Saturday, July 14, 2012

Butterfly Paradise


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I went to Wilkerson Farms yesterday to buy more grass fed local beef. Yum! One of the owners, Carrie, has a lovely garden of coneflowers and zinnias in front of her house. I was so delighted to see the yellow Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly fluttering from flower as well as a Buckeye, American Lady, Silver Spotted Skipper, Sulphur of some sort, and several other Skippers and smaller butterflies that I'm not sure of the ID of. It was seriously a butterfly paradise, and I snapped away both before and after making the transaction that I'd come to do. Carrie even had sunflowers! Wow!

I did a lot of pp on this one to remove the background.  There was a lot of dead, brown flower in it.


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These two sulphurs floated together with one being kindof still and feeding and the other never slowing down. They carried on this way the entire time I was there.



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Love the probiscus on this Silver Spotted Skipper!  Wish he was farther left on the flower though.



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What a cute tiny Skipper!



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No clue about this tiny guy but yet another variety of butterfly in the garden.



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A larger view of the garden.  Like I said...a butterfly paradise!


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Friday, July 13, 2012

Bob


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Johnny and I rode our bikes to Porter Farms and Nursery yesterday, about a mile, and bought fresh green beans for dinner.  Donnie has me considering biking places instead of just hopping in my van for short trips.  I can manage to ride my bike with the Canon SX40 HS around my neck.  I'm sure you'll understand that being able to take my camera with me is of course the deciding factor in my transportation choices;-)  At any point, the girls up there were having some fun with vegetable creations.  I thought Bob was rather crafty!

Speaking of veggies.  I embarked on a new cooking adventure Wednesday, making chicken stock, and I ended up making a great chicken soup for lunch yesterday too.  It was quite possibly the best chicken soup I've ever made or had.

Below is a picture of the soup, and here are the details.  They say there are a lot of healthy benefits to making the stock this way, so consider giving it a try.

For starters, I bought a chicken directly from a farmer.  My first and not last!  It was cleaned up and ready to cook but fresh and healthy and free of any injected crap and a whopping 6lbs.  I roasted it in the oven about like you'd expect putting carrots and onions underneath it and not using any chicken bouillon like I would have in the past.   I browned it nice by rubbing olive oil and spices on it.  We had it for dinner with sugar snap peas and a salad, and it was yummy!  Afterward, Donnie wanted me to try making real chicken stock from bones, so I got out my pasta pot, put the bones in the colander part, added enough water to cover, and proceeded to create the stock.  Here's the recipe that I used.  I see no reason to wait to add the veggies and spices, and I let mine cook for more like 5 hours.  It was so easy to lift up the colander to remove the bones from the broth, but what about the veggies?  We decided to carefully remove the bones and add the veggies back.  We figured there was a small risk for bones left in but worth the risk.  I had hoped that the stock would have a great flavor, but it was kindof so so without any salt or real spices.  But I guess that's the way it was supposed to be.  We put it in the fridge to cool overnight.


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I used this recipe to turn the stock into soup.  I take liberties with just about every recipe I use, but you get the gist.  I used olive oil to saute an orange bell pepper, an onion, and minced garlic.  I added in the 4 cups of stock.  I did not add additional celery as the stock had some in it.  I didn't have the spinach to add at the end either.  I ended up adding 2 teaspoons of salt, a generous amount of Texas Pete, the soy sauce, a bit of basil, and pepper.  I put in a pinch of tarragon and sprinkled in some poultry seasoning (rosemary) too.  I kept finessing the flavor trying to bring out the best in the stock and I think it worked.  Then I added in some leftover link style chicken and spinach sausage and a bunch of the leftover chicken which Donnie had deboned for me along with the carrots that I had roasted under the chicken the night before.  Wow!  Donnie and the boys and I ate it up for lunch big time!  Thankfully, there are two bowls of soup left and enough chicken stock to make soup again real soon.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Views of the Setting Sun


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I couldn't help but notice the reflections in the windows of an office building out in center field during the Durham Bills Game last week.  I was too busy talking about the fireworks and Wool E. Bull to mention this photo then, and I didn't take anything yesterday worth sharing, so here it is today.  It looks like some combination between sun and water to me.

Here's an earlier picture showing the building that later had the reflection.


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Wednesday, July 11, 2012

It's Raining It's Pouring


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It poured yesterday afternoon and more rain is expected over the next 3 days.  Woo hoo except that it cuts down on the light and therefore my outside photo ops.

I was standing in the garage watching Donnie and Johnny working on Teen's flat bicycle tire when I took the daily of my birdbath splashing in a heavy downpour.  (The boys are home from their trip with their dad now.)  Donnie's very skilled at fixing things, and he's patched several bike tires already this year.  We read an article or saw a news show recently that talked about how today's kids aren't learning to fix anything.  Many cars are too hard to work on these days; I think car repair used to be a great how to use tools opportunity.  The world is so fast paced that we're all in must do mode instead of taking time to show and do with kids.  It was nice to see Johnny who is interested in all sorts of tech stuff interested enough to pay attention and Donnie patient enough to slow down and explain a few things to him.  I just love the reflection of their work showing up in both vehicles.



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Here's a wider view up the driveway.  You can just barely see the blue birdbath on the right.


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Joey asked Donnie to teach him cards today.  As in playing cards.  Hard to believe, but the boys had not played Go Fish, and that's the game Donnie chose.  What fun!  Madi showed up for a while too!  She was glad to see 'her' boys.  It did my heart good to hear all the laughter and see all the smiles at the table.  Sometimes it's life's simple pleasures.


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Tuesday, July 10, 2012

The Statue and the Flowers


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The cold front arrived yesterday bringing an inch and a half of rain to my house along with cooler temps:-) While the break in the heat is great, it was raining when Donnie and did our errands yesterday, and I didn't get to take Jennifer over to Yates Mill like I had hoped. That and stopping by to see Sir Walter Raleigh were the two other things I would like to have done during her stay. Maybe some other time.

I took my daily shot at a quick stop we made between the raindrops.  I loved the backdrop of flowers.

I did do some shots with Jennifer and my dragonfly lights.  I didn't like how they turned out enough to post as a daily:-(

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Monday, July 9, 2012

Jennifer in the Hot July Heat



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All vacations need a down day, right?  Well that's what yesterday ended up being for Jennifer.  It was 101 at the house again, and Donnie and I stayed inside most of the day.  I gave Jennifer a great view for watching DVR'ed Nascar and Wimbledon and the movie Timeless.  I have this large window upstairs in the garage bonus room where the good TV is.  There's a half circle (moon) glass on top and then for the regular window I have a curtain with sun/moon fabric.  I thought it made a nice back-drop for today's daily.  I used to be really, really into celstrial stuff in my decor.  Remnants remain, but I don't add to the collection too much anymore. 

The red glow to the fabric in the daily is from the Picasa neon filter.

Here's a pink tinted version of the daily.

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And the real fabric.


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I took a couple of pics of the grandfather clock (from my father's house) with  the curtain and light creating neat reflections.

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The shot below is the weights (is that the right word?) with the curtain reflecting on them through a glass panel.

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Donnie and I  have errands to run late afternoon, so I hope to get a few parting shots of Jennifer around town and then send her off to her next destination tomorrow.  We're starting a cool down today which kicks into earnest tomorrow and is also scheduled to bring several inches of rain.  We really need the cool down and the ability to go outdoors without instantly sweating again.  Yesterday for exercise we resorted to using the xBox Kinnect Adventures game inside with AC! 

Sunday, July 8, 2012

A Walk in the Ferns


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It was too stinkin' hot to do much of anything in Raleigh yesterday.  At 102, you go from house to air conditioned car to store and back and that's about it.  Donnie and I took a trip into town to run a few errands including going to Guardian Angel Thrift.  Arguably, it's my favorite store in town:-)  This charity has raised over 1 million towards Alzheimers Research and is still going strong.  Jennifer helped me pick out several new shirts, and us girls had a good time browsing everything in the store.  Thanks to Donnie for snapping the shot of me and Jennifer in the parking lot.


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Also at Guardian Angel, Jennifer and I picked up a quick gift for her next host, Linda G. Linda has a collection of tiny shoes, and Jennifer thought it would be nice to add another one to the group.



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Jennifer and I did take a short walk to Madi's driveway to snap this quick shot with the pink chair.  Go pink!


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And of course at night, Jennifer took some time to enjoy the mood lights.  We watched Girl with the Dragon Tattoo also.


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Jennifer thinks we are eating pretty well!  Homemade fajitas!


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