In Our Neck Of The Woods (Part 2)…

I’m sorry it’s taken me three and a half weeks to get around to posting part two of my original post, but life has been busy!  I only thought the month of May was busy, with all of its celebrations. Then came the month of June, with Father’s Day, an anniversary, and our garden kicked into high gear. I’m here to tell you, things got a little bit crazy in our neck of the woods!

Before going forward any further, let me back up a bit to the month of May and show you one of my favorite Mother’s Day gifts.  My daughter-in-law has a good sense of humor, don’t you think?

I’ve named this little lady “Bertha Big Butt” and we’ve gotten quite a bit of enjoyment out of her, so far…  For the first few days, everyone thought “Bertha” was me–bent over and tending to my flowers 🙂 Actually, I do have a polka-dotted dress…but it’s blue.

Come to think of it, “Bertha” reminds me of a story [our former pastor once told] about the lady who came walking into church, one day, with the her dress accidentally tucked into [the back of] her girdle!  Heaven forbid!  The other day, I was actually headed out the door, to church, when Ed told me to turn around and look in the mirror.  Yep, you guessed it–my dress was tucked inside the back of my undies 😦  Thank goodness for observant husbands!

Let me back up a little bit further and show you one of the cute little wrist corsages the children [of the church we’ve been attending] made for the mothers of the church, for Mother’s Day.  I thought they turned out nice.

I was invited to help with this project, and I enjoyed having lunch with the ladies, getting to know them, and helping the children create these corsages.

Now, fast forward to the month of June, and the week before Father’s Day and our 45th wedding anniversary.  I felt lousy almost the entire week, but on Thursday I finally rallied…just in time to take a beach trip!

On the spur of the moment Ed and I threw our beach chairs into the back of the van and headed for St. Simon’s Island–totally unplanned.  We had a great time, celebrating our anniversary a few days early.  We ate bar-b-que sandwiches for lunch, and spent the afternoon relaxing under the shade of our favorite oak tree.  I didn’t take a single picture, but the view was still the same.

Ed and I celebrated our 45th anniversary (and Father’s Day) in church, on Sunday, June 18.  Without God’s mercy, Ed wouldn’t even be here to celebrate with me, so there was no better place for us to be than in church.  We drove to the nearest Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant, after church was over, and enjoyed our traditional anniversary meal together.  Later, we drove home and celebrated Father’s Day, too.  It was a busy day!

Suddenly, the day after Father’s Day all of our garden was ready to harvested!  We’ve never had this happen before, but our corn, butter beans, tomatoes, and peas were all ready to be picked and canned at the same time!  Ed and I worked several twelve to fourteen hour days in a row.  At night we fell into bed, exhausted, and this is what my kitchen has looked like for over a week:

this table has been totally filled, twice, with rippening tomatoes

Day one – ( 2 of the 7 buckets of corn we picked)

day four – some of the 3 bushels of butter beans we picked and shelled

more butter beans and the first of the peas

We’re well into week number two, and we’re still picking and shelling peas, as well as canning tomatoes as they ripen!  Our green beans and some of the tomatoes may have drowned, but the rest of the garden not only survived, it has produced beyond our expectations. I promised God if He blessed us with a good harvest, we’d share the bounty, and we have.

We’re so grateful to our daughter and our granddaughter for their help in shelling all of these peas and beans.  One day, the four of us sat and shelled beans for six straight hours!  We all went to bed with sore thumbs.

Things are now winding down with gardening and canning, so the end is in sight!  A few more days and the spring gardening season of 2017 will be history.  Did you notice I said “spring gardening season”?  The fall gardening season is already underway.

Ed already has two rows of sweet potatoes planted!  We’ll be adding a few more things to the fall garden as the summer goes on.  Oh, and our grapes will be ripe around the last of August!  It’ll be time to break out the jars and make a little grape jelly. The fun never seems to end in our neck of the woods 🙂