39 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 4-18-16”

  6. Husband was home for twenty four hours. He is looking better. The exercise is doing him good and he has fewer aches and pains. The swelling in his hands has gone down. So, difficult as it is for the family to have him gone, this little break has done him some good. Only Four more days of school for him.

    Meanwhile, back on the farmlette, life continues. We went to Moscow to visit the folks yesterday and when we got back, the bucks were loose from their pen. We put them in a new happier place. No, we did not off them, we just moved them to a different pen.

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  7. Good morning from sunny Atlanta.

    Finally, the tax season will be over except for all those extensions.

    That header is quite speckled! What do those eggs potentially hold? Glad to have you back, Cheryl.

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  11. Third time is the charm!

    Does anyone have an Inspire Bible that has the journaling exploring area in it? If so, what do you recommend for coloring? Are some colored pencils preferred over others?

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  15. I wrote a long post, but made the mistake of clicking on the flower to see what size it opened up as, and doing that loses the post you’re writing, with no apparent way to get it back. Sigh.

    The first two pictures above are obviously connected. The header is a clutch of killdeer eggs, the first photo below it a mama killdeer. She isn’t exactly feigning a broken wing, just flashing her brightest colors and hoping to distract me from the nest I’d been photographing . . .

    We have a lot of killdeer around here, and I’ve long hoped to find a nest at some point. I’m sure they nest in our back field (not our property, but the farmed acres behind it), but without seeing the mama at her nest initially, there’s no way to know where one might be, and they’re known to sneak away a little bit and then start their display from somewhere other than the nest.

    Well, when my husband and I pulled into the driveway of the lady who was going to drive me (and herself) to Chicago last weekend, this killdeer was running around an area of stone beside the driveway, on the left side. I told my husband, “If you open your door, you’ll probably find that killdeer has a broken wing.” But I got out of the car, and my friend came out of the house, and the killdeer ran away a few yards. I asked my friend did the bird have a nest, and could my friend show me where it was, and so she did, and I took some photos. Then my husband reminded me to get some photos of the mother. (I meant to do so, but we were so close to the nest I wanted to see it. BTW, I was surprised how big the eggs were for the size of the bird, but killdeer are hatched ready to run around, so I imagine the egg needs to be bigger to give them more growing room and space.)

    By this time the mama was no longer doing any sort of display, so I had to walk toward her to get her to put on a show for me, and at that point she held out her wings to flash that color on her back, and called and carried on a bit. I got some pictures and then left, to leave for my trip and let her return to her eggs.

    The bottom photo is a spring beauty flower. They’re supposed to be common in Indiana, but I’d only seen them once and hadn’t known what it was. They’re one of the first flowers to bloom, so when I saw that the hepatica were just starting to bloom, I started looking for spring beauty and found quite a few. I found some in small groups, but I put on a close-up lens to get some magnification, and a single blossom works better for that. The flower is tiny (about dime-sized is the only size description I could find), so this is an enlargement beyond life size, especially if you click on it to see it bigger. They’re said to have the ability to transform a field into beauty, but I’ve never seen them approaching such quantity. The photo was taken in March, proof that we actually had spring starting in March this year (my first time in 19 years total in the Midwest to see it that early). Now we have our May crop of dandelions in profusion.

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  16. Kim, I didn’t pay much attention to the flowers, and they’re only in the photo because the nest was among them. I thought they were regular pansies (not wildflowers) when I saw them, but again I didn’t really look at them closely. Our violets aren’t in bloom yet (though undoubtedly they will be soon, considering the profusion of dandelions), and this was more than a week ago.

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  18. Janice, I have had a loose leaf Bible and NT (separate) since I was in seminary.
    It doesn’t matter what you use, for comments. Except one thing.
    Don’t use pencil. after decades, pencil notations fade and are hard to read.
    Not as permanent as a pen of some sort..

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  19. Never heard of the Inspire Bible — I have used the Journaling Bibles from Crossway (they have a new edition out now that has a blank page next to every page).

    I agree with Chas about pencil in general (for writing notes) — I recently traced over a page full of penciled notes from long ago in the back of my Bible as it was fading fast and I wanted to keep what I’d written.

    But it’s easier for me (at first) to use a pencil (along with highlighters) when starting to write in a Bible. Once a Bible gets fairly marked up, using pen is easier for me. 🙂 I don’t worry so much about not being able to erase it if it looks too sloppy or being able to write perfectly.

    I remember the loose leaf Bibles — never had one but I recall they were popular maybe in the 1980s/’90s? Cambridge made them, I think.

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  20. Kim, I’ve seen miniature pansies, too. When I took the photo, all that I noticed was that pansies had apparently been planted among the rocks, and some were close enough to the nest that I was including some in the photo. But it’s likely that at least some of them (including the ones in the photos) were miniature pansies.

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  21. Johnny Jump Ups out here–where I was awake from 1-3 writing and stopped in afterwards to find nothing was up. I could have been last yesterday, but what was the point? I prayed for Jo instead . . . 🙂

    Since I wrote nearly 15 blog posts over the end of last week, this is a writing day, finally! I’m already five pages into the new chapter and it very well may be done by tomorrow. Thanks be to God.

    Unhappy the weather next week will be in the 80s in The South. I was hoping for spring-like 70s. Now what am I going to wear? 🙂

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  22. I have heard people call those flowers Johnny Jump Ups. They are violas, I believe. They are very hardy and perennials. They bloom very early here, too. They can range from white and yellow to blue and purple.

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  24. Love the picture of the eggs in the nest. I have tried to find one of those nests, too, but never could. Beautiful eggs for such a short period of time. That is like so much else in creation. God is so not stingy with His beauty. He is so extravagant.

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  25. Well Kathaleena you solved that mystery for me. I have often wondered what violas were.

    Michelle, you will wear linen and cotton in light colors. Bring a sweater because any place you go indoors will try to freeze you to death to make up for the heat outside.

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  26. My DNA results show I’m genetically from northern Europe. Think that’s why I hate the heat so much?

    🙂

    Michelle, maybe there’s a dog park you can visit there to cool off

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  29. My husband and I always say we are colder when we go down south, than we are up north. You really do need to dress in layers or have a sweater or light jacket for the indoors. We end up freezing in the air conditioning that is everywhere.

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  31. We call the flowers in the first picture Johnny Jump-Ups or Heart’s Ease, and, as Mumsee says, they are edible. We use them to garnish salads.

    Janice, I don’t have the Bible, but I use Staedtler fineliner coloured pens for my colouring book, since Sharpies bleed through the paper.

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  34. I was out a bit ago and my tablet said it is 76 degrees. Yes, it is getting on the warmish side.

    I talked with my friend, Juanita, who got out of the hospital this afternoon. She is weak, but hopefully on the mend. She and I have a similar appreciation of nature.

    I also spoke with my friend Karen who received a threatening call from someone posing as an IRS agent who said they owed $8,000.00 in back taxes that they had been trying to send notices about that kept being returned. He said she would be arrested if they did not pay up. She called her husband on the other phone and he told her to hang up. She has reported it to the phone company and to a news station who might interview her about it. It’s pretty frightening how bold the scammers are these days.

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  35. It got up to almost 80 here today. But I am glad the rest of the week will be in the 60s. I’m not ready for summer yet. (Well, I’m never ready for summer.)

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  36. Good evening…most of ya’ll have gone to bed by now….worked all day…and it was 26 degrees on the car thermometer as I drove home at 6 tonight….icy roads in our part of the forest, but the main roads were ok….it didn’t even appear that snow had fallen in the Springs….what a difference a half hour drive makes! The plow has been through three times since last night, dumping a couple feet of ice and snow across our drive each time….grrrr We are supposed to get another 3 inches overnight….then we are done with it for another week…I’m ready for summer!!!
    We call those flowers on the header johnny jump ups…and they have been known to blossom even during our Colorado winters…and they spread like weeds…I love them…very very hardy!

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  37. Well, I’d never heard of Johnny jump ups, but I have seen them around. The flowers in that bed weren’t (for the most part) those, though; they were bigger than the 1.5 centimeters that it looks like those are, and I have seen those little ones before. So I suspect that there were some full-sized pansies and some of those, too; since I wasn’t really looking at the flowers except to notice they were there, I didn’t see that the ones by the nest were smaller. But I’ve learned a new flower name today.

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  38. Oops…did I say that? No, actually, Killdeer are among my favorite birds so I won’t be eating their eggs. I was watching one today and knew its nest must be right on the road I was walking on. Son told me there is a pair nesting right next to where the airplane sits. So they ignore the roar of the engine and wash of the propellers and take care of their nest. He saw the eggs and there were four smaller than chickens but not so small as a robin. I told him what you had said about them needing to be quick on their feet, like quail and guineas and pheasants and all.

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