Egyptian Geese

We have been watching this family for a while already.  The "babies" are almost as big as Mommy and Daddy now. Really cool to see them on the days they get water time. They dive under and pop back up, sometimes several feet away.  Mom and Dad are very protective and they actually are not in the water as often as I would have expected. Without a good lens on my camera, this shot would not have been possible as they keep their distance from human interaction. Of course there are neighborhood cars driving by fairly close sometimes, and they seem to be okay with that... until you slow down to get a closer look.  That is when you hear the warning quacks and the babies start scurrying away.  So respecting their "safe distance" is a must. Meanwhile I think the whole neighborhood is enjoying as this winged family grows.  Mom and Dad have been around for a while and it will be interesting to see if any, or all of the young ones stick around.

Cast Iron is amazing

Cast Iron comes in many shapes and sizes.  This John Wayne pie pan is one of my latest additions to my growing collection.

I started accumulating more pans than I could find a place to store, which inspired my husband to build me a mini gridwall in an otherwise unusable space. I have pans stored in other places, but this new gridwall does a great job of making the more frequently used pans easy to access.
It is quite amazing to see what a cast iron pan can do for a recipe.  I have several recipes that I have made for years and found cast iron typically takes the end result up a notch or two.
Cast Iron has been in my kitchen for a long time, but somehow it seems like I just discovered an amazing new friend.  In the past couple of months there has not been many days that I have not used at least one of my cast iron pans. 

My quilting is not quite as active in recent months as I have often been, but I still get a little quilting squeezed in here and there. It is hard to get the full effect of this work of art without seeing it in person, but this quilt hangs on a wall 18 feet off the floor, and previously the lighting, (bright overhead fan/light) was not the best to accent the quilt's true beauty.  My husband decided to install a small bar track light to help illuminate it. We don't have the new light on that often, but especially in the evening visitors can now experience this quilt, should they notice.