Well Thursday was the first full day of no rain in quite sometime. The bright blue skies and brilliant sunshine was a comfort to the body and soul and of course the gardens, yards and flowers loved it as well. We made a trip to Galax, Va. for some shopping as we are having company on Saturday and then again on Sunday and Monday with overnight guests.
We started the morning with a sleep in once again until after 7'ish. We saw the blue skies above the tree tops that surround our cabin and immediately our dismal rain soaked attitude improved. I often wonder how folks in the north make it through the winter where they go for weeks without seeing the sun. After a lite breakfast we got ready to head out for town. I loaded up the unburnable garbage as we made a dumpster stop on the parkway. Just as we were getting ready to leave the cabin, neighbors George and Gail Redmond came by for a visit and brought us a framed picture of our cabin covered in snow from many years ago. Seems our once old friends on top of the mountain took the picture and had it framed and now are moving again and didn't want the picture anymore so they gave it to the Redmond's to give to us. It was taken when the two blue spruce trees in the front yard were just a couple feet tall and now they have grown to exceed 15 feet or more in height. We now must find a place in the cabin to hang it as it's a nice framed photograph.
We made several stops in Old Galax before winding up at Wal-Mart. I dropped Nancy off as she wanted to finish up birthday shopping for the kiddos and headed to Lowes for some limestone and potting soil to add to my compost. I have several volunteer tomato's, peppers and cukes that have come up in the compost bin and I want to put them into individual pots for transport to my winter garden in Florida. I should have plenty of those seedlings to go back with us in a week or so, actually we leave in about 12 days for Florida. After grocery shopping we gassed up and then headed out of town with a vegetable stop at Horton's. They have really nice produce so we stocked up with what we could as my beans never did well and we only had one good mess of them. My yellow squash is blooming since I moved them from the lower garden and I now have sugar peas up but we will see if they make because of all this rain. I did loosen up the soil around their roots when we got home.
It was after 3 before we got home and since we skipped lunch we decided to eat an early supper around 5'ish. So we sat on the porches and decks in the sunlight and read until was time to heat up the leftover Zucchini Pie for supper and it was as tasty as the night before. I just love the flavor of that dish and along with it we had four ears of corn leftover from last week. They were tasty but only less than half filled out with kernels. After the cleanup we headed out on our daily hike to the top of the mountain.
We saw no one until we reached the Browning household and finally after a week of missing them on our hikes we made contact. They gave us a couple of ripe Paw Paw's. They are about the size of a double yoke egg with lots of black seeds. The meat is almost a custard in consistency and has a unique flavor. Nancy didn't care for them but I ate one which was good and the other one seems a little too ripe. I remember the song of picking up Paw Paws and putting them in bucket from when I was a kid. We never grew them at the home place but there is a place in W.Va called Paw Paw and I now wonder if that place is named after that fruit tree.
Well it was slowly turning to dusk as we descended the mountain and the evening shadows were quickly descending on us as we hiked through the woods. It was going on 8 by the time we got back so we watched a little of the Fox News channel before I got into the baseball game of the Rays vs the Yankees. We blew a 4-0 lead to lose in the bottom of the 9th and I think their season is over as the Orioles have a big lead in our division. We tuned into the Ravens vs the Steelers on T.V. and that game seemed to show how bad the Steelers are this year as well. It was a hot shower then some horizontal lab for me with a new Sandra Brown book shortly thereafter, LATER
