Happenings on the Homestead in the Appalachian Mountains

Weekend Coffee Share

Hello there Adventurous Friends & Family, greetings from Georgia. How you doing this 39th week of 2024? I got the pansies planted. They are doing good. I got into an ant's nest while digging around in the dirt. I got bit a million times before I realized what was going on. I stopped by the farm stand to get a couple of pumpkins for the baby shower. The place was really decorated up for fall & Halloween. Grab a coffee or your favorite beverage & I'll tell you about Hurricane Helene barreling through our place this Friday morning...

Watching live updates of Hurricane Helene
as she approaches land & moves toward
our area. 

*  We were woken up this morning about 5:30 am by the roaring winds off of Hurricane Helene as she was passing through. She went more east of us than weather forecasters were predicting. We never lost power. The lights flickered a few times, just enough to upset the time on the digital clocks. We had some heavier items blow over outside, the bench overlooking the creek & one of the heavier lawn chairs near the firepit area. The refrigerator on the tractor shed porch blew over onto the jeep. The corner of the refrigerator put a crease in the side vinyl window of the jeep top but thankfully didn't punch a hole completely through it. There doesn't seem to be many tree limbs or twigs that'll need to be picked up. The pond filled up with water & there is overflow. We'll see how long the water stays in the pond. Maybe the weight of the water will patch the leakage. 

The creek is still rising 
from runoff. We parked
my car & Kevin's truck
beside the house just
in case those big trees
went down. 

 

I had thoughts of grabbing my tube
& floating around while the water is up.
 It was drizzling rain, so I decided it best
to continue on with my morning walk.

* Some other happenings:

Lots of big nice pumpkins to choose
from at the farm stand.

I spy with my little eyes,
something black coming
out of the chicken house.

A little something for
Daughter & Grand Twins,
maternity tops for Daughter
& an apple snack for the
babies.

  

Happy Birthday to Sister Sharon,
celebrating with birthday cake,
presents, balloons & silly hats.

These are some of the things that's been going on in my neck of the woods, how has your week been?

Happenings on the Homestead in the Appalachian Mountains

 

Weekend Coffee Share

Hello there Adventurous Friends & Family, greetings from Georgia. How you doing this 38th week of 2024? This week I did a little painting. I've been busy the past couple of weeks hanging out with Grands & Great Grand & loving every moment of it. I worked in the garden & orchard quite a bit, putting the last bits of goodness in the freezer & pulling up stalks & weeds. I've got flowers to plant. Most the marigolds dried up. I don't know if we forgot to water them till it was too late or what. Anyway, Kevin brought home some pansies from the farm stand that I wanted. I'll replace the marigolds in attempts to have the flower bed in front of the house last a little longer with annuals. Grab a coffee or your favorite beverage & we'll talk about some of the flowers that are blooming before I head out this weekend to Grand's football game, I'm hopeful to get to see Grand Twins in 3D/4D ultrasound pictures, then off to the lake fishing with Kevin. It's supposed to be a nice fall weekend, though Kevin says it's going to be too hot & too many leaves still on the trees for him to go bear hunting just yet.

We saw asters in bloom
while out jeep riding.

 

The perennial begonias Moma
gave me back in the spring are
doing good. Actually, she sent
the plants to Kevin for the new
flower gardens he was making
at the pond area. He built &
 planted, it's my job to take care
of the plants, dead heading & such.

*  This week's visit to Granny & Sister's was painting & a cookout. Next week I'm planning for us to celebrate Sister's birthday with presents, balloons & silly hats along with reading the book Happy Birthday Thomas!.

Making a ghost.

  

Making little spiders & big spiders.

Our completed projects & the cute jack-o-lantern
shirts I got the Grands. We're ready for Halloween.

Sister cooked us up some burgers, trying out her new grill for the 1st time.
The burgers smelled so good cooking. It was a perfect beautiful fall day to
have a picnic, until... the yellow jackets showed up. We moved inside to
finish eating our lunch.

*  I love this memory from 10 years

ago & I share it every time it pops up:

What would you do to get free doughnuts from
Krispy-Cream? We dressed up like pirates.
September 19th, Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Grand gets bragging rights for
catching the biggest fish this
summer. The girls ruled this
  fishing trip. I caught the 
other 3 fish.

*  Some other happenings:

Grand & Girlfriend participating in
"Anything but a backpack" Day.

   

We've been hauling rocks to place
around the spring. The pond still isn't 
holding water. We're still hopeful the
leak will fix itself.

  

Kevin's strawberry runners planted 
for taking root. He'll be taking the
plants to the farm sale coming up
in a couple weeks.

These are some of the things that's been going on in my neck of the woods, how has your week been?

Happenings on the Homestead in the Appalachian Mountains

Weekend Coffee Share

 

Hello there Adventurous Friends & Family, greetings from Georgia. How you doing this 36th week of 2024? We went to the rodeo & got soaked. It rained from start to finish. I did enjoy a small bag of kettle corn before the rain sat in. I discovered some nice green bell peppers in the garden. I stuffed them for supper. Kevin was just as surprised about the peppers as I was. The plants got off to a slow start & we had pretty much given up on them producing anything more. We worked on cleaning up the garden some. Kevin potted many of the strawberry runners. Grab a coffee or your favorite beverage & check out us married 39 years...

*Happy Wedding Anniversary to us.

Now, with our 1st Great Grand.

Then, our wedding day back in 1985.

My version of stuffed peppers.

These are some of the things that's been going on in my neck of the woods, how has your week been?

Happy Birthday to Grand Tripp.

Happenings on the Homestead in the Appalachian Mountains

Weekend Coffee Share

Hello there Adventurous Friends & Family, greetings from Georgia. How you doing this 35th week of 2024? I had a hair appointment & a teeth appointment this week, both went good. I set another appointment to have a couple more teeth worked on. School started back for the Grands. I helped decorate for Senior Grand's 1st home football game of the season. Kevin butchered some more chickens. The garden is winding down though we're still getting a few things. It's that time of the year that I make a fall bucket list. Grab a coffee or your favorite beverage & let's see what's on the list this year...

Garden goodness, tommy toes, okra,
 sweet peppers, strawberries, squash
 & a tomato.

* Grand's 1st week Back-to-school.

*  My Fall Bucket List is the same as last year:

1. Put out fall decorations 

2. Go to a fall festival 

3. Make a snack mix using candy corn

4. Get candy for trick-or-treaters

5. Drink pumpkin spiced coffee & eat pumpkin spiced everything

6. Get some pumpkins

7. Start Christmas shopping

8. Watch fall/Halloween movies every day in October

9. Get out coats, hats, gloves & long johns

10. 

    Moma's angel trumpet plant.

    Go camping while the leaves are colored

11. Make potato soup

12. Drink spiced apple cider

13. Go to a football game & have a tailgate party

14. Take pictures of fall

15. Make a pumpkin pie

16. Take a leaf looking drive & have KFC for a picnic

17. Carve a jack-o-lantern

18.  Make pumpkin chili

19. Got vehicles ready for winter

20. Rake leaves & make pumpkin bags

Spur of the moment
pumpkin roll.

More & more leaves
 are falling.

5 generations.

These are some of the things that's been going on in my neck of the woods, how has your week been?

Daughter & Babies are doing good.

Happenings on the Homestead in the Appalachian Mountains

Weekend Coffee Share

Hello there Adventurous Friends & Family, greetings from Georgia. How you doing this 34th week of 2024? It's been a few weeks since we've chatted. I got the blackberry jelly made, enjoyed a food truck event & hosted a Farm Day Summer Day Camp. Kevin butchered some roosters for the freezer & got his retirement benefits approved. We're both officially retired now, though he chooses to continue working part-time for the time being. Great Grand was born & Moma spent a few days in the hospital getting treated for phenomena. I spent a few days with Grands while their parents went on their annual anniversary get away. Me & Kevin had a couple good days out on the lake fishing & then went for a jeep ride. Grand's football & cheer practice started, the leaves are starting to change color & the goldenrods are blooming. Fall is in the air. Grab a coffee or your favorite beverage & we'll catch up. The gender of Grand Twins has been announced & I'll introduce you to Great Grand...

Meet Ash. 8 pounds 1 ounce.
20 3/4 inches long.

*  I took the jelly making supplies up to Moma's. Me & Grand spent the day up there just a few days before Moma got sick. We made jelly, planned the final touches of Cousin Camp & started planning for a Two Little Pumpkins baby shower for some time in October. Then we all went to the food truck event in town for supper.

Cooking & mashing up the
blackberries to make
juice for jelly.

 

Straining out the seeds & pulp
from the juice.

Beautiful & tasty blackberry jelly. It's so good on buttered toast.

Me & Sister tried the pina colada
lemonade. It was delicious with
the cherries & crushed lemon
pulp.

Elvis was there at the food truck event.
Well, at least it sounded like his voice.
We enjoyed listening to the band while
 we ate.

*  Farm Day was fun. The time went by so fast. There were garden food samples, chicken petting, a picnic & playing in the creek. Have you ever had mud pie coffee? If you have, I know you will agree that it's one of the best kinds of pretend tasting that there is. We did an egg drop activity to see if an egg could be protected from breaking using some things normally found around the house such as cotton balls, newspapers, toilet paper, lemons, marshmallows & pieces of egg carton. The results of the experiment were that egg cartons do protect the eggs very good. Most the eggs survived being dropped from 8 to 6 feet, but there were a few that didn't. 

 

Everyone took turns touring the
chicken house & gathered a 
couple eggs.

The food sampling consisted of looking,
touching, smelling, handling, squishing,
tasting... followed by a spit out bowl. There
 was banana pepper, tommy toes, cucumber,
blackberry jelly & strawberry jam to taste.
 The jelly & jam was tried on graham
 crackers. Several rounds of Hot Squash
 was played.

*  Back in mid-July when Daughter's Friend was visiting, me & her hosted the Grand Twins pregnancy announcement & gender reveal. Daughter wanted to wait for the public gender announcement since one of the babies had 85% accuracy on it's gender at the time. We made predictions & had a lot of fun with it. Baby B continued to be stubborn as it took several hard hits to crack that ball open.

Baby A - It's a girl, 100% positive. Turns out,
 the later ultrasounds show it's a boy 100%.

 

Baby B - It's a girl, 85% sure. The cord
was between it's legs. Turns out, the
later ultrasounds show it's a girl
100%, maybe.

Where the lake meets the river, there was about a 20 degree
 colder difference in the water temperature & we could
feel it in the air too.

Sitting around the fire at Cousin Camp,
eating popcorn & listening to creepy
stories being read. The Cousin's
are Moma's Grands, 3 generations
of them now.

These are some of the things that's been going on in my neck of the woods, how has your week been?

Happy Birthday to Grand Austin &
Granddaughter in Law Jessi. Happy
 Birth Day to Great Grand Ash.
We celebrated their days at
 Cousin Camp.