Cleaning up

Well...the storm is over. Tim was able to get most of the yard cleaned before he had to leave for work yesterday. There sure was a lot of snow to push out of the way. Daniel and Leah played outside on the snow piles for hours. While they were out there the sun came out and it felt quite warm. Too bad they had to be so covered as they could have absorbed some Vitamin D from the sunshine.

After reading about the importance of Vitamin D in preventing disease we have been supplementing. Vitamin D comes from sunshine. Fifteen minutes of sun shining on your cheeks and arms around noon is supposed to supply your daily dose. But in northern climates we just don't get it. That's probably one reason we have such a high cancer rate here. I have read that cancer can't grow in a body that has enough Vitamin D.

It was still storming on Sabbath when I took this picture of these birds. I'm glad they were able to get something to eat.




Daniel made a patch for his eye and wanted a picture taken.



Yesterday morning I cleaned the ashes out of the wood stove. After I filled it with wood I thought, "I should take a picture." I'm sure I have mentioned that I just love this stove. One of the advertisements said that you only have to use one match a season. I love that I can let it burn down to where it has just a few coals and never have to build a fire with kindling and newspaper. I just load it and it always starts burning.

These are Whitney and Brandon's parakeets. We can't remember exactly how old they are. But we think we got them one of the first years we lived here. They have to be at least 10 years old and might be 12.

Rex, the bird on the right and the nicer bird, has not been doing very well the last couple weeks. I thought maybe he was dying. He was looking smaller and felt lighter when I held him on my finger. I have been just leaving him alone. The other night I took him out. I noticed he had a hard time staying on my finger. I sat down with him and he jumped onto my shoulder. Then her ran down my body onto my leg. I noticed he was limping. I'm relieved as I think he must have injured his left leg. That is why he hasn't been eating much. As he sits on his perch he is holding up that leg. He seems to have a hard time getting down to the food dishes and back up again. He is recuperating though, I think, and will get better, I hope.

While Tim was cleaning our yard our neighbor, Bruce came by with his tractor and snow blower. He was out cleaning some of the roads. We appreciate our good neighbors that help keep the roads open.

Leah had a hard time getting through the snow but she did make it to the snow pile where Daniel was playing.

Later they were playing in the drifts on the north side of the house. Brandon and Daniel had dug some tunnels there on Sabbath.

It was so nice and warm on the steps. The sun felt so good. I was able to stand out there for a few minutes in my shirtsleeves.

Here's a short video of Tim and old red. Old red is so old it isn't really red anymore. But it still gets the job done.

Nature Walk

For part of our weekly school work we are to go on a "nature walk." Living in ND the weather doesn't always cooperate especially during the school year. We do some nature studies in the summer to make up for what we don't do in the school year. This week it was nice enough to get out and enjoy nature. I've got a few pictures of that further down the post.

We are still studying Canada and North America. In science we studied plant life. One of the things we learned from The Usborne Living World Encyclopedia was, "Inside the shoots, roots and leaves of land plants there are two kinds of tubes. These carry water and food around the plant. Xylem tubes carry water from the roots up to the leaves. Phloem tubes carry food from the leaves to other parts of the plant."

One of our experiments was to take two stalks of leafy celery. We were to break off two inches of the bottom of each stalk. But on one stalk we also removed the xylem. It was actually easy to do. When we broke the bottom of the stem we just pealed the stringy part up and that removed most of the xylem right there. Then we stuck both stalks into a glass of water, made our predictions, and waited a couple days to observe what happened.

As you can see from the first picture the stalk that we removed the xylem wilted as no water could get up the stalk. The other stalk looked the same as it did when we first put it into the water. A good experiment that turned out!




Back to our nature walk. I said that we would try to find something alive that we could observe. I wanted Daniel to dig into his leaf pile and see if there was something underneath it. He didn't want to as he thought there might be snakes in there. He isn't afraid of snakes but just didn't want to get bit by one. I told him all the snakes were hibernating. But we decided to look elsewhere. While he was walking Daniel saw this snake crawling close to his leaf pile. I guess I was wrong! Sunny loves to kill snakes. Can you see the snake all coiled up in front of her feet?



We looked around some more. We found a little bird trapped in the chicken fence. I opened the door and was trying to help it get out when Mario came in and quickly caught the bird before I could stop him. Daniel was pretty upset with him but I said he was only doing what cats do. I felt bad as I should have known he would catch the bird.

We decided to go for a walk down the road. Of course the kids wanted to ride their bikes. It wasn't too muddy so we walked north and then east to the end of our trees. Sunny and Mario came along, too.




It was a nice partly sunny day. I hope we all got a little vitamin D while we were out there as we haven't had much this month!

Speaking of vitamin D we are all supplementing right now. I am taking part in a study of vitamin D levels and disease. A few weeks back I got the results from my first blood test. My vitamin D level was on the low side of "normal." Since I know that deficiencies in vitamin D can be related to different diseases, one being cancer, I thought it a good thing to see if I can get those levels up a bit.

I best get busy.