I see it has been since September since I posted. I've just been too busy and staying off the internet. Our service we have limits our data usage and includes our phones so hoping after the first of the year I can change that to unlimited and then can come on here more. The pictures below are not in order as they happened since September but will try to explain each one.

We recently got a new addition to our family. This is Miss Kinsey and she is a German Shepherd. Sonny's middle sister gave her to us. It has been some years since we have had a puppy. Those big wire kennel cages are wonderful.

In September I set up a display booth at the fair again this year. It was much better than last year. I found out they gave ribbons to the best ones but I wanted to keep ours simple so it wasn't as elaborate as others.

In October Sonny and I went to Little Rock to begin his surgery for knee replacements at the VA hospital. Well it didn't happen. We spent the night in one of the worst hotels I've ever stayed in. I won't go into detail about it. Then at 5:30 we took the shuttle to the hospital where they wouldn't perform the surgery because he had a 3 week old chigger bite on his knee. So we had to wait on our ride and then after the disappointment and anger of it all, Sonny had decided to use Medicare instead. Well seems he can't have that done until he enrolls in it and then it would be July before he could get scheduled and so looking at going through another year of waiting. So he changed his mind and has rescheduled for Jan.9. This will just be the starting process again as we have to start all over and will probably be in February or March before it happens. 

In November we fired up the smokehouse and smoked 5 turkey breasts, 2 hams and 20 tubes of summer sausage. The turkeys and hams were for our church Thanksgiving dinner. 

In between all that we drove out to the little cemetery where we have decided to be buried. I love old churches so it has this little chapel on the grounds. 

The end of November we celebrated Sonny's 72th birthday with kids and grandkids. 

We also had Christmas pictures taken for a change. I really want to try to do this each year. My sweet daughter-in-law Carmen is great with cameras so she did the honors. 

And best news is our oldest 2 granddaughers are getting married. No dates set yet. The picture shown is the one who lives closest to us. Other lives in Arizona. 

Kinsey

on our way to VA hospital. Hate city traffic. 

Sonny smoking meat for Thanksgiving.

The small chapel at our cemetery. 

Fair booth display

Sonny's 72th birthday with son and granddaughter...goofing off. 

Our granddaugher Nicki and boyfriend Kolin...soon to be married. 

Our Christmas photo

Rugs For Sale

I was having so many problems with etsy not depositing my money into my bank account so I closed out my store and decided to try to sell here on my blog. I have posted my "Garden Run" rug to the right with a paynow button if you are interested. But here is the bigger photo of the rug. 

It is traditionally hooked...that is it is hooked with a heritage hook on cotton monks cloth backing using 100& new, hand-dyed, and recycled wool strips. It is bound in wool and has hanging rings on the back for hanging on a wall.

You need to take care when cleaning your rug. Do not ever use bleach or bleach products on the rug as bleach melts wool. Also do not machine or hand wash the rug. The water and agitation will make the monks cloth sag and fray. 

To clean: Spot clean only. Shake gently and vacuum lightly. To deep clean and if you live were there is snow...lay in clean snow for an hour or 2 and then dry and block.

To block a rug...lay on a hard surface...(I use my wood floors). Lay a damp towel over entire rug. Using an iron without steam and set on highest setting, press going up and down (not sliding your iron around) several times over entire rug. Remove towel and let it sit and dry preferably overnight. 

Just a few more shots. Still staying busy but finally summer work is slowing down. We are finished with the garden and all the "putting by" of fruit and veggies so now I can concentrate on my crafty things for a change. Looking at maybe recycling my clothes into something new for me to wear.  

But on with the photos......

We thought we would only have a couple of bushels of apples this year but we got 4 bushels. I put one bushel up into apple sauce and another into jelly. The rest we gave to 2 of the sons to use. 

This is the overflow of our pantry area. Most of this was canned this year and there are cases stored towards the back of the shelves and then you can't see but many more stored on the floor under all the shelving area. So we are prepared

This was my sweet potatoes. I love the faux sweet potato vines to use just for decorations and so easy to grow...but this year decided to grow my own REAL sweet potatoes from slips I grew on my windowsill. Well either a deer or a rabbit decided to have the vines for dinner. The plants are still alive and putting out new leaves so I will leave them for awhile until I harvest. 

This is my little sweetheart...Fredrick VonBlackballs. He is a chihuahua and he was a rescue dog. He and Lulu (below) are both around the same age and thinking maybe about 10 years old. He still has his moments where he thinks you are going to beat him but we never have but think it may have occurred before we got him. 

This is LULU and is a totally mix breed. She is also a rescue dog but so so sweet. She loves to hunt the squirrels and rabbits in our yard and especially loves to ride in our ATV. Both she and Freddy are outside dogs as we don't plan to ever have an inside pet due to hair and allergies. But we couldn't love them more. We have a dog house for them on the porch of our sunroom building and then in winter we move it inside the sunroom building and keep a heater running so they are kept nicely in cold weather. In fact the summer heat we have is harder on them than the winter cold. 

Busy time around the home

The weather has been so nice for August. We really haven't had a hot summer. Most mornings it is rather cool and we have had so much rain this summer that the grass feels like plush carpet and of course has to be mowed quite often.

Sonny and I sit on the porch most mornings right after the sun comes up and enjoy the view. I love this time of day with the morning sun peeking through the trees. 

View from the porch. 

Field across the road with the cows. 

closer view of cows. 

I love this speckled cow. I think she is my favorite.

We harvested the apples and pears and I made lots of jam. I ran out of sugar and won't be back to Sam's to get more for a few weeks so I just juiced a few grapes and froze the juice to get ready to make into jelly. I still have stone or wild plums yet to juice.
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Homeplace

Just a few shots from around the homeplace.

I missed the wrong caption under this photo in last posting. This was a few of our peach trees when heavily loaded with fruit....not muscadine grapes. 

I love Spider Wort. This time of year it is about the only thing that blooms and the blooms are my favorite color.....blue. 

This is close-up of Spider Wort bloom. I hear Spider Wort is also edible. 

Our walk through to the patio area. This is an overgrown muscadine but rarely has fruit as it is too shaded. We do keep it trimmed back or it would grow all the way to the ground each year. 

This was a huge visitor hanging from our gazebo. Meet Mrs. Spider. 

We finally got our first egg from our hens. They are only 5 months old and have laid 2 now. We are so excited. 

This egg was so small but perfect as all things are in God's kingdom....


And as always........

Busy few weeks

My newest rug finish. It is for a new mother. Here theme is deer heads with flowers and colors are mint green and coral. The baby's name is Oakley. 

We have had a busy few weeks. I had a tooth pulled a few weeks ago and wound up being surgery and took almost 2 hours. Sonny had one pulled this past week and took only 30minutes. Tough luck on my part. I got a summer cold right after the tooth bit and it settled in my left ear. I wound up having a burst eardrum over it and had to get some very expensive ear drops but it is all better now. 

We only have one old fashioned antique clematis still blooming. 

Jackmani clematis

The garden has been winding down as well as the fruit. I put up peach jam and put the plums in the freezer to make jam later. I only put up 4 gallons of blueberries and we let family and friends come and pick what they wanted and still had bunches and wound up letting them just drop off. I put up salsa, pickled green beans and roasted bell peppers. We are still having fresh tomatoes and peppers. The rest of the garden is pretty well over and done. We still have apples, pears, muscadine grapes and figs to ripen and put up. I plan to put up some preserves from the figs and pears but will make the apples into applesauce.  Muscadines into jam. Just a few photos.

muscadines

fig tree

apple tree

Will share more later.

Sorry about the video

I don't think the video I tried to put here works ....oh well. It really was great!!
On gardening....this year our garden is only about 1/3rd the size it usually is. But we are still getting a few goodies from the smaller garden. Our fruit has been great this year. The plums not so good but we have had a bumper crop of peaches. Our first one to ripen it's peaches is a red peach and is the best tasting of all of them. This year we put carpet tack strips up around the trunks to keep the squirrels and other 4 legged critters from stealing the fruit but seems we have a 2 legged robber...We had picked about half the peaches on this prize tree and then the other half all disappeared in one night. But we still have other types of peaches. Of course I'm putting up peaches in the freezer and also making peach jam. The jam will make terrific Christmas gifts this year.

We have had a bumper crop of blueberries. I still have berries in my freezer from last year so mainly been having the family come and pick what they want and they are now falling off and fermenting so smells like blueberry wine around the bushes now. 

The youngest son and daughter came out and picked yesterday and she is such a joy. She is our youngest grand and is spoiled rotten. but she still remains sweet. She is also my mom and grandmother's name sake. 

While they were here, we gathered some tiger lily seeds and found out the pollen from the flowers can really stain you as got some on my face...now I'm wondering if I could use it for dyeing wool. 

I'm leaving you with an awesome sunset.

photos wonky

For some reason when I went to add photos to last post, instead of adding to the bottom, they kept going to the top so will try to post the rest here.

Our 2 granddaughers were with this group. As you can see from bottom photo, they did hand motions to black light with white gloves set to music. 

I didn't want to put up the entire video so clipped it some. 

And as always...

Been awhile

It has been a busy time lately. Fruit has been coming off so was time to start putting by all the goodies. We have been eating from the garden now. ....and kids and grands have been out a lot. Then had major problem with the tooth that broke off early spring. Seems the root died..And of course it happens on a Thursday night and most dentists are not open on Fridays. So I lumped along until Monday and when I called, I found out my dentist was on vacation until Monday June 26. I then called their standby dentist and they did not know my clinic was closed for the week so they did not have any openings. I then called 9 different dentists in 2 days. Most would not have openings. The oral surgery unit in Hot Springs charged over $700 and that was just the starting price to pull the tooth. Finally one of the other local clinics I had called and had told me they would call me if they had cancelation. They called at 1:30 on Wednesday and I had to be there at 2...15 miles away but we made it there and the tooth that was supposed to be a minor removal wound up being oral surgery and they had to drill it out...took 2 hours but at least it was only $300 and not over $700. 
In the midst of all this, our church has had VBS every evening. I had signed to work but with so much pain I only got to help out on Thursday in the kitchen. Then last night the kids had their program. Two of our granddaughers were in it and did the hand motions to music...they had a blast all week. 

Some of the parents at the program night. 

Our pew with our grands sitting spot.

There were so many kids and parents and grandparents that we had to pull out extra chairs to sit along the sides and back. 

Our pastor 

Our pastor is so full of energy. His wife was the coordinator for the entire week and they both did a terrific job. Since weather was rather warm, he had his head shaved and the cap he wore had a built in wig. Our granddaugher is behind him in this photo. 

Our pastor's wife

Rooster in the Mix? Baby Mockingbirds! And Blueberries

Our little hens have sure grown. They have finally eaten all the fire ants out of the old stump in their yard.

A couple of days ago, I told Sonny I thought one of our hens was a rooster. We so called bought pullets but when they are little it is hard to tell. Arkansas law states you must buy 6 biddies at a time. I think to keep kids from getting babies for pets or at Easter. Anyway our farm and ranch store had a special if you buy 6 you get a 7th one. I even watched them gather and crate them for us so just figured they were all hens. Well this morning I woke to the most awful noise...sounded kind like an owl. I'm thinking "O NO, an owl will catch and eat our hens." Well looked out in the yard and it was a rooster among the mix.

He is the one on the left and is much larger than the others so guess he has a harem of 6 hens now. 

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Along with our wanderings around the place this morning, we discovered a mockingbird had made a nest in our muscadine grape vines. It makes it closer to the blueberries which they love..so guess a fight is on our hands later. But I was able with a lot of fussing from mama bird to get a close up of the babies.

You can see the beak on one in the bottom center right side. All are fuzzy and really ugly!!!! Of course not to mama bird.

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While there I discovered some of our blueberries are getting ripe so ate a handful.

In a week or so, we will be picking them and looks like we will have a lot to give away this year. 

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And as always.....

Mother's day and other things

I finally got the photos off my camera to post. Last Sunday was Mother's Day. Our preacher always has a family reunion that weekend and so Sonny got to do his first official sermon that morning. Our youngest son and family came as well as the middle daughter-in-love and her 3 girls. I forgot my camera but the one youngest son's wife had her phone and took this photo of me, my son and Miss Molly.

I failed to get a photo with the other 4 girls. They gifted me with such nice gifts as well. An owl tote bag and lots of candy in a mug.

Then Monday night, our only grandson Reid graduated from High school. We did the long drive over to watch but since it was so late, we came straight home without photos but thankfully one of the DIL's took this one and shared.

This is our oldest son and all 3 of his kids. In order from left to right. Dani, Shawn, Lexy and Reid. All 3 of these kids are out of school now. Lexy graduated from college this winter and is now a nurse in charge of a nursing home in Houston. Lexy is a hair dresser. Reid is going to a community college and hopefully will go on to become a game warden. So proud of all our grands. 
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I love this tree. I bought it for hubby one father's day years and years ago. I call it a worm tree. It is really a catawba tree. It blooms early summer and the smell is heavenly. You have to seed it with the worms which multiply and are mainly used for fishing bait.

These worms only live on this tree. We seeded it one year and the following year Sonny took off too many of the worms and so now we need to reseed it again. They eat all the leaves but won't kill the tree. Amazing how nature works. 
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And as always....