Goodbye Garden!

Well, another garden bites the dust (literally)!  Garden of 2010 is officiallly over.  Plowed up, scooped up, most of it dumped in the compost bin.  We started composting this year.  Burned the cornstalks and a little bit of other stuff.  Cornstalks take too long to break down and the cobs take FOREVER.  I'm thinking about a fall garden, but right now it's too blasted hot to even worry about it.  We'll see, when August or September rolls around.  Usually we have a nice long summer that runs into November sometimes.  At least, our temps take a long, long time to cool off.

This little patch of dirt produced enough cucumbers to make about 3.5 quarts of pickles (and I even gave some away), green beans and purple hull peas to keep frozen  for eatin' for awhile into the winter, onions and potatoes that we're still eatin' on, jalapeno peppers, bell peppers, and serranos and GOBS of tomatoes that were turned into gallons and gallons of hot salsa (along with our peppers &  onions).  It's been a good year for the garden and given me so much pleasure in taking care of.

This fall promises to be extra busy as we start renovations and cosmetic work to our home. Me, myself and moi will be handling most of that.  Once all done, we're putting it up for sale.  It's almost time to permanently move to the farm.  It's been about 3.5 years now since we got the farm and I'm so ready to get out there.

You know, I grow nostalgic thinking about selling our home. We've been in that home for 20+ years. Princess was a toddler when moved from our tiny little first home into this bigger house where we raised our kids.  Adam and Josh were still quite young, too.  I still see the scuff marks on the walls, the baseboards.  The fingernail polish that Princess spilled still stains the vanity in the bathroom - tiny dots, but there nonetheless. There once was a tussle over something, I forget what, and there is a bedroom door that has a crack in it where one of the boys put a fist through it... When I look at the living room, I see where our Christmas tree has stood for 20+ Christmases and the nails under the mantle where the kids hung their stockings.  And all the family pictures that are scattered throughout the house are still smiling back at me.

This house is going on 30 years old and it needs a little facelift.  We've painted and replaced carpet a couple of times, re-wallpapered, and all the usual things that folks do their homes. The carpet has some stains that the cleaners couldn't get out from our family nights when we all ate pizza in the living room and watched movies together... or the kids had friends over.  There's scratches on one of my kitchen walls where one of our dogs decided to find out what sheetrock did when you scratched at it... There is a hole banged in the laundry room wall where the doorstop finally gave out and the door knob started hitting the wall.

I can still see my boys in their bunk beds with their dinosaur bedspreads and my baby girl in her little rocking chair in her pink room rocking one of her baby dolls.  We had so much fun here!  We had a lot of great times here, me and the kids.  I stayed home with them until the boys were in highschool and Princess was in Jr. High.  I feel so fortunate to have been able to do that.  We had our fusses and our tears, but more than that, we have a close-knit family and no matter what happened, we always stuck together and supported each other.  

Our little pomeranian, Cookie, who we had for 13 years, is buried in a little wooden box in the backyard under the cedar tree.  The big old hackberry tree in the corner of the backyard is just about dead. Lightning struck it and it split, but I can see the 3 story treehouse that my boys built and played in, scaring me to death when they pulled the trampoline nearby and jumped from the top floor of the treehouse onto the trampoline! 

OUR house was where all the kids came to play, where the kids would invite their friends.  I was the cool mom and we always had so much fun!  Our grocery bill was enormous cuz I always had snacks and stuff for the kids.  We had sleepouts and sleepovers here, too.  The kids would drag all their sleeping bags out onto the trampoline and sleep out there.  When I'd get up in the morning, they'd usually all be in the house!  And Princess had to do whatever her big  brothers did!  They bounced her off the trampoline when she was about 7 or 8 and her arm got broken.  So it was off to the emergency room... 

Sooooo many memories.  It's going to be SO hard when we sell this house and close the front door for the last time.  I keep trying to tell myself that 'ITS JUST A HOUSE', but it's been our HOME.  But HOME is where the heart is and our hearts are moving on.  We'll be making new memories!

We've been gradually cleaning things out, throwing away, and boxing up to move.  Most of our stuff is still here, but alot of it we've already disposed of.  I'm hoping we can be done with our fix-ups before the holiday season starts, but that may be a little premature.  Depends on the weather, schedules, etc.  Tony and I will be alone for the first time since the kids were born (and we ARE excited about that - my mom says it's like a second honeymoon!).  It's a sad time and a happy time!  We've had a little taste of no-kids for a bit, but it will be permanent after we move.  Tony and I are both looking forward to this big change in our lives, but I'm also a little sad.  We can't keep two places, and it's time to move on.

Well, this post certainly took a direction of its own, didn't it???  I was going to show you alot of pictures here, but sadly they'll have to wait.  One of 'em was a dead copperhead, so you probably don't wanna see that one anyway...  I've taken too much of your time just reminiscing this afternoon. Guess I'm in that kind of mood... 

Still haven't gotten to my peach cobbler yet.  Have you seen Debbie Wisdom's blog?  She had peach cobbler on there and a great recipe to try - I think you should pop on over to visit her!  Nothin' like a warm fresh peach cobbler with ice cream on it in the summer time!  I think that'll make me feel better! Don't you???

More Rain & Our Trip to Jefferson, TX

Hey my lovelies - over the last two days we've gotten about 10 inches of rain. Can you believe it? We caught up on our rainfall totals for East Texas all in two days! Some places around here are having problems with flooding, bridges washed out and roads washed out, and even a few homes flooded. I personally didn't have any problems. You oughta see my pastures and my garden! WOW - what a little natural rainwater can do!!!

Guess I must apologize for my crudity on my last post. Most of you avoided acknowledging my crass-ness when I called our torrential rains a gully-washer, a frog-strangler, and a t*rd-floater. Ya'll made me feel bad, so I deleted that. However, I did have one blogger buddy comment AFTER I'd already deleted it that a t*rd-floater is exactly what they called it, too. Yea! Somebody understands where I come from! But, to those of you who were offended I apologize.

OK, on to other matters! If you follow Debbie Wisdom at her blog, Wisdom, then you'll know that she, Tara from New Day, New Seasons and I had a blogger buddy get-together and we all met up in Jefferson, Texas, on Tuesday! We had the BEST TIME EVER!!! We visited this very cool Confederate cemetery first...
This was the Scottsville cemetery just outside of Marshall... Beautiful monuments of old, lots of stories that we'll never know, babies, soldiers, husbands, wives... I always wonder what their lives were like... This was the family chapel...


Here is one of the monuments - the cemetery was very well cared for...

Here's Debbie checking out some of the headstones. A bunch of the gravesites had little wrought-iron fences around them, and alot also had footstones...


This beautiful monument was called the weeping angel - it was gorgeous & I'd love to paint it someday!

And I don't wanna bore you with too much cemetery stuff, but here were my two buddies having way too much fun in such a  somber place!

In Marshall, we visited the old rennovated Weisman Building - a used-to-be a department store downtown. It's now been converted into a lovely antique place with a WONDERFUL eatery where we had lunch. I forgot to take a picture of my lunch but it was DELISH - chicken salad, tuna salad, spinach quiche, banana nut bread, fruit - YUM!

We then pedaled our way on up to Jefferson and spent the rest of the day cruising 'round the place, checking out all the bed/breakfasts (wow - they're were way more than I remembered!) and they were SO beautiful.  We visited a few shops, visited the old restored Excelsior Hotel (where I heard there were ghosts, but we didn't see any), and ate our way through the afternoon.  We had coconut pie at one eatery and a root beer float for me at another place.  Huge hydrangeas in the garden at the Hotel in this photo - they were in the fountain area...

I guess you could say this little guy could be a ghost from the Excelsior Hotel - he appeared each spring and disappeared each winter.

At the end of the afternoon, we sat outside and enjoyed some cloudy weather and scooted inside quickly as a storm hit.  We got to sit inside for an HOUR and visit and laugh and cut up!

Look who we ran into at the General Store???  Why, John Wayne!!!  Tara here had to take her turn giving the Duke a big hug!  But he kept his stoic face.  Matter of fact, he never changed his expression when each of us hugged him and posed with him!  Come on Duke - lighten up!!!

Well, I had 50 pictures I could show you, but maybe in another post.  All I know is that these two girls are precious and special to me.  I had gotten to know them via their blogs and so just meeting them in person was the icing on the cake!  We all learned so much more about each other and it seems like I've known them forever.  Our personalities just clicked and I have never laughed so much as I did Tuesday!  At least not in a long long time.  I can't remember when I've had such a fun getaway.  We missed a couple of gals that were supposed to come, so I'm hopin' we can repeat this blog buddy meetin' and just have a big ole blogger convention!!!  Thanks for Tuesday, Debbie & Tara - love you two, too!!!

Super Bowl 2010

The Saints Did It!   Wasn't it GREAT???  I'm going to try to get around to visiting everyone, and I really appreciate your sweet comments! Keep 'em coming!

I didn't get to watch most of the game - I was in the kitchen alot, and trying to get around and visit with all the young people.  We had a house full! Our college age kids class at church, well they range from 18 to early 20's, single, and they've been slowly growing this class. Most of the kids that grew up at our church have gone off to college which  leaves a handful of "homies" and we're gradually picking up a few from UT-Tyler and Tyler Jr. College.  We had the class teacher/sponsor and his wife, another adult couple helping out with food and me and Tony AND about 20 young people.  Our church had an early evening service at 3:30 and everybody came over to our house after the devo.

I had ordered 4 family size pizzas from Papa Murphy's, which is the ONLY place to get pizza nowadays. THank goodness for a double oven! We went to Wingstop and picked up buckets of hot wings, we had smoked sausage in the chafing dish (which we don't get to use much so this was a great opportunity).  I had made a huge bowl of homemade salsa, tons of chips and layered Mexican dip, veggies and crackers and M&M's and "trash" all scattered around. AND we had 4 desserts.  My favorite was the Sopapilla Cheesecake that my son's girlfriend Lindsey made.  I personally taste-tested it 3-4 times to make sure it was edible for the kids to eat.  The cutest dessert prize goes to Tara!  She brought 2 homemade little single layer cakes that were decorated for each team!  One was white with a blue horseshoe and the other was gold with the black fleur de lis!  They were so cute & I appreciated her thoughtfulness and the time she put into those cakes!

The kids got a huge kick out of our "redneck cooler".  Tony put all the soft drinks and water bottles in the washing machine and iced 'em all down good.  The laundry room is right next to the kitchen, so it was fun to see the kids all digging in the washing machine getting their drinks!  Very easy, and easy to empty! No hassle whatsoever! And the washing machine is clean and you don't have to worry about cleaning out your cooler!

Sooooo, we all surfed the food island and bar and washing machine all evening and stuffed our faces and sprawled out on the couches, chairs and floor and hooted and hollered for our teams - it was a mixed crowd on teams.  Lots of yelling and shuffling and scuffling but can you believe it? NOTHING WAS SPILLED ON CARPET OR FURNITURE!  Wow - they did good!  I had even put a Mexican blanket on the coffee table so they could eat there & I wouldn't have to worry about it!  A couple of the guys played soccer out in the front yard until dark - they weren't real interested in the game.  I think everyone had a good time.

Sad part is --- don't be mad -  I left my stupid camera in my car which we had left at the church building. We had planned on going back to get it before the game and we ran out of time.  I'm so sad that I don't have any pictures to show you!!!  (I slyly thought that I'd put this part at the end of my post so you would have to read it all to the end to find the pictures.  If I put it at the beginning, you might not read the post! Sorry!)  So I'm going to post a picture for you that has absolutely NOTHING to do with this SuperBowl post!

I hope ya'll have a great day.  Looks like we're in for more bad weather.  I set out my potatoes Saturday and some cabbage and broccoli. May be too soon. I hope they make it - we're supposed to have freezing weather again this week.  Hey, Lowe's has the broccoli and cabbage plants setting outside already. Help me people - do you think they'll make it?

To Be 17 Again...

It was all about the car back then. All the girls wanted to date him.  We met when we were 15.   My boyfriend (later to be husband) had undoubtedly the coolest car in our high school. I kid you not. A 1970 sky-blue Pontiac Firebird with the flip tail on the back with white leather top and white leather interior.  While most speedometers went up to 120, this car's speedometer went to like 160. (I hope he never went that fast.)  There were a few roads in our area with steep hills, one of which was called Suicide Hill, that he took me on a time or two.  It was too scary for me.  I thought we were going to go airborn!  He now says he doesn't know why his dad let him have that car - he wouldn't have let our boys have a car like that!

At our high school, Ag was the big thing. Very country town with lots of agriculture/cattle stuff going on. You were cool if you were in Ag/FFA and raised cows and had horses, etc.  He did. He and his daddy raised Charolais cows.  I was immediately attracted to him. I thought he'd never notice me until I drew a very detailed  picture of a horse and "accidently" dropped by his desk in English class.  He never knew what hit him.  He was all over that, and the rest was history. 

He was, at our red neck high school, a leader, made good grades, was Student Council President and class president and all that.  We attended all the dances together & it was so much fun!  We knew all the same people, and also, there were about 6 of us couples that were high school sweethearts that wound up getting married, and all but one of them have stayed married and live in our hometown still!  I did Drill Team (which I loved). Why, when Earl Campbell took our high school to the State Playoffs in 1974, we got to strut our stuff in the Astrodome!  Cool for a small town girl! 

Our school counselor, Mr. Brown, also taught Ag, so he'd get his favorite Ag guys out of class and they'd go mess around during school hours - go to the donut shop, go to the school farm, go run errands for Mr. Brown - man they had a great time. I wasn't so lucky to get to do that!

Look at the styles in this photo - short shorts for guys and girls, too, but this day I didn't know we were going to be washing his "Blue Baby".  This was a year or two before we became engaged I think. We didn't marry til we were 21, with college and all that.  I ran across this photo a day or two ago, and I just wanted to share it with you - good memories!  I'd love to find a car just like this one and give it to him.  He wishes for it back sometimes... Ya'll have a great weekend! Stay warm!

Summertime Fishin' with Pop

Howdy-doody, cold people! Howsa 'about a little hot summertime fishin'?  That oughta get you all nice and toasty!  Just think, settin' there in the sunshine in the boat or on the pier, whether at a lake or on the oceanside... Cain't ya just hear the water lappin' against the pier, maybe swattin' red wasps that like to get up under the eaves of the pier?  Sippin' a cold one (Coke, I mean) and the sun fryin' the tops of your thighs and anything else it can reach? Sweat runnin' down into every crevice and crack on your body? You set there long enough, the sweat and fish stink and dirt makes granny beads on yer neck and inside your elbows. Doncha just love it???  Here's my firstborn on his first fishin' trip 25 years ago with his Pop (my daddy).  Look that proud accomplishment on his little face! He's as proud of that little perch as any trophy bass fisherman, and Pop is just as proud, too! My dad was a trophy/tournament fisherman in his day... I still go fishin' with him... I love it!

And ya know what? Adam and Daddy are still at it 25 years later!

You know what?  Guys can do alot of talkin' and solvin' the problems of the world and life settin' on the lake. It takes alot of patience to fish, lots of analogies about life and fishin' that Daddy taught us kids and now my kids, and there's alot of other things to talk about, too. It's a great "male bonding" thing. But what about when Dad takes ME?  Lotsa good daddy/daughter time, too.  I catch up on what my daddy's into. He's always puttering around doing something. Fishing, huntin', buildin' stuff, fixin' stuf'f, oh yeah, now he's into surfin' the net and whatever the latest techno-gadget is.  He's got a game camera on some of his deerfeeders and it takes night pictures of deer, hogs, whatever comes to eat the corn. It's pretty cool.  I think my daddy still looks pretty good to be in his 70's. He hasn't slowed down much.

And here's yours truly! Today we're catchin' crappie, right off the pier. We like to bass-fish out on the lake, but this is crappie season, and we're pullin' em in right and left. As I recall, we had a big ole fish fry at the farm that night. This was back in the summer of 09.  They were practially jumpin' up on the pier for us.  It was so hot even in the shade, I didn't have a dry thread on me when we got ready to leave. Daddy didn't either.  You know that time in the mid to late summer when the lake water is tepid- feels like bathwater almost - and it's not even refreshin' anymore?  Well, that was this time of summer! We drank several bottles of Gatorade between us and our fishbait (shrimp) was stinkin' to high heaven. I'm sure we smelled lovely when we got back to Mom's. And she WILL shoo you outside if you're too stinky or have dirt or mud on your shoes. And you cain't set down on her furniture without a towel under ya.

Wish there'd been a 3rd person with us so we could have our picture taken together... If there's anything that was any funner (is that a word?) in this world, then the Good Lord saved it for Himself! That's what my Nanny always used to say.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed fishin' hot summertime lakes today in Texas. We can batter up them fish and throw 'em out on the pavement and watch 'em fry if you'd like to. It'd be better than gettin' all that fish grease out and heatin' up and stinkin' up the kitchen. We'll just get out the big propane fryer & cook 'em in there.  Cut ya up some sweet onion slices, fix some coleslaw, fries and some jalapeno hushpuppies and some fish grease cream gravy!  Mmmmmm - it just don't get any better than that!  I can't wait!

Learning How to Cook

(don't know where  the idea for this post came from, maybe from Debbie at In His Pasture, her post about the biscuits brought this to mind...)

Imagine if you will about 26 years ago, a young wife and mother, in her first home.  She and her young husband have scrimped and saved and done without, and finally put a down payment on a tiny but new home.  She is so proud of her little house. It's small, but new, and she got to pick out the colors, the carpet, the flooring, the wallpaper and paint. They bought it at just the right stage. It's a pretty little house - 3 little bedrooms, 2 little bathrooms, a little kitchen, a little living room, and a little utility room.  She has a new washer and dryer, a new queen size mattress set and she even found some garage sale bunk beds for her little son's room.  She is expecting baby #2.  She's planted some flowers and some tiny shrubs in the front flower bed, and her husband has put together a little swingset in the back yard and a little sandbox for their little boy to play in.

For their Christmas present that year, the young wife's in-laws have bought them a new-fangled contraption for the kitchen - a microwave oven!  She is so proud!  They've been on the market for a little while, but she knew nothing about them.  She was so excited to begin using her microwave because she knew now she was a thoroughly modern housewife. 

She planned a wonderful dinner one evening for her husband who worked hard all day.  He came in about 5:30 and sat down to watch the news on their little TV set and hold their little boy in his lap.  The young wife was so content in her little kitchen and feeling all Susie-homemaker-ish and everything was perfect in her world.  She needed some boiled eggs for what she was preparing for dinner and she thought to herself, 'well, it would be so much faster and more efficient if I give my new microwave a try and boil my eggs in it!'

So, she placed a couple of eggs in a little dish in the microwave and set the timer.  Then she went back to work on her meal preparation smiling to herself.

BAM!!!!!

She practically jumped out of her skin and screamed like she'd been shot!  Her husband came running into the little kitchen yelling, "what happened????"  There she was holding her hands over her little ears with a horrified look on her face.  There was fragments of EGG all over her, all over the little floor, all over the little walls, all over the ceiling, all inside the microwave!!!

She burst into tears!  The egg explosion had blown the door open to the microwave and had blown the eggs to kingdom come and back again!  What a mess!  Their little boy stood there looking dumbfounded.  Then, her dear sweet little husband took her shoulders in his hands and guided her out of the kitchen.  She sobbed into his neck, and he put his arms around her trying to keep from laughing.  "It's NOT funny!" she said between her sniveling and snubbing.  "I know, honey, it's not," he smiled. "Don't worry about it. I'll clean it up."  And he did!

I found pieces of egg in places that I never knew it went when we got ready to move to another house 5 years later....