump".  This little Black-chinned Hummingbird has plenty of blossoms to choose from.

In addition to hummingbirds the various bees, wasps and other insects are enjoying the blooms as well. The individual flowers open over several weeks. In the picture above you can see the still-closed buds in the lower part of this clump, with recently opened flowers near the top. 

Sadly, the entire plant will die this summer, but they send out plenty of "suckers" from the base so there will be several smaller plants to take its place.  Life goes on... 

How Fast Did Your Year Go By?

Even though our day to day activities never seem to change, the days go by very fast.  

I am Facebook friends with a couple of the staff from Green Lake NFH, where we volunteered the last two summers.  They are talking about things going on at the hatchery and I was thinking it seems like we were just there a couple of months ago!  I can’t believe how fast a year has gone by.

I looked at my pictures from June of 2019 and was amazed at how busy we were.

June 1st - We were building bluebird houses:

 June 3rd - We went on a Puffin boat trip: 

June 4th - Playing disc golf.

June 5th - Disc golf and lunch at our favorite Mexican restaurant.

June 6th - You remember fish wrangling? 

June 7th - We were getting ready to start our next 2nd set of pollinator gardens: 

 June 8th - Started mowing around the hatchery:

June 10th - We went on a wonderful hike at Orono Bog: 

June 12th - We took a beautiful hike at Ship Harbor:

June 13th - We had some outside tanks to clean:

 June 14th - We were playing with puppies: 

June 15th - We had a messy job cleaning heat-exchanger filters: 

June 16th - Disc golf. 

June 17th  - Was an awesome kayak morning: 

After kayaking we stopped by Havens Candies: 

 June 18th - A chocolate factory tour was a lot of fun: 

June 19th - Disc golf.

June 20th - Mowing, weeding, getting raceway #4 ready for skimcoat: 

June 21st - Skim coat on raceway #4: 

June 22nd - Patching #88 drain: 

June 23rd - It rained all day. I actually wrote on my calendar that we didn’t do anything all day!

June 24th - 39 holes of disc golf.

 June 25th - Another beautiful hike at Mariaville Falls: 

 

June 27th - More work on bluebird houses and mowing: 

June 28th - More patches on outside tanks: 

June 29th - The ground is finally dry enough to start pollinator gardens #3 & 4: 

 What a difference a year makes.

It is hard to stay home knowing there are so many wonderful things to do and see in the world.

Teri