Sweet Home Alabama

We stopped at the Alabama Welcome Center on the way home from Nashville. The nice people gave us some Alabama posters and maps. Alabama has a new poster come out, every year. I have three of them now. One, of a hummingbird, one of a tomato, and now one that looks like a quilt square. Sure will have fun finding places to hang them in the new house.

Nashville Fun!

Here they come!

Down Town Nashville.....

Minnie Pearl

Little Miss Country Singer

We left the TT at 5:30 am Friday morning ( after letting the chickens out) and headed for Nashville to pick up my girls. Their flight came in at 8:30 am. Their plane was on time and we set out running and we haven't stopped yet. We headed for downtown to play tourist. It's fun even though it's tacky. Genavive really didn't know anything about Nashville or anything about the music so we kept telling her that " Hannah Montana" lived there and to watch for her. ..lol
We just walked around town, taking fun pictures. We went inside the Ryman Auditorium but found out that it cost $13 a person for the tour.....and said " never mind". We headed for home around lunch time....driving through Micky Dee's on the way. It's a good two hour drive. ...but a pretty one.

You must be a redneck if......

The guy down the road has a little produce stand in front of his " fixing cars business". We stopped a week or so ago and got a huge watermelon from him. Since there weren't any melons at the Farmers Market, we stopped and bought another watermelon from this guy. I am hoping to make watermelon rind pickles when we eat it. I got this awesome " canning cook book" the other day and there are several things I'm going to try from it. Any ways......in front of the garage at this guys place, he has his grill filled with flowers. " You must be a redneck if you use your grill as a flower bed."!

Billy's Garden...July 4th!

Billy brought Linda over yesterday to see the house, " the girls house" and our garden. She hadn't been over in a few months. Before they left, they told us to come over today and pick some okra since they had tons of it. OMG! they had two tons of it!! I picked half the row on both sides and it filled my big basket and a bag. Most of it is too big to be good though, because it hadn't been picked in a long time. When I got it picked, I enjoyed a glass of " sweet tea" in a jelly glass, on the porch with Linda. It made me smile...it being so southern! When I was finished with my tea, Linda had me go pick a box full of purple/pink peas. Then, Billy had me to go pick some tomatoes because they had more than they could eat. Also, picked a huge head of cabbage. My cabbage is all wormy in my garden and the worms got to Billy's too but he put "seven dust" on his and the worms didn't go all the way through the head, so it's nice on the inside. Can't wait to have fried cabbage. We had so much stuff from their garden, we couldn't carry it all so Billy had to bring us home with his four wheeler. It was lunch time so we had BLT...minus the lettuce....I had cucumbers on mine instead. The tomato was one of Billy's. It was wonderful! Nothing like you buy in the store. After lunch, I started in.....first I made 10 jars of plum jelly...it's sooo pretty! Then, I made 10 jars of corn salsa and I ended up canning two pints of tomatoes since we had a pile from the BNOE garden, ours and Billy's. Oh yeah...forgot....this morning, Chuck and I picked 20 ears of corn out of the garden. ...so I put it up in the freezer. I still have to go through all the okra and pick out the good ones. Billy and Linda are going to Gatlinburg next week for a couple of days and want me to go pick the okra again...which will be fun because Shell and Genavive will be here to help. Will also water their plants for them while they are gone. I had fun in the kitchen all day but kept thinking how, next year I'll have a big beautiful new kitchen to do this all in. :-) We still have a lot of pinto beans to pick, so will put those in the freezer also. I'm trying to hold off picking them, until Shell and Genavive come. I think we will have a watermelon ready next weekend. I've counted at least 15 melons in the patch. ...different kinds and sizes. Awwwwww ice cold watermelon!...it's SUMMER!

Farmers Market

Purple/pink eyed peas....the basket full that we bought....3 lbs.

Albino blackberries

Pretty tomotes!

Lawrence County tomatoes!

I loved the corn stocks attached to his truck.

Little plums that we bought for jelly.

We left here by 7:00 am and went to our local Farmers Market, this morning. There is a farmers federation and you have to belong to it to sell your produce at the market. It all has to

be grown locally. We went after a watermelon but was told its about two weeks too early for local ones but there were plenty of other stuff to pick from. We bought some little plums so I can make plum jelly, and some corn so I can make corn relish. ( I want to eat our corn ...on the cob) The corn was $3 a dozen and his dozen was 14, not 12 but when he was putting it in the bag for us, the grabbed four more ears out of his truck and put them in our bag, so we ended up with 18 ears of corn. We got talking to one guy and he had "white blackberries". He said they were albinos. Never heard or seen such a thing. He also had a big pile of zucchini and asked if we liked zucchini. I told him " yes" and he gave us a bag full....for free. We also bought 3 pounds of purple/pink eyed peas. We came on home and stopped on the way, and got another watermelon from the man that lives just down the road from us. When we got home, I sat on the porch and shelled all the peas. Then, Chuck decided we needed to go to WM and see about taking our window AC back because it stopped working, yesterday. So......on the way to WM we stopped at the Farmers Market again because I needed some green peppers for my corn relish. While we were there this time, they were serving FREE hot dogs, drinks and homemade ice cream. REALLY GOOD! As we were walking through the market, I noticed the lady in the last booth had a couple of plants and one of them was an " angel wing begonia". When I looked at it closer, it was just like the one I had of my Mom's that died in the freezing barn this last winter. I asked the lady how much it was and when she said $3.00....Chuck said right away... " I'll take it!!" It may not be Mom's actual angel wing, but it's a Mom's angel wing and that made my day. We came home and while I was blanching the peas and putting them in the freezer, Chuck took the AC out of the window ( not an easy job) and packed it up and took it back the WM. Got another one and came home and put IT in the window. We will now have AC when Shell and Genavive come. We really don't need it at night but it does get hot during the day.

Outside walls

The front of the house....sun room (large window opening), laundry room,dining room, front door, living room.

Side and back....Sun room, bedroom, bathroom and kitchen.

They finished the framing today. They did all the studs to the ceilings and finished up the walls. I asked Troy if they were going to do the porches next but he said " nope"...the roof. The " brick man" came today and wanted to see the antique mantel we have and Troy wanted us to go pick out the brick for the fireplace but the place closed early for July 4th. He said it was closed on Monday too but if we called him he would meet us there any time we wanted on Monday so we could get our brick. They are ready to brick up the fireplace as soon as the bricks arrive. Plus, Troy came up with the idea to put brick as the caps of the retaining walls so they would tie in with the fireplace. I liked that idea so that's what is going to be done. They should be putting the roof on next week while Shell and Genavive are here.

Framed walls

The back of the house

Chuck is standing in the kitchen windows

I'm looking into the sun room

Yesterday morning we spent a couple of hours, walking around on the floor of the house, trying to figure out where the AC air handler was going to go. We put it in one closet and then another but the closet that would be the best place for it, wasn't big enough without making the bathroom and Chuck's closet 5 1/2 inches smaller. It seemed like we were moving this and that and it was getting really confusing just to get put the AC in the closet....soooooo......we decided to just put it in the attic. Chuck really didn't want it up there in case it leaked but we decided it would be OK. It's better than moving the rooms around. Then, there is this one angled wall in the hallway and the way they had it chalked on the floor, it looked really short to me. Sure enough, I called G & G and had them measure that wall in their house and theirs was 9 inches longer. Troy and I figured out how to move the cabinets in the kitchen ( like they are in G & G's house) and that made the angled wall at least 6 inches longer. After we figured out all that, Chuck and I headed to town to pick out the bath tub, sinks, toilets, faucets, inside doors, door handles, hinges and we ordered the front door. When we had left, they were just starting to build the frames to the walls. When we came home, after going to four different places, including the grocery store, they had all the wall frames up but a couple in the middle of the house. We pulled up and I hollered...."wow! we have a house!" lol. They will come back today and finish the walls and I think they are going to do the two porches next.....then the roof will be next week!