Spring 2010

These minuscule purple flowers have been around for a few weeks. Daffodils are blooming all over the place! Our two native pear trees look like snowballs. LOOK at the camelia! Closer...Closer... And...sigh...a casualty of the winter. Overwatered. Both pots. (The ferns are dry as the Sahara desert!!??)I divided these last spring and gave the high school Agriculture department a good start for a parent plant for their annual plant sale. Good thing! I've got to buy some back for me!

It Ain't Easy Being....

Purple! I finished my second sock. And wore them to school Tuesday! One of the boys was upset...he was under some delusional belief that I was knitting the socks for him. I keep trying to tell him that his Spanish teacher will teach him how to knit...

I also wore my purple wave scarf! I looked snazzy...even if I do say so myself. The two items don't look as though they match, but the lighter purple in the scarf is the same color as the socks.

I made some quilt blocks and mailed them off to another quilter. On HGTV quilting message board, when someone is having a hard time with life, or a death in their immediate family, someone will generally volunteer to make a quilt for them. We make blocks and pass them on.

I pulled up at the library yesterday and look what was looking at me!

Hop on over to the Friends of the Daingerfield Public Libary's blog. (Check my sidebar for the link to click.) We had our first Breakfast With Rudolph. Emotions ranged from "What if no one shows up?" to "What if too many people show up?" LOL I don't know when someone thought to start a sign-in sheet, but we had 80+ people during the two hours the event was scheduled. One coffee urn was filled with 24 cups of hot chocolate...another pot had to be made! We had three boxes of donut holes...only 1/2 box was left. Our pigs ina blanket bakers, separated the fluffy canned biscuits and wrapped around Little Smokies. Just a few of those left. In a fit of, "What if we don't have enough food?" Two of us decided to make Rice Krispies Treats...mine were plain...hers had peanut butter in them. Just a handful left. We did good!

Now the photo taking and printing was another matter. We printed about 50 photos of kids sitting on Rudolph's lap. Problems? Yes. We had two very similar cameras. After the photographer, aka the librarian, took a few photos, we swapped out cameras. I removed the card, downloaded the photos to the computer, picked out what I considered was the cutest photo of the child(ren), printed it. Put card back in camera, swap with photographer.

This was a different program from what I am used to. On mine...if I leave photos on the card, my program does not download them again. The library's DID! As copy 1...and copy 2...and copy 3! Get the picture? So I started deleting the pictures from the card. Ooops...I deleted some pictures that had not been downloaded to the computer! Photographer did some retakes.

AND...we either have photographer error or camera problems. One round of picture taking had only ONE photo on the card. This has happened to her once before.

We made apologies around...more photos were retaken. Some people had to leave because of their time issues. Someone came into the library yesterday for a picture of her child, we looked. He wasn't there. Once again I apologized. She was very gracious. I told her that we should have the bugs worked out by next year. Fingers crossed!

So...we have swapped cameras, I have the library's camera and she has mine. We'll be taking photos and see if the problem pops up and which camera it pops up on. One more possibility could be with the card. Since the cameras are near identical...same brand, etc., they take the same card. We'll swap those out and see what happens.

Can't Sleep

I had a coke along with popcorn at the movies tonight. Since I don't normally drink caffeine to start with, those near weekly movie nights keep me awake past midnight.

We got about 3/4" of rain today. Low temp was 71...high was 91. While it can't be classified as cold, it was a whole lot better than the temperatures we had in June. Alas, the 100s will return.


And guess who left the camper door open? During a break in the rain, I went up with a mop, but nothing was wet.

Sam got the plumbing stubbed out and the ceiling and walls up in his potty room.

After he puts the corner moldings in, he'll move the shower surround in and secure it in place.

And the door is installed along with the door facings. The utility tub is plumbed and the plumbing is stubbed out for the hot water heater too.

I don't know what all he finished after I left for the movies...I'll report in later.

Cooler Today

'Cause the only time I did any work outside was first thing this morning!! I went to Mama's to raid the garden. I am sooo glad there was only one cucumber. I can't make dill pickles...they get soft. I can make a really good bread and butter pickles, but Sam doesn't like them...so I don't. Sam also doesn't eat them raw...I do. But can't eat the volume that's been coming out of one or two pickings!

Mama doesn't know this, but I took several to the library Monday afternoon and gave them to a patron who came in. At least they didn't ruin.

My crepe myrtles are finally blooming!

I get impatient waiting on them even knowing that they are a mid-summer bloomer. I am a bit concerned about the tree on the far right. I need to get some water down to them.

I walked up to the building to help Sam. He had the 'roof' on the potty room and plywood on a couple of sections. After dry-fitting the drain for the shower, he also dry-fitted it.

No commode yet. He's going to insulate the walls, then put wallboard on the inside before installing the commode and securing the shower.

Here's the tub. The hot water heater will go beside it.

Imagine my surprise when I walked up to the building and saw the FIAT he had hid out in the building! He didn't mention buying a FIAT!! Where's MY set of keys???

;o) I went back to the house to wash some clothes and clean some floors. Yuck! But I'm not complaining...the air conditioner was working just fine thank you very much. After a while, I walked back up to the building. Sam needed to go to Mt. Pleasant (20 miles or so away) to buy the wall board for the inside of the potty room. I had a brilliant suggestion to eat at David Beard's Catfish King. Back to the house to clean up and change clothes. When we got home...we didn't go back outside.

My kinda day!

Stuff

I purposely have not posted anything the week so that I could keep my first anniversary blog give-away up front (top) and center. Quite a bit has gone on this past week.

My views of the election: Bummer

These photographs are from my property.

The neighbor's horse enjoying the day. MOF, this is the only thing that neighbor has that doesn't bother or irritate us.

When we first moved in, Sam caught their son skateboarding on our front porch. When Sam opened the door and startled the kid he said, "Oh, I didn't know anyone was home." Yep, raise your eyebrow here.

Their two big dogs are never put up and come onto our property to do their dirty work: poop-piles not two feet from the front porch, new shrubs dug up, $200 pool cover clawed and torn. The little dog yaps at us when we are in our yard. We have ten acres - he yaps at us even if we are on the back corner. Gimme a break! After the two big dogs killed another neighbor's little dog, I called to let them know that my son was coming in with his dachshund and would they please put their dogs up for two days/one night. Nope. Sigh...

These two big oaks are the same variety. Look at the green leaves! (That tree lost half of itself when the storm from Hurricane Rita passed through.)

We have leaves falling all winter into...

This went on all winter last year as Sam wanted to see how much trouble it would be to not cover the pool. Talk about a nuisance! When the skimmer basket gets full of leaves, water can't flow so it gurgles and burps until you dump the basket. Thirty minutes later, you've got to clean it out again. I kept asking him even through January and February before the catkins (blossoms) started falling in the spring to puleeze cover the pool. The cover is still not on the pool...

Clouds behind the front this Thursday.

First Sign of Autumn

We are still rather green for this time of the year thanks to the rain we received in August and September and the rather cooler temperatures. We've had a rather nice entry into the next season. One of the very first signs of fall in my little corner of the world happens to be when the Tupelos (a variety of gum tree) start to turn purple. This tree is on the front of our property. Oh! I see some yellow across the road!

I look out the bathroom window every morning looking for signs of color in our pear trees. They are dropping a few leaves, but still have no 'color.'

I have signs of spring in my yard too. The small greenery between the border and the soaker hose are baby bluebonnets! They will be beautiful in the spring when they bloom.

Coxcomb and Sunset

I took these about dusky dark last night before we started getting rain from the most recent hurricane to hit Louisiana. We were predicted to get a great amount of rain, but Gustav did not come through northeast Texas. We have have had a good gentle rain all day. Thank God! Gustav lost strength before it hit shore and wasn't a repeat of Katrina.



On with the show. Aunt Cora Adams (who really wasn't an aunt at all but my grandfather's cousin's wife...however, my grandfather's parents died when he was an infant and an aunt raised him therefore making his cousins more like siblings...which would be more like aunts/uncles to my dad...confused? Sorry...) Anywho...Aunt Cora had an old-timey yard. She had flowers throughout her front yard and not one blade of grass showing. I remember a riot of colors, but most of all I remember the velvety softness of her coxcombs. These are some of mine:

The evening sky as Hurricane Gustav started to affect northeast Texas:

Lilies and Son

Thanks to Pam - Berry Ponds Quilts blog - I now know that my lilies are crinum lilies. I have two varieties. The red is evidently c.graminicola graslelie. I also have a white with pink that must be c.macowanii Sabie crinum. Both are African. They were all supposed to be red, so once they multiply, I'll be doing some digging to remove the white/pink and replacing with reds.

"My Son" has posted a couple of times; mostly recently requesting "quarts" of salsa! Ah! Children! What did we do without them? What do we do with them?

Born in 1983. Three weeks early by doctor's counting...Twelve years late by my calendar! Weighed 6 lbs. 11 oz. But he made up for it. He ate everything! I had knees like that too! 2002 came all too soon.