The Winner IS!!

The contestants.

The Hunny picks with a witness at the table AND no peeking!

he hands the paper to the witness, who opens the paper up......

the WINNER is Shaunaus.

The witness of the drawing, so everything is fair and square!
Shaunaus wants the survival seed pack. Thank you all for entering!
Please go visit Linda over at Hometown  Seeds
  http://www.hometownseeds.com/variety and do some shopping.
We all need seeds that are not sterile hybrids.
She has a great selection of merchandise to chose from.

Congratulations to the WINNER!

REMINDER!!!

Don't forget tomorrow is the drawing for the Home Survival Seed give a way1
Make you sure you have entered!

Lots of luck!
KD

Getting Out of the House!

Not to far from here live a vera vera nice family who have a little farm. I thought a nice ride to the country would do me a world of good. They said,"Come on!"

This sweet jersey milk cow provides enough milk and rich cream for about 8 families. I get some too.
You probably can't tell but she has a bum foot, nothing can be done to fix it and it doesn't seem to bother her.  The foot however inspired her name,

*ILean*

get it?

We took a walk and saw a REAL garden.

I almost didn't post this because of all that white fat glaring in the sun. You'll notice I posed behind the extra wide buggy.

Inside the buggy is a little baby dumplin.

Are your lips puckering up?

They should be because she is adorable.

What was I thinkin not to get some close ups of her toes?

Shame on me, next time.

One little garden patch.

Just teasin it's humongous!

and pretty.

With flowers that get sold at the Farmer's Market.

Maybe I have missed my calling.

I need to be a farmer and go sell at the market.

Flowers and bread.

They don't allow any more home canning which is just plain stupid. You mean to really believe that a factory is cleaner than my house?

I ain't thinkin so.

just sayin....

I brought home one of these.
A box of tomatoes.
More cream and milk.
Tomorrow I am going to make butter out of the cream. You have never lived until you taste it.
We had a good time. I munched on the baby and kissed all her little fat pudgy luvin spots. She is ADORABLE. I think the cure to any sadness is baby sugars. All the kids are so sweet an so well behaved they are a pleasure to be around. They shared lunch we ate sandwiches with tomatoes of course, and home made pickles, home made blueberry jelly, and watermelon. We got stuffed. Her son prayed the sweetest prayer before lunch and thanked God for providing all the wonderful food that grows and for me coming to visit. Awh*sigh* love tank filling up.
 It was a great afternoon.

Topped off with a sinful sweet. Banana blueberry pudding. Just toss in a few blueberries when you make yours. As you can see, I am definitely not on a diet at the moment. Well I guess I am, it's a seafood see*food diet.
See it and eat it.
Yeah that was bad.

But I'm adjusting to my new life of empty nest, so I am allowed a stupid joke or two, don't you think?
What are you doing this weekend?

I am making salsa, bread, and butter.

Inside A Random Mind

Yesterday, the Hunny came home about an hour early from working. I had been feeling sorry for him having to work on the holiday. He has been putting in some Saturdays too. He is feeling it, not being a spring chicken anymore. He is definitely a seasoned rooster. Cock a doodle doo!

He was sittin in a chair with his feet propped up, and he says, "Wife- he never calls me Karen, he always calls me wife how about if we trim some trees and you come show me which limbs to cut?

I am thinking to myself that he should just sit there with his feet up. But being a nice lady occasionally, I said "Sure if that is what you want to do."

I wish I could have taken pictures of what happened. We had just started and the wind started blowing big time. Wind here can blow a big  person down the road.  I hollered at the man, "It's fixin to STORM." I was hollering so he could hear me. We are both pretty HARD OF HEARING without a big wind storm blowing the words away.

The man made the executive decision to continue.

And it rained.

It was a gully washer. Too much rain for pictures.

We were completely soaking wet, and it was fun. We weren't hot that is for sure. I was thinking that maybe I should do more yard work in the rain.  I did a real red neck thing. I grabbed my mop bucket and caught the rushing water from the gutter spout and dumped it into my garden where the rain doesn't get too. Saved myself a bit of money! The water was just gushing, it took about 3 seconds to fill the bucket up. That is a lot of water.

But then, just when we had a full driveway of limbs that were humongous as in about 12 feet long each.
The CHAIN SAW BROKE. The rain was letting up in intensity, which was good, but the whole front yard was a pile of limbs.

Uh oh.

So what did we red necks do?

To accomplish this?

The Hunny goes to his bottomless pit of tools and brings out this electric saw that would be perfect for carving up a turkey, and I get out my loppers.

We got the pile done.

Soaking wet.

Did you know how hard it is to see in the rain if you wear glasses?

I did not get to close to the chain saw or the electric saw, not when the Hunny is saying he can't see. Yeah right. We are nuts, it is official.

I just admired the results.


Can you believe I still have not planted the planters by the door?

If I wasn't so cheap I'd stuff them with artificial flowers. The gorgeous kind that cost about $10 for each branch. It'd cost a small fortune to fill these up.

But empty? GAH what am I thinking? Not.

This time of year. Everything starts going berserk.
At times I cannot even get a foot into an area to do any work.

My jumbo grande zucchini plant bit the dust.
the worms got it.

This is out of hand.

A jungle.

This is better.

Bush whacking.

Some stuff I just yanked up and tossed.

I found some whopper cucumbers that had travelled way back into the jungle.

Little suckers thought they might be watermelons.

Look at these tomato plants.

Wish I was picking fruit from them.

Still green and the birds have gotten all the ripe ones so far, they are pigs.

Thieves.

They get so greedy they start pecking the green ones. I get mad when they take a bite out of each fruit looking for the best one. Gimme a break.
I never have figured out a way to get them off the mater plants.

So then why did I have the Hunny build them some nesting places?

I thought we could give them some safe nest sites, but they have never used them. Birds can be dumb.

We used to have a pair of doves that built nests here every year.
They chose the most precarious places. One time the top of the weed whacker, that was terrific.  Another time in a plastic ice cream bucket on top of an out door freezer. We had to provide some help for those babies to make it. In a strong wind the bucket blew off the freezer and the little babies blew into the yard. My husband was looking for them and could only find one. He put the nest back into the bucket and the one baby. Then he saw our good dog Rasmus  focusing intently on something. He had found the baby and was waiting for the Hunny to come and get it. Good dog.
So both babies made it. The Hunny duck taped the bucket to the wall. Course then he had to repaint the dang wall. The things we do for critters.

And before you leave if your still here I'll just show you the garden.
So you can think about what you want to do next year with your free seeds from my give away.

Every year mine is different.

I hope it doesn't bore you.

This year I put in low growing things.

Dwarf okra.

Sugar pie pumpkins. Cabbages and collards.


The pumpkin flowers are pretty.

And after all of that?

Why a nice cold coke float.

No not diet coke.

Horrible junk food and just the thing I wanted and couldn't resist.

It was great too.

Now, go sign up for your seeds.

God Bless America

To all the men and women who serve for this country, Our family thanks you.
Freedom is never free.

Garden of Eatin Give Away!! SIGN UP!!

Linda over at Home Town Seeds would like to sponsor a give away. I decided to just cut and paste what she said in the e mail and let you choose the prize if you should be the very blessed winner. I'm honored she would consider my blog for a give away because I think my readership is small. But ya'll are a mighty bunch so what I figured is that with you cutting and pasting and posting we could give Linda some good exposure for her generosity!

We love to do giveaways. We would be happy to offer one of our Survival Packs as a giveaway http://www.hometownseeds.com/survival-seeds-c-213/survival-seeds-peace-of-mind-for-your-family-p-35 . Or if you think your readers would be more interested, we could offer our Variety Pack http://www.hometownseeds.com/variety  or our new Herb Pack (which isn’t quite up on the site yet, but includes 10 varieties of our most popular herbs). Let me know which pack you think would be best.

So here is the deal. 

For every place you post about the give away, and link back to my blog. You can have an entry. One for a comment, in the comment state your choice of seed packs, one for a Face Book and one for a twitter. You have to let me know what you do because I don't twitter. If you talk your friends into doing the same you can have an entry for each friend you get to do a link, up to 10 chances for each person. 

If we get a big turn out I'll figure out random integer. I don't know how to do that so I will probably make up name tags and put them in a hat and have the Hunny draw.

My bag of survival seeds is big, it came with directions and it's is sealed air tight to keep for next year. Even though we are in the thick of harvesting it's never a bad time to get more seeds. These seeds are also NOT hybrids so you can collect and save from you own garden. UBER COOL! 

You have one week. Sunday July 10th we will pick the winner. If you enter before 6pm that day I'll add you to the hat. Winner needs to live in the USA.

This is a little re run to get ya'll goin on winning some free stuff! 

Come on now, don't embarrass me, sign up!

I extended the original date to get some participants.

FREE SEEDS!

Who Is In Charge Here?

There is no place like home.
I can't imagine what it would be like to be a kid and not be able to go back home.


Today I am freaking out.

My heart is breaking all over again and I feel like I could lose my mind.






The hardest thing in the world for me is to let go.
The hardest thing for me is to not be in control.
The hardest thing for me is to wonder about all of these decisions and choices; and stay out of it.

The hardest thing is still not knowing anything about what is wrong with Kayla. Or what she can really be expected to do.

I went and saw her today.

If it was my call, I'd say the hospital dumped her. I'd say this is the wrong place. For one thing it is co-ed. It's like a half way house where people have 3 hots and a cot and one year to become independent.

OK, so it's what it is. I am not the one in charge here. Like I said that is the hardest thing.
I don't know what Kayla can do really. I have worked very hard to train her and teach her.
The house mother said she could tell. We talked for a bit, I answered her questions and she gave me the papers with the house rules.  They have internet access with monitoring systems on them.
It's in a rough neighborhood. It borders the ghetto. Kayla is in a tiny little room with a very small chest of drawers and half a closet.  She sleeps on the top bed of a twin sized bunk bed. She shares a room with a 19 year old who has a one month old baby.  Kayla is not to big on babies. I hope she has patience with a newborn crying at night. Whew, I really have anxiety over this. I was hoping for a place that was all women and where she would have a lot of supervision. I told the house mother that. I told her Kayla can easily be victimized. She is willing to work with her and that is a blessing.

The rule list is awesome. The structure for the day is very good and no messing around with breaking the rules. It's all very no nonsense.  It could be just the right thing. Dear God please calm me down,
help me to trust.

What a change from her beautiful room here. What  a change from our beautiful home.
She misses her cat.

Of course she complained about the food.
She hasn't got to the place yet where she can just be thankful not to be hungry.

I know I am not in control.
I have to let go and I just want to say forget it, this is all just a bad dream now let's wake up, and bring her home.
If I did that we would be right back where we started.
I can't.
She won't listen to me.
She would be "good" for a couple of days and then go right back to her agenda of risky behavior.

So here we are, right in the middle of it.
I am amazed at the letters some of you have written to me of trials you have faced.
We all have a lot of hurts. Sometimes it takes one of us to pull down our masks for a minute and then others do too. It's risky to be real. It's risky to let others know your life isn't as pretty on the inside as it looks on the outside.

Shoot fire it's just risky to live.

So today is a day to wrestle with anxiety, who knows what tomorrow will bring?

And don't forget the give away.
Ya'll sign up for those seeds!