Last Day of July

Well reported earlier that squash was rebounding; not so. Don't know what's has been happening, but it's not good. Cucumbers however, are flourishing.

Red pepper and celery

soaking veggies

Tonight made second batch of relish. This is very intensive process - have to hand cut most of the stuff into small pieces. Started with red pepper and then celery (see left). Then moved onto onions and cucumbers. Once everything is cut up very small, you soak the veggies in salt for three hours. Then rinse, rinse, rinse.  Last thing is to put all into a pan with spices and vinegar and boil for  about 15 minutes. They you put in glass jars, put on a two piece top and process for 15-20 minutes.  They just came out a few minutes ago. But you have to let them cool for a long time, before checking to make sure they are sealed well. That will happen in the morning.

During the day today, continued the outside work along Crawfish Road. The banks were overgrown with things that I would rather were not there, including sweet pea, poison ivy, milk weed, and Virginia creeper, among others.  Managed to get a "bracelet" of poison ivy on my right hand (and other places too), a few days ago. Yuck!

bank a mess

Front bank after weeding




Fruit cellar falling apart

Fruit cellar in process of repairs

 There's an old fruit or root cellar (also sometimes called a cold cellar) on the property, but it's been deteriorating greatly. Thanks to Butch, my brother-in-law it's on the mend! He's doing a little at a time - needs to put on several layers of cement to cover it up. Now we need to get more cement!

Tomorrow- maybe a round of golf. This is supposed to be a fun place - right?


Property and garden photos

Garden of Eden

Killing ivy on trees

Well it's been a busy week. My sister and her husband came to visit and helped me work in the yard. Butch of course is still a little whirlwind and just keeps on improving things around here. First he started to stop the ivy and poison ivy growing on many of our trees. The trees look funny but eventually the ivies will die and the tree will be very thankful. You can see just  few of where he has removed the ivy near the bottom. Previously ivy went from top to bottom!  That bank was also filled with 5-8 foot weeds! Looks great now!  Then he went into what my aunt used to call the "Garden of Eden."  He's been cleaning that up too - also all overgrown. He's not killing everything but hopefully with what he's done, I will have a least a little chance to manage this garden. 

While he was working on this, my sister and I were removing other weeds in the front of the house and cutting the roses way back; removing errant trees, etc.  As always my sister is helping identify what is a plant we should keep and what we should get rid of.. What a job!  Also found a lot of poison ivy .. might have touched a little.. just now starting to see rash developing.. ugh!! Before I started you couldn't even see the ground cover, now it's very obvious.

Just so you don't think we worked everyday, we did take my sister and her husband to Abingdon to see a play and then to Heartwood to see SW Virginia artisans' work - fabrics, jewelry, art work, ceramics, wood carvings, furniture, etc. Some beautiful things. And for Jon's birthday we did no work - went to see the Settler's Museum - a very nice place with some info about the groups that founded this area in 1700's, a one room school house, and a farm with house, barn and out buildings with many of the period furnishings and household and farm implements. What a life. Boy do we ever take for granted how good we have things. And we had cake and chocolate ice cream. Also had company for dinner to see them both Monday and Tuesday nights. Fun was had by all.

While no one else looking I also did my first batch of pickles - bread and butter ones this time. The garden has rebounded somewhat from all our storms. Hoping it continues.

Zucchini rebounding

Cucumber

Yellow squash starting again

Tomatoes ripening



Keep on working

Most plants taste better when they've had to suffer a little.- Diana Kennedy

I hope that's true! Our garden took a beating, so hoping everything still tastes great!   The zucchini and yellow squash had lots of broken stalks, but these plants need to be trimmed anyway so think they will make it.

The grapes loved the rain and I don't see any damage to them from the storms. The Japanese Beetles however are making the leaves look like swiss cheese.  Have to see what I can do about that.


I love green peppers and we have picked some little ones already. I have both bell peppers and "snacking peppers" growing and they are starting to produce. Some plants are a little slower than others, so hope they all get going and are prolific this year. Hoping these guys get a little bigger before I pick them.

What is it they say about weeds, just flowers growing in the wrong location? Well if that's true we've got lots of "flowers" right now.  Some are where they belong - like this Turk's lily and the hibiscus (beetles also liking these). We also have lots of Queen's Anne Lace, Sweet Pea, Chicory, Milkweed, Bittersweet Nightshade, Honeysuckle, Phlox, and various other things I've yet to identify.

Sweet Pea

Daisy- like weed



Queen Anne's Lace and other

Hibiscus



Monday, July 16th

Been a long week since we got the power back but we are extremely relieved and have made much progress in getting things back to normal.  Lots of things to do here everyday that had nothing to do with having no power, but since it rained a lot too, everything outside was very muddy so it was a few days before we could really get much done outside.

My brother-in-law, Butch, has been up and at 'em everyday. He is a true workaholic! He has closed up the holes made by our un-welcome visitors with heavy duty metal screening, closed all the holes in the dining room closet, closed up the cellar window more securely (and now hopefully it won't leak either) and even managed to kill one mouse on it's way across the kitchen floor. We've seen no activity in a few days and every item in every cabinet, drawer, and closet where we saw activity has been washed in Clorox water (Luci and I did that). We hope those visitors are gone - we will see.

Butch also uncovered an old path from the back door to the shed and cleaned it up and made it a nice path again.. There are many old paths here, so I had to stop him, as I think the entire side yard is made up of paths, and that was too much for me.. But this one looks nice!  You can see the white/green hydrangeas on the side of the shed and some our our grapes too. The white hydrangeas are almost gone right now, but maybe we will see more as the sun comes out. Now we also need to get rid of Japanese Beetles who are attacking the grapes, beans, and a few other plants around here.

Just outside the back door are our blue hydrangeas. They are really pretty this year! That's oregano to the right of them.. We also have an old butterfly bush that got damaged by the storms we had; not sure if it will survive but we are trying to save it. See the beautiful butterfly that has come to visit?

The garden is now back in pretty good shape.. Lots of things damaged, blown over, etc. in our storms, but I think we didn't loose anything but some unripe vegies. Spent last couple days in the top garden cleaning it up. The tomatoes look very peculiar - all tied with strips of sheets to various contraptions to get them off the ground, but they are still healthy for the most part. My husband says it looks like Halloween in the tomato garden area. Poo-pah! We will have our soon-to-be first ripe tomato maybe tomorrow or Wednesday. and our first cucumber too which can be picked as soon as we decide what to do with it. 

Well it's been a busy day so think I will end my blog for tonight.

Remember - It's difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a homegrown tomato.- Lewis Grizzard

Power to the People

Well there have no posts for a while. On June 29th, there was a wild, windy storm and our power went out. We thought we enjoyed camping.. not so much anymore!  There were two more storms over the weekend that brought down a lot of other people's power too. Lots of downed trees everywhere; for us just a few branches- some big some small. One of the storms - a mini tornado - happened while I was in church. It's less than a mile from church to our house and the three cars who left church to come down Crawfish road all had to stop three times before my house to move tree limbs blocking the road. Our friends further down Crawfish had a huge Maple (probably 12 foot around and higher than their 2-story house) uprooted in their front lawn that took down power line and a couple fences and was laying in their driveway.  Neighbors with logging-size chain saws came and helped them clear this tree.

My other friends who own the dairy up the road had probably 15- 20 huge 40 year old pines come down.. one on the roof of their house which pulled down their generator line. Also lost a roof off one of their barns - part was across the road, some up in trees. Lots of neighbors and friends went there to help them out.  When I arrived, there were at least 3 chain saws working and soon there were lots more. Fortunately for all, I was one of those without a chainsaw in my hand- and we picked up limbs and moved logs as the chainsaw folks cut through the downed trees. Shortly they reconnected the generator and could milk the cows who were not so patiently waiting.. Cows by the way can get cystitis easily if not milked and then you can no longer use their milk and the cows can die from this.  By afternoon,  we had the road and the driveway cleared. I don't have pictures, but my neighbor does. I might post later, if I get them from her.

The neighbors who had the Maple down (and other downed fences on their farm (which they quickly repaired so animals couldn't get out) showed up at our house unannounced on Tuesday morning and said, "let's go get that pine in your back yard."  We have a chain saw and they brought a bigger one - plus a 30-40 foot trailer.. and we cut down the downed limbs and pulled down the biggest one with the jeep and a chain and totally filled his trailer.. He took it back to his ranch and is going to burn it in one of his fields. Not sure this picture does it justice.. but it was a couple of big limbs!

Just after we finished and Nelson I were thinking about going to the pool at the country club to get showers- pine is really sticky even though it smelled great - his sister and her husband, two dogs and two cats arrived! They are here for a few months and had lots of stuff to unpack out of the car.. They had been warned that we had no power but had little choice but to keep on coming (they drove from Nevada). There aren't many place to stay with that many animals.  We did finally go get showers by the way.

On July 7 (yes a full week with no power).  Electric crews andtrucks were all lined up outside our house waiting to go down Crawfish Rd where there were many breaks in the lines.  My TECO Storm Training came in handy.  I had looked at our pole and told the supv I thought the problem was the cutout on the transformer had blown and that there were only two houses it affected – mine and the man behind us.. and he looked at it and said if that was what it was, it was an easy fix.. ½ hr later it was fixed.. I don’t think we’d be back in service if I hadn’t pointed it out to him.. We aren’t on the lines they were here to fix..  Thank you to Kentucky for sending a power crew to our area to fix our lines.. And thanks to the AEP supervisor for taking me seriously.

Old stove

Well several weeks before this happened the oven on our stove went out. Nelson fixed it last time that happened but this time couldn't get it back on. So off to Lowes we went. We have a space that can fit no bigger than a 24 inch stove. Oh goodness, those have to be special ordered; "no one" uses stoves that small anymore.. Okay - they gave us a three week estimate but it arrived early, but while we had no power. So as soon as power was back on for a few hours, I called to schedule delivery. They arrived early yesterday morning.. The delivery man came in to see where it was going and started to laugh.. He said this delivery caused him to see 2 things he'd never seen before... our old stove design with the hood and a 24 inch stove with a glass cooktop.  The old stove was really actually an nice design and I hated to give it up - but couldn't find anything like it - that hood actually is designed to have a microwave sit on top of it and you can plug the microwave into the stove. However, years ago, the fuse kept blowing on the stove if you plugged in the microwave, so my aunt had a separate plug installed, but it was really nice to have a place to put the microwave in this crowded kitchen and a great height to use the microwave.  The stove was pulled out from the wall when I took this picture.. it really didn't sit in middle of floor. Also, here's our new one. Cooked a blueberry dessert and baked potatoes in new oven and dragon tongue beans on top for dinner last night, so already got oven dirty!

New stove

They had quite a time getting it in.. there are built in stoves, free standing stoves and drop-in-stoves. This is a free standing, but almost had to be dropped in. At first I thought it was going to have to go back, but they lifted it slightly to get it over front opening and got it in. Of course I can no longer pull it out by myself to clean behind it, but we'll have to deal with that somehow. The back part with the oven controls wouldn't go in - it's just over 24" wide, but the space was a little wider in back so when they lifted it, they could get it in. Very nice delivery men.  As you can see we have space to put a shelf in -  that will work for something.

Luci, Butch and I have spent two days cleaning and reorganizing.. so the kitchen is now in pretty good shape.. Luci is a gourmet cook and brought a lot of food and equipment we don't have or cannot get here; forgetting I think how little storage space there is.  Wonder if we shall ever use dining room table again.. 

If only we can convince the mice not to return.. working on that..   We have several other locations to tackle.. kitchen is not only place our little enemies inhabited over the winter.  These cats that are visiting, by the way, have never seen a mouse, so not sure what they would do... and both are fairly old. One cat hides in the bedroom all day long and the other one had free reign of the house yesterday, but showed no signs of interest in areas of concern to us. But maybe after she's investigated everything else..  Dogs are all having a fine time together and all exhausted and sleep great at night.