BIG Brown Spider (hairy face, white spots, striped legs & large abdomen)

Above my front door is a spider couple, who invites their spider friends for awesome parties... they jam out to my satellite radio music while eating moths & flies who are attracted to my porch light at night.
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These spiders are actually shades of brown and not the silver gray color in these two close up pics below - the color looks different then reality because the flash on the camera washed out the browns, so when trying to ID this spider go by the markings and not the color.
There are two spiders (the ones pictured here) living together in the same crack above the door, and the interesting thing is they let other spiders live right near them too - although I imagine sometimes things can get out of hand and the big ones might eat their smaller friends. It happens to us all, at least metaphorically.

This pic below is more the true color brown...

Check out those GOLDEN Nugget Eyeballs!

XOxooxo

(Almost Dead) Lunar Moth

I hope I am this beautiful when I am almost dead.

XOxoxo

Riding JuJu the DOnkey (For The First Time!)

Things About JuJu that are easy:::::
Juju loves to go for walks with me... in fact she loves it so much she will bring me the rope halter herself and let's me put it on her face with no problem. She knows that walks with the halter means freedom outside her fenced area, it means adventure and fun, it means seeing neighbors, eating grass & weeds and along the rural road.
JuJu is sweet with people, easy going, calm, and will let children get on her back. I had never gotten on her though.... until today!
THINGS That JuJu makes REALLY hard on me::::::
Deciding when and where to go. I hadn't really planned on riding her, but because me and JuJu are still struggling with who is in charge of the lead rope, who is choosing where to go and which way to turn, we ended up at my neighbors yard , luckily a neighbor who used to ride horses. I decided to make the best of where JuJu had fought with me to.....
YAY! I got on her back and she stood there. She didn't seem to know what to do and wasn't interested in walking - which was fine since we were just getting used to each other. Of course, us silly humans thought it would be hysterical to put a carrot on the end of a stick and see if she would go....

Unfortunately JuJu saw the stick more then the carrot and after a minute or two she decided the stick was MAJORLY DANGEROUS and started running down the hill! Now since I am a new rider and wasn't using a saddle I kept slipping forward till I was practically about to straddle her neck. When I loudly yelled "WHOA" she stopped and I jumped off. (My 10 first WHOA's were not stern enough!)

She got the carrot anyway though cause I am a sucker and well, she did a good job.....

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Getting her home after though, was not easy. Two other people volunteered to help & I think I have a broken pinky toe (i'm too scared to look at it). Can someone tell me why this sh*t is so fun though?!!?

XOxoxo

Ben & Phoebe's Daybed

I recently helped my cousin and his gorgeous fiance {they just got engaged on the weekend} with the cushioning on this lovely daybed which they purchased from Cotswold for their beach house. We selected an array of brightly coloured exterior fabrics for the scatter cushions and a trusty navy and white stripe exterior fabric for the seat cushions and voila this is the result. I just love it and apparently they do too!!

Rural Entertainment: The Fireman's Fair

Ya'll know by now I love local rural events... they are nothing like the big splashy Mardi Gras, Jazz Fest and French Quarter parties I grew up with in New Orleans - instead they are personal, down home, small crowds, nothing fancy, and people are just happy to see the other people who all live the same hidden mountain & farming lifestyle. They don't try to put on a show, they just are themselves. (I mean this even for our local wrestling matches, even if the guys do sport a few sequins!)
So Yesterday right around the bend from the Luck Cabin was the Spring Creek Fireman's Fair, I had gotten a flyer in the mail 2 weeks ago that made it hard to resist attending (see pic above) - seeing that Smokey The Bear was going to be there, they were going to play Bingo, have live music plus live Firemen....I HAD to see.

The first live band rocked the stage, i mean as much as they could rock out without scaring the other locals (aka slow and country).... they kinda rocked it Johnny Cash style, with the Beatles song "Act Naturally" thrown in the mix. And you best believe I danced - in fact a old, smelly drunk man found me (he said he lived "down yonder") and we were the only two people who cut a rug on that green grassy area in front the stage, while a crowd of maybe seven people watched & clapped.

Since me and the drunkard became BFF's, he also taught me how to play HorseShoes! I had never played before, but basically you are throwing heavy ass horse shoes like 40 feet into/across the air in order to hit a tiny metal pole sticking out the ground, in a pile of sand. I hit it once... out of about 30 tosses. :)

My awesome neighbor (remember the one who saved me in the night when I first got my donkey JuJu?) was diggin' into the atmosphere - as we watched the M.A.M.A helicopter fly in. The helicopter landing pad serves two purposes in our rural nook, and that is to bust people growing pot & for when we call 911. Yeah, we are so freakin' rural they can't even get us to a hospital in time before we'd die so they just fly this bad boy in and save us. (see pic above).

There was plenty food & drink --- including fried apple pie, hot dogs, hamburgers.... none of which I can eat since I have Celiac Sprue and shall never be able to partake.
There was also a silent auction. Well. There was a really odd assortment of things for auction, my favorite being this set up below.....

Faux Wiener Dog in a Baby Bed.

I had no idea why they had numbers spray painted on the ground in a circle either, till my neighbor explained this was for the Cake Walk.

I can't eat cake, but I can walk - so i joined in. Basically it's like musical chairs and each person stands on the big ole' number on the ground, they start up the music and everyone gets walkin' in circles (i was getting dizzy) till the music stops. Then they pick a number out of a hat... the kid who picked it picked his own number (little psychic!) and won a cake (go ahead and eat it little kid, cause i can't anyway)!

My Drunkard BFF took this picture of me and smokey the bear. Drunk people don't always get the main attraction in the picture, ya know. But you can tell SMokey The Bear reallllly was there, right?

I thought "Sparky The Fire Dog" was gonna be a real dog, but it was just a dude in a costume. He was not real, like Smokey The Bear. ;)

The BIG main attraction that it seemed so many had prepared for was the Lawnmower Race!! For real, a woman standing next to me during the race told me her son had spent weeks on getting his lawnmower ready for the race, by putting in a go-cart motor... and in fact he had fixed his lawnmower to race a few years back.

Right at the beggining one guy's lawnmower BLEW into smoke, another's broke down had to be pulled off, one older man road slowly on his, while just a few guys were blowing past everyone, nearly tipping over trying to come in first place.

Decorated with Hooters Stickers, numbers, southern flags, cow bells....

I was rooting for the grey Lawnmower, cause i was standing next to his Mama, but he didn't win.......

The Fireman's Fair though was a total WIN!

PS- I never did find tha' Bingo game? Where was it at?

Xoxoxo

Folk Art Schoolhouse Papercut

This is a smaller piece that took me about 4 hours to cut. It measures 17.5cm x 17.5cm.

I want to cut a series of vignettes all this size - all showing different traditional scenes. If you've got any suggestions I'd be very happy to hear them!

Images of ..... Haworth

The Parsonage, Haworth - home of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë and their family from 1820 until their deaths.



The Apothecary (Drug Store) where Branwell Brontë purchased the opium that was eventually to kill him

Looking down Main Street (on a quiet day!)

Main Street again

Images of ..... Brontë country

Looking down towards Stanbury and New Laithe Reservoir


Lower Heights Farm

The ruin of Top Withens, believed to have inspired Emily Brontë's novel 'Wuthering Heights'

View from Top Withens


Stream near the Brontë Waterfalls

Orange Salamander with Black Spots

Orange (some may call it red). Black spots. It speaks for itself.

Read more about North Carolina salamanders HERE.

Xoxoxox

Friday Flowers

This morning, whilst running very late for school drop off, I raced around my new old garden and cut some foliage for an arrangement I was wanting to create for the shop today. Here is the result above. The arrangement sits on a beautiful oval Antique table which actually just sold to one of my lovely clients this afternoon. I am loving big glass vases filled with masses of leaves at the moment. Luckily my garden seems to have the perfect plants for this type of arrangement.

Images of....

We've had a beautiful summer here in my part of England (West Yorkshire). I've enjoyed getting out and about, mainly within about 20 miles of Saltaire where I live. As a deaf introvert (!) it's no real hardship to venture out alone and it seems to work for me to plan 'days out' with just my camera as a companion. I don't have a car so I use public transport and in many ways that is all part of the adventure, planning interesting visits that 'work'. There are advantages to not having a car, one being that you don't necessarily have to do a circular tour back to where you started. The end result of these expeditions, inevitably, is lots of photos. I can only use a small proportion on my main 'Saltaire Daily Photo' blog. Although I also have a Flickr account, that functions just as an album really. So I am going to try a few posts on this blog that are mainly sets of images, perhaps a few words too. Most, but not all, in the sets of images will have been taken on the same day. We'll see how it goes...

Organic Fall Garden Frenzy

RECIPE:

• donkey poop
• trampled top soil
• hay
• sawdust/wood chips

I know. It's not that exciting looking, it's just dirt and some garden beds that are so naturalized that they hardly look like garden beds. I made them to blend in with the surrounding forest on purpose. :)
But the thing is, it's not just dirt, it's not just garden beds for me- it's the food producing project I have been working my ass off (mine for realz, not the donkey) on for months now and the last few weeks have been a non stop, steady race to get a some beds ready for a fall garden.

I started building raised bed gardens along the donkey & chicken fence - since JuJu the donkee has taken no interest in the leaves or fruit of squash plants, she doesnt even like kale all that much, I figured this was a great place to expand. I started by shoveling off rich black top soil trampled and churned in front the barn, mixing that with unwanted hay, and piles of donkey dookie to make a SUPER fertile place to throw & grow some seeds.

To keep the dirt from falling backwards out the fence holes, I lined up pieces of scrap wood left over from building the mini barn (see pic below at bottom of fence.)

I am not all about making this look eco chic & fancy, I AM all about making this free, simple, eco friendly - by using left over materials and things already available, by not driving out and guzzling gas to buy products that guzzled gas to get to the store.

In fact the whole point of my garden is to feed me, in all seasons, in all financial states - I want to be free as possible from the albatross of vehicles, groceries, and money $$$$$$!!!

This here is how I am trying to be free...........

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SEEDS I PLANTED:

• spinach
• radishes (red and white)
• rutabaga
• 3 types of kale (dinosaur, red russian, siberian)
• lettuce
• carrots (red, yellow and orange)
• beets
• broccoli raab
• peas

Xoxoxo