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???

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!

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....