Tuesday

Monday was another great day for working outside as once again the rain passed us by. I know I'm hard to satisfy but now I'm wanting a little side show of the rain. I drug out the garden hose for the first time this summer and sprayed all of the gardens. Wow I usually have to do this several times during the course of the summer months but with all of the rain when we first got here, today was the first time.

The morning started around 7 'ish after a long evening in front of the tube watching some close football games. We did our respective quiet times with our cups of hot drinks and then oatmeal with fruit for breakfast. I've noticed the spare tire is inflated once again due to all of the good eatin' and I've been especially bad with the bread and desserts. Now is the time to cut down on both as the abs have become soft and fluffy, oh well.

I headed down to check on the neighbors chickens and gather the eggs and found 3 in the nests. I let them out later in the day and they walks around scratching and pecking until nearly dark when they go back into their house and onto the roost. Next year we are having chickens as they are fun to watch plus they are great bug eaters. After a check of the gardens I fired up the chain saw and took down one of the crookest oak trees ever in my backwoods yard. Well that thing got hung up in another tree as it fell and it took me a couple hours of trying to get it on the ground. I tried pulling it down with a rope by hand, then the golf cart and the riding mower and all to no avail. I then hooked a chain to a tree nearby and with a powerful come-a-long managed to slide it off the stump and it crashed to the ground.

We took a break from the tree until after our daily hike to the top of the mountain. We stopped and chatted with Mike and Nancy then headed across the top where we visited briefly with Joe, Jetta and Zeke. We headed on down the mountain as I could feel lunchtime coming on. I had worked up a good sweat so I was needing some calories. After a lunch of fresh garden salad a lot of which came from my garden and the last of the Rosemary bread(thankfully). That is the best bread ever but oh so fattening.

I headed out and began trimming and sawing up the oak. Nancy came out to help me clean up the branches and leaves and pile the brush down into the gully below the yard where I will burn it on the next wet day and then we hauled most of the sawed up wood up to our wood pile for future camp fires. We were finished up in a couple hours and then rested on the deck reading until suppertime. I did managed to pick a mess of 1/2 runner beans. They were small but very plentiful because when I replanted them after the third time I did sow them too close together, oh well.

We ate leftover sauerkraut, smashed taters and pork for supper, yeow I actually think the flavor was better than the day Nancy fixed it. Well after supper I headed down to pen the chickens up as they were on the roost then made a few trips around the gardens checking for beetles. They have finally started to ease up with their multitudes and now I'm only finding a few of the voracious eaters still on the bean and basil plants. After dispatching them with a thumbnail to their heads I watered the porch plants and moved my seedlings up under the porch. I think a rascally rabbit nibbled the lettuce seedlings off the night before, oh well.

Well it was getting dark so I ventured in to watch Nadal finish off Jokovich in the championship tennis match in 4 sets and he picked up a cool 3.6 million bucks for 2 weeks work. What is wrong with that picture to make that kind of money for playing a game plus all of the notoriety for being on T.V. Well I flipped to the MNF game and the Redskins looked nearly as bad as the Bucs. These guys are way over paid for playing a game in my opinion and then to perform in a less than stellar manner, oh well!!! I hit the showers at half time and could no longer watch as the game had a criminal at quarterback in Michael Vick. Oh well!!! LATER