Strange Basement Visitors

I had one of the strangest things happen to me today. I went downstairs to the basement to do more laundry and as I headed for the dark corner of the basement with the washer and dryer, something started hopping and jumping around. After pulling my heart from my tonsil area, I saw that it was a duck??!!!! I yelled for my son to come down quickly which caused him to stroll over to the top of the stairs and I said theres a duck in the basement. He looked at me like I'd been drinking Black Russians all afternoon and then came down. At first he couldn't see the bird either until it jumped again and my son's eyes grew to the size of saucers. Our obvious predicament was how to get it out of the basement . There was a winter coat laying there still not washed and I grabbed that up and of course the duck hissed at me and waddled behind the water pump and tank and headed for a new corner. I told my son to throw the coat over the duck and grab it; he looked at the duck for a bit and handed me the coat and said he's open the doors for me when I got the duck.
I did get it in the coat and was holding it ok because the head was up front with its beak and head snaking back at me. We carefully went up all the stairs and got it outside on the deck. It was an interesting bird, a tufted type head with an unusual beak not like most ducks. It was long and thin with a slight hook on the end. It was also a "she" as I could tell by her duller colors. We looked at her for a bit and then I just kinda held her out and she flew away quite nicely across our field and over the tops of the trees. I was relieved to see that she wasn't hurt anyway.
The mystery than became, How did it get in the basement and what kind of duck was it? We checked all the windows in basement because we didn't really do that after the bad storms of last week and they were all fine. So I went to the chimney and the pipe that was shoved into the hole at the bottom of the chimney was pushed out and open all the way to the top of chimney. So thats how she got in. I did a search online and in my bird book and identified her as a hooded merganser. Never saw one before. They like to nest in hollow trees or stumps that are 10 to 30 feet off the ground so that explains our chimney as her choice of nesting area. She went for a long dark ride down that two story chimney though.
So thats the story of our basement visitor, haven't been so frightened since the boys were younger and their teddybear hamster got loose, went down the air intake pipe and was standing on my dryer when I reached for the detergent bottle. He was dirty and on his hind legs taking a swipe at me and he was all of about 4" tall. He had some nerve...
It was a very intoxicating feel though to hold a wild bird in your hands and then have it fly from them. I will remember that for a while and oh, I do have some duck doo-doo and feathers in the basement to prove this story!

Quilts for the wounded

Our guild, the Pine Needle Quilters, had a challenge to make a certain number of quilts by Memorial Day weekend and then send them to Fort Hood in Texas where many wounded come into. A friend of my sisters is stationed there and she is handling and organizing at her end along with the chaplain. So we made 57 quilts I believe and displayed them at our Tabor Lutheran Church on Memorial Day when they have the ceremonies in the cemetary, which happens to be across the street from me. I thought I'd share some photos of those lovely quilts.

The red and the blue quilts were the Job's Tears quilts I was working on, I love the way they turned out. The other quilts are all laying on the pews in the church. Many people came by that day to look at them and they were blessed by the pastor to help in the healing of the people who would receive them.

Its a good thing we got our quilts complete and sent out as our place that we meet and sew at was destroyed in a tornado last week. A large tornado blasted across our area and destroyed quite a number of homes and damaged even more. My sister sustained damage and is still cleaning up with the help of friends and family. She called me right after the storm and we headed out to try and get to her place. Here is her road, we could not even walk in as there was so much trees down and most areas were even worse than this. The twister was about 20 feet from the house as you can see by the path of it.

There are places that it is about a mile wide of total destruction. Many horses were killed or wounded or horribly that they had to be put down. Just a terrible time around here but thank God no one was killed although a few injured.

We are looking for a new headquarters for the guild though and thats hard to find a good spot with lots of plug ins to accommodate at least 30 or 35 people with machines. We may know more today regarding that.

I have been making much soap over the past two and half months. My skills are much better and I love it. Relieves a lot of stress to pour that beautiful soap into my mold and in a months time I have a lovely soap and a nice bath. I've started to sell to my family and friends as I have way way too much soap, shea butter, calendula petal soap, blackberry and sage, lavender, goatsmilk, rosemary goddess, lemon verbena, oatmeal and lavender, gardeners soap, orange and spice, gardenia, fairies dessert, blue moon, neon moon and the list goes on. I'm addicted but I have very soft skin now......