An end of the season trip and so much more....

This is a post full of pictures. We have had some adventures lately and the true love of my life is now, on occasion, reading my ridiculous blog so I want to share some pictures with you and him..... Here goes.

Well, at the beginning of the week, we loaded up the car and I do mean loaded, and headed for Gulf Shores, Al. My sister and her family got a beach house for a week and we decided to take my mom (mimi) and go have some fun in the sun with them. Here is a picture going through the tunnel in Mobile.

This is a picture taken in the hotel. My niece decided to go back to the hotel with us every night. So the oldest is mine and the youngest my niece. I just thought this was a beautiful picture.

Here's my girl on the alligator in the ocean. My son is the one at the end of the line on a boogie board. They had a blast.

This is my oldest playing Frisbee on the beach with my nephew. She hates the beach but even she had a really good time.

Here's our temporary man of the house showing off more of his board skills.

And here is a flag that was at the beach house next door, I just loved it waving along the ocean front.

Now, we are back home and back to reality. No one wanted to leave but Mimi had to go back to work and so the fun was cut short. We had a great time but we sure did miss daddy being with us. Although, I don't think I would have been able to frequent as many little stores had he been with us. (ha ha)

Next, I wanted to share with you my new pot rack. I am hanging my cast iron on it. It has freed up some space in my hobbit kitchen and I really like it but I am not sure what needs to be put in the opening.

Then today, our neighbor came over and put up a temporary electric fence for us. The grass back here has grown to a level that we can not control so he fenced it in for us to put our horses on. I really need to borrow some goats.LOL

Here the horses are enjoying some new pasture.

I also thought I would share our baby chicks that are no longer babies. Every year we get about 5 or 6 new babies and here are a couple of this years crop. I think this one is so pretty. She is an Auracauna and she will lay blue/green eggs.

My honey loves a black chicken and our last one disappeared so here is his new black chicken.

Now for the bad news, before we left for the beach, I was of course, canning tomatoes and I heard a loud pop. I had blown up my cook top. So I just decided I will deal with it when I get home. Now I am on the hunt for the best deal on a cook top. In the mean time, I still have tomatoes running out of my ears, literally. So this is what little man and I fixed up today. We put my Coleman camping stove on a table outside and I began canning on the porch. I really should have been doing this all along, as it really saved my kitchen from heating up.

Oh and by the way, so far the best deal is at Cowboy Maloney's in Jackson. However, I have a few more calls to make.

I thought last but not least, I would end with a beautiful picture of our mammoth sunflowers. They started blooming while we were gone and they were quite the site to come home to.
Have a great weekend!!!

July is flying by.....

Well, we had a pretty good 4th. It was as good as could be expected without the love of my life here. My mother came down and my sister and her family. Our little version of Mayberry has a big Lena Day every 4th of July. We have politicians and speakers come and give their .02. My girls spent the day signing in participants for the antique car and tractor show. Then they moved on to making snow cones.

Last year my honey did the color guard. So this year in lieu of him being deployed they asked if my son could do the Pledge of Allegiance to the American Flag. It was great. He was so nervous but it was truly a treasured memory for us all. Here he is on stage.

There are all kinds of events for the kids. The big one is the turtle race. Kids decorate their turtles and then race them around a circle. My son did it last year and my nephew wanted to do it this year. Here he is with his turtle.

They won 3rd. place. Needless to say, my sister and family will be back next year.

It was a great day and a great way to take our mind off of the circumstances of our day to day.

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Her"s one of my projects that I have somewhat completed.

Now keep in mind I did this myself and really could have used the expertise of my honey but I think it came out pretty good. I love Rue's new pantry and she was my inspiration. I love her wooden brackets and I think I will change mine out one by one. These shelves will be holding the majority of my canning. I have 19 jars of muscadine and pear preserves left out of the 75 I put up last year. If any of you would like for me to send you a jar leave me a link to your email. The harvest will be coming in again in Sept. and Oct. and I will be starting all over.LOL I would love to share our abundance.

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~~ Indeed, the Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield its produce.~~

Psalms 85:12

And here's some of the produce this week. I am putting up corn, tomatoes, and peas this week. All of this harvest is slowing down the process of my really big project but it is making the days go by faster. Most days I look up and it's 2:00 before I even get the day started good.

I pray that we put up enough that we can eat from the garden all winter. We will see.

Have a great week.....

Whew.... It has been a while!

We have had so much going on and so many changes in a month.

About 3 wks ago..... we put this man, the love of my life, my very best friend and the father of my babies ......

On this bus, to go to.....(actually to go to the airport but you get the picture)

Iraq.

Here he is in front of a palace.

To say it was one of the worst days of my life would be an understatement. I have cried and cried and just when I think it is getting better.... I cry some more.

On a more positive note, he made it there safely and praise God for technology. We are using Skype and a webcam to see and talk to him via computer everyday. So to say it could be much worse is so true. When we did this 4 years ago it was much worse. When he starts working 16 hour days we wont talk to him as much but right now, while they are transitioning troops over, we are getting very spoiled.

While he is gone, I plan to do a lot of my projects. Here was the first one....

This is my living room that we painted a nice dark Khaki a year ago, when we moved in.

Well, I was never really happy with it because it was so dark and this room does not have a lot of natural light. I need light and airy. So last week, I repainted it Benjamin Moore's Adobe beige. I love this color. Here it is now. I will be painting all of the trim a bright white tomorrow.

Now, this is our other huge project. The garden is coming in.

Today, I put up 3 gallon bags of corn. My corn is not ready yet but a neighbor gave us a good bit. We ate some for dinner tonight and it was so wonderful.

I also put up 7 qts. of pickles. We love homemade pickles.

Now, here is some of the rest of my bounty right now.

I hope to put up lots of canned tomatoes, ketchup and spaghetti sauce. That is if I win the battle on blossom end rot.LOL

It also looks like we will start picking peas tomorrow.

Here is a picture of one of our sunflowers. We always plant a row of sunflowers for our middle daughter. She loves them and they are beautiful in the garden.

It is a busy, busy, time but I love harvest time.

I have a really large project going on and I can't wait to share it but it will be a while before it is completed.

May Garden Party and a little update....

I can't believe May is here all ready. We have been busy, busy around here. My husband left on Friday. He is not out of the country yet but he mine as well be. He will possibly get to come home for 4 days in June, then he will be off to Iraq. It is a very sad time for us and I haven't felt much like blogging but I went to Rhoda's spot this morning and thought how fun a May Garden Party. I can do that. However, over here in Ms. we are experiencing quite the down pours. So in between pouring rain episodes, I went and took a few pictures. Now, keep in mind we moved to this place with little to no landscaping and along with all of our other projects I have been piddling with the yard here and there. So here are a few items we have planted.

Oh, and of course I forgot to upload my pics first so you can't click on them. Sorry.

These are the azaleas from the spring. They bloomed like crazy. They are finished now and I have already done all of the pruning of them.

These are some elephant ears that I have planted to kind of hide the air conditioner unit. Elephant ears do great down here in the South.
These are amaryllis. I have two kinds this beautiful pink and white and we have some red. I love these.
Here's my spider wort. I literally dug it off the side of the road to go in this flower bed. We have it growing all up and down the road and highway. It is beautiful.


Now, this is not such a beautiful spot, yet, but I wanted to show it to you for a reason. This bed is completely under the awning of my back porch. It gets very little afternoon sun. Well, when we moved here it had some hideous looking roses in it that were tall and leggy looking. Now we have planted dwarf gardenia in there and I need to add some colorful flowers.







I cut the roses back and moved them to this bed and they get more sun and are loving it.

If you look closely in the corner I have some purple jade coming up and taking off. I thought I had dug it all up and moved it but I guess not. It kind of looks good in with the roses.

I have three of these little planters with perennials and potato ivy around.



Here are the muscadine vines loaded with this years bounty.

Last but not least here are the blueberry bushes and fig tree we planted this spring. They are doing great and we should have about a handful of fruit this year.LOL However, in 3 years, Lord willing, we should have more than enough.

If you get a chance stop by Rhoda's at Southern Hospitality and take a look at her May Garden.

Outdoor Wednesday!!!

Good morning, friends.

Oh, my, 2 posts in the same week, I believe that is a record. I saw this little weekly meme at one of my other favorite daily stomping grounds and thought I would participate. Here are my blooming azaleas. They are really showing out. You can click on the pics. for a closer look.
We bought this house at the end of May last year and by the time we saw the house the azaleas had already bloomed, so we had no idea what color they would be. They are breathtaking to say the least and I want about 20 more of the same color all around my yard.LOL

A couple of weekends ago, we worked on some landscaping and mowing of the lawn. This is the Gerber daisy my daughter picked out for the front porch. It's blooming beautifully.

And here is a geranium I picked out for my front porch table. I just love geraniums. Red is my favorite color of geranium but my daughter's is pink. I guess you can tell who won.

Last but not least, this is what we have on the mini farm this week. The week before we left on our cruise, we noticed this chicken missing. She is a small chicken, a Wheaten Old English Game Hen to be exact. So we just thought something must have gotten her while out free ranging one day. We had looked everywhere and she was nowhere to be found. Well, she came out of hiding this week and look what she has with her.

She has 7 little chicks. This is the first time we have let one of our hens keep their chicks. We have always been afraid that predators would get them. However, she is doing a great job keeping her little brood safe and we are going to leave them alone and hope for the best. I can not tell you how much fun it is to watch a momma chick walk around the yard with her little babies in toe. It is pure joy.

I have to say letting the chickens raise babies the natural way sure beats this.

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We have 7 baby Americauna chicks in our laundry room. I bought them last week. They are the ones that lay the blue and green eggs. I will keep them in the laundry room for about another week and then they will go to the barn.LOL

Well, that is all for my Outdoor Wednesday. I hope you will all head over to A Southern Daydreamer and check out a few more.

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Have a great day!!!