Oh yeah, we on the rebound

I am not gonna say it no more. I am not gonna promise to update the blog more frequently. I will try tho. At least I can say with some hope that I am on the rebound and making progress toward feeling some better. Dang its been a tough couple years at best. As most know I am diagnosed with rheumatoid and osteo arthritis and fibromyalgia. Plus the damage to my back and arms from a work injury. Some day I am gonna wake up and not feel pain and know for sure I am dead. But until then the battle rages. The long an short is my doctors had me on some meds that are good for fibro and helping manage chronic pain from such but the side effects were killing me. I have always all my life loved being outside, in the garden, having flowers, taking care of different beds of edibles here on the farm, raising our own meat, all things farm related. I have spent the better part of 2 years INside because I could not tolerate heat or cold, the fatigue and brain fog were just awful. Then I had an Ah-ha moment. Yes another one. All this started when I was put on cymbalta and lyrica. So if they cause that many negative effects I did not have before then I think it would behoove me to not take them. I am here to tell you getting off the medications was a nightmare. Literally! I had horrible dreams, violent dreams, pain, headaches. brain zaps,(you cant know unless you have had these), my tummy has been mad at me for a long time. I have not allowed myself to drive now for about 3 weeks because I just did not feel safe riding with ME. I am now at the point where the worst is over. I can walk without appearing to be intoxicated now, I can drive and feel safer in my own abilities. I am making positive progress. Thank God!! I have had some pretty good days this past week. I at least have been able an felt like getting out side to do things. In all this, I guess the message is, if you are sick, no matter what the illness. Be your own advocate. Research your illness or injury, know your options, know your own body and really pay attention to how meds make you feel. Sometimes a bunch of small changes (minor side effects) can be as bad if not worse than big effects. IF you feel your medication is causing more problems than it helps, ask the doc to change it if possible or adjust your lifestyle to make you better. The cymbalta I was taking slowed the chemical signals in the body that tells the brain "pain". It slows the pain signals but along with that everything else in the body as well. I feel like my digestive system has slowed really bad to the point I don't digest my food well thus not getting the nutrition my body needs. Now I have to work on that too from a holistic standpoint. Add more cultured and fermented food to help digestion, fresh pineapple for the digestive enzymes. I kept wondering why I could eat only once a day and feel full and not hungry all day and all night. That is not normal ya know. But tomorrow is gonna be better. Always!!

Today I actually drove me to town and didn't scare me or damage anything or anyone. I went to check on mom, she is doing OK. Had lunch with Rodger at the local DQ(mistake). Ran into some old friends I had not seen in a long time. Stood on the sidewalk and talked to them for well over an hour. Had intended to stop by the store to say hello to Lori, but dang by time I looked at my watch it was past time to for me to start supper so I came on home. I cant remember when I have been out of the house this long. We had fresh green beans, new taters, corn bread an garden maters for supper. I fixed a pan of meatloaf but not much of it was eaten. We all just pigged out on the garden stuff. Rodger got his after supper nap in and then finished installing our cell phone booster. It has helped our cell phone reception a good bit. Not much signal to be had out here in the boonies. But that is a good thing. There are places on our road that has no GPS signal too. We so hid even the satellites cant find us. While Rodger was doing his project I started getting my stuff together to plant my lil cabbage plants that we picked up at Lowe's yesterday while we were in Lexington to the dentist.

There were only 9 of them but that is enough to make a few more jars of kraut and have coleslaw for a while. They should be done before really bad weather. I had the black plastic over this whole section of the herb bed to kill weeds and it did a fine job. I just left the plastic on the area I am not planting to keep the weeds at bay. I did use landscape fabric under the cabbage with mulch on top to keep it in place.

My friend Anna had sent me several lavender plants earlier in the year and I put them in pots so they would get really good strong roots. I got some of them planted here at the west end of the herb bed so they can have plenty of light in summer time and bloom really well. The nearby plant is one of my mature sage plant that has been all but scalped. I have about 10 nice sage plants growing in here now. I really have made some headway on getting the herb bed back in order. Gosh it was about gone with no weeding this summer. Next project is to thin out the mint(s) and purple cone flower. They are so over grown. The oregano is out of control too. I did cut a bunch of it last week to dry for use in cooking. If we don't get rain tomorrow I am gonna try to cut the chives and get those frozen for later use. Chives are best frozen. I got a spot ready to plant some parsley too. Parsley is good frozen or dried. I dry most of mine. Its about time to be thinking about where I can plant some turnips and mustard for greens. I probably need to can more greens so we can take more to Rob and Amoy next spring. I like to just eat the turnips raw like an apple. I had some last fall that got lost in the back of the fridge and stayed in there for a good 3 months. When I found those they were so sweet and good. Love em!
I had my camera in hand (can you imagine?) when I went out back to close up the chickens for the night and check on my beans out back. This jungle looking mess is suppose to be lima beans. Not sure but they have grown up and down the fence wire they are trellised on till it might be near impossible to pick the beans.

The smaller beans to the left of the tall "mess" are a few plants of the Ky wonder pole bean. Those are gonna get trellised this weekend I hope. But the beans on the limas are huge and to me look almost like fava beans.

Well, what do you think, Limas or Favas? I don't know, but if they lima beans they are gonna be huge beans. They are wide and flat and I always thought Lima's looked like large green beans as they grew, just a bit bigger.

These things are a good 1 1/2 inches wide and they are just starting to grow. I better ask someone who knows more about Lima's and Favas than me. I bet my friend Deb will know.

Rodger and I were out of town last weekend to western Ky to visit Aunt Ann and Uncle Tripp for the weekend and pick some green beans. Oh my, that woman, even with her being sick and taking chemo and radiation treatments all spring an summer she has a huge garden. At least she had some friends that came from out of town to help her daughter in law get lots of things canned up. They got green beans done and while we were there I helped Shawna make and can some tomato juice so she can comfortably do it alone now. And Ann had lots of tomatoes that were close to ripe enough to make juice. Please keep this sweet lady in your prayers that she can make a speedy recovery and we can have her for many more years.
Not much else happening here, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

Need to get my ducks in a row

But these days seems like I am lucky to just get my ducks in the same pond. I feel lost in my own lil world. I lose track of time lapse. I have been thinkin for a week or more than I need to update my blog and let my readers know I am still kickin. Well finally , here it is. By the way, where the hell did summer go? Just the other day I was starting things in the greenhouse and wishing for summer to get things planted an now here it is mid-August nearly. Actually I have lost a lot of precious time and a lot of my life trying to get better health wise. NOW maybe I can be on the uphill swing. I have stopped a couple meds that I think were making me so fatigued and making me sicker. If I can just get me past the withdrawal of those it will be better. Making progress tho. Maybe in the near future I can do a whole post on what has happened an how I am making positive progress now. So many things to do an so little time before fall and frost, then the snow flys.
Our garden has not produced as much as we are used to but no panic here because when I do have an abundance I can like there is no tomorrow. So in leaner years we still have plenty of canned stuff. We finally got the first round of sweet corn put up late last week and weekend. Will be picking over it again probably mid week. Beans, well those are a whole nuther animal. Not going to be many if any of those this year. But we have enough already canned. Our tomatoes have lots of nice healthy green tomatoes on the vines but they will be a lil later getting ripe. No biggie tho.Our potatoes did really well this year. We got those dug a couple weeks ago and are in the building curing for later storage in the cellar. I plan, but we know how my planning goes, to can some of the smaller taters for quick meals. Not to mention the fact that the very best fried taters are ones that were boiled and left over. I got this idea from my friend Rosie who said in Germany her mother always had boiled potatoes in the kitchen to use in so many ways. And I love Rosie's fried taters. When I make garlicky herbed potatoes here I always make enough to have leftover fried taters the next day. So very good.
I did manage to get the sage cut an dried last week and ended up with a 2 gallon zip top bag nearly full of crushed leaves of sage. I still need to dry some oregano and mint from the herb garden. I should be planting some parsley to chop an freeze. Parsley an chives are much better frozen than dried. Parsley is OK-ish dried but better frozen. Chives definitely better frozen. A few weeks ago when I was making dill pickles I used some dill that I had chopped an frozen last summer. Good stuff.
I had a doctor appointment in Richmond last week an before we left town we had stopped at the local fruit stand an Rodger got me a box of peaches. I think the box holds 3/4 bushel. I ate a lot of em but did manage to can several jars too. This week I am looking to get nectarines. The fellow said he would have them last week and this week. Need to purchase those right now as my lil fruit trees are not big enough to produce yet.

Ended up with 11 pints an 2 quarts. Not bad considering I ate lots of fresh peaches. Love em!! My counters in the summer kitchen are pretty cluttered for it to be the middle of what should be canning season. At this moment I have lots of empty jars out there an a flower pot in which I had started some cabbage for fall cabbage. My cucumbers in the garden ate my cabbage. Covered them up and with all the rain the cabbage rotted from all the water. But not much can be done when ya have so much rain and don't  get the cukes trellised. Plan B, start an try to grow fall cabbage. Need to be thinking about gettin the fall crop of chickens growing too. If I order now they will be big enough to butcher off before the weather gets too cold and we will be done with our late season meat supply. Probably raise about 25 more for the freezer. I still have several from the spring "crop" to last till we get more raised.
The past couple weeks I have felt a bit better with some med changes and stopping some meds. A lil more energy I guess. I even had enough energy to clean the windows outside. I had found a recipe on Pinterest for window cleaner to use outside an you just need to hose off the cleaner, no drying needed an it drys spotless. Yippee!! So I tried it an be dang, it worked. So I will share the recipe with you so maybe it will make your window cleaning life a lil easier.

Outside window cleaner
1/4 cup ammonia
1/4 cup vinegar
1 tablespoon Jet dry(like used in the dishwasher)
1/2 cup water
1 teaspoon dish soap

Mix well in spray bottle an take hose an rinse window to get the dust off so as to not scratch the glass. Spray the cleaner on the window and with a brush or sponge or even a mop wash the window. Rinse with the hose again and leave it be. The windows will dry spotless. This makes window cleaning so much easier for me. I don't have to climb on a chair or ladder to reach the taller ones, and no streaks from drying either. Now I really need to clean the siding with bleach to get the "green stuff" off. Maybe when I get another burst of energy that I am not forced out of necessity to use for something else I can clean the siding.
Not much else happening here on the farm, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

Its not so bad after all

I thought our poor garden was gonna be a total bust this year, but its not so bad after all. Although we still have plenty grass in there that is covering up some things it is still decent. We have made enough pickles to last a year even if we don't have any more. The vines are nice and green, just no cukes or even bloom on them. Not sure about why that happened. But we good either way. Our taters are not visible for the grass but the vines have already died back and its time to dig those. Most likely we will do that this weekend if no more rain till then. Well probably Rodger, Jason and Miranda will get em out. My pepper plants are short but have lots of lil peppers on them and still growing. The tomatoes are nice size plants, green and have lots of little tomatoes. They will just be a lil later than we are use to because we planted everything later this year. I hope to have sweet corn in a week or so. And I think we will have plenty to last us.  Watermelons and cantaloupes are coming along too. Beans are starting to bloom. Not sure why they came up so spotty but we should have enough to last us. The corn we planted for cornmeal is huge and the ears are huge as well.

Rodger is 5'11 and the corn is twice as tall as he is. This is the Reid's yellow dent. An old fashioned open pollinated variety that we save our own seed for. So far we are happy with this variety for stock feed an to make corn meal. The chickens sure do like this stuff shelled. They don't eat much of it in summer but in winter it is a different story. Makes nice dark yellow egg yolks too. Rich and healthy for ya.
I am making progress on the herb bed, finally. I did get my new lavender plants planted in the herb bed and some sage plants that I had started in the greenhouse. They have been in pots for a several weeks to get some growth before transplant. Sure makes a difference in how hearty they are in the ground. I got some mulch put down too around the mature sage plants as well as the new ones.

I plan to try to get the sage cut for drying tomorrow as the weather has been much less humid for a few days. Rodger helped me last evening to get the rest of the weeds pulled so we could lay down black plastic to kill out weeds in the far end of the bed. By time we finished it was too dark to get a good picture, but trust me, it sure looked better.

This section of the herb bed has been established for a few years and has filled in pretty good and it has mulch so not much problem with weeds growing in here. A few strays that are easy to pull out here and there. The section that will have the black plastic on it for a few weeks is gonna be used this fall for  a few cabbage, maybe broccoli and brussel sprouts for a fall crop. After I harvest the sage tomorrow I plan to make a spot to sow some parsley seed to cut this fall. I am guessin if I plant it late I can let it come back in the spring an go to seed for a new crop next year without reseeding. Kinda takes care of itself. I have lost my tarragon plants. They got over run by the oregano and mint. Suppose I will have to obtain some new plants next spring. I still have enough dried to last a few more years. Seems like on the farm, its feast or famine. In those "feast" years I can and dry everything I can get my grubby lil paws on so we don't run short in the "famine" years. It has worked well for me so far. My strawberry plants near the driveway are still producing some. I did get the bed weeded, it just needs mulch put down now to keep the weeds out. Same with the bed in back of the house.
My new lil beans that I planted in the bed out back came up rather spotty but the ones that are up look nice and healthy. I will trellis those for extra beans to can and save seed from. I feel better now that we kinda have a handle on the weeding here. That got pretty depressing for a while with all the rain an heat and not being able to get any thing done about the over growth.
The excess rain has sure made nice berries this year. My 1 thornless black berry plant that my friend Rosie gave me a couple years ago had lots of nice big berries on it. I know this because I stood out there a few days ago an picked and ate about 2 big hands full. So sweet and juicy. I still have more than enough berries canned to last a few more years without having to pick any in the awful heat. So I took the lazy way out this year.
I finally got my car in today to get the right seal put on the moon roof to keep it from leaking. It seals nice and tight now. The mechanic also unclogged the drain hole so it don't get water inside anymore even if the seal should leak. He did say this is a rather common problem with these vehicles. Now to get the duck tape residue off the top of the car. Maybe I can get that done tomorrow too if it don't get too hot or rain on me.
I know this subject is touchy with most people but some of us still smoke. Yeah I do, and yeah I know its bad for ya. Now get off my case. With that said, we turn our attention to the ones of us who still do smoke. My friend Anna sent us a cigarette rolling machine. Bless her heart, so kind of her and her hubby. Hubby and I can both smoke for about half what it was costing for cigarettes. The machine is so dang neat. Much improved over the ones of long ago like I have of my dads that you had to lay the paper in, put the tobacco on the paper and dampen the edge, manually roll the lil handle to roll the cigarette up. Hell I would have to stop smoking if I had to do that. I have "NO" experience rolling. Nuff said about that. But when we go to the big city we plan to get our tobacco to start rolling our own smokes. I like menthol so I guess I will be finding the menthol filters to roll with. So if you still smoke it is well worth lookin into purchasing the rolling machine that basically shoves the bakker into the filter cigarette thingys. But if ya wanna really cut down or quit, by all means do so or roll ya own. Anna also sent me a huge bag of lavender that she had dried. I love love love the smell of lavender. So very relaxing to me. My plan is to make some lil sachets or bags and fill them with the dried lavender and store with bed linens. I will likely make a pretty one to just hang on the head of my bed and hope it helps me sleep a lil better. Hell any thing that will help a lil. Maybe if I do enough things that help a "lil" that all those "lil's" will add up to a good nights sleep. One can alas dream, er hope to dream.
Not much else happening here on the farm, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

Wet season, garden is pitiful

It has been abnormally wet this season and our garden sure has suffered for it. Not that I can complain much tho. So far we have not had to haul any water for the well as it is up to the top full right now. The grass got a big head start in the garden and it sure makes it hard to trellis beans when its hard to find them in the grass. But it was dry enough this evening that Rodger did get the beans plowed out and he said if no rain tomorrow evening he will try to stick one patch of beans. I feel so bad that I cant stand the heat and get out and help him but the heat makes me very ill. I get dehydrated really quick and sick if I get hot. So seems I am banished to the house for now till cooler weather. We for sure must plan the garden better next year so as to not get so far behind and have to fight the grass in the mud. Rodger got the grape vines in the vineyard tied up to the trellises last evening and he came back in soaked it was so hot. Cant imagine how hot it will be to try and pick blackberries. They are getting ripe too. Rodger brought in about a pint other day when he was out driving the farm and found some ripe. I would like to have a few gallons canned but not sure about getting out in the heat unless we get a drop in temps for a few days. Which is not suppose to happen till this weekend. We shall see.

I finally got around to making my lil "saddle bags" for my car. Just bags to hang across the gear shift to stash things in like cell phone, inverter and such. I kinda like em>

 

I like the pink tiger stripe. Guess this will keep the fellers from wanting to drive my car. Naw, they will just take em off and toss em in the back till they get out. I know them. Anyway the evening I was working on the bags I had to go out to the car to measure the length I needed for the handles and got a heck of a surprise. My passenger floor was full of water. I was a little upset to say the least. We drove the car thru monsoon Mary and it didn't leak a drop and sitting in the drive way its full of water. We assumed it was coming from the moon roof and ordered a new seal for the window. Until it comes in I ran the risk of sucking water out of the floor every day after it rained so I coerced Rodger into helping me solve the problem till we can get the seal installed. This is the result and it works like a charm.

 With duct tape, WD-40 and baling twine you can damn near fix any thing on the farm. I told Rodger when I take the car to the shop to have it fixed I will take full responsibility for the duct tape repair. So I am sure the shop will get a good laugh out of this. But by dang my carpet wont be ruined in the meantime. Rob thinks we are true rednecks. But we raised him so am thinkin that makes him one too. His just don't show so much. 

So far this summer we have made 18 quarts of bread and butter pickles and more to come. Tomorrow we should have more cukes ready to pick. I think we will be making some dill slices from those tho. I am still working on getting the 50 lb bag of big onions dried and stored. Then it will be on to the celery and carrots. So I will start more onions in the dehydrator in the morning and they will be done the next day. Its taking a longer time to dry them crisp with all the humidity right now but they need to be dried. 

After I start the onions in the morning I am gonna try to get some weeding done in the herb bed before it gets hot outside an I cant take it no more. Then maybe try to get some carpet cleaned and major house cleaning. At least I can do that if I am gonna have to be stuck in the house. So we shall see what all tomorrow holds when we wake up. 

Not much else happening here, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

Life goes forward

Life goes on, forward most days, but only one day at a time. This weather has been yucky, we have had too much rain for the garden. Might be hard to believe but the grass has about taken over. Its still far too wet to get in there to work so the grass will keep growing. We do have a few nice days forecast thru the weekend. We should also get a lil break from the heat as well with temps staying in the mid 80's. I can do 80, its those 90's that do me in. I don't acclimate well at all any more. I am either freezing or burning up. I don't have a happy middle any more. But at least my knees will be happy for a while. I got the last of the series of 3 injections in my right knee yesterday. It is a bit sore but not as bad as they have been after the injections. So there is a plus. Now if only this stuff will kick in and do its job and relieve the pain in the knee joints I will for sure be happy about that. But the doc said it would take a while and depend on a lot of factors. So we wait. I don't do well trying to squat down to weed beds and such. So guess that is out of the question. But I certainly have plenty of it to do. I did manage to finish the beds out back this evening with Rodgers help. Still need to get the strawberry bed by the drive and the remainder of the herb bed weeded. Rodger bought me 20 bags of mulch to put down on the berries and herbs to help cut down on the weeding. Maybe I can get a lot of that stuff done this weekend as it is suppose to be nice and not rain. After I get the mulch down it can rain a bit to settle it in but no downpours please.

Last week after my doc appointment we had to make a trip to Lexington to Sam's club to pick up supplies for the company and get a few things stocked back up for us here at home. As the rain destroyed our onions in the garden we bought a 50 lb bag of onions at Sam's. I have been slicing some of those and getting them dried out in the summer kitchen. I also bought carrots to dry an celery. I am surprised at how many carrots and celery flakes I use in cooking. Lots to say the least. Our carrots did not grow this year either, not sure if it was too wet or too cold when we sowed them. But we planted twice an none made it. I still have enough carrot chunks in the freezer to last another season but needed some dried to make my version of Ms Dash. It has been a challenge at best to dry things in the dehydrator in the summer kitchen for a while. The humidity is high outside and it takes longer even in the dehydrator. But we making progress. Still got a lot of onions, all the celery an carrots to dry. Maybe by time I start canning beans I will be done with all the dehydrating. Rodger did make it to the garden last weekend and picked a bunch of cukes and we made bread and butter pickles with those. Tomorrow evening we will pick again and make more. We do use a lot of pickles. Rodger will eat the pickles as a snack if I don't have a dessert made. We try to make at least 20 quarts of bread and butter pickles and about that many kosher dills every year to last all season. When I have cukes that get too big to make good dill slices or spears I usually chop those and can them as chopped dill pickle for use in deviled eggs and such. Lots easier than chopping as you need them. Just open the jar an take out what ya need for the recipe.

Our yard had gotten beyond over grown before Rodger could get it dry enough to mow. Kinda resembles a hay field right now. Wont take long for it to grow back tho. He even ran the weed eater in the garden between some of the rows of veggies to get the grass out that was really tall. Its hard to believe it is almost mid July already. Where the heck did the summer go. Well I have lost most of mine going to the doc once a week for the past 6 weeks for the injections in my knees and before that we were on vacation. With the injections I am suppose to stay off my feet for 48 hours after so that has knocked out 3 days per week of not being able to get anything done. But we done with all that.

My hens are all trying to set I think, I have 6 sitting on eggs and the layers are still laying with them. That is a waste of good eggs. I have 4 hens that have been setting long enough to hatch 2 batches of chicks and have not hatched one. So if its not unbearably hot out tomorrow I may try to get the eggs out of those nest an trash em. The chicken house needs to be cleaned out again but not sure how spunky I feel with a wheelbarrow. I could use the waste on the beds in back where my Lima beans and tomatoes are. The broccoli I planted late is not doing anything so I think I might get it out of those beds and put a layer of chicken manure and bedding down on the bed and cover it over with black plastic or newspaper, if I have enough here at the house. That should break down nicely and make a good spot of fall cabbage and maybe some greens, or lettuce and onions. But definitely cabbage. Not sure the cabbage in the garden is gonna do any good or not. Rodger said the cukes have taken over the cabbage row where we didn't get those trellised. Not much you can get done when the weather wont cooperate.  It has stayed so wet that we still don't have the greenhouse taken down and stored away yet. I sure wanted it nice and dry before we try to disassemble it and put it back in the box for use next year. It was dry this evening but was too late to get it taken apart after Rodger got in from work. Maybe this weekend. I think our weekend list is growing by leaps and bounds. Our plan for tomorrow evening is the pick cukes and put the net fence around the grape vines here in the yard. The vines are loaded with huge grape clusters. The nicest ones we have had yet and I sure don't want the chickens to see the grapes and start eating them before they get ripe. My luck we will fence the chickens out and then wild birds will find em and eat em all. I see a good amount of grape juice coming from all those nice grapes this fall if we can keep the critters fooled. I don't think I will make any more jelly as we still have a lot that I had made a few years ago when I had a good grape harvest.

Not much else happening here on the farm, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

Gathering building material

I am seriously thinking of gathering materials for the building of the ark, again. Well that is a lil stretch but if we have many more weeks of rain like this we may sure need an ark to keep afloat. And the weather forecast is for rain all this week into next week. It is mud in our garden. Although the garden stuff is growing, so are the weeds and grass. I am betting I have cukes to pick if and when I can get in the garden without getting stuck in the mud. Our yard looks like a jungle out there. My herb bed is pitiful. I can not seem to get ahead of the weeds in there much less keep them at bay. Geez!! where does it end.

I get my second in a series of 3 shot in my right knee. Both knees still give me fits and hurt like the devil but I am still hopeful the injections will help long term. The doc still says it will take a while to tell a noticeable difference. So wait I will. After all what else can I do?

I used the June apples that aunt Ann brought to me for making some apple sauce to can. I left the sauce a lil bit chunky. Now I really need to find the recipe I used when the boys were lil to make an applesauce cake. The cake had applesauce in it and on top as well. Very moist and for the most part rather healthy. As I remember it did not have too much sugar in it and contained nuts and raisins. A rather healthy snack if there is such a thing. But hey, if ya think about it most cake does contain things that are good for ya. This is what I had for breakfast this morning.

Yeas I had Italian coconut cream cake for breakfast with my coffee. I love this cake. Aunt Ann made one for me to bring home this past weekend. Rodger and I went to visit them and spend some time with them before she starts her chemo treatments in a couple weeks. She and I got to hang out and just have fun, going to an auction(my first live auction), hit some yard sales, picked up some flowers and other plants at the local Lowe's store. Just had a good day talking an visiting. Rodger went with uncle Tripp to fly his plane to another airport after having to land at a smaller one the night before. He also made a stop in Louisiana to get some fresh gulf shrimp. We had those for dinner that night grilled along with steaks and other assorted goodies. Ann made 2 of the coconut cakes, one for eating at the cookout and 1 for me to bring home. That was so sweet of her. And she really should have just been taking it easy but its just not in her nature to sit around. But we had a great weekend and Rodger enjoyed Tripp's company and getting to fly in his MU2 plane.

Two of my favorite people. And my doggie. Luna loves people and she took to Ann and Tripp when they were here. Ann's lil dog Jack was so jealous that they were paying attention to Luna. He is their lil travel companion. And very easy to travel with.

We have not had much going on here on the farm lately with the rain. But we can hope it dries up enough to at least go check on the garden stuff. It looks good from the house.
Not much else happening here, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella

Can I just rant and fuss today

I will try not to cuss but just rant about the dang blogger site. As most of you know I do not have ads on my blog and never have. I don't get paid for the stinking ads that keep popping up at the top of the age when I log into to blogger to do a post. This just irritates the snot out of me. So if when you check my blog ignore the ads at the top which are mostly singles sites or just something that will take you to a pop up ad of some sort. Sorry, nothing I can do about them to get them off here. I might have to move my blog or create my own website. I will see what happens in the next little while.

Dang I cant remember what I told you last time I posted so will just update from memory. We are getting plenty of rain to make the gardens grow. It also makes the grass and weeds grow too. The garden is doing good. Rodger said he needed to trellis the cukes but after he told me they had started to vine already I suggested he not mess with them. We have had rain and with adequate rainfall plants will be brittle and break easily. So at this point I think it best to just left them crawl on the ground. Makes them a lil harder to pick but better than breaking the stems an killing them dead. I think we will have enough produce to restock our food supply for winter and lots to eat too. As matter of fact we had canned green beans with new taters last week.

We were so happy to have Aunt Ann and uncle Tripp to visit this past week. Ann is still battling cancer and is getting ready to take some stronger chemo treatments. She is very positive and upbeat and we are still praying an holding out for healing for her. Aunt Ann looks great, her hair is back after having the radiation and it looks good on her. Uncle is his usual jolly self. Love those 2 bunches. Looking forward to working the hunting lodge with them this fall. She brought me some June apples to make applesauce with and a gallon of blueberries for the freezer. Gosh the blueberries were huge an so good. I love to eat them just fresh or after freezing them take them out an let em partially thaw an then eat em. Blueberry banana smoothies are awesome too. Makes a quick easy breakfast for me. And its good for ya too.

Our lil grandson is growing like a weed out there in Nevada. I would so love to see him in person before Christmas. Dang plane tickets are so pricey. I do get pictures and videos from his momma and daddy often tho and we sure do love those. So being a grammy I have to share the pics with ya.

I really love this pic of him and his momma. So precious and you can only imagine what is going on in that lil mind.

Love this one too, he is in a big hurry to get out of that car seat and into something else.

I think I want this one printed off and enlarged, matted and framed. He is a happy lil boy here and if you see the clock in the background it says 1:35 and I just wonder if  he is keeping his momma up. But who would not want to stay up and see that sweet smile. Cant wait to see that lil boy in December. But in the mean time we will enjoy him thru pictures, videos and hopefully Skype once I get my new computer. The one I am on now is old, about 8 years old, and is not capable of video chat. Today I had a warning pop up telling me to shut the computer down to prevent damage due to over heating. I know the cooling fan is not working properly and soon or later I will be puter less. So Rodger told me to go ahead and order a new one. So I did and it will probably be here this week from Amazon. Until then I will keep my fingers crossed.

I did get out and empty out the greenhouse today and move the pots that had plants in them to the herb bed for the summer.So soon as we get time and its not hot as blue blazes outside we can take the greenhouse down and store it away till next spring. I got in the herb bed later and got some of the weeds pulled out of there. I really need to add a good deep layer of mulch in there so I don't have to spend all summer weeding that thing. That gets to be a big job to keep up with. Not so bad right now but when I get busy canning it will get far ahead of me and then I just have to wait till fall and make the best of it. Maybe I can pull the other stuff out tomorrow and get the black plastic laid down in there to kill the weeds and then plant some stuff that I need to replant in there. Sure will make it much easier to keep up with. I already have a pot with some parsley and chives started and just need to make a place for  them that wont get over run with grass and weeks. I still don't have the old bath tub set in the ground to start my fairy garden yet. I am collecting ideas on Pinterest right now for that. I saw a big dried gourd that had the side cut away in a fairy garden for a house. I do have gourds so maybe that is an idea for my fairy house. Yeah like I need something else to tinker with. In this weeding process this evening I did find a lil Mexican cuke plant that had come up volunteer tho. So I will let it be and hopefully get a lil trellis put up for it to grow on.

Not much else happening here on the farm, so till next time, blessings from the McGuire homestead.

Stella