Smokehouse Redux

This year, our homely old smokehouse got a facelift.  I hired Mike to "purty it up" by covering it with clapboard and making it more useable as a storage building/potting shed/woodshed. Now, not only does it function better, but it has improved the view from my kitchen window tremendously!

P.S.  The clapboard was salvaged from a 100+ year old farmhouse in Bristol.  Turned to the unpainted side and planed down, it is as good as new.

BEFORE:

IN PROGRESS:

AFTER:

Pinatas, Horses, and Mary Poppins Medleys: Time with Family

What is summer without adventures with extended family?  Here are some photographs from our favorite family frolics this year.

COUSIN RAE'S BIRTHDAY PARTY

Rae as a parrot

Thomas making a "deal" with cousin Carstyn for candy

Posing with Wendy Wiggles (dog)

RIDING HORSES WITH AUNT KIM AND COUSIN OLIVIA

OUTDOOR SYMPHONY CONCERT

With Aunt Betty and Uncle "Shoe"

Goofing off with Mamaw

(excited about the Mary Poppins medley that was a special request from Thomas)

Riding in the wagon with Cousin Skylar

Forsaking All Heirlooms: Tomato Harvest 2014

Having spent the last ten years remaining faithful to heirloom tomatoes, which oftentimes succumbed to disease before harvest, I decided to grow all hybrids this year.  I hated to join the "Dark Side," but I simply did not want to spend hours fighting blight and wilt and blossom-end rot only to come up mushy, diseased fruit.  You can see that perhaps it was a wise decision as we were overloaded with healthy, red tomatoes that were consumed immediately or put in jars for enjoyment this winter.  What will next year bring?  Well, maybe I'll try to grow ONE Brandywine.

A Day at the Beach

This summer, Thomas and I picked up Lance at Camp LeJeune, after he had put in two weeks with the Marines.  We took the opportunity to do a little shore-line vacationing while we were there, visiting Cape Lookout lighthouse, Wilmington, and Carolina Beach.

On the USS Carolina Battleship

Adjusting the trunks

Feeling the waves...

...and the sand underneath

A beautiful shell!

"Hey, this would make a great drawbridge!"

Installing the drawbridge 

Instructing Daddy on the best way to build a moat 

The finished castle!

And a favorite poem by e.e. cummings:

maggie and milly and molly and may

went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang

 so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles, and

milly befriended a stranded star

whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing

which raced sideways while blowing bubbles; and

may came home with a smooth round stone

as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)

it's always ourselves we find in the sea