Monday

Well at 6:30 I rolled over and looked at the clock and said to myself"sleep in" but the body said get up. I thought when you retire you could just stay in bed as long as you want to, but no I have to get up even though I skipped a whole nights sleep on Saturday night. After my spot of tea and my quiet time I slipped out to check on the gardens while Nancy did her quiet time as well. We decided last night to use up the 2 over ripe bananas in the buckwheat cake mix for breakfast. My were they ever good and they held us to nearly 1 PM before we had a lite lunch.

I sprayed the flower beds with an insecticide as some little brown bug was eating the cone flowers then fertilized all the veggie plants before we headed off on what would be our only hike of the day due to a good steady rain that started just as we walked out toward the back trail after supper tonight. It sure cooled us down once again from the mid 80's to the high 60's in about an hour. After our hike we changed clothes and headed to Sparta to the library, grocery store and veggie stand and post office to retrieve 9 days of mail. We got back around 1 PM and had a lite lunch of home grown sliced cucumbers and the last of the pork roast we brought with us that Nancy had ground up for sandwiches.

The temps were starting to rise once again to the mid 80's but with the strong breeze it was tolerable so I cranked up the weed whacker and edged the whole property. I finally finished around 4:30 so really walking up and down the yards I more than got my exercise in for the day. I picked some fresh kale, a cucumber, beet greens, a yellow pepper, a couple green onions and some basil for the garden salad Nancy put together along with a couple grille marinated chicken breasts, white rice covered with sauteed yellow squash and onion and a dash of soy sauce. Yumm good eatin'. Tomorrow we are heading over to Va. to pick black raspberries for jam at a friends berry patch then afterwards we'll head on to Galax for some goodies from Walmart. Hopefully the rain will hold off in the morning long enough to pick berries.

Well the weather forecast starting Wednesday is for highs only in the 70's and low's in the 50's. Now that is mountain weather and what we are use to here. This high 80's and high humidity is what we have in Florida, plus the garden likes the lower temps. Any how its been a good day with lots of little things accomplished besides edging. Did I mention the Japanese beetles are here on my roses and wine berry bushes and I picked off at least a hundred or more today. Nite nite beetle, oh by the way here is a good way to pick beetles so they don't get away when you try picking them from whatever. Take a used plastic butter container and put about 1/2 inch of water in it then put the container below the limb the beetle is on and tap the limb and the beetles will fall into the container with the water. The water keeps them from flying away so they will cluster into balls of 5 to 6 which makes its easy to lift them out of the water and lay them on a flat something before squashing them with your shoe.

Well will close for now as this soft rain on the tin roof is making me very sleepy, LATER