How Much Wood

Would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? I do not know, but the woodchuck (aka groundhog) that moseyed down the retaining wall this afternoon was munching on Stella d'Oro buds and some tall weeds. My pictures aren't particularly clear but you can see how big it is. (It's about the size of three or four squirrels.) I looked it up and it's a sort of enormous squirrel or marmot. I find myself wondering where it came from and where it was going.

More Dad's roses. They're so pretty and they smell so good. I can't get enough of them.

I went out after supper to clean out the birdbath and fill the feeders. The first visitor was this male House Finch that came to have a few snacks of grape jelly and then, after wiping his beak off on the crook, hopped over to the platform feeder and had something else.

 

And this chipmunk was on cleanup duty. I spilled a little seed and it diligently worked to clean it up. A squirrel tried to investigate and the chippie lunged at the much bigger animal and drove it off. Way to go, little guy!

But before all that, this morning I was busy baking. First, before I even got dressed, I stirred up a batch of Hershey's "The Best" Brownies. I don't know if they're truly the best but that's the recipe name so I'm going with it.

Once the brownies were done (and I was dressed) I mixed up a Banana Split Snack Cake which made the house smell so good it was all I could do not to cut in to the thing on the spot. But I didn't. I'm providing the dessert for tomorrow's July 4th cookout in Shawano and it's bad form to bring a dessert with some of it already eaten. Now if I was going to cut things and put them on a plate to take along I could maybe have some but not when they're still in the baking dish. Nope, no can do.

I sat myself down and drew a Gratitude Journal page this afternoon. I confess that I didn't paint today so I put yesterday's painting on today's page.

Instead of painting I came back here and listened to the last eight chapters of The Seaview, then I typed up the list of corrections so that I could send it off to the producer. She did such a terrific job, most of the corrections are mispronunciations, and there are a few of my typos and story corrections that I'm having her make too. I'm definitely going to upload a new manuscript to KDP since I like the version she voiced better than the printed one. The chapter separations make more sense and there are a few additions that I have no idea how they didn't get into the first printing. I'm happy that I can fix that.

The most frustrating part of my day was realizing that I didn't have enough all-purpose flour to make the two desserts. I was about a half-cup short. I wasn't worried because there was a partial bag of flour in the pantry cupboard, except when I looked at it it was bread flour. Then there was the small unopened bag of flour downstairs, which turned out to be self-rising flour. Grr. So I hopped in the car and tootled over to the grocery for a bag of all-purpose flour. I had flour on the grocery list for a month but thought, oh I've got that partial bag in the cupboard, and never bought it. Wrong. Now I have plenty and it'll be months and months before I need to bake something again. Oh well, it won't go bad. I don't know that I couldn't have used a little bit of either of the flours I had on hand but I wasn't willing to risk it. The grocery isn't much more than a mile away, I had to pick of a prescription anyway, and I ran into a mom of kids my kids went to grade school with so it was worth the trip.

--Barbara