So Christmas day found us with crazy wet weather. Not as bad as Alabama or some others had; but we did get some hail.
And were pretty sure a tornado went North of us.

We had more rain today, too. I waited until today to take a couple of pictures.

I found this the day after Christmas. That is not what's left of a young tree, by the way. It's a branch from the oak tree.


But most of the water had dried up. Still, with Christmas and today, we have had a lot of rain. Wish I could send some North where it's needed, too.




Have a safe, enjoyable, last weekend of the old year!

♥

grounded the Lady Bug Association.



There were actually several dozen, but I was too short for the camera to get a good shot.

Hope you all have a wonderful evening and a safe, blessed Friday. ♥

of pecans is what we sold today. That makes 952 pounds of pecans picked by hand.
After unexpected expenses, that money will take us to the end of the month.
A real blessing.

Figured I will share my redneck planter with you all. ;o)






Store garlic that didn't get used soon enough and a test end from a celery stalk.

Have a blessed week. Remember to hug your loved ones and tell them so. ♥

to country cat.
Transformation complete.


Have a safe, blessed, Weekend. ♥

In an old house that has supposedly has had a termite contract for 30+ years, this is not what you want to find in the bedroom...





That's hundred year old cypress, and then some, since we don't know exactly when the house was built.
And termites are not supposed to like cypress.
The termite company did verify none of this is active, and was probably caused by the leaking roof. Apparently wet wood attracts termites, whether cypress, treated, or whatever.

There are a couple more places on this outside wall that we expect may have damage, too; judging by the water damage to the hardboard; but we haven't pulled those off yet.
The company will, of course, give extra attention to the outer wall in this area.
And hardboard is still made, so we won't have problems matching the other walls.

It has been very interesting to see how the room was done, while trying to remove the molding on the wall. For instance, the closet was added to the room after it was built, so we cut the molding level with the closet wall to minimize seams.

You all have a blessed, safe weekend. We're going to get some more pecan trees tomorrow.

Instead, I'm just going to say God Bless, JohnD. You and your family will be in my prayers.
I hope you can find some radical treatment that will help you kick this disease to the curbs.
*hugs* ♥

One of the best things about going into town was going by the bakery and smelling the fresh bread baking.
Talk about heaven.

Now though, the sad thing is that after maybe 90 years or so, that bakery has closed. A casualty of the union dispute with Hostess, Inc.

My husband remembers going there when he was growing up, and buying little nickle loaves of fresh warm bread. A highlight of his youth. :o)

Terrible loss to the city and the 350 or so workers who went to work a week ago Friday to find pink slips in their boxes.

Hope you all have a blessed Sunday! ♥

Just a short update.

Things are proceeding slowly on the house.

We have harvested probably another 250 pounds of pecans since the post where I told you we sold 460 pounds. This is all done by hand (with a hand held picker) because all of our trees are too old and big to use a mechanical shaker on, even if we knew someone who had one.

My husband's back has been bothering him a lot more since we retired, understandably. It has bothered him for years, but with a desk job, he usually was okay after a cortisone shot. Now with all the clearing, roof repair, plumbing repairs and other various things; it is bothering him more. He is concerned he may need back surgery.

My biggest concern, after buying the house and seeing all the work needing to be done (4 years ago) was that we might be getting too old to accomplish it.

His knees have been bothering him more, too. He had outpatient surgery on one knee, oh, maybe five years ago? Maybe a bit longer.
The doctor mentioned knee replacement surgery then.
We were hoping not to have to go that route; but now I don't know.

Anyway. We have a bathroom about half finished.
We got the counters. One was measured wrong. Because we did not pay $900 to have them installed, we were told at the time we ordered them that any problems would be ours to deal with.
We paid $35 to have the Lowe's 'professional' measure the cabinets for the counter tops.
It has taken us a week of thinking and moving and measuring, and finally cutting a notch in one of the cabinets, to be able to get the counters to match so I could have a sink where it should be; without having to move all the major appliances.

I did complain to Lowe's, home office 3 days ago; and supposedly someone from the local office is going to call; but I am not holding my breath.
We have already come up with our own solution which we think will work (fingers crossed).

I've already told my husband we need to find other places to buy our lumber. There are several options, so hopefully it won't cost us a lot more. There's a lot of work to be done on the house yet.

So, that's why no updates and no pictures. I do still try to document things, but now that we are here, I see it every day.

I've also been in touch with the daughter of Eva-Lou Joffrion, who also grew up in this house back in the early 1900's. Nice times.

Have a wonderful, safe weekend!

We saw this on Sunday, coming back from Pineville, about one in the afternoon.





Never saw one before. I did a bit of research, but mostly couldn't find out what causes them.
I suppose it could have been an airplane.
Daily temps have been in the low to mid 70s for about a week now.

Oh well.
Hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving or a wonderful Thursday. ♥

Saw this on the way home from the flea market in Lafayette today.


I thought, that doesn't look good.
Been seeing a lot of this lately.


As we got closer, hubby said "I know, they're burning the sugar cane fields." I, of course, said
"What? Why would they do that, that sounds crazy."


He explained they burn the leaves off to harvest the sugar cane.


Still sounds crazy to me, but there's the pile of canes - so he said.
And that is how they harvest sugar cane in this part of Louisiana, anyway.

Sometime I'll try to remember to take a picture of what's left of the old building where they used to cook down the sugar cane in bowls like this one we have in the yard,


to make the cane syrup. And maybe sugar too? I'm not too clear on that. Oh well.
Have a wonderful, safe Sunday, everyone!

P.S. Sorry about the quality, we were moving. And I believe if you click on them, they will expand a little. :o)

At least I believe these to be wild tomatillos.



We have these growing, quite literally, all over the property.
As I understand it, the fruit of wild tomatillos stays fairly small. And I believe they are used in Mexican cooking?
Wish I cooked a lot of Mexican food, I'd like to have a use for all the tomatillos that are growing around here.
The flowers are pretty.

Have a blessed weekend! (To include tomorrow, of course.)

and you are registered, please vote Tuesday, whatever your affiliation.
And if you could, but aren't registered, why not?





Happy Tuesday and God Bless America!

460 pounds of pecans looks like.



This is what I've been doing for the last few weeks, around laundry, helping hubby in the yard, grocery shopping, fishing, of course; and trying to teach myself about mending clothes.

We have several types of pecan trees. I am very thankful to Eva-Lou Joffrion's family, or whoever had the foresight to plant them. Here are a few of them.



The two on the left are what are called Native pecans. They are often worth more than others because they have a high oil content. I have about 60 pounds of those right now. They are in the pantry. I kept them aside in hopes that later they might be worth more.
Next (third from left) is what we believe is called Caddo, but we're not sure.
Next is Elliot, then what is called Papershell, and the one on the far right is a Stewart.

We have planted four pecan trees ourselves, and want to plant a couple more. For whoever comes after us, if they have the sense to keep them.

So what did 460 pounds of pecans mean?
It meant $230 when we sold them in town, for lumber, nails and screws to work on the garage with.
But that's another post for another day. We are on the fringes of the Verizon coverage here on the farm. Sometimes there are so many disconnects, I can't even get blogs to load, let alone read them or comment. I'm lucky it's been good to me tonight. :o)

Hope you are all having a good week. Those of you with snow already, be careful and stay warm.
Those of you who are or were in the path of Sandy, I hope you are okay. You are in my prayers. ♥

---

I wanted to edit this post to say that we found out we do not have an elliot tree. Apparently it is Cape Fear, according to the guy at the Pecan Buying place. Good to know. :o)

Have a wonderful, safe weekend!

For Leontien. May God give you strength as he walks with you during this time. Much love. ♥

I don't know how many of you remember this post here; but I thought I would do a little update since the neighbor came over today.

We thought her dog had gotten better. We saw it earlier this week, but it died three days after they brought it home.
Turns out, not only was the dog poisoned, but little shards of metal had also been put in whatever it ate. Sadly, that wasn't found out in time, but probably wouldn't have helped if they had.
:o(

Also, eight places around us, including that neighbor, have been robbed/ robbed again.
One place while the guy was in the shower. He had parked in back so they didn't know he was home.
He saw them running off after he got out of the shower.

So hubby thinks he really did hear something a few nights ago, though when he went out with his pistol he didn't find anything.

This time they are only taking commodities. Things that they can use, or sell easily at a flea market or some such.
The neighbor said three different police agencies are involved now.

I told hubby I guess it's time for us to go out and do some shooting practice.
He doesn't need it, but I do.

Some people suck lemons.


Hope you all have a wonderful, safe, blessed weekend. ♥

while picking up pecans.





And no, we do not keep bees. Don't know anyone who does. Have no idea where this piece of honeycomb came from.


Hope you all have a wonderful week! ♥

Will try to post pictures soon.
We've been a little busy. Not just working on the house but trying to enjoy retirement.
I don't have the online time I had when hubby worked a paying job out of the home. I usually only get an hour or three in the evening before bed and I use that time to read and comment on your blogs. ;o)
The rest of my time is spent with the hubby.

So, sorry about that.

We've had the kitchen measured for counters.
Gotten a plywood floor on one of the bathrooms.
Kept the place mowed.
Replaced the main water line due to a leak that couldn't be found in the one we put in two or so years ago.
Gone fishing several times.
Played with mending clothes.
And are now into picking up pecans.

Watched a humming bird today.
And a Pileated Woodpecker.
And a hawk flew over my head to land in an oak tree in the pasture.
No pictures of the hawk though, I was picking pecans at the time.

Maybe I have a picture I haven't posted yet.

Oh. I know. We have a pecan tree that we are trying to get the local electric company, or Department of Public Safety, to trim for us because we don't have $2000 to do it ourselves -- and they would have to be there for it to be done anyway!

Both of them have been contacted by us several times to try and mitigate our liability if something should happen and the 'branch' come down by an act of God. I use branch loosely because the trunk is actually divided somewhere above the fence line and one half is what goes over the power lines and half of the roadway.





Oh well.
God bless! ♥

I think some of you may know what this means without my telling you. And no, it has not rained for 4 or 5 days now.



Suffice it to say that this is an area near the pump house where several lines meet.
So, hubby dug it up with his tractor. He's got a new furrow making thing of some sort. I am so eloquent, aren't I?

Anyway, while digging the trench for the new line, we found some interesting things.





More red bricks. What makes these bricks different? They were cemented together, or whatever they called it then. Three layers deep. Hubby did not know of anything there, so they may have been there before the 'cow bowl' was installed. He doesn't know if his dad put the 'cow bowl' there for their dairy or not.


As for 'trench treasures'...


I did the finding as I was trying to help get the brick pieces and rocks out of the bottom of the trench.
I thought this was some sort of double ended something; but as we cleaned it up, hubby recognized it as something that was probably associated with his satellite dish installation work when we were here in 1994.

Then there was this.



The hook obviously is supposed to go in the little... detent of the ring, but it can't because of rust. At first I thought it might be a stirrup from a saddle. Then I thought possibly something to tie a horse to, because it was by the side entrance to the house.
But then I thought maybe something as simple as a swinging ring from a swingset. Who knows? ;o)

I also found this hand made spike nail thing.


And lastly, I found this.


Hopefully we get the water line finished tomorrow.

You all take care and have a wonderful week! ♥