A day in the garden

Today was my day to spend in the garden. I got all ready to go down there and I heard something in the tree by the end of the TT. I just thought it was a squirrel but low and behold....it was a little raccoon. I think he was as surprised as I was ,to see each other. I grabbed the camera and got a couple of pictures before he went to the top of the tree. I did end up spending the whole day in the garden ( except for about an hour for lunch and to clean out the chicken brooder) I got 24 of the 28 rows of the main garden all weeded. Everything is growing.....the pictures are of the corn and cabbage. I should end up having 18 heads of cabbage if it all keeps growing like it is. We have three rows of corn. Since Chuck put some pie tins on a stick, the deer have not bothered the corn again. I would like to spend tomorrow in the garden again but it's suppose to rain all weekend. Five inches!!!!!!

Yard day

I started the day down at the garden. I finished mowing the "east 10 acres"....ha...not really that much but it sure seems like it when you are mowing. It's all cut and pretty for another week. I had planned on spending the afternoon, weeding the gardens but as always, I got side tracked. Chuck had gone down to "brick creek" and dug out a cart full of bricks for me to use on the new flower bed at the TT. After lunch, Chuck went to town to get bird seed, Home Depot to get stuff he needs to hook up the toilet( don't faint) and to Publix to pick up a couple of things that we forgot to get yesterday. I took my cart and went down to brick creek to bring back the bricks for the flower bed. That was a heavy haul. As I was pulling the cart of bricks, I was thinking of how I am " my mother's child". I have been doing a lot of things that my mom would have done and she would be proud of me. She's been gone for 16 years now and I still miss her. Any ways.....I used all the bricks and didn't have enough so I went back down to brick creek and climbed in. I dug around and found enough bricks to finish the flower bed. It almost filled the cart again so it was another heavy load. By the time I finished the bricks around the flower bed and raked up enough pine straw to fill it, Chuck came home. I found enough left over lattice work for Chuck to nail up under the deck, behind the flower bed. It's amazing how you can make something out of what ya have and not have to go spend big bucks on it all. I wouldn't want to even think how much all the bricks would have cost us, that I have used on all the flower beds. Thank goodness who owned the land before us, put all those bricks in " brick creek". :-) I spent the evening, down at the garden. We moved one of the hummingbird feeder down there. I weeded three rows of the main garden and put ant poison on the BIG ant hills. It was dinner time.....it's so easy to work from morning until night around here but it doesn't really seem like work. I guess cause it's fun to me.

A money story

Let me tell ya a story about some money. My Auntie Barbara ( who I was named after) died around 25 years ago but Uncle Brown lived up until around twelve years ago. When Uncle Brown died, I was left some of Auntie's money and have used it wisely. For about twelve years I have kept a little part of it in my checking account, just in case there was ever something that I came across that I wanted but couldn't really afford it at the time. Well, I never came across anything that I thought I " really " wanted so the money has been in my checking account all this time. I finally realized that if I hadn't spent it in all this time, it would probably just sit there another twelve years. Welllllllll, when Shell came up over Spring break and had a really nice Nikon digital camera, I got thinking that would be a nice way to spend Auntie's money. After all, I did take photography for two years in high school and Auntie would like it that I bought a nice camera. So, yesterday, Chuck and I set out for Huntsville to find my camera and we found it. Now I just have to learn how to use it. On May 8th, Charlie ( the photographer of our Alabama Canyons book) is having a class and a hike in the forest. I signed up!!! Can't wait to go. While we were in Huntsville we passed this car and it had a funny picture of " Pres. George Bush" saying " Have ya missed me yet?" ....on the door. Chuck and I laughed so hard. It was pretty funny....lol. There is always something to laugh about up here.

When we got home and unloaded groceries and stuff.....I went down to look at the garden and ended up mowing half of it all. I plan on finishing it this morning. On the way to the garden there is this HUGE blackberry patch and the blackberries are blooming like crazy right now. I am constantly pulling up blackberry bushes in my flower beds and gardens. Chuck says we should have a bumper crop this year because of all the rain we have had. I sure hope so....we are out of blackberry jelly and that is Genavive's favorite.

When we went to Tractor Supply the other day to get a new feeder for the chicks, I found the best "chicken book" and have been reading and learning all about my chickens. It's really interesting. I also got a new cook book at Sam's yesterday called : Southern Living Farmers market cookbook. I figure I'm gonna need to know how to cook all these veggies that I'm growing in the gardens....ha.

Well, it's time to pick up the TT and head outside for the day. It's suppose to be a pretty day but as of tomorrow we are getting more rain and another weekend of thunder storms....hug! We have places to go and things to see this weekend...rain isn't suppose to be in the picture.

Fun Tues

Today was the fourth Tuesday of the month so that means it was " sit n sew" with the ladies of my quilt guild. We have all of the squares done to complete the quilt we are making for charity so some of the ladies started putting the quilt top together. It's going to be bright and beautiful!

After lunch, I left so I could run some errands in town before coming home. When I got home, we needed to run to Tractor Supply to get chicken feed and a new feeder since the chicks have out grown the little tray they have been eating out of. They kept turning it over. As we drove down the road, we kept seeing these pretty yellow flowers. Then, we came to this whole field of them! It was solid yellow...so pretty! There sure are a lot of wild flowers up here. We decided we need a book on wild flowers. Oh...speaking of wild flowers, Chuck went into the forest while I was sewing with the ladies and he brought me back a white wild azalea for my wild flower bouquet.

Spring just keeps on coming

My Iris's are loaded with buds and have started blooming. It should be awesome once they are all blooming. Even my little azaleas are bursting with flowers. The flower seeds that I planted last week are coming up in their pots. I think all the rain we got in the past couple of days has made everything pop.

Today was laundry day and I spent most of the day in the sewing corner while Chuck did some tractor work. He switched the box for the bush hog on the tractor and mowed down by the garden and the paths. He even mowed the BNOE path to their house. I even found time to clean the explorer out. It sure was dirty from all the mud ( before we got gravel). The explorer is back to being " mine" now that we have the truck. Well, tomorrow is " sit n sew" with the quilt guild so had better go and pack my things. Another fun day is coming.

Beautiful trip

Charlotte's mom lives out from town on several acres and it was like paradise. Her house is built on a huge hill with trees and beautiful flowers all around it. She has a waterfall into a big coy pond. Her screened in porch is high up into the tree tops. A perfect place for drinking your morning coffee and wine in the evenings. On the one side of her carport, is a guest house with two bedrooms, a bath and room with nothing but books in it. ( called the book store). Charlotte's dad collected books and her mom has been selling them for the past couple of years. The boys slept in the main house with " MeMe" and Charlotte and I enjoyed the guest house. While Charlotte ran in the marathon, Owen spent the night and Saturday with his cousin and Char's mom, Ben and I ran around to fabric stores. Saturday night, we went over to Charlotte's brother's house to celebrate her other brother's birthday. It was another beautiful new house, in the same setting as Char's mom's house since it was just down the street from hers. I felt so lucky to be able to spend the past four days in such a beautiful place with wonderful people that made me feel like I had known them forever.

Down Town Nashville!

Charlotte's Mom had invited me to come to Nashville for four days with Charlotte. Charlotte went up to run in a 1/2 marathon on Saturday,along with 36,000 other runners. Friday afternoon, her and I went down town so she could sign up, get her shirt and shop for the marathon. While she was doing that, I took a walk down town to the river and back. It was a little weird being a tourist by myself but it was fun. It was crowded beyond belief because of all the runners being in town. I even went into a couple of shops and ended up buying a " NASHVILLE" coffee mug so when I'm sitting on the front porch, drinking my coffee out of it, I will have the memories of this trip.
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Growing so fast

My little baby chicks are growing leaps and bounds. They out grew the wash tub we had them in so Chuck went over to the BNOE to get the brooder that they said we could use. He had to repair it some and cover up the side bars with chicken wire, but it's safe for the pre-teens to live in. They have much more room and their water stays cleaner now that they can't scratch the saw dust into the water bowl. They still have to have their heat lamp on them . I am thinking in a week or so, they will have all of their " big girl feathers" and won't need the lamp. Next BIG project is building the " coop". I have a feeling there will always be a " next big project" around here for ever.

Forest Wild Flowers

Yesterday we took Charlotte hiking in the forest. We went looking for wild flowers and oh did we find them! Bluebells, white and red trillium, wild iris, phlox, lady slipper, beautiful ferns and many more flowers that we didn't know the names. We met up with a couple at the end of our hike and they said that her sister had gone out the day before and found over 75 different kinds of wild flowers. We also came across a school of trout in the stream. That is something that Chuck and I had never seen before. We had set out to find the waterfall about 1/4 mile down the Sipsey by the way of Borden creek but we ran out of time and had to turn back because Charlotte had to go pick Ben up from school. Maybe next time! We still had a really beautiful day in the forest as always and ended up hiking about six miles. The weather was perfect for it. I think we got Charlotte hooked....she wants to go again....just like everyone does, once they go.

Still Spring

We had decided to buy a special anniversary present since it was an important one. The present was a bird feeder that we had seen in the hardware store in Athens. This feeder has a motor in the bottom of it and when the squirrels climb onto the bottom to eat, it flings them off into the air. ...lol..it's so funny to watch. The name of the feeder is " the yankee flinger". I guess it's just a " southern feeder" ...ha. Any ways.....the hardware store was out of the feeders but they are ordering more and when they get them in, they will call us. Chuck and I walked all around the square in Athens and enjoyed all the pretty flowers and buildings. We stopped at my favorite place for lunch...Zaxbys. They have the best chicken salad around. On the way home, we stopped at WM in Decatur and low and behold.....they had our rhubarb that we have been looking for, for months now. We bought four along with some other plants. Next stop was Fred's ( a store like Dollar General but bigger) to see if they had our solar lights that we had a rain check for. Yep!! they did so we got our ten lights for $10. They are the same lights at WM that sell for $3 each. Shell got us wanting more of them when she brought two of the WM lights up for part of our Easter present. We ended the trip with getting groceries at Publix. After getting home, I hurried and put everything away so I could go down to the garden to plant the plants we had gotten. After being down there for a few minutes, Chuck called me to say that Troy ( our builder) was here so I came up to chat with him. As soon as we can get rid of the trees....he will start the house. I ended the day with going back down to the garden to tend and then to the barn to water and feed the baby chicks. Another nice day in the cities and the country.

The gravel is DONE!

Chuck called the gravel guy this morning and within an hour he was here with the first load of gravel. It's really neat how he just drives up the drive way, dumping the gravel and we have instant drive way. After three loads, both drive ways were done and we have a big pile of gravel in front of the barn to be spread around the barn and to use for the floor of the green house. We saved over $8,000 doing it ourselves. We had two quotes from two people who wanted to do it for us. We are so happy to have drive ways that we can drive on when it rains.....plus now the construction trucks can get busy on building the house.

Forty Years!

I got up this morning and got my cup of coffee and sat down next to Chuck on the couch to watch the news, just like every morning but this morning was a little different. It was our 40th anniversary. I said to Chuck, " who knew 40 years ago we would be living in the woods, raising chickens and riding on a tractor." Chuck said, " and living in a trailer". We both laughed. Not only all of that but we don't have a pot to pee in (yet)....lol We spent the day just doing this and that on the land. Nothing major. I walked down to the garden to see if any new seeds had popped up and to my surprise there were lots of watermelon, cantaloupe and butternut squash. I gave every thing a good drink of water. Just as I was about to leave, the little bird that is building the nest in Mom's watering can showed up. I couldn't figure out what kind of bird it is yet but I'm sure I will be seeing it again.

Chuck brought the printer up from the barn and hooked it up to the lap top so I could print some embroidery designs off the internet. So now not only can I get on line every day....I can print whatever I want. Next, he went over to the BNOE and brought home an old chicken brooder ( a cage) to fix up for our peeps. We have only had them for a week and they are growing so fast. In a couple of weeks, they won't be able to live in the wash tub any more. They are already trying to "fly the coop".

Early evening we got cleaned up and went to town to the local "Steak house" for dinner. We ran into our friend Tim, who owns the little store down the street from our land. Our dinner was really good and we took a little country road home. Had several nice phone calls wishing us a "Happy Anniversary". Wow! 40 years.....still seems impossible.

Finally done!

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I finally finished planting all the gardens, yesterday. What a good feeling! I planted the pumpkin patch last. The whole time I was planting it, I was thinking about my best friend for 50 years, Marina. I was using her garden tool that her Mom gave me last summer when they were cleaning out her house. She was so excited for Chuck and I to live on the land. She died not knowing that we sold the house and were so lucky to get up here. She had promised she would come see us once we got up here. After finishing up the pumpkin patch, I blessed it with Marina's blessing...." now grow damn it!" ..lol. It sure worked for her because she could grow anything in Gainesville.

On the way down to the garden, this morning, there was a little brown bunny munching on some honeysuckle or what have you, on the garden path. We have lots of bunnies on the land. I just hope they stay out of the gardens! So far so good. I weeded the first five rows of the garden......only 23 more to go in the main veggie patch. I think this will be an " early morning job" every day. Things are starting to pop up, like: acorn squash, sugar snap peas,okra,tomatoes, corn and even some watermelon that I just planted a few days ago. I'm sure every day there will be more seeds popping. The first five rows ( in the pic) I have onions, garlic, giant garlic, cabbage and lettuce.

I spent the afternoon playing in my sewing corner of the barn. My days don't get any better than this!