Josh & Lindsey in New Zealand

If you're following along, Lindsey has updated their blog - their adventure finding a place to live!  I get to see a whole new side of my son as a young husband, a young husband that truly cares about the needs and desires of his sweet wife.  Makes this mother's heart proud...   sniff...  sniff...

I'm A WINNER!

Lucky, lucky ME!  I entered a give-a-way over at Dawn's Comfy Corner (she's a fairly new blogger and buddy) and she sent me the news that I won!  And what a nice gift - it came in the mail yesterday and I'm so anxious to give them a try...  Seeeee?????

They are thick and absorbent and she made them very generous to scrub and wash all my dishes and pans!  Can't wait to use them.  I imagine I'll be gettin' to that shortly cuz I've got NO dishwasher other than myself and a sinkful of dirty dishes from breakfast!  Thanks so much, Dawn!  (Just noticed my "Butt Rub" seasoning for BBQ back there behind...  oops! - Promise that wasn't staged.)

In other news, my oldest son, Adam, is home for a few days to enjoy the farm, the tractor, AND most importantly - Fishing with his Pop (my daddy).  He said the rest of the spring is going to be very busy in the music industry and he probably won't be able to come home anytime soon after this.  EVEN THO it's supposed to rain torrents later this week/weekend.  He and Pop may have to find other things to do besides fish!  My middle son, the Kiwi son Josh, is a photographer, and he did some publicity shots of Adam last time they were home together...

 Josh is doing a great job, I think!  They took these photos down at the old train depot here in our town...

New topic...  about 3 years ago, a friend of mine gave me several starts of her white iris.  I spread them out in one of my flower beds behind the deck, and planted them and they've done really well at spreading and filling in and making new leaves.  They lived through our drought last summer, too.  I was about ready to pull them up and move them because in 3 years, they hadn't bloomed.  I thought maybe they weren't getting enough sun in their locale.  I even threatened them out loud that they were about to get yanked out of the ground if they didn't bloom this year.  Well, lo and behold...

THEY BLOOMED!!!

Think it was just time?  or think it was the threat???  Who knows, but I'm glad they decided to show their pretty faces!  Yes, they're all white, but I think I'll add some more colors to them.  I had intermixed them with some blue hydrangeas, but they died during the drought even tho I really babied them to no end.  So, iris it shall be!

Fruit trees are blooming their little hearts out...

My lovely onions.... Do you see some bare spots?  Well, my sweet little Gypsy decided to do some digging in the boxes.  I repaired as best as I could, but will have to get another bunch or so and fill in.  I can see some fencing in the near future around the garden, but that's okay.  The last 3 years, the coyotes ate most of my watermelons. Drat.  I've been asking for fencing since the first year, but THIS is the year for a garden fence!!!  Gypsy is one of those puppy dogs that buries her treats, her bones, her chewies, and goes back later when no one's looking to dig 'em up and eat 'em.  Another lesson from being a stray I suppose.

Kathy, you know what this means, doncha?  WAR ON GOPHERS!!!

Gypsy tries to dig them up, and if she finds one on a trap, she pulls the trap out of the ground and carries it off to eat the gopher.  Yuck.  (note to self - get worm medicine from vet...)  So... I've lost several gopher traps and at $6-$7 apiece can't afford that.  We've taken to driving a piece of rebar into the ground and wrapping a wire connected to the trap around the rebar to save our traps!  Works pretty good...

I've already caught two, and possibly 3 more that were eaten off the traps.

Ok, my peeps - love you all and I wish you the very best of weeks!  We have beauty outside right now, but rain is promised.  Only thing to deal with today is 30 mph winds!

Keep yer dress down!

South Light Art Blog Updated...

Updated my art blog in case you're interested!  I'm getting very close to the finish of the painting!

Time for Gardening!

At LAST!  It's officially time for gardening!  At least here in East Texas, altho I wouldn't doubt that we might have one more bout of nasty cold before it's all over with!  Usually Easter weekend, but it's in April this year so I think we're safe.  I've been bustin' a gusset to start my garden.  I'm doing something different this year - Square Foot Gardening - at least on part of it.  I'll still do my row crops like peas and beans in rows, but other things are going in raised beds.  I've been reading Mel Bartholomew's book "Square Foot Gardening" and it really makes alot of sense.  So...

Who do ya call?  Why, Daddy, of course!  Oh, hubby could do my bidding, too, but he's working, and Daddy needs something to do.  He's my partner in crime (or whatever else) and my go-to guy for all my little projects.  He built me some garden boxes from some old oak 2x8's and 2x6's, and I'm working on getting my planting mixture all ready for the beds.  Below is our new compost bin that Tony and Dad built last fall and we've got some super composting going on over here.

Here's my mixture of products - compost, vermiculate and peat moss.  I have to mix it all up barrow by barrow and put it into my raised beds...

Below, two of my beds all filled with the growing mix.  I've already got my onion starts planted in them but I haven't gotten their picture taken yet... I put out about 250-300 onions.  I know it sounds like alot, but we eat alot of green onions and that'll start in a few weeks, and then we'll leave some of them to grow to full size.  That'll take us through the summer, fall and part of winter (if I put them in the fridge).

Here's me, below, with my trusty Deere.  Our compost is pretty big so we turn it with the bucket.  Lots easier...

After all the gardening going on, these beautiful almost spring days call for a trip to the lake to do a little fishin'.  The bass were hungry and we caught about 20 each.  Unfortunately, Dad caught the only two big ones.  The rest were under about 10".  Oh well, we both had fish in the freezer, so it was fun catching them and letting them go - plus - no cleaning!  The bass are beginning to move up into the shallows to spawn.  Give them a couple more weeks or three, and we'll be able to just sit in the boat and watch them big lunkers jump in with us!  Just kidding, but the prospects for BIG bass will improve significantly!

My oldest son may be coming home from Nashville for a week or so, so I may be out of pocket for a bit.  Plus, WE (me & Dad) ARE FINALIZING OUR PLANS FOR BUILDING MY CHICKEN COOP!!!  At long last!  Hoping to get Adam in on that little project  - unless it rains.  They are predicting rain for 4 days this week, so we'll see how that goes!

PS -  For all you gals that commented about my last post on my husband's family's farmstead, I really appreciate your comments.  Unfortunately, we can't buy it as much as I'd like.  It does belong right now to one of the cousins and their family wants to possibly sell it - not sure yet.  He has Alzheimers disease and cannot really tell us anything about it.  We know very little about the early history of the property - only what's on the family records at the courthouse.  But thanks so much for your comments - it's a neat place and I'm sure it would have been SO interesting to know more about it!

Keep yer dress down!

Old Family Homestead

Come and take a little walk with me.  Down this overgrown dirt road where two dead trees had to be cut up and pushed off to one side of the  drive.  It's been so long since human eyes have gazed down this lane.  Do we dare?  Let's put one foot in front of the other and see where it leads...

My husband, Tony, goes on ahead of me.  It IS a beautiful day, a Sunday afternoon, and we're going on a hike, into the acreage, the woods, the tangle of an old homestead that hasn't had human contact in many, many years.  Around two hundred years ago, this old homestead belonged to Tony's great-great-great (we think one more great) grandparents.  A hundred or so acres in deep east Texas that grew several generations of ancestors before. I'm not sure how they came to have this land in the first place, perhaps my hubby knows.  I know that alot of folks in east Texas arrived by wagon from southern states of Tennessee and Alabama among others.  I know that's where Tony's and my ancestors came from.  Even as late as my grandmother and grandfather, they came by wagon to settle in East Texas from Chattanooga, Tennessee.  My Nanny was pregnant with my mom when her mama died and she didn't even get to go back home for her burial.  Sorry, I digress...

OK, back on topic......It's got a bit of everything.  Clearings for pasture grass or gardening, pine plantations, a lake, and an underground spring that feeds the creek and the lake, wildlife for hunting.  Must have been a wonderful place to raise 8 sons and 3 daughters.  These were the original inhabitants of this land.  These were my husband's ancestors.

Deep in the woods, I spy a clearing filled with little bitty yellow daffodils or narcissus - can't remember their names.  All that yellow and green amongst the greys and charcoals of wintertime. It was beautiful! Almost fairy-land like!  You'da had to'uv been there...

Through the trees, we spy an old barn... It's pretty empty, you can tell the wild things have taken over as well as the spiders and birds.  When I slip inside, being careful to watch where I walk, I can almost imagine all the farm chores that were done here, the feeds stored, the harnesses, the tools...  It's fun to just sit and imagine the sounds of the livestock and chickens and the laughter of children running and playing around this old barn...

Looks like it's been patched many times with tin and wood... I'm sure it's seen lots of good use over the years...

Wait!  What's this I spy?  We finally arrive at the old home.  We almost can't see it through the trees here when we wade through the tall grass.  We also have to watch out for holes in the ground.  The hogs have been running loose here for no telling how many years.  If you don't watch your step, you're going to break your ankle or fall flat on your face!

I SO hate to see an old homestead like this fall into ruin.  No one has lived here in so long.  I couldn't get close enough amongst the trees to get a good clear picture of the whole house.  It once was painted white, but the paint had long ago chipped away and only a few little slivers waved in the breeze.  This was a big house at one time, two stories, several rooms - I guess they needed it for such a large family.  Looked like it had been added onto a time or two.

Kind of a cool black and white...

Such a shame to see this old place falling in upon itself - I stepped inside for just a minute, but didn't linger - some of the flooring has fallen in and just wasn't safe to hang out for very long....

When I was looking in the windows, I started imagining again at what life was like here once upon a time.  The mom and dad, the children, the hard times, the good times, the Christmases, the births and the deaths.  Handing this house to the next generation and then the next until fnally, they all left this place and moved away to begin their lives somewhere else.  I wonder who the last person or persons were who lived here...

A little further away, we found an even bigger barn, complete with a hayloft on the top level - just like one might see up north or in a picture.  A ladder went up to the top.  I REALLY wanted to go up there and check it out imagining how it might have been long ago - full of hay and perhaps kittens!  I'll bet the kids played hooky from their chores and had all sorts of fun up there in the hayloft!

You can see below the hay loft.  There was sure some great old oak and pine wood on the inside of the barn that was still usable - especially the oak.  I'd love have one of those old barns taken apart and moved to our farm, but it's just not possible, and not affordable.

I love this photo looking up through part of the hayloft.  The back side of the barn was nearly gone, but it sure made for an interesting photograph!

Above and below pictures - do you know what kind of tree this is?  Best we can tell, it's a Hercules Club tree - it appears to be some kind of hardwood, and it's got sharp pointed thick bumps on it.  It's difficult to tell the size of the points from the photos, but I sure know how this tree got its name!  I'd sure hate to get "clubbed" with a limb from this tree!  We actually found one of these nasty trees on our own property. I think my hubby is going to cut it down before it has a chance to spread!

We wandered through the tall pines.  This place through the recent years had been sold to one of the great, great, great grandsons, and he'd had pines planted on this place in several different areas.  They have not been managed well over the years, and strolling through the pine forests was a bit difficult stepping over limbs, etc.  However, there are still lots of good trees to be harvested.  My husband has actually been hired by the family to investigate the viability of the remaining pine plantation and see about managing it as a crop.  That was the original intent.  Tony is good about stuff like that...

Finally, we had been told that there was an old burial plot or cemetary on the place and that some of the first family members were buried here.  It took alot of looking, and someone from the family had told us an approximate location. Tony had been out there a day or two before and had recorded the location on his GPS (aren't those great!) so we found it pretty quickly. There were a few gravestones that had names and dates on them, but there also were some markers that just had initials on them.  Don't know if they were children or what.  Some big rocks for grave markers, too.  I took a few pictures but I don't know if you can make them out.  The old patriarch, Jeff S., was born in 1811 and died in 1891, I believe.  His wife was buried there, too.

See the clasped hands carved into this stone?  It had broken in half so Tony held them together so I could get a photo....

A few more stones in this burial plot...

Very hard to make out...

This ugly fellow kept hanging around the house.  Vee, you can appreciate this guy - we've got a slew of these guys down here, too.  It was kinda creepy... No telling what kind of tales he could tell.  Sorry this was so long.  I just thought it was a really interesting afternoon, and it was sort of a history lesson to us - if only an imaginary one - beings it was my husband's ancient family place.  We enjoyed this trek.  I hope to go back sometime...

Keep yer dress down.