The land of cotton......

Right down the street from our land was another " WOW"! Chuck went into town one day and when he came back, he said he had something really neat to show me. I jumped into the explorer and away we went! For years, I had seen the cotton fields growing, but had never seen anything like this before. This HUGE bale of cotton! Are ya ready for a lesson on cotton?

Early days, cotton was grown for fabric but today the fuzz left on the cotton seed after ginning, is used for explosives, upholstery, writing paper, US currency, film and videotape. The oil is used in cooking, cosmetics, soap and other items. The seed husk and material that remains after oil extraction is used in fertilizer and livestock feed. Here, I thought it was just used to make cotton fabric, for sheets, clothes and cotton balls.....HA. Silly me!

We have noticed in the past two years, most of the cotton fields that were by our land, have turned into corn fields though. I can't wait to try and grow some cotton.....just for the fun of it. Our neighbor's sweet husband, brings her a bouquet of cotton every fall, when it's " cotton picken time". The fun of the " True South". !

Another pretty field......

We are always coming across something that makes us say "WOW!" in Alabama. This is down at the end of one of the roads we can take to go into town. People take the time to plant fields of pretty flowers for everyone to enjoy. On another road to a small town close by, someone planted an acre of sunflowers. If you go by them in the morning, they are all facing the sun and if you go by them in the evening, they all have turned to follow the sun. Guess that is why they call them sunflowers?

Alabama's state flower.

At the end of summer, the clearing in the middle of the land is totally covered with bright yellow, waving in the wind, tall, tasseled goldenrod. Back in 1927, goldenrod was picked for the Alabama state flower. In 1959 the ladies of Butler county voted to change the state flower because they preferred the camellia, since goldenrod is a weed. I did not know any of this until this last summer when we were down around Montgomery, at our best friend's house for July 4th and Chuck and I went exploring in one of their old barns on their land. I found a box of old vases, ash trays, etc and there was an ash tray the shape of Alabama with a picture of goldenrod in the middle of it. I brought the treasures we found, back to show Gene and that is when she told me about it being the state flower, years ago. It may be a weed, but to me, it's a beautiful field of yellow flowers and just one more neat thing about the land.

Sweet little hummingbirds.....

This is just one of the many reasons why we want to live on our land. There are so many different birds that live up there, that you just don't see in Florida. I have heard of sightings of one hummingbird, here and there in Florida but they are migrants on their way to or from Central America. The "hummers" show up on the land around the middle of April and leave in October. Chuck and I have so much fun sitting on the porch of the TT, watching them hum past us to the feeder. I have one feeder just outside the kitchen window so we can see them up close and personal from inside the TT. One day, Chuck was wearing a red tee shirt, sitting on the porch. A little hummer flew right up to him, probably thinking " what the heck?...this sure is a BIG red flower". He stayed several seconds and then flew off to the feeder. I don't think I will ever get tired of hearing or seeing these sweet little birds.

Brick Creek

It took us awhile to explorer all 22 acres of the land. One day we came upon this little creek, well what "used to be" a creek, going to the center of the land. It wasn't filled with water, but half filled with broken bricks. We named it " Brick Creek". I got up early (geez, we always get up early, with the neighbor's rooster) one day and headed to the creek. I climbed in and started throwing out the bricks. I came up with the idea that I could use them to make the flower beds around the TT. The problem was, it was a fer piece back to the TT and how was I going to get all these bricks there? Hooray for the "best neighbors in the world" again. Chuck went over and borrowed their little " John Deere " with the trailer. Since then, we have made several digs in the creek and have used their son's " John Deere wagon". I have had enough free bricks to make all the flower beds and even had a left over stack for later on.

Monogramed flower bed.....

Since, most of the bricks were broken, a lot of them looked like the letters "B" and " P" ...which could stand for "Brambly Pines" or the initals to my name. Chuck surprised me and monogramed the flower bed in front of the TT. He is always surprising me with little things like that when we are on the land. If he goes off for a walk alone, he comes back with some kind of pretty wild flower for me. (we always have a vase full of some kind of flowers when we are up there) Just makes me happy to be up there.

The Living Room.........

The living room was almost as much fun to redo as the kitchen . I painted the cheapy paneled walls a light tan. I was smart and used a primer on them first since they were that dark burgundy, I mentioned. Chuck measured the two double windows for me so I would know how big to make the valances. ( I don't want to hang curtains to block the beautiful view of the woods we have from every window in the TT. ) I have a dear friend here in Florida that helped me make two of the most unique "chicken valances" that cover both double windows. Debbie (another one...not the Tx one) used to work for a window treatment company so she knows all the tricks of the trade and was nice to share them with me. We made one for the dining area window also. The valances are one of my favorite things in the TT. We brought up Shell's twin bed (from college..USF...Go Bulls!) and we are using it as a couch/bed. I made a pleated bed skirt out of ....you guessed it....chicken fabric. The black comforter completes the look I was wanting. We FINALLY got rid of the nasty, pink, cat puked on carpet. Since the rooms are small and we only had to put carpet in two of them, we were able to get remnants. The TT was livable .....even if it doesn't have water or electricity.

The Chicken Kitchen!

The chicken kitchen is all done. I did make a curtain to cover up where the dish washer "used" to be. We store our gallon bottles of water in the hole. Oh, I have forgotten to mention.....we have no "water" OR "electricity" on the land yet. That is a whole other story.

Redoing the cabinets.......

It didn't take long for me to decided on how to make the kitchen cabinets look better than they were. Of course, that wouldn't have taken much, they were so bad. I painted the outside of the cabinets, an off white and the inside a pretty "ice cream pink" as my mother would have called them. Oh! how I wish she could come spend time on the land. She would have loved it so much. The top cabinets had that amber color, plastic with circle imprints in the cut outs of all the doors. I know ya'll know what I'm talking about...sooooo 1960's!!! Chuck took all the cabinet doors off and we took them back to Florida with us to work on them. After taking the amber plastic inserts out, Chuck put "real chicken wire" in the holes of all the top doors. I painted the eight lower doors and pantry door with the off white paint. Then, I started in.....stenciling life size chickens/roosters, nests, eggs and dishes. Then, I stenciled chicken wire over everything on the doors. What fun I had!!! I couldn't wait to take them back to the TT and hang them. The next thing that I did was make pleated kitchen curtains and embroider different chickens on each pleat. ( I am so lucky to have a super duper sewing machine that embroiders) Of course there had to be matching kitchen towels made to complete the kitchen. When everyone heard what I did to the TT with all the chickens, they started giving me everything to do with chickens. There are chicken dishes, chicken salt/pepper,chicken cutting boards, ceramic chickens and a chicken tea kettle. If it has a chicken on it, it's probably in the TT. Shell gave me a 12 month chicken calendar and I went to the dollar store and bought 12 frames. ($12) ....you guessed it. I now have ten really neat chicken pictures hanging over the couch/bed in the living room. The other two are hanging in the kitchen. My favorite chicken thing ever is a bowl that Shell went to a ceramic shop and hand painted a chicken with the chicken wire inside . I just LOVE IT!! Soooooo, when you walk into the TT, it feels like you are walking into a "chicken coop".....you can either call it the "Tacky Trailer" or the "Coop".

Painting......

Since the counter tops in the tacky trailer were "mauve", I had to come up with colors that would go with them, without painting the whole inside of the TT "PINK". So, I picked chocolate brown and tan. Off to Walmart we went. After all, why pay top dollar for a couple of gallons of paint to go on the walls of a $3,999 tacky trailer? Every wall in the TT , but the living room, was sponged painted two different colors of green. It was pretty bad!!! The living room was dark, dark burgundy. Not only were these colors awful but the walls were very dirty. I started in the kitchen first. I don't know if it was because this TT was built in 1963 ( I was only 13 years old then) or if all TT's have fake wood paneling for all it's walls. I managed to get the kitchen and the living room painted this trip. What a big difference it made..... at least it was "cleaner".

The Tacky Trailer/ Chicken Coop

When we first bought the land and would go up for a few days, we would work all day on the land and stay in a motel in town. Then, one day while home in Florida, I was messing around on the internet with one of my sewing digests and there was an email from someone answering a question someone had asked and she signed the email.....Debbie in Alabama. Of course anything to do with Alabama, my ears, eyes and fingers perk up and I wrote to this person. Come to find out, she was in a town only 30 minutes from our land. We had so much in common..with our kids, interests and we discovered we even had twin cats. The next time Chuck and I went to the land, Debbie came out to the land to meet us. We became the best of friends and since that date, Debbie and Ken invited us to stay with them every time we came to the land. What fun we had!. Then it ended. Ken got transferred to Texas for work. Our friendship didn't end...just the fun in Alabama together did. Debbie and I still email each other almost every day. So, Chuck and I went to camping in tents on the land when we went up.
We talked about living in the barn (when we got it built) while we have the new house built but decided that it would be too hard to live without heat in the winter. It gets darn right COLD up there. So, the idea of buying an old tacky trailer was born. Three summers ago, we were driving to Walmart and passed a used trailer dealer. JR was his name. I hollered for Chuck to pull over so we could look at the tacky trailers. Sure enough...there it was!!!! Bought new in 1963 and owned by a little ole lady. It was "awful" inside but I looked past the "awful" and thought of what fun I could have painting and decorating it. The price was on the window...." $3,999...delivered and set up!!! What a deal!!! Jr said he could deliver it the next day. Off we went....to clear trees where the TT would be set up. There was no way they were going to bring this TT down our windy drive way so we asked if we could bring it down our neighbors drive way, turn it and go in front of their barn and then turn again down the path we use to walk to each other's land. That meant we had to make the path wider also. We got it all done just as they were driving into the best neighbors on earth, drive way. Even though we had to sleep ( in our sleeping bags) on the nasty, cat puked on PINK carpet in the TT....it was better than sleeping in the scary tents, in the rain. The next trip up I started in on the "redoing of the Tacky Trailer" and how it became the "Chicken Coop". ...........................to be continued.