May 30

Not a lot of cooking going on here, No new recipes but I did make a dish I haven't made in a few years...Santa Fe Rice Salad.

It's pretty good but not really a favorite of ours.  It can be used as a side dish with a Mexican meal, or just scoop it up with tortilla chips like salsa.

I had to take my string trimmer in for repair earlier this month. Same problem as before...broken drive shaft...covered under warranty again...no charge.

This big dog (lab/shepherd mix) is always at the repair shop to greet the customers.

When I dropped the trimmer off,  she came from the back with a red ball for me to throw for her.

I threw once and she retrieved it...but when I threw it again I accidentally bounced it off a stack of boxes. 

She gave me a funny look then picked up the ball and took it to the back room!   Ha! 

It's like she didn't want me to embarrass myself with such bad throws!

This time she had a big Nerf Frisbee.  She did let me throw it but only once.

I can't remember ever seeing one of these Giant Leopard Moths before.

They come out only after dark, but this one had gotten trapped in the screen porch somehow.

It didn't want to fly at all, so I nudged him off my hand onto a tree trunk.

Please excuse my chipped nail polish

One day I glanced out a window and saw my Purple Smoke Tree looking like this...stripped to it's skeleton!  What on earth?

It was these...some kind of small purple caterpillars.  I picked them all off, then tried searching the internet to see what they could be.  Not many results for purple caterpillars.  Maybe eating purple leaves caused them to turn purple?

See that small beetle in the photo below?  There were a couple of those on the tree too.  Not sure if they are related to the caterpillars in any way?  

Not being sure if these were good bugs or bad bugs, I decided to smoosh them.  Probably they are the larvae of some rare and beautiful butterfly.

The last time I planted peas in my little garden, a deer chomped them down just after they started blooming. So this year, I just planted a few snow peas right up next to the back porch.

 I think they are such a pretty plant anyway. As good as any decorative plant you could buy...and all I need is a few peas to add to a salad.

On Memorial Day, I rode over to Evansville with Lonnie to visit his parents grave site.  We are such clods, we didn't even think to take any flowers for the urns.  We haven't done this before and it just didn't occur to us to take any decoration.

After visiting the cemetery, we drove around looking at Lonnie's former homes, schools and other landmarks.  

As we drove past this subdivision entrance (below), Lonnie remarked that it was the spot where he and his older brother sold newspapers when they were kids.

For fun, we stopped and got a picture of Lonnie with some church newspapers he happened to have in the car.  He emailed the photo to his brother Don to see if he can figure out where it was taken.

I don't think there were flowers planted there back then...only grass, but Don might recognize the concrete structure.

Not much sewing lately.  I did finish up all the sailboats.  I will show those next time.