Once again the weather here in the high country was magnificent although we could use a little rain especially for my gardens. I'm hand watering at least once a day now that I have lots of new seedlings up. We sat around for most of the morning waiting on Nancy's new flat top stove to be delivered with in a time frame and when they were an hour overdue I called Lowes. Well there was a missed communication or mix up as the truck is scheduled for Wednesday not Tuesday to deliver, oh well!!
I started the day around a 6'ish roll out to birds singing at that hour of the morning. They are as happy as we are to be here in the mountains with temps in the high 50's and low 80's by the afternoon with little or no humidity compared to Florida. After my usual handful of vitamins and supplements washed down with a cup of hot green tea, a few minutes to give thanks and reflect on life's situations and to lift up some who are greatly in need of a miracle to regain life to the fullest and then the posting of this ramble I ventured outside. I'm starting to find a few slugs each morning in the upper garden and I quickly dispatch them with a hoe so far they haven't eaten any of the seedlings but with the numbers I'm seeing it won't be long before they will begin to cause damage. So far the rabbits have left the plants alone as well as have the deer.
After a glass of V-8 for breakfast(I'm going to try a reduce the size of this spare tire) I headed out to move up into 9 packs lettuces and spinach seedlings. All of the seeds germinated and look great and if all of these seedlings mature I can once again feed many. I now have radishes breaking ground after just 4 days since sowing. The lack of rain has helped since last year everything either washed away or rotted in the ground and the gardens were abysmal. Very few gardeners harvested anything last year; me included, oh well.
That barn swallow that is trying to build a nest under the eves is very persistent despite my tearing it down each day sometimes as many as 3 or 4 times a day. If I leave the ladder up beside the cabin she stays away from building but as soon as I take it down she is right back. I'm amazed at the correlation she perceives with the ladder being against the house and the tearing down of the beginnings of her nest building. I had to cover an area under the porch where they tried to build a nest around the satellite wire. The nasty mess they made had me concerned for health reasons so I covered that area with plywood as my potting table was just littered with dung, oh well. They are a nasty bird and with all of the woods around why do they want to nest in a building.
Well I'm doing quite well with my limited intake of calories as I had just a banana for lunch but with lots of reoxygenated water. I never once felt hungry despite all of the up and downs on the hilly yards. We headed out around 3'ish to visit with our "mountain mom" and move around a table on her deck so she could give it a coat of paint before heading to Sparta and Nancy's hair appointment that lasted over an hour. I headed down to the hardware store and picked up a new valve for the commode as the other somehow froze and cracked during winter despite draining all of the water lines before leaving in November.
We stopped at a local family restaurant for a chef's salad for me and fried Pollock with a baked tater and cole slaw for Nancy then headed for the local butcher shop to check out their specials. Wow do they have great looking meat and the prices are comparable to the large groceries in town. A pork loin with the bone-in was 1.89 a pound and they will cut it to your specifics as well as baby back ribs are 2.99 a pound; we are going to stock up for later at those prices. The management is awesome and they are almost like a mini-grocery store as well.
We headed back to the cabin and got ready for a hike when our cabin builder and old friend Ray Todd came by on his 4 wheeler and of course his dog with its tongue hanging out from following him. We had a nice visit and he looked well for a change despite all of his health maladies. We are all just overwhelmed with what our buddy Eddie is going through which is not good. He is still unable to breathe on his own and thus is intubated. If that stays the same they will do a trach on him next week which will only make it worst when and if he can speak again. There doesn't seem to be any improvement in his feelings and thus stays paralyzed. He can't speak or communicate so it's just a sad situation. He definitely needs a healing miracle.
We took off for the top of the mountain on a hike around 7:30 and met the new owners of Tommy and Fred's place near the towers. She(Shawnee) grew up in this area and is now a nurse in Raleigh and is married to a physician. They both have children from a prior marriage. She is very out going and friendly and we hit it off immediately. They both come here on their days off and then travel back to the Raleigh area to work weekly.
Well is was nearly dark when we got back to the cabin so it was hot shower time and that is relaxer for me as it wasn't long after I tried to read but the sandman was calling around 10'ish, LATER
