Happenings on the Homestead in the Appalachian Mountains

Weekend Coffee Share

Hello there Adventurous Friends & Family, greetings from Georgia. How you doing this 8th week of 2024? It's 35 degrees out this Saturday morning. I'm having coffee with Moma & Sister a little later today. We're going over our baby shower plans, making a couple flower arrangements for Grand's wedding & also planning for an Easter egg hunt & dinner. Kevin is getting oil changing supplies to change the oil in his truck. It seems that Neighbors goats or deer or something has ate our daffodil buds just before they bloom out. The buds must be very tasty for some kind of animal. Grab a coffee or your favorite beverage & I'll tell you about the 2nd sampling of cookie I made for a potential participant for Grand's wedding cookie table, walk with me. 

Said a quick hello to Grand while shopping
for a baby shower gift for their Mom & getting
 a pizza to cook for our supper.

Mickey, Minnie & some others
at Nana Camp.

*  Nana Grandjoy Camp Run-A-Muk - Grandgirls spent the weekend & we had lots of fun, laughter & activities. We played Go Fish, worked a puzzle, built Legos, played dolls, watched Boss Baby, made cookies & went to Cousin's birthday party, to name a few of the things we did.

Gathered eggs for our breakfast
& fed the chickens.

*  Grands helped make my 2nd sampling of cookie for Grand's wedding. This recipe I call, pecan pie cup cookie.

Chopped up the pecans.

  

Made the filling.

Cut out the dough.

Filled mini muffin cups. They rose more
 than I thought they would.

Leftover dough.

Happy Birthday to Conner.

These are some of the things that went 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 7th week of 2024? It's a chilly refreshing 37 degrees out this Friday morning. We have daffodils coming up & they're about to bloom any day now. Kevin is going to do a little squirrel hunting with a friend this weekend, I'm going to be doing some activities with the Grandgirls. I got a haircut this week & ordered some flowers to attempt to make arrangements for Oldest Grand's upcoming wedding. Me & Kevin are on the arch building committee. I made a sampling of a cookie recipe to see if it would be tasty & presentable enough for wedding food. Grab a coffee or your favorite beverage & I'll tell you about a few more happenings around our place, walk with me. 

Happy Valentine's Day. I got my usual
box of chocolates from Kevin. I also got
a card from a previous coworker & friend.
The card was certainly a sweet surprise.

*  Kevin did some tree trimming around on the property & trimmed the fruit trees. I picked up a few sticks, Kevin picked up a lot.

*  Our next project is to redo the flower bed in front of the house.

This is how it looks now. A before picture.

*  There is going to be a cookie table at Grand's wedding. The wedding is going to be a small intimate ceremony to include immediate family & closest friends, so guests are going to be asked to bring some cookies to share with everyone. I came up with several ideas of recipes I'd like to try. I'm going to make a sampling of each before making the final decision of the winning cookie recipe that gets to go to the wedding. 

This week's cookie sample was thin
mint chocolate fudge cookie bar. 

Rose doing her own things
while I'm mixing & stirring
in the kitchen. 

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 6th week of 2024? It's 51 degrees out this Saturday morning with a 60 percent chance of rain this evening about suppertime. We went on a good camping trip this week. We watched several beautiful sunrises & several beautiful sunsets. We saw lots of wildlife especially armadillos. Kevin enjoys being the camp cook therefore that makes my enjoyment of camping a lot greater. We camped in an area where cotton grows & spanish moss thrives. There were lots of pine trees that produce huge pinecones. We saw several things we'd not ever seen before while out exploring. Kevin did a little squirrel hunting, we both did some fishing. We didn't get any meat for the frying pan as we had hoped & kinda planned for. The fish had size limits that we didn't reach. We gave it several good attempts at catching a trophy size largemouth bass over 24 inches. The squirrels stayed hid while hunting but we saw several while out riding around site seeing. Today I'm working on putting away the camping stuff, but 1st, grab a coffee or your favorite beverage & I'll tell you about a few more of the things we did & saw while out camping, walk with me. 

We set up camp in the designated campground overlooking the lake. The camp
area was dispersed, if you need it you had to bring it. We brought wood along to
have a campfire or 2. We were too busy & ended up never even building up a fire
in the firepit, the little pile of rocks you see there.  It rained the 1st day, so the 
awning we added came in handy.

There were firebreaks all
over the place that made good
 walking trails.

 

We were surprised to discover that
there were flowers in bloom. I 
asked Siri & this is sweet smelling
Carolina Jessamine. It's vine stays
leafed out green all year long. These
pretty little yellow flowers were
everywhere out in the woods.

This is a place where paper comes from. It was interesting to see these 
longleaf pine trees in their different stages of growth.

The biggest bed of palmettos
we saw while out walking.

 

Kevin spied this lion's mane
mushroom. According to Siri,
it's edible. 

This sign was posted at all
the boat ramps & fishing docks.
We sited 5 gators sunning &
swimming out in the water while
fishing. We watched the gators
through binoculars & wasn't ever
close enough to get a picture, thank
goodness. Siri said gators
are not aggressive unless provoked.

  

Spanish moss hanging
in the trees. According to
Siri, the moss lives
off the air for it's food &
moisture not the trees.

This memorial was marked on the map, but it wasn't pinpointed to it's exact location. We wondered what it was all about. We came across the memorial one day while walking one of the firebreak trails. We saw several woodpeckers in the area during our visit & assumed they were the red-cockaded woodpeckers that this memorial tells about providing the habitat management for.

I spied this upside down carrot.
According to Siri, its 
called stinkhorn mushroom.
It's hollow on the inside.

  

I spied this different shape of 
stinkhorn mushroom. I didn't
attempt to smell these to see if
they stunk. I usually don't go around
smelling mushrooms anyways. I'm
always afraid I'll ingest some of
their poisonous spores if they were to
 have any.

Rose soaking up some sun
during a picnic.

 

Exploring the cypress knees.
According to Siri, the knee's 
purpose is to perhaps help the roots
get air due to their swampy habitat &
might help with erosion among
several other possible things. Seems it's 
really unknown what the knees purpose
really is for. 

Mickey & Mini hanging out
at camp in a tree that has
ferns going on it.

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 5th week of 2024? It's 36 degrees out this early Saturday morning. We've got our camping stuff packed & ready to go. Kevin had some time off work this week due to the plenty of amounts of rain we got. He worked some more in the workshop putting up the ceiling. He ordered a blackberry bush & a couple grape vines to replace the ones that didn't make it last year. I visited with Moma & Sister this week. Sister made her delicious hashbrown casserole to go with coffee as we sat together & made some plans for Daughter's upcoming baby shower. Daughter requested a lady's floral theme. It's going to be a surprise what we came up with. Grab a coffee or your favorite beverage & I'll tell you about my 1st time cooking with an air fryer, walk with me...

I thought the chicken was a little dry &
needed spices of some sort.

*  Moma got us an air fryer for Christmas. I had seen oldest Grand use an air fryer so, I talked with him & Fiancée about cooking chicken in the air fryer.  Their advice was to be careful & make sure the chicken got done on the inside. 

Peach cobbler in the makings to go 
with the chicken, beans & rice for supper.

*  I was glad to hear on the radio on my way to work that the groundhog didn't see it's shadow & we'll have an early spring. Yay! I've heard rumors that daffodils are starting to pop up.  

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