Weekly iPhone Roundup {3.11 - 3.17}

First I'd like to say, Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Another eventful weeks for the books. Not anything major, just doing a lot and involved in a lot. I added 3 new Silkie Chicks to the flock, which was an impulse buy. I only wanted two white ones, but there was legit only 3 left, so I couldn't leave the third little one behind. 

We also took all the glider cages out and cleaned them, which was an all day thing. We also cleaned the toys, wheels and all the cage sets. The gliders were probably having a sensory overload due to all the cleanliness. I'll be the first to admit that we absolutely do not clean their cages as much as we should. With the weather getting warmer, we really have no excuse. 

Aside from that we had the Bald Eagle excitement from my last post. Still so damn cool and I'm so proud of the pictures I was able to capture. It makes me want a higher quality telephoto lens now, which is terrible. It's not like it's gonna happen, They're insanely expensive.

I also got to play the Resident Evil 4 remake demo yesterday. So. Freaking. Amazing! If anyone knows me, they know I love anything Resident Evil. My sister and I have legit been playing Resident evil games since 1999, which is almost a quarter century... unreal! For the solo games, RE4 has to be one of my favorites. I have so many good memories with it, I think that's why I love it so much. I got the remastered version for PS4, but the rendering or something really screws with my eyes. 

I almost forgot to add that I went with my aunt to our culty neighbors house Wednesday to look at some sprouts. Word on the street is that they're selling their property. I couldn't believe it, I was both excited and dreading who might move in after them. That's beside the point. I mainly went to look at their chicken coop that they have for sale. We've been in need of a new coop for years. We have the lumber and everything else for our new one, but we have to wait until my uncle is recovered from his surgery to build it for us. Until then, we thought this coop would be perfect. They're asking a lot for the coop, but they did agree to go down a few hundred dollars, which is awesome. I just have to contemplate for the next week or so on what to do.

Anyways, I think that's pretty much it. Anything else will be in the photos and not worth writing too much about. Enjoy!

Living in a rural region means you absolutely will get stuck behind farmers and their tractors.

Here's the new baby Silkies! One looks cream, but the other two are for sure white.

Granny Layla.

Perryvile, MO streets and night.

People are so nasty. Someone left their McFlurry outside the drive-thru window Saturday night.

I'm in love with the new baby Silkies. They're tiny and terrified.

The drive-thru was a bitch Sunday night at McDonald's. I do not miss these days.

This baby turkey wanted so badly to come home with me.

So did this one.

And that one in the back.

Notes on the clawfoot bathtub. Love the aesthetic.

Walmart grocery pickup for the win. The guy that almost always bring the order out is a guy named, Nathan, that I used to work with at McDonald's.

The drive home on the new Saint Francois bridge.

The boys cage was nice and clean Tuesday. All at my own hand, I might add.

Mr. Max... he's such a beautiful red boy.

Here's the Bald Eagle next from afar. I sure hope the owner of the farm doesn't mind us parking here.

It's really far back.

Thankfully the zoom on my phone got a decent picture of the mated pair of Bald Eagles.

This is Miss Louise, our scissor beak chick.

She's such a curious and sweet girl.

Here's more of the baby chicks.

And more of the baby chicks.

The scraggly one is our white Polish Crested chick, Thrya.

This absolutely insane black and white chick is another one of our Polish Crested chicks. Her name is Brida. If you know, you know.

A more calm Crested Polish.

I just love all our chicks so much.

This is the rarely photographed black Silkie.

Here are the other 3 glider cages in the process of being cleaned. After months and months, we finally moved Cas' cage out of the room. :(

I not only scrubbed their water bottles, but I boiled them first. I also soaked all the nozzles in white vinegar to break off hard water stains.

Our one white HQ sugar glider cage all nice and clean.

Our double stacked HQ sugar glider cages, nice and clean.

And lastly, our Double Critter Nation sugar glider cage that got cleaned the day before.

Here's a pic of the new Resident Evil 4 remake demo. Loved it!

Nasty, hazy day.

Here are the sprouts that the neighbors gave us. They're all in really rough shape.

And last, but not least, all of the Dunkin' Donuts s'mores iced cases that were given to us.

More Garden Updates (annual cult meeting on the side)

 I know I posted a garden update a couple days ago, but those were taken on my phone and, to me, that doesn't count. I'm joking, of course. I'm sure there are hundreds or thousands of people that blog with only cellphone photos. I managed to make it out to the garden a little while ago to take some pics. It's rained most of the week, so it's cloudy today and a little cooler - cloudy days make for great pictures.

All of our stuff seems to be doing fairly well. The row of corn really sprouted up this week and looks great! A few of our zucchini plants are starting to get blossoms, as well as the cucumbers. That's always a good sigh, shouldn't be too much longer before we start getting full sized vegetables! Our tomato plants are all loaded with blossoms, the plants are just a tad on the small size, but they look healthy at least. I'm gonna get a couple more seed packs next week to (hopefully) fill the lower garden.

I'm sure everyone is wondering what the secondary part of my title means. Well, I'm sure everyone remembers my post 'The Cult Next Door' from back in January. If not, I linked it, so go give it a read. Well a couple times a year the "cult" has an annual meeting. The last one they had didn't do that well due to COVID, but this one seems to have had quite the turnout. Cars has been coming in since Wednesday and today starts their festivities. 

I'm not nosy per se, but I do like to see what they're up to on occasion. I know I'm horrible, but I use my telephoto lens to sneak a peek every once in a while. I haven't done that yet, but I'm planning on it. Just like last time I won't share any pics I get because I don't want to get into any kind of trouble, but I will verbally report back with my findings. 

I guess that's all for now and this week. Hope you enjoy the pics!

These tiny beauties will be orange cherry tomatoes.

Cannot wait to eat them.

Our corn sprouts - they look awesome!

The plentiful lettuce row.

Green beans are growing nicely as well.

Some of the larger tomatoes are starting.

Here's one of the zucchini blossoms.

Some random yellow/orange bug I found. Love bug pics with a macro lens.

Eggplant blossom.

I never knew eggplant blossoms were so pretty!

The Cult Next Door

 As much as I would like to use this title as a euphemism for something else, I mean it as it sounds. It's been around 1 1/2 years now, maybe closer to 2 - I'm not too sure - that some very, lets say, odd people moved in next door. Now some of you may not know (or may not remember), but we live in a very secluded area in Southern Missouri. The county road that we live on, which is about a mile long, is home to three separate households. Coming down the road, our neighbor, Ray, is the first house on the right, then you drive down maybe a quarter mile and we're the driveway on the left. As you drive past our house, there's a very large pond or small lake behind us, then about a half mile past us sits our new neighbors. The ones that I'm convinced is a... you guessed it, cult.

From the very beginning when I first met these people, I thought they were different. Absolutely nothing wrong with being different, I consider myself very different, but these people are a special kind of different.

It started with little things, like them being in the dry stream gathering rocks which was supposedly for their orchard. Then them telling us not to mention to anyone around here that they moved in behind us or who they were, just weird stuff like that. Huge red flag, right? Well after I precured their last names and did just a small amount of digging online, I discovered that the guy that lives there once went by a different name. Creepy, right? I mean, people could change their names for a variety of reasons. To protect themselves, to get a fresh start or something much more sinister, because they're running from something. Be it good or bad, I'm assuming it's bad, but that's just me. 

After several months to a year went by, they started coming around more and more. They told us more about themselves and that they're Seventh-day Adventists, they're vegans - even though I saw them getting ice cream from a store that I used to work at. I don't think they know what being vegan means, unless they're just lying about it. 

This past spring/early summer, they had their first "cult" meeting. There were literally dozens and dozens of people from all across the states that showed up. Mind you, this was at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, but they still had that many people from all over right at our back door. It started on Friday and lasted through Sunday. Naturally, I had to work all 3 days, but that didn't stop me from spying when I got off from work. And by spying I mean using my telephoto lens to stretch my view, so to speak, across the lake to see if I could see anything out of the ordinary. 

At first glance, all I could see were people standing and sitting around. Then my gaze drifted to a couple standing in front of a very large bonfire. Mind you, they stood in front of this first and looked into its burning haze the ENTIRE time I was spying. It was very American Gothic, considering they stood there like statues the entire time. It was quite spooky. I also caught an image of what appears to be a man floating in the background. There are plausible explanations, like him being on an elevated part of the yard, but considering his foot placement, I don't know, it just looks off to me. At one point on Saturday morning they were walking around chanting and ringing bells. Like what the actual eff. 

Let me back track a few months. This was probably in February or so before the COVID pandemic, which is why we so freely let this happen. Apparently they have a young boy staying with them, no more than 15 or 16. They walked down to our house one evening to bring us something they got from the food pantry - yes, they somehow get that service - and they had the young kid in tote. He needed to use the bathroom, so of course, we let him. One time after this, he brought some produce down to us and insisted that he carry it inside, which we didn't allow because there was no need. Then the following day he retrieved our mail... from OUR mailbox and walked it down to the house! I'm sorry, but that's just not okay. 

I don't know what it was, but it was like he was insisting on being inside. I'm assuming to assess the house. Perhaps he was looking at all of our exits, maybe? Well hopefully he saw the .22 rifle and .410 shotgun leaned up in the corner of the kitchen. I know having weapons is frowned upon, but when you live in the middle of nowhere with sketchy people and meth-heads all around you, you need to have a weapon readily available. No shame there.

Anyways, back to the cult. They had an additional cult meeting in the middle of the summer, but this was in the height of the pandemic and only a couple different cars showed up. They're very strange folks. The woman of the house is one of those people that you can never recognize. It doesn't matter if I've just seen her the day before, but she literally always looks different. The man looks the same. He's tall, slender, dresses in a mainly all black attire and sports stringy dark brown or black hair. She's impossible to describe. Other than the fact that she's short and thin. I can never remember what she's wearing, how her face looks or even how she styles her hair.

I'm turning this into a mini-novel, but I have one more thing to add.

We put out two very large gardens over the summer. I can't even begin to give you the measurements, but they were BIG. One plot down by the chicken coup had 20+ zucchini plants, plus some yellow squash, cucumbers, potatoes, green beans, 2 random pepper plants, acorn squash and watermelon. Hopefully that give you an idea of size. Then the one up in the yard in front of our house had 20+ tomato plants, radishes, peppers, carrots that didn't grow, lettuce, green beans, corn and I believe that's it.

I get my green thumb from my gran and my aunt, so thankfully we were blessed enough and all of our stuff grew and did really, really well. Minus those bastard carrots. Anyways, our neighbors came down to look at the garden quite a few times and even asked to borrow the tiller, which we agreed, but they never actually borrowed it. According to our other neighbor, Ray, they put out a semi-large garden themselves. It wasn't until late in the year that Ray told us that they were extremely envious of our garden. I'm not sure why, considering we offered help whenever they would seek it, but apparently, for some ungodly reason, they were jealous. They used lye, netting and left rocks in their garden bed for their "mineral" properties. Unbeknownst to them, the majority of the minerals are in their soil. So most likely, their garden got overcrowded and smothered, which is why they had such bad luck.

My aunt visited them one evening, per their request, and ended up asking my aunt very odd questions about cucumbers. Like if it was already pickled.. I'm sorry, what!? Then after my aunt told her that she had to pickle it herself, the lady asked if she could eat it... Um, yes woman, you can eat a cucumber. After my aunt told her that she could eat it, she asked her how and what on. Like this broad is in her 50s or 60s and doesn't know what the heck to do with a cucumber. This is where it gets kinda funny; this woman is planning on teaching gardening classes! No joke, she's gonna show people how to live off the land. They're planning on hosting "events" where they teach people how to garden, hunt and survive.

I swear if I see a Kool-Aid truck rolling in, I'm out.

We've always had elderly neighbors who have never given us any issues. Our other neighbor is awesome, but there's something really off about these guys. I normally don't like to talk about people, but they make me feel extremely uncomfortable and uneasy. I've watched enough documentaries about cults and cult like behavior to know what signs to look for and these people check almost every box. Hopefully they are just super religious and aren't actually a cult, but I'm going with the latter here.

And with this novel coming to a close, I'll leave you with one of the many photos I took the night they had their largest "gathering". I don't feel comfortable sharing pictures of the actual people, but a big part of me wants to. Instead, I'll leave you with an accidental photo that I took that night that happens to be one of my favorites. 

My failed attempt at spying on the cult, but actually ended up being an awesome shot of the weeds with some amazing bokeh lights. This was taken with my 70-300mm Nikon lens.

Hot town, summer in the city...

So I didn't have to work yesterday -- yay me! -- for some odd reason. Not that I'm complaining, it's like an inferno in that place! I kid you not, it's barely 10 degrees cooler inside than it is outside. How is that not abuse in the workplace? They will NOT fix the damn AC and I consider it cruelty.

Anyways, back to what I was originally going to say! I didn't have to work yesterday and ended up going to church with LaVaughn and my aunt. I haven't been to a baptist church in YEARS! I went to the same church that we used to go to, the one at the end of our road. I have to say, literally nothing has changed in the years I've been absent. A couple people have passed away, which deeply saddens me, but the rest is basically the same.

Our neighbor that lives up the road from us was there yesterday. I heard him ask my aunt if she had a good camera, she so much as cut him off and shouted, "Megan does, she has a real good camera!" I was thinking the entire time, "Woman, what in the hell are you getting me into?!"

Apparently he bought nearly $300 worth of outdoor paint and had his entire deck painted. It's supposed to have a 20 year warranty and is chipping in less than a month of it being applied. He was wanting someone to take pictures of the chips and have them sent to Lowe's. So that's what I did today.

I got to his house just after one, took pictures of the receipt, the paint can, and the chips -- which were actually all over his deck. He asked if I wanted him to call the store, which I did. I was hoping that they would have an email account that I could send the pictures to, as opposed to have them printed and either mailed, or taken in . Luckily they did have an email for the store, but we'll get to that later.

He attempted to call the store -- this man is 86, mind you -- but the person he was talking to was unable to hear/understand him. That's when I offered to call, which I did. Long story short, I talked to the paint department manager and was able to get all the pictures sent to him. I'm currently waiting on a confirmation email from him.

I think I almost had a heat stroke outside on his deck. This is a BIG wraparound deck that has absolutely no roof, no awning, no nothing! And it was midday, so the sun was basically at it's highest peak and beaming down like a laser beam burning into my soul.

I'm impatiently waiting on the email as I write this, all the while trying to cool down from the 100 degree weather outside. I think I need to go for a swim, that sounds like fun.

Love & Peace

-Megan

And now some really adorable pictures of the cats and Milla from Saturday night:

Milla politely begging for chicken.

She's like, "Hey, give it!"

Just because Una needs to be included.

Zoe would live and breath chicken if she could.

I can has chicken?