Steve`s Country
For a smile as wide as a country sunrise
Daily Pics #297.
Good morning to everyone! It’s a frosty morning, but the sun is shining brightly, the blue jays are busy getting their peanuts, Jasper is also trying to get his share of the peanuts, the chickadees are busy at the hanging feeders getting their breakfast of sunflower seeds and the juncos are on the ground looking around for their breakfast as well. Plus I see a lone, bright red male pine grosbeak on the feeder eating away as fast as he can it seems. They can break open those sunflower seeds very quickly. They can actually eat a lot of seeds in just one minute. The sun is shining on him so nicely right now making that red color really stand out. There he goes, one of the blue jays just came down to the feeder, guess they have finished the peanuts now. Most of the peanuts they hide for later use, though the first two or three they do eat right away. Those blue feathers really get bright when they are sitting in the sun as well.
Yesterday while making the new bird feeder Jasper came along and stood up against my leg looking for a peanut. So I gave him one and sat down with him while he ate it. I did most of the talking, which is normal, Jasper really isn’t much of a talker. But he did “chip” a couple of times when I mentioned the blue jays. Jasper is getting more calm now, these ‘therapy’ sessions seem to be working for him. Maybe he just likes getting all the attention now, no sharing with the chipmunks. Still, I’m sure he misses those chipmunks, that’s why he spends so much time running around in the trees now. He needs the exercise. It was 55F (13C) yesterday with the sun shining. But it didn’t really feel that warm for some reason. Probably because the sun is so low in the sky now. Air temperature and sun temperature are different. And there is still snow on the ground. Sunny areas have no snow now, but shady spots, like back here, still have snow and it’s not melting fast. By the end of the day tomorrow the snow should be gone, but more is coming next week as the temps return to normal again.
Let’s see, for today’s favorite pics we have a flower bud from a peony just starting to open, as our featured image at the top. Then we have that same peony flower in full bloom as our pic above. The flower ended up being 8 inches (20cm) across, very beautiful indeed. But even the bud itself is very beautiful. I hope you all have a wonderful Wednesday and God bless!
Steve and Muffin.
©2020 Steve McLeod.
Steve’s DIY Project #1.
Hi everyone and welcome to something sort of new for Steve’s Country. Though I did do a DIY before but hopefully I will be a bit more regular with some ideas. Perhaps once a month anyway. Today’s DIY is really something for fall which I wanted to post a month ago, but this and that came along and it never happened. So, fall being done up here in the north, it seems a bit odd to post this, however, fall is still happening in some places so I’m not completely out of date. But it will show what a person can do for decorating that doesn’t really have much, if any, cost to it. Mostly I only used items I had on hand, leftover things from other projects and only bought one new item to use, the urethane to spray it with at the end. So, here we go… First I gathered up some scrap pieces of wood I had laying around and then glued them together.
I also used some small 3/4 inch finishing nails to hold it together a bit better, helps until the glue dries. Then I did a bit of sanding with some fine sandpaper, which I always have on hand. It only requires a little sanding, by hand. No major electrical tools needed here with this project.
Then I painted it with a yellow acrylic paint, only one coat as I wanted the grain of the wood to show. I chose a light yellow since it is a fall project and it fits nicely with the balsam cones I used. After the paint was good and dry I sanded it a bit to really allow the grain to show nicely. On one of my walks I picked up some balsam cones to use for this project, shown above. Balsam trees are like spruce trees, though they really smell much nicer. And they always produce lots of cones. I picked out the ones I wanted and placed them on the wood making out the words “Happy Fall”.
I just did this free hand because I was looking for a nice home made look sign. Then I used some wood glue, which I have on hand always as well, to glue them all in place.
I let this dry until the next day then took it outside to spray it with urethane for added protection and give it a bit of a shine too. I used a glossy finish urethane. This is not good to use indoors, always use outside. Once dry I glued some colorful plastic leaves on it and there it is. All finished and the only cost was the urethane, but there’s lots of that left for other projects too, so the cost is really very little. It can be set outside or used indoors. Hope you enjoyed this easy little project, have a wonderful day and God bless!
Steve and Muffin.
©2020 Steve McLeod.
