busy

Someone asked me how I was able to make ANYTHING when trying to entertain small children. Luckily, my third daughter can be persuaded to enjoy coloring or play dough or stickers. Heck, she can spend half an hour just cutting paper into smaller and smaller pieces. And of course, I let her. Maybe that's the secret.

But there are other distractions too that are keeping me from working on the quilt (and the poncho - ahem.) My neighbor, Mountain Man, came by last weekend and brought this:
This is a solar cooker. Did I mention that we live off the grid? That means there are no power lines anywhere near our house (or phone, either.) This cooker would be a great alternative to the (hot) gas stove, because after all, you can't barbecue everything. M.M. cooked us up a tasty stew.
Cooking keeps me pretty busy, especially when the big girls are here. I have a small freezer, so I can't keep a lot of processed food around (better anyway). But the garden hasn't really kicked in yet so we spend sewing time at such pleasures as the Farmer's Market.

Then, because I really needed another mouth to feed, this showed up:
Mountain Man rescued this......bird from marauding blue jays. He had to go down the hill for awhile, so I am feeding it until he returns, watered down cat food with a glass tube. It has a remarkably long throat. M.M. called it a wood pigeon but dh thinks it's a buzzard. He certainly has the honk for it!
I wanted to call him Frightful (did you read My Side of the Mountain as a kid?) but his real name is Fuzzy. And I don't mind feeding him; how often do you get to save a life?

More stories of life and death here.