The morning started with the typical Sunday morning routines as I slept in until nearly 7 o'clock then we had a lite breakfast of fresh fruit, granola(thanks to Sandy) and oatmeal before getting ready to head out to Cornerstone from our weekly corporate fellowship. It was a little warmer than usual with temps already into the 70's whereas its usually in the 60's to start the day and it did get to the middle 80's by early afternoon. We did get some cloud cover which quickly dropped the temps as well as a few dozen or so rain sprinkles. We really could use some rain as I'm back to hand watering the gardens.
We had a nice crowd at church and Pastor B brought another great message in a series on Joy in your life with the choices we make. Afterwards we met up with the Sam and Marcia as they now attend First Methodist in Sparta at the local Mexican Restaurant along with Mechelle, Caleb and his friend Ethan and The Tracy's. This was the first time we have eaten there this year and the food was great and plentiful especially their chips and salsas which is endless. We stayed and visited and made plans for later in the evening at Mechelle's and planned our trip on Thursday to Damascus ,Va. to ride the Virginia Creeper Trail which is 17 miles down the mountain on bikes on an old railroad track that was converted to a cinder path. The Tracy's son, Ryan is coming here to Sparta for a couple days with them and we want to give him a taste of the mountains.
We headed home after a stop at Walgreens for some scripts for Nancy and a backpack to carry with us on the bike trail some goodies. We understand the hour and half trip there could turn some of us green from the twisty, winding road up and through the mountains. We will take our bikes we purchased a couple or 3-4 years ago but have been sitting in the basement all these years and look brand new. It tough to ride on hilly, gravel roads after we learned the hard way one time and that is why they look brand new.
We were hoping for a rain shower to cool things down and give the gardens a drink. The flowers are holding their beauty and the garden is still looking great since I'm hand watering the lettuces, kale and beets. I noticed my first blooms on the sugar peas and will soon be adding them to the fresh garden salads. I still have no ripe tomato's but did harvest 4 nice cucumbers and have a huge green pepper ready to eat. The Zinnias are budding finally as we love their colors and beauty.
We headed out after phone calls to Nancy's mom GG, sister Betsy and our Amy. I read for a couple hours in the interim and then we got ready to head over to the Dalton Farm and then a supper around 6'ish. Mechelle was grilling farm raised steaks, along with 1/2 runner beans and a squash casserole from the garden and with our garden salad we feasted for the second time of the day. Afterwards we headed down through the pasture to visit with her horses and alpacas. She has a couple boarder thoroughbreds horses which are right off the race track from Miami and boy are they stupid when it comes to pasturing. This one horse was afraid to cross a small stream of water about a foot wide and eventually had to be roped and led across. Seems they spent their whole life in a stall while in the racing program and are seldom let out to graze. We saw a couple recently born alpacas and boy are they cuties and very inquisitive as they stare and watch you. They remind me of the storm troopers in the Star Wars movies.
We decided to play the best of 3 games of Sequence with the guys vs the gals and we the guys won the first game with me playing two hands(Harvey Hand we call it-the white rabbit) as we were a man short. Anyhow we won the first game of the summer and that put an end to the gals bragging rights despite them winning the next two games and the match. It was a fun time and we always enjoy the raucous play with Mechelle's mom and dad, Gerald and Kay. We all headed out around 9'ish as it was still showing some light outside. It wasn't long after
