The Patience of a Dove

Hello!


For what amounted to almost two weeks up at The Nest this past trip, we did a bit of bird-watching, and it was all done right from our little screened porch.


Early on, we noticed that a mamma dove was sitting on a nest that she built on top of the outside of our neighbor's air conditioner. Smart little lady that she was, she had the carport roof over her head and was up high enough that no one could easily spot her. For the whole time that we were up there, she sat on those eggs morning, noon and night, getting a reprieve once in a while when papa came to relieve her. She would then fly off for a short while and he would sit on the eggs.

I think that these were mourning doves, which I have read are also referred to as turtle doves. I hear that they tend to mate for life and remain monogamous. Able to raise up to six broods a year, both parents work together to incubate their young.

After spending two weeks watching the patience shown by these beautiful creatures, I could not help but admire them and feel a little sad when we had to leave without seeing the babies hatch. I hope that they are still in the nest when we return.

Do you see the mama bird?

This was the best photo that I could take

without getting close enough to disturb her...

And speaking of mama birds,

today this old bird

effectively becomes the mother of a forty-year-old daughter.

Birds fly.

So does time.

Happy Birthday Kym!

Have a beautiful day!

Windows in the porch and OOPS!...a slip of the drill...

Hello dear friends, and happy Wednesday!


When we were up at the Nest, our last order of windows came in before we expected them to, so Hubby decided to put in three of them, this time inside the porch. Our porch was once a long screened in job, but at some point a previous owner decided to make half of it into a sunroom. He enclosed the back portion and put vinyl siding on it, inside and out (I keep pretending its shiplap, but I don't think I can fool anyone) adding five windows to the outside and a decent door to the front. Its nice because it stays warm in cool weather, but its not so nice because he did a terrible job with the windows (a future project for us will be to fix or replace them) and decided to put the dividing wall and rear wall right over the frames of four of the old house windows that we are trying to replace. I guess his assumption was that those 30 year old aluminum awning windows would last forever.

Mr. Perch simply thrived on the excitement of 

having to remove the siding before he could get

to the old window...

 Well, at least there was insulation under the 

wallboard!...

 

Window out, at last!...

And, the new one is in!

We did also get the siding back up, 

along with the grey wood trim,

but I forgot to take a photo...

And then, we decided to tempt fate and move

to the window inside the sunroom,

on the other side of the wall shown above. 

And... after putting in 15 of the 18

windows with no mishaps,

what should happen but 

OOPS!

a slip of the drill!

 

Oh, well, at least it was on the old window!

PS...By the way we did get the new window in

without further mishap,

but decided to call it quits for that trip!

Have a great evening.

Advertising and Blogs

 

Hello friends. I try to keep this blog on a positive note and leave the ranting for others, so I have put off writing this post for quite some time now. But yesterday, as I was reading some of the blogs that I follow, there was a link to another blog that looked like it would make for nice reading. So I clicked on the link and found a fairly nice home decor blog. Simple enough.

Have you noticed how advertising has found its way to so many blogs (especially the home decor ones), that it isn't even pleasant to read them anymore? I do most of my blog reading on my iPad when I am having my coffee in the morning, and have approached the point where it takes so much time to get past the ads (some of which I can't even "x" out of, or lock up my screen altogether), that I am no longer going to read any that cause so much aggravation. I may as well just go out and buy a magazine and put up with those advertisements.

Don't get me wrong. I don't mind some advertising. As a matter of fact, I tried AdSense for a very short period of time. At least that vehicle had the good sense to place advertisements where I wanted them placed, and with content that was relative to my post. But I choose not to read blogs anymore that have a pop-up ad every time I scoll down to the next paragraph, at the same time as having others pop up from either side of the screen, and in a much bigger format that the blog post I am trying to read in the first place. I guess these are the bloggers that we see on Pinterest claiming to earn 100 grand a year on their blogs. Oh, and let's not forget the blog setups that give you a short paragraph and then make you click to "read more", where, of course, you are switched to another screen and start all over with yet more ads.

 

But back to the blog that I linked to through one of the blogs that I read...This gal with the lovely home and family, who indicated that her faith was the focus of her life, had a unique form of advertising that I had not seen before. You know how when you get to the bottom of someone's post and it has little glimpses indicating "other posts that you might be interested in"? Ones that are usually relative to the post that you just read? Well, at the bottom of this post were  four such glimpses. One was to a post from her own blog. One was for a new testosterone booster. One was about what happens when you take a testosterone supplement, and the last, accompanied by a very suggestive photo, was about the most embarrassing dirty photos on the web. In fine print at the bottom of each thumbnail the sponsor was stated.  I checked this same blog today, and at the bottom of its very lovely post, was an ad for the "skinny pill sweeping the nation", and it was illustrated by an awful looking person, with what were very exaggerated facial features. Would you want to end your own posts this way? I wonder if some people read their own blogs as a viewer would see them.

I personally believe that our blogs should be extensions of ourselves, and not gimmicks for advertising at our readers' expense. Especially when the ads are not at all relative to the type of  reader who is taking the time to follow that blog in the first place. But that's just my humble and worthless opinion.

By the way, the advertising you see at the top of my post is scanned from a 1923 Woman's World magazine that I have in my ephemera collection. And it is the only type of advertising that you will see on this old woman's blog.  Feel free to save it to your computer and use it as you wish. 

 

I wonder if the women of 1923 got tired of seeing advertisements everywhere they went!

Thanks for putting up with me today!

A New Magazine: Living the Country Life

Hello! A couple of weeks ago I found this premier issue of a new magazine in a local supermarket. I meant to share a glimpse of it with you, but forgot about it until I picked it up to read it today. In case you haven't yet seen it, take a peek!

A cover that draws you in...

Nice articles...

Gardening...

Recipes...

Beautiful photos...

Farmhouse decorating...

Featured homes...

What it didn't have, though, were tons of advertisements. As a matter of fact, there were only a few pages worth. Boo-hoo! It appears that this magazine will be published twice per year. I will certainly hold my breath for the next issue.

Have you discovered any new mags lately?

Thanks for coming by! 

New Windows for The Wren's Nest

Hello there!

Well, we are finally putting new windows in this little old mobile home. We opted for ones with grids. They were only slightly more expensive but we thought they were well worth the money as they gave this place more of a "cottage" look. We have ordered them six at a time, because the folks at the nice mobile home place that we go to give us 10% off if we do.

When this place was built 40 years ago, it had the old-type aluminum awning windows, which you cranked open. The good part was that you could leave them opened when it rained, and usually no rain would come in. The bad part was that aluminum pits after time and gets nasty looking. Also, the windows  have so many working parts that some of them become dysfunctional. These are no longer air tight, so water came in and rotted the window sills in areas...

You have to manually swap out the screens and storm windows each spring and fall. And these are fastened on inside with little clips held on with screws, which doesn't make for nice looking window trim.

After all the windows are in, we will be re-framing the insides and installing new trim, which will be painted by moi...

The cranks used to open them is inserted through a hole in the trim, again, not air tight and ugly to look at...

Though installing the windows is not hard in itself, the prep work is time consuming. First, all of the old aluminum awnings had to come down. As with much else in this place, the screws holding them up were old and rusted, some were broken, and a pain it the butt to remove...

Here is the bank of old rear windows in the master bedroom, replete with red tail lights above. Gee, how can you tell that this is a mobile home? You can see how the windows are flanged and screwed onto the structure, a look which we are not fond of, to say the least...

In this picture, actually taken of the old living room windows, Bob is removing the old caulking from under the flanges. New caulking was then put on all of the new ones...

Here we are back at the bedroom windows when one new one was in. What a difference!...

And here all three are in, with the lovely grey wood trim that you previously saw me painting. The trim covers up the screws in the flanges, and looks so much nicer...

Whittling away at this task has kept us rather busy, but it's well worth the extra effort. We've been getting a lot of compliments on the look. At this writing, we've replaced 13 widows, with five more to go. Hip hip hooray! 

Looking Out

Good morning!

Now can you guess what we've been working on at The Nest? ;~)

More to come...

A Touch of Sweden at The Wren's Nest

What? Sweden in the mountains of western North Carolina? No, not really!

We bought a bunch of 1 by 4 pine boards at Home Depot...

...which I painted a lovely shade of grey...

These will be used for our project that is now underway. Stay tuned!

A New Roof for The Wren's Nest

Hello to all! In my last post I shared some photos of stains on the ceiling of our master bathroom. Since we weren't sure whether or not they were the result of new leaks that occurred during the winter when we were away, or if they were bleed-through from old leaks, we decided not to take any chances and had this place re-roofed. Well, actually, on a mobile home it is called a roofover, which is when a new roof is installed right over the old original one. It turned out that one had already been done here, but it was old, so the roofers removed it and put on the new one in its place. We are very happy with it and it looks really nice. It is called "white", but actually has just the slightest tint of grey to it, so this will work in our favor on our design plan for the exterior painting whenever we get around to it! 

Here are some photos. The roof was put up the last time we were up here. Here comes the load of materials, which included the insulation and steel roof material. Actually, they had enough on this truck to do a couple of other jobs after ours.

Two young men did all of the work. I don't think that I've ever seen anyone work as hard as these fellows. They started at 8 a.m. And worked until the job was finished at 5 p.m., taking no breaks. We suggested that they take a few as it was hot up there, but they said that they would rather work until they were done. Here they are removing the old roofover, pieces of which you see on the lawn. These were later hauled off of the lot by the folks here at the park, and sold as salvage...

In this photo they are getting ready to install the insulation...

...and in this one, the roof is on, and they are installing the trim...

We took,the next two photos from the pool area, which is right across from our lot...

I will soon paint the old black trim (seen on the porch) to match that on the new roof, and this week we are making some other changes to the front. But more on that later!...

In a few of the photos above, if you're very observant, you may notice the biggest change that we are in the process of completing. Something started right before the roof went on, and still being worked on this week.

Have a great day!

Unwelcome ceiling stains...

Good morning friends.

We have been so busy hopping back and forth between home and this place that I haven't had a lot of time to post about some of what is really going up here. You may recall that we pretty much completed work on the master bathroom last year. This was the only room that I actually painted the ceiling in. (The other rooms will have to wait until I have more time.) So imagine how we felt when we came up for the first time in April and found this...

A ceiling stain just outside the shower and tub...

...and a very large one inside...

By the second time we got here, they hadn't gotten any bigger, and we didn't know if they were from a new leaks, or bleed-through from old ones, but we didn't want to take any chances. So guess what unexpected expense we had? More to come...

Thanks for coming by!

The Mums at The Wren's Nest

Hello to all!

Last fall I planted two little mums in the little garden in front of our little mountain getaway. When we got up here on Saturday, we happily discovered that they were in full bloom, and actually bigger than the bushes. Who can figure!

In April I had put in a couple of white petunias, one of which you can see in the photo below, along with one of the daylilies that is just starting to bloom...

I must say, "gardening" here is a lot easier than back home. Not only because it is such a small space, but also because the soil is so much better.

Have a great day!

Sue

A Time of Sadness

Florida.

So dear to my heart. 

My previous home for 28 years.

Where my dad still lives.

Where my children make their lives.

And where my grandchildren are being raised. 

Orlando.

Normally thought of as a vacation paradise.

My heart, thoughts and prayers go to all of those whose lives were so greatly changed by

the events of today.

I am at a loss for words over the sadness.

So I will refrain from saying anything else.

Vintage Photos: Friends on Vacation

Happy Sunday, dear friends! We are up at The Nest, so I am attempting to post via iPad and/or iPhone. Both are somewhat awkward as I don't feel that I have control over fonts, spacing, centering, linking, or much else. Here goes nothing!

In a previous post I shared photos that I purchased from a nice lady who then included a few freebies. You may recall that I used one of them on my Etsy shop photo. She contacted me again and said that she had some more of these same friends vacationing and asked if I would like to buy them. We agreed on a price, and here they are.

Some had neat writing on the front of them...

I'm not sure if they were the same group of friends, or two different groups. The clothing seems to be from two slightly different eras.  When I have more time back home I will use a magnifying glass to get a better look at their faces and read the writing, which is not that clear.

I love the boat with the flag on it...

Some had writing on the back...

I wish I knew the whole story about these gals having such a wonderful time enjoying their vacation on the lake.

Well, our "vacation" up here begins today with my painting the outside window trim for the next batch of windows while the Mister works on the gutters and downspouts. 

Thanks for coming by! 

Sue