Thursday

This morning was just a bit different as the skies were overcast and stayed that way most of the day. We did see a little sun in the early afternoon but not for long as the temp's didn't get much warmer than the low 70's. WOW what a gorgeous day and it did feel like a fall afternoon at times. Right around supper time a light gentle rain began to fall and has increased to steady rain at times to what is referred as a soaking rain. It's still raining as I write this post as well as the temp's have dropped dramatically.

After our quiet times, a light breakfast and a load of laundry hung outside on the line we headed out for a long hike. The morning was super for hiking and Nancy and I made it all the way to the top of the mountain from our cabin without taking any rest stops. Wow that was a first for Nancy. After our hike we came back and had a lunch of leftover chicken pot pie. Yeow that was as good as when we first ate it last night for supper.

Nancy took several flower pictures and a scarecrow picture for Ava. This scarecrow is very special as we learned last week a small wren had built her nest with 5 eggs inside the shirt just below the head. Well today I checked it and there were 5 little hairless chicks(baby birds) inside the nest. We feel like new parents.

We decided it was time to make jelly from the raspberries we picked yesterday in Galax. We are a team when it comes to this fun but messy adventure. First I rinse all the berry's and put them in a blender to make it easy to extract the juice. I next pour the blended berry's into a strainer that separates the seeds from the blended pulp and juice. While I'm doing this messy procedure Nancy is boiling water to soak the lids, rings and jars. She also is measuring out the sugar and getting ready to mix the extracted juice with Sur-Gel and sugar into a pot and bring it to a boil. Next we must fill the jars with this boiling mixture then tighten a lid with a ring to the jar then place it in another pot of boiling water for 10 minutes. We did 2 batches which made 19 normal size jars and 3 smaller ones. The second batch was mostly a red raspberry mixture but added a little of the black juice to make a full batch. We had the 3 small jars to not seal so Nancy make homemade biscuits with our dinner and we topped them with this just made jelly. Ummmm is all I can say.

Speaking of dinner Nancy made one of our favorite "comfort food" meals. She took some smoked ham and boiled it with new potato's, carrots and fresh green beans and of course the biscuits with the just made jelly made for not only a beautiful dinner but a very tasty one as well. We were going to share this dinner with our next door neighbors as tomorrow is Jodie's birthday; but they must have been out celebrating. What a perfect meal for a cool rainy evening. Oh well another time. LATER