Friday

Well it was close to 7 Am before we rolled out to start the day and it was nearly 70 degrees. There was lots of sunshine and blue skies we could see as we looked up through the tall trees that surround the cabin which keeps our temps down until the afternoon when the shade is gone and the sun strikes the deck and front porch. After our quiet times we both had cereal with fruit to start the day. Afterwards I headed down to work in the garden as it was cool and pleasant enough to hoe and weed the lower garden. Seems we will have a few cucumbers as well as a cabbage or two as they are starting to head up despite the holiday the green worms had while I was laid up with the bum knee.  That's about it from the lower garden except for a little endive which is still barely producing. I filled up the sprayer with miracle grow and gave the lower garden a good drink and feeding.

I drug out the ladder and painted the roof on the red building that was once an outhouse. I noticed I was starting to get some bad rust spots on the roof so I bought a quart of aluminum Rustolium and painted it. I think since I have over 1/2 a can left I will give it a second coat next week. After the paint job I took off to the top of the mountain to check on Joe and Jetta place and Nancy was going to hike. Yesterday she acquired a large blister on her heel from the new boots she bought and was trying to break in; and it was too painful even with a band aid and thick socks so she road with me  in the golf cart and then walked on the flat area with her sandals on while I picked beans. I got a really nice mess so I gave 1/2 of them to our "mountain mom" and she will share with her brother.

We got back around 12:30 and finished up the leftovers from last nights supper of pintos and Jasmine rice along with some fresh onions and a tomato. Wow did that ever class up those leftovers. After lunch I piddled around down below separating my garlic kernels from the stalk and I filled a large empty Smart Balance container with fresh home grown garlic. That should last a couple months as we use a lot of garlic in our cooking and salad dressings.

We decided to ride the golf cart over to Helen's and when we saw that Shirley was still at her place we stopped for a visit. They were getting ready to head back down the mountain to Cleveland, N.C. which is about a little over an hour away. She was up for a couple days with her mom, Ruby and grand daughter Josie. She was carting back three small watermelon's and about a dozen tomato's of which she was going to feed them to her pigs so instead she offered them to us; of course we obliged her and then we shared that bounty with Helen who will share with her brother Joe. That was a productive short visit. After Shirley's we headed on over to Helen's and visited with her for nearly an hour. I could barely keep my eyes open after setting down in her comfortable rocker, the a/c was blowing up the hall straight towards me which made for nap like conditions.

We got home and decided to just eat a fresh salad and to share a cob of fresh corn Helen gave us. I microwaved it for 4 minutes in the shuck and it is was just dewisheous. Wow does that ever cut down on the cooking time and the mess as the corn comes out of the shuck with no silk hairs on it. Just butter, salt and a little pepper and munch away. I picked some endive, beet greens and kale to go along with the homegrown cukes, onions and tomato's for our salad and wow is all I can say with some Greek dressing on top and then we finished the rest of the multi-grain french bread.

After the clean up we headed outside as the humidity seems to have abated so she dead headed some flowers and I picked up a couple trash cans of sticks, twigs etc in the back woods yard for a fire I started to burn our trash. We still had a sack of trash in the out house that had a couple of Gabriel's diapers in it. They are the hardest things to burn but all the small sticks made for great tinder and eventually they all burned up. Well, now at 9 PM its totally dark whereas a few days ago at 9:30 I could still see images. Summer is getting shorter as the cicadas are making such racket and that's another sure sign that summer is slowly fading away towards Fall. The high temps today still felt like summer but by late evening it became quite pleasant to work outside, LATER