janis

Feathers

We have a lot of feathers at our house:  feathers in the inside pen, feathers in the outside pen, feathers in the pond, feathers in the tub, feathers all over the bathroom, feathers in the living room, feathers in the kitchen, feathers everywhere.  It's a constant job to keep up with it during molting season. And now we think the girls are starting to molt too.  We found two flight feathers floating in the tub this morning after their bath.  They sure aren't Louie's!  His are all gone!

But as I pick up all those feathers, I can't help but notice something:  every feather is different from the last.  Every single one is unique in its shape, color, size, curvature.  It's so easy to simply look at a duck, recognize that it's covered with feathers, then go on our merry way.  But out of those hundreds (thousands?) of feathers that cover the bird, every one is different, right down to the itty bitty feathers on their eyelids.  (yep, those are feathers too!)   It's really quite amazing. 

So here is a sampling of some of the types of feathers we get at our house.  Some have a lot of down, some have nearly none.  Some are curved, others are straight.  Some are striped, some are plain.  (click on the picture to get a larger view with more detail.)  But they all have one thing in common:  they smell great!  Ducks are fastidious and love to be clean (thus the multiple baths per day) and they always smell soooooo good! 

It's hot here

Yes, we live in Arizona and yes, we expect it to be hot during the summer.  That doesn't mean we like it though!  For those of you who are not "Zonies" I'll briefly explain our summer.  June tends to be the hottest month in terms of temperature.  Then about the first week of July (give or take a week), our "monsoon" starts up, complete with dust storms, rain, and higher humidity.  The temperature tends to be a bit lower due to the moisture in the air, but August can be pretty miserable.  About the middle of September, the nights will start to cool off a bit (meaning, they'll go below 80 degrees) and October is usually beautiful both day and night (my favorite month). 

But for now it's HOT.  This picture was taken on our patio, in the shade, about 2:00 this afternoon.  Yep, that's right:  117 degrees.  Now, I'm not so sure that's right (the weather service says it's "only" 110) but believe me, it's HOT here.

If you're wondering how the ducks stay cool, well they have their pond, plus Todd rigged up a misting system for them.  We turn that on about 11:00 every morning and keep it on until about 5:00 in the afternoon.  At that point, their pen is in the shade and they don't need it so much anymore.  As for us, we stay inside on days like today, enjoying the air conditioning.

Here are some pictures of the ducks enjoying their pond this afternoon.  You can see that Todd has added some more grass to the area and there's also a pump water feature.  All three of them enjoy playing in the stream of water, trying to grab it with their bills.  But today Huey simply preened while Dewey & Louie swam.  Louie actually swam the full lenth of the pond with his tush sticking up in the air, orange webbed feet paddling away behind him.  It was pretty cute!

Oh, and by the way, while I was trying to post to my blog, we lost electricity twice.  We think they might be having rolling brown-outs across the valley due to the (heat) high energy usage (heat) this afternoon (did I mention heat?).  Our power is back, but now we have no water.  We suspect the pumping station that supplies our water is still without power.  No power = no pumping = no misters for the ducks and no water for us. Hopefully this is a temporary situation.

Molting

Louie is molting.  All three went through a molt last February and we thought they were done for the year.  But then a little research revealed that drakes (boys) have two molts per year.  One is to get camouflage colors (to protect them while they're unable to fly) and then one later on to get their striking, "I'm ready for love" colors which are to attract the females.  About two weeks ago we noticed that some of Louie's flight feathers were sticking out funny, then falling out.  They're all gone now and new feathers are already starting to come in.  They're only about a 1/2" long so far.  In the meantime, he's looking a little ragged.

Here are some "before" pictures, taken April 30th:

And here are some pictures taken today.  You can see that his back is pretty bare and the bright purple-tipped feathers are completely gone.  You can see that there are a number of feathers floating on the pond. He has also been scratching at his head a lot, with lots of those tiny head feathers coming out.  We think he's getting ready to grow his brilliant green head feathers again.  And then, Huey & Dewey, ya better watch out!  The mating recess will be over! 

The Wedding

The day of the wedding went off without a hitch, well, at least there were no hitches that I was aware of!  We all got to the church early for pictures and I tried to get some of my own during that time.  I was pretty happy with them, but during the time that Todd & I were included, the person I handed my camera over to wiggled a bit much and those didn't turn out.  So here's a picture of my family without Todd and me (Adam's wife, Debbie, is also missing in this picture).  It includes my mother, my brother, Doug, and his bride, Holly, and my brother's three sons (oldest to youngest, left to right, Adam, Aaron, Daniel).  You may remember seeing Adam & Daniel in our idea book, Timeless Touches Techniques with Fibers, and Aaron can be seen on the Timeless Touches gallery pages. 

The ceremony was beautiful with lots of music (Holly is a music professor at the college where my brother is also a professor).   The little flower girl (whose mother was an attendant) had a bit of a meltdown during the ceremony and had to be taken out, but everything else went as planned.  It was pretty emotional for a lot of people, including the minister whose voice broke a couple of times.  I'll admit, I did my share of sniffling also.  The reception was graced by a lot of music (including a tape of Holly singing at age 6!) and the telling of limericks.  The bride & groom stated they would not kiss with the traditional clinking of glasses.  Noooo, they required that we come up with original limericks about them after which they'd kiss.  Some of them were really funny and it was a happy, fun time.

The following day we started the long, hot trek back to Arizona, back to our critters, and back to work.

Critters

I've mentioned before that I married an animal lover.  So in addition to our dog (Jake) and three ducks, we also have a backyard haven for other critters as well.  We have a small pond outside our office window where our turtle and 5 goldfish live.  We weren't sure that the fish would be able to coexist with the turtle, but they're a year old now and about 3" long.  And for awhile last summer we had a couple of tadpoles but lost track of them when they grew up enough to leave the pond.  When we got back from Kansas the other day, we checked out the pond, which was desperately in need of water, by the way.  We not only have about 10 baby goldfish, but we also have a tadpole!  (They were all appreciative of the water we added that day!)

Our backyard is what we like to refer to as "natural".  This sounds a lot better than "not done".  Yes, we've lived here several years now, but we took the money we had planned to use for landscaping and started a business with it.  And we haven't reimbursed ourselves for it yet.  In due time, in due time.  Because of this "natural state", critters do like our backyard.  It's also quite large, so they have lots of room to roam.  We often have two or three quail families living back there, except for this year when Jake discovered that baby quail are quite tasty (shudder).

Before we left for Kansas, we knew we had two pregnant squirrels in the backyard.  Well, one was still pregnant, but we had seen evidence of babies from the other hole.  Okay, most of you in other parts of the country are thinking, "squirrels?  big deal."   But we're in a huge metropolitan area and up until spring of 2005, I had never EVER seen a squirrel inside the city limits (except at the zoo).  Therefore, squirrels are still a novelty for me.  When we got back home, both mamas were thin so we know we have two sets of babies now.  And early this morning we saw one of the first set of babies (already growing fast) poke his head out of their hole.  Todd set out some chopped tomatoes for them and I was hoping to catch him (with the camera...not literally) in mid-chew, but he didn't cooperate.  But isn't he cute?   We're not sure how many siblings he has...the most we've seen at a time is three.  And we still don't know about the other litter, but we'll probably start seeing them before too long!

We're back!

Aren't "vacations" supposed to be relaxing?   This was far from it!   

We started our trek with a couple stops in northern Arizona for Todd to make some sales calls for his "other" job.  (Yep, he's a two-timer!)  Because of those stops, we only got as far as Milan, NM for the night.  However, this is where my good friend and artist extroidinaire, Donna, now lives.  She very graciously, and unexpectedly, took us in for the night.  We were able to see their new log home, enjoy the view, and snooze with the windows open, letting in the cool night air.  Thanks, Donna! 

After a late start on Saturday (we were enjoying our time with Donna too much) we drove for about 12 hours, getting to my brother's house near midnight.  The next few days were filled with shopping (I still needed a dress for the wedding), doing stuff around the house (Todd is a handy guy to have around), shopping some more (food for the rehearsal dinner), playing cards and table games, etc.  One of the highlights was being in on a surprise bachelor party for Doug on Sunday night.  We convinced him that we were kidnapping his son, Adam, for a surprise birthday party at the community pool (where Adam's wife, Debbie, and my youngest nephew, Daniel, are both lifeguards).  When he arrived, he looked around and realized that the group of friends were his own, not Adam's.  hee hee!  I love a good surprise!  Holly (the bride), Debbie, and I crashed the party after the initial festivities were done....everyone seemed to be having a great time!

Of course, the big event for Todd & me was planning, preparing, and serving the rehearsal dinner (for 75-85 people...we're not sure exactly how many there were in the end).  Todd & I spent all afternoon in Wichita on Thursday shopping at Sam's Club for ingredients.  We had taken a couple of coolers along with us but quickly realized that we needed to supplement them with some cheapo styrofoam containers from the grocery store.  It was pretty hot that day (94 degrees) and it was a full hour's drive back to Doug's town.  Our car was packed with food!  We started the meat cooking in huge roasters (like crockpots on steriods) and they slow roasted all through Thursday night and into Friday morning.  On Friday morning, we got out to the church pretty early and started in on our meal. 

I have to say this:  Todd & I work together incredibly well.  From the early days of our marriage, we have done lots of projects together (home improvement, groups over for dinner, children's church, etc) and we always do well together.  Not all couples do, so we consider ourselves blessed that we do.  In fact, without having our history of successful projects in the past, I'm not sure we would have had the courage to start our own business together.  But I digress...

Todd immediately started chopping onions, tomatoes, chilies, etc, for the pico de gallo and salsa.  He's an expert chopper.  But I'm the expert taste-tester!  After he does the basics, I'm the one who adds the critical ingredients that determine the overall flavor and temperature (hotness) of the salsa.  And it was such a chore to take chip after chip and dip it into that fresh salsa to make sure the mix was just right!   Here's what the salsa looked like after all the tweaking (all two gallons of it):

Mmmm!   I have to admit, I really do like my salsa!  But we made this batch a little on the mild side...afterall, we were serving midwesterners this time!   (the leftovers are in Kansas...rats!) 

While he was doing all the chopping, I was working on the Not-Fried Fried Ice Cream.  I had hoped for an easy recipe for Fried Ice Cream, but I certainly wasn't about to deep fry all of those servings at the last minute!  I found a simpler version on-line, tried it out at home before we left, and it was amazingly similar to the real thing.  However, "easier" does not necessarily mean "faster".  I spent several hours scooping ice cream, freezing, making the crunchy stuff, rolling the scoops in the crunchies, re-freezing, etc.  If I ever do it for a large group like that again, I'll do it several days in advance. 

After we had all of the main prep stuff done, we went back to the house, took showers, changed clothes, and then right back to the church we went for the final preparations.  At this point we had 3 helpers, friends of Doug's that weren't involved with the rehearsal itself.  And it was at this point that it all became a blur!  Somehow we ended up with a full salsa bar for appetizers (chips, salsa, pico de gallo, guacamole, sliced jalepenos, chopped cilantro, nacho dip), plus all of the main course (beef & chicken burritos & tacos, rice, refried beans, black beans, and all of the accoutrements), then the fried ice cream and flan for desert (I made 4 pans of flan that afternoon), lemonade & iced tea to drink.   I'm told that it all tasted good, but other than taste-testing the salsa & guacamole, I only had one shredded beef taco.  Even though by then I was practically starving (no lunch that day), there's just something about eating food you've been smelling all day long.  It tends to lose its appeal. 

And since we were in the kitchen most of the time, we didn't get to mingle with the relatives like I'd hoped.  But all in all, it was a great evening, lots of fun, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.  And no, I don't have pictures of all the food, or the serving table, or anything else from the rehearsal dinner.  I got so involved with it all that I totally forgot to take pictures other than the salsa prep.

Stay tuned for my wedding report!

Kansas or bust!

Todd and I are both off to Kansas for the next 11 days for a much-needed vacation.  We're going for my brother's wedding and will be seeing some family and friends for the first time in many years.  I'm very much looking forward to this! 

Even though the office is technically closed, we'll still have access to email while we're there.  I can't guarantee a super-fast response time, but please do feel free to email me while we're away.  Even though it's "vacation", I'll still be working a bit and so will Todd, especially while we're in the car.  Yep, we're driving.  Yep, we're nuts.