Birthday and Cherries

Today we celebrated my Julie’s 14th birthday. My, my, how time has flown by. Seems like just the other day, my Lord was surprising me by giving her to me. God is SO good. We celebrated at Groundhog Mountain with hamburgers, hotdogs and chocolate cake. The Horn’s came with us and Dave, Jess and the kids met us on the Blue Ridge Parkway at Meadows of Dan. We had a wonderful day!!

Mrs. Vicki bringing trucks for the boys to play with. You will notice she has on a jacket. It was kinda chilly here this morning. 42 degrees when we got up. I think it is supposed to be about that chilly tonight too. It was a nice day though-definitely not too hot.

Daniel seems to be deep in thought.

Jess and Katie. Katie is staying warm in her blanket.

From the picnic area, we went on down the Parkway to Levering Orchard to pick cherries.

The trees were loaded with cherries.

Can you tell Sam loves cherries!

If you look closely in this picture, you will see a man in the top of the tree picking.

We all had so much fun. I can’t think of a better way to spend the day than with family and best friends. Enjoy your day and God bless.

June 2, 2012 7

Fallen Leaves

Yesterday, we went to our Pastor’s home. They had some corn to give us and some peaches. I thought you all might enjoy seeing some pictures we took. As you can see, I think fall is coming on us pretty fast. Some of the trees are already losing their leaves. Our temperatures this morning was 55 degrees. Our morning temps have been in the 50’s for about a week now. So much nicer sleeping weather. Anyway we got about 2 bushel of corn and almost a bushel of peaches. We will be busy today working all that up. Grace is my helper when it comes to shucking corn. She loves it. Julie will be inside doing other work while Grace and I shuck. Then I will let Julie help with the blanching while Grace has other chores.

Also, a couple who go to our church told us we could come and pick plums from their tree. This is exciting for us. We have never known anyone who had a plum tree. We want to make jelly and I was thinking about trying plum juice. I wonder how that would taste? I guess we’ll find out. We probably won’t get to go pick them until later in the week. I let you all know how it turns out.

This is a picture of some of the trees in the Pastor’s orchard. If you look close, you can see the ladder at the tree we picked peaches from. I will show you all a few more pictures next time. Well, we better get busy. Enjoy your day and God bless.

August 16, 2011 8

Our Church

This is a picture of our church. It is a very small church that is out in the country. My kind of church. Today the pastor’s message was about what makes up a church. It was a very good message.

This is the view from the backside. Isn’t that grapevine pretty? You can’t really see it but there is a nice garden behind the grape vine and over to the right is a nice small orchard with apples, pears, and plums. A very nice setting.

We came home from church and for lunch we had homemade bbq using the rolls Grace and I made yesterday for the buns. We also had fresh corn from the garden and I made a macaroni salad. For dessert we had the applesauce muffins we made yesterday. Tonight’s menu at church will be pigs in a blanket, chicken casserole, green beans, potatoes, with pie and a cake for dessert. Tonight will be our last lesson on I Corinthians. We will start II Corinthians on Sept. 19.

Today has been another nice day here in Floyd. Temperature right now is 82 degrees with a slight breeze. Very enjoyable. Time for me to go enjoy some of that nice weather. God bless.

August 29, 2010 1

Orchard

Friday evening we went to our Pastor’s house. As I mentioned earlier, he gave us some peaches. He has a small orchard at his house. All his trees were so full of fruit. It was beautiful.

These are only a few of the trees. Grace took lots of pictures. I will try to post more of them tomorrow.

This is a view from his yard. Very pretty. We also ate supper at his house. Almost everything we had was home grown. I love to eat this way. We had hamburgers on the grill, cucumbers, onions and tomatoes from the garden, fresh homemade applesauce, and fresh peaches. Delicious!

The girls and I did not get to can our beets yesterday. As it was raining most of the day, we decided to run a few errands in town instead. Jess had given me some coupons she had for canning jars and lids. We decided to go to Wal-Mart and get these. They are a little cheaper there than there are at our local supermarket. We will be canning the beets today.

The sun is shining here nicely today. Temperatures have cooled down some, thanks to the rain yesterday. Outside temperature is about 80 degrees. This is one of those weeks when things begin to start building up. Much to do. Beans are ready to pick, berries are ready, beets are ready and I think we might have enough tomatoes ripe to make a batch of salsa. I love to can and put away food for my family however when I start getting behind, it is easy for me to allow that to become a stressor in my life. I do not want this to happen. God has given us this bounty and I thank Him for it. When I was growing up, the garden and canning controlled our summers. I do not want that for my girls. I want the garden and all it involves to be enjoyable and fun for my girls. I want to keep a balance. This is hard, as old habits are sometimes difficult to break. Pray that I will do this well-that my girls will have a love for gardening and canning and not see it as just hard work.

Enjoy your day and God bless.

July 28, 2010 1

Happy Birthday

Yesterday was my Julie’s birthday. We celebrated by having a picnic lunch at Groundhog Mountain with our friends, the Horns. The building you see behind the kids is the lookout tower.

This is one of the things you can see from where the tower is. The mountain in the distance is called Buffalo Mountain. I think you can probably guess why.

We had birthday cake, hot dogs, chips and all the things that go with it. We are so blessed to have friends like the Horns. Their kids and our kids have so much fun together.

After the picnic, it was time for some work. We went to Levering Orchard in Ararat, Va. Time to pick some cherries. We had a great time. It is a pick your own orchard or you can purchase them already picked. It is, of course, cheaper if you pick. Besides who would want to miss all that fun. We picked almost 9 lb. or the equivalent of 2 gal. They are very good. After getting all hot picking cherries, we stopped on the way back at this little store for an ice cream cone. It certainly tasted delicious. All in all, it was a great birthday day. Prayerfully tomorrow I will be making a post about a beautiful new baby boy, with lots of pictures. I am making sure I have my camera with me. We are getting ready to leave as I type this. I need to be there by 5:00, as she is scheduled to be at the hospital by 7:00. I know I have asked before, but remember to pray for us. Take care and God bless.

June 6, 2010 1