Tracie's World

It's hard to imagine, but it seems my bird woman efforts have possibly been a little to successful.  Because it seems that birds are what you could call "sloppy". Kind of a like a college student's apartment.  They also like to invite their friends, and then fight over the fixins.  Even though it's been fun observing my little guests, it hasn't been so much fun for my geranium plant, which is covered in bird seed.  And it hasn't been so fun sweeping the balcony twice a day. They've also started getting a little daring and coming right up on the balcony.  So I think the bird feeder will be coming down for now, til I can find a better way to manage it. In the meantime, I checked out the Birds of North America website, to see if I could figure out the different varieties that were visiting.  And as near as I can tell, here's who's been in the neighborhood, with a few photos from the website. American Tree Sparrow Black Capped Ch

So for the last few months, my folks have been working on getting ready to go on a mission.  Their paperwork was finally submitted the first or second week of May, and then it was time to play the waiting game.  We figured it would take about 3 weeks for them to get their call back and find out where they were going. About the third week, I had a bit of an unexpected trip come up to Atlanta.  And the day the call finally arrived, I was on my way home. So I was in the air and incommunicado when they finally opened it.  As soon as my plane landed in Salt Lake, I sent a text to let them know I was on the ground, and moments later got the good news back from my brother.  They had been called to serve in the Mississippi Jackson mission.  I was stunned.  I made him message me again, just to make sure he wasn't pulling my leg (which both my brothers like to do with me). He replied back that yes, it was true. Now, the reason for my initial reaction is that I also served in the Mis

After an early round of Golf yesterday morning (hooray for golfing weather!), I met up with Inge to go to the 35th Annual Asian Festival.  Basically an event for all the Asian nations represented here in the valley to come together, and showcase their cultures.  There were cultural booths, dancing, and a market, not to mention some absolutely fabulous food. Since I'd missed lunch, I was kind of a starvin' marvin. So we started off browsing the food booths.  We decide to split a plate of Mongolian fried meat dumplings (which looked more like a turnover), but was delicious. We also tried some sticky rice with Mango and coconut milk, which is a yummy Thai dessert.  Of course, as hungry as I was, I just dove right in and neglected to take a picture. But here's a close approximation. Just picture it with a little soy sauce sprinkled over it, and you'll get the idea. After filling me up, we walked around and looked at the various booths, and did a little shoppi

Despite the ridiculous weather we've been having recently, my container garden seems to be thriving.  Case in point, my strawberry plant.  Most mornings I have a few strawberries to munch on before breakfast. They've been sweet, juicy, and downright yummy.  There's still quite a few little nubs on the plant, so hopefully I'll be feasting on strawberries at least another couple of weeks.