Be careful clipping those rose bushes

Bye Poppy!

Most mornings I wake up early, very early. Even this morning I was laying awake at three a.m. making a list in my head of all I needed to do before the day got too hot. One of those things was to cut the old blooms off the rose bushes. Lynn told me years ago that if you clip the old blooms back to the first group of five leaves the rose bush will keep blooming.

By 6:30 Poppy was at work and I had fed and watered the animals, raked the chicken lot, swept the goat barn, and put BunBun is his lot to play. 

I cut most of the dead blooms off two rose bushes and moved on to the third one. It was at the third rose bush that I got the life scared out of me. 

Do you see that snake! It was right there in front of me. My hands were all up in this bush, clipping and moving the limbs. See the clipped stem right there in front? That was just a little too close for me!!

No doubt, there will be a lecture from Poppy. Where was that pistol I bought you? Why didn't you shoot the snake? 

Friends, it is just not in me to kill a snake or anything else. I catch house flies and wasps in a big yogurt cup and set them free. No way am I attempting to shoot a snake out of a rose bush! I did however move on up to the garden to work. The snake disappeared.

Still trying to get a good picture of the mimosa tree. One that really shows off the pink blossoms. It is the reflection that caught my eye here.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to be back soon. 

Love,
Henny

A very hot day!

Wild orange lilies are in bloom everywhere around here!

Dear friends,

Who in the world has time to sit down at the computer at 10:22 on a Monday morning. Surely not me! Actually, I have just walked inside from mowing the back yard.  

Can't stay but a minute. I'm cooling off! The temperature is climbing and could reach 100 degrees today! That seems unusually hot for June here in North Carolina? 

It is so hard to leave the housework and go outside to work first, but I did just that this morning. As soon as I cool off a bit I'm going up to work in the garden.

Wow!  I'm back and it is HOT in the garden! I managed to work about an hour.

I took this, not so great, picture of the Mimosa tree yesterday. This tree always reminds me of Madison and Michaela about ten years ago, climbing and laughing and hanging by their knees from a limb far up in the tree.

Okay, back to the heat...

Would you look at the volunteer vine, how terribly hot and wilted, but wait...

a little baby gourd. Do you think this is a gourd? Awww, I hope so!

Guess I had better finish the housework. Need to check on BunBun too. I worry about all the animals when the temperature gets up near 100 degrees!!

Appreciate you stopping by.

Love,
Henny

Tired, sleepy, and dumb too (me, not Eli)

Eli and I feel about the same today!

Here it is twenty til four, late afternoon and I have wasted the day away. Big plans I had of getting a ton of stuff done! Poppy is in a meeting in Raleigh and said not to look for him home before seven tonight. So what have I done? Again, wasted the day away! Here's the problem. The clock alarmed at 4:20 this morning. Poppy needed to be at the store at 6:00. Same thing yesterday. I am tired and my mind is not functioning. Seriously. 

I go outside and stand and stare thinking, what am I out here for.  The volunteer vine is moving right along. 

There are big yellow blooms but no fruit. Every blossom falls off like it was snipped off with scissors. I wonder why.

Oh! misspelled words! In my post about fishing I spelled Bream...Brim. Good grief, how embarrassing! I do know that Bream, not brim, is a fish. :)
Did you read Red's post on hiawathahouse.blogspot.com about embarrassment? I should have written that post. I'm good at embarrassing myself. Oh well, this too shall pass.

This peach tree I moved in early spring seem to be doing good. It has several small peaches.

That heavy duty yellow drop cord, actually there are two, hanging over the little door that goes under the house is where the dehumidifiers are running, hopefully drying things out. 

Okay, I don't feel capable of writing a decent post today, so I'll push away from the computer for now. Sure glad you stopped by.

Love,
Henny

Hungry Kitties and packing up

When you're hungry jump up on the freezer,

or on the washer,

and wait patiently for somebody to notice you.

Now if you happen to be outside there are all kinds of free meals. There just might be some fish bait left over from the weekend.

Guess not.

Is there any dirtier job than going through boxes of junk in the shop and cleaning out closets; sorting and folding and packing to have a yard sale. Probably not. I'm getting together with both daughters on Saturday. We are all meeting at a flea market and each of us with a car load of stuff.  Andee is driving down from Virginia, for goodness sake.  It is supposed to be 95 here on Saturday, so I'm thinking we will probably roast! The only bare spot in the little Toyota Corolla is under the steering wheel. I must be careful and not wreck. They would probably never find me.

Better get back to work. Just wanted to stop for a minute and sit down at the computer. It has been nice catching up on reading your blogs. :)

Love,
Henny

Special company for the weekend

Eli, Poppy, and Josh

Dear friends,

Has it really been five days! I don't know where time goes! 

My last post was about the big water problem...hot water and steam spraying for two months under the house without us knowing! As of yesterday, we have two dehumidifiers running.  After two weeks, we'll figure out where to go from there.  Treat for mold, new insulation?? Anyhow, it's been busy around here.

We also had company for the weekend.  You may remember when Poppy's brother Joe passed away a little over a year ago.  Well, Joe had two sons, Joey and Josh. We were so happy that Josh brought his two sweet teenage daughters, Kaylie and Brooke and spent the weekend with us.

Josh, Brooke, Poppy, and Kaylie

Kaylie is 15 and Brooke is 12. Not only did these sweet girls lose their Grandpa Joe who adored them, but just a few months ago their mother passed away. 

Brooke

These girls love the outdoors. Both of them hunt and fish.

Kaylie

These girls can bait their own hooks and then don't mind taking the fish off!!

Brooke and Josh

Kaylie

I hope they enjoyed being here as much as we enjoyed having them. The pond is still muddy from all the rain but it didn't keep the fish from biting. Josh carried 42 Brim and a couple of Bass home in the cooler.

Josh, Eli, Brooke, and Kaylie

Let me tell you, Eli had a blast!!! Two young girls to run and play with after months of a dull boring life with two old folks, Poppy and me. He was  simply worn out.

Brooke and Eli

Brooke looks pretty tired too

Eli and Kaylie

and so does Kaylie. A long day of fishing in the hot sun made all of us tired.

Gosh, will I ever catch up again. I need a day to just read all my favorite blogs. Thank you for visiting. Looks like we might get a thunderstorm this afternoon. Hope to be back real soon.

Love,
Henny

More water problems and the garden

Mokey says none of this is his fault!

What is that old song they used to sing on Hee Haw?

Gloom, despair, and agony on me.
Deep dark depression, excessive agony.

It's really not that bad. But gosh! I haven't had a minute lately.

I had planned to go into great detail about how our hot water heater sprang a leak under the house and has been spewing hot water and steam for probably two months now. We never would have known had the power bill not more than doubled in the last two months. Yes doubled! Oh my gosh! Friends, it pays to check under the house occasionally.

My nephew Greg, who just happens to be the best plumber around, came out and fixed the problem. Now we have the worry of drying out the flooded crawl space and the dripping insulation and the water soaked rafters, well maybe it's the floor joists I'm talking about. Anyway, it's all those boards the insulation is tucked into when you look up from the crawl space.

On a happier note, I've got happy pictures of the teeny tiny garden.

Tomatoes

The rain showers these last three days has everything in  the garden happy and growing.

Green tomatoes hiding in there

Onions

Poppy says I planted the onions too deep. I followed the directions on the bag of sets??

Crookneck Squash

Kale

Sweet Banana Peppers

I love Sweet Banana peppers! Sorry to gloat over such a teeny tiny garden. The garden makes me happy. I need happy today.

Blackberries

and down past the blackberries are the sunflowers and zinnias.

Smokey's new job around is watching over the goat's lot.

Ya'll okay down there?

and now a quick nap.

Too many pictures, I know. I get carried away. Poppy say, no wonder you are always needing new batteries. You take too many pictures of the same thing.

Thank you for stopping by.

Love,
Henny

and for good measure, I'll throw in one of old sweetie pie...

Guess I've finally gone off the deep end

About that grasshopper trap. Honestly, I think my Mother made that up herself. I searched on line for "grasshopper trap woven with Plantain" and could find nothing. Mama never sat idle. Anytime we were in the yard she was making Daisy chains or chains from the clover flowers. She could doodle better than anyone.  I'll have to show you sometime the neat doodle work she taught me. "Doodle work"! Would that be how you say it? Ahhh, remember "Doodle bug, doodle bug your house is on fire"?  Anyhow, Mama had the patience of Job.

I remember once when my sister, brother, and I were small. We were all in the car going someplace and mama gave us a stick of gum. She showed us how you could very very carefully separate the foil on the wrapper from the paper, then carefully smooth it out and gently wave it in the air to make a little crinkly sound. Now this is trivial but it entertained and fascinated me, of course, it doesn't take much. :)

Plundering around in my gardening basket a few days ago I found a twenty cent pack of Radish seeds. I figured it was too hot and too late in the season to sow them, but look. Have you ever seen a bunch as cute? :)

There was also a twenty cent pack of Cosmos in my basket so I dug a spot in the garden for them. I like those twenty cent packs of seeds that Walmart sells. Just right for my teeny tiny gardening spots.

Anytime Eli and Weetie are are awake the kitty feeder stays on the freezer in the pantry.  Glad Bickett didn't decide to back up.

I'm off to refill the hummingbird feeders and wash the kitchen window. Hope your Monday started off as fine and dandy as mine did. Gosh, knock on wood! Hope this week stays fine and dandy. 

Love,
Henny