Too Fast For The Shutter

It was a good thing that I snapped the first picture of the Hummingbird at the nectar feeder because she was too fast for the shutter in the second one. I wanted a picture of her flying and pressed the shutter button as she rose up but by the time the picture was taken she was gone. Not a blur on the screen, nothing.

When I opened the drapes this morning there was a Downy Woodpecker on the suet pellet feeder. I dumped out the old pellets and refilled the feeder on Wednesday because the old pellets hadn't survived all of August's rain in good shape. They looked moldy and melted. Ugh.

The other day a recipe for Chicken & Greens Soup popped into my head, I looked it up, and couldn't get it out of my mind. So this morning I went to the grocery for the ingredients and made the soup this afternoon. I'd forgotten how much it made--over 16 cups--enough so I could freeze some and still have a bunch to eat for lunches next week and probably the week after. Once the everything is in the pot except the chicken you puree the soup with an immersion blender. Unfortunately my immersion blender gave up the ghost at the first whir so I ended up doing it in batches in the blender blender. It was a pain to scoop out soup 2 cups at a time, get it over to the blender without dripping all over the floor, and then whirring it into a slurry. There was barely enough room for the soup in my biggest Tupperware bowl so I had to transfer it back to the soup pot to stir in the diced chicken to finish it off. A lot of work but well worth it.

While I worked through the soup steps (of which there are many) I also drew the next figure in the 3-D book. It's called Quack! Quack! and it's a very cartoon-y duck. It was fun to draw. The soup recipe was complex enough that that was all I had time to draw in between Zoom calls this afternoon and evening.

I heard a crash as a bird hit the patio door and looked down to see this Goldfinch sprawled in the door track. It must have hit really hard because they usually fly away immediately but it eventually wandered off once it stopped seeing stars.

Tonight at Friday Night Knitting I got to the end of the Villasol Sock leg and am ready to start the heel but that takes thinking and a Zoom call is not the place for knitting thinking so I'll tackle that tomorrow or Sunday.

When I put the sock away I worked on the Another Teal Meadow washcloth and started the decreases to get back down to three stitches like I started with.

Just to prove that I did look outside here's the other Dad's rose that's blooming. Still no Japanese Beetles munching away at the roses. Shhh, don't say it too loud.

Today's toss was a few more activity books that the kids have outgrown. I didn't think I had that many strewn around but I guess I did.

--Barbara