Why I Oughta...

We have a couple of - what we call - "nests" up in some of the larger, mature trees in our backyard.  I say that we 'call them' that because, frankly, we don't know what they are.  They're these large, clumps of leaves that exist up near the top of the trees (in a crotch) that sure look like a nest, but for all I know could just be a clump of leaves that didn't fall down. Or, that was...until I saw something recently up there.   On a recent afternoon, I saw good-sized hawk swoop across our yard and land right next to one of these nests.  Here, below is a photo showing that hawk perched right on top of said nest.  Can't quite make out what is going on?  Here, below, is a slightly zoomed in version of the photo: Still can't quite figure things out?  Here's an even-more zoom'd in version that I've annotated below: Well....that seems to settle things for me.  A little bit. This is, most certainly, a nest.   But, a nest for whom?   Was the h

Back in November, I posted a couple of photos and talked about the process of turning a collection of Black Walnuts into a homemade 1 scratchmade wood stain.  In that post , I laid out the steps from collecting the walnuts to bottling the stain - and about midway is where we pick things up in this post.  Six weeks of macerating in the five gallon bucket with a little bit of evaporation ended up yielding about 3 gallons or so of material.  A quick stir with a stick every once in a while and I had a thick, black syrup.  Along with a mass of walnut hulls and bits. I grabbed a piece of cheesecloth that Nat had on hand and a couple of rubber bands and donned a set of disposable gloves.  Knowing this is, indeed, stain, I opted to deal with the process out in the yard.  You can see the setup below.  The five-gallon bucket on the right, topped with cheesecloth strainer.  A smaller, one gallon finish bucket in the middle and a couple of pints of rubbing alcohol (91%) to thin the syrup out.  I

The boy had a proper Christmas train setup this year with the basement being done.  (or mostly done)  You can see his setup (a large oval) with a steam O-gauge locomotive running with some rolling stock behind it.  The tubs in the corner contain a few more pieces of track and cars that we didn't get to this year, but it still is a Christmas tradition.  My Dad set up a Christmas train with me.  And I'm setting up a Christmas train with the KotBTs.   Here's last year's post - 2020 Christmas train .   In our new house, this marks four years - 2017, 2018, 2020 and 2021 (now).   There's a very short period of time these days for a boy to be interested in these model trains.  With our train being O Gauge (larger than the most popular - these days at least - HO), I think that also limits the potential in these trains.  HO (smaller) can pack A LOT more into a layout with the same footprint and the hobby is more well-formed for adults at that scale.  You can go to hobby shop

I was thumbing through a Disney World 50th Anniversary coffee table book at the Downers Grove Library last week and I was (of course) drawn to the early days pages.  From the land acquisition (Walt was involved then) to the opening of the Preview Center, the ephemera that they show is pretty interesting.  One of the standouts was this Florida Disney World balloon logo that features the Disney World glove as the center of the Mickey ear balloons. They've moved away from the Vacation Kingdom monicker, but with the 50th Anniversary merchandise that came out this fall, it seems that (at least part of) Disney is leaning into nostalgia.  

Today marks a seven year stretch of publishing a post in my online diary here on my blog.  Seven years straight, starting back in 2015 when I stopped posting on my Illinois political-meme blog (which lasted just a couple of years) and came back home to my homestead on the Web.  This year, I've hit 365 posts - this one is the 365th one and there's no reason to not keep going in 2022.  Just post, baby.  I'm like the Al Davis of blogging in 2021.   By my quick count, there are 260 posts in the [ garden diary ] for the year, so that's 260/365 = 71% of my posts were related to our yard and garden.  I suppose I'm not surprised by that number, but it certainly points to where my interests are (currently) and how I've been able to use this place on the Web as a reference for what I've planted, what has worked and what I need to work on.   That feels like a good way to look at the new year:  Recognize what I've done, think about the good and the bad and focus on

In the midst of the gingerbread-cooking-making party in recent weeks, Mr. Hankey made his first visit to our house.  The kids, while intrigued, weren't quite sure to make of him.  And Nat shut it down pretty hard as soon as I started singing the song.  Maybe in a few years when the KotBTs is old enough to discover the show on his own we'll have another visit from Mr. Hankey during Christmastime. 

Up at Angelo Caputo's in Addison, they're selling pizza cheese for a full buck cheaper than Frankie's Deli in Oak Brook Terrace .  Cheapest I've come across was at Nature's Market in Westmont, but that $5.99 price is (now) almost four years old.      For tracking purposes, I shredded six of these #1'ers, but ended up using probably four of them across 10 bar pies and 2 skinny Detroit pies on Christmas Eve.  Also, four white Cheddars was probably 50% too much, too.  Next year - with the same amount of bar pies, I could factor 4 scamorzas and 2 white cheddars. They bill it as "Cheese for Pizza" from The Chellino Cheese Company, Joliet, Illinois on their packaging.  And that's how we use it.