I can see clearly now!

One of the reasons why I love spring so much is because I get to go out on my ginormous property and take pictures. As the animals emerge after the cooler weather and the flowers, trees and veggies bloom and grow I have the best time wandering about with my camera.

I've only had my camera for a bit more than a year and quite honestly I've never taken to experimenting with it off  the auto setting. The main reason was because I never read the huge booklet of instructions. I hate reading directions and lets face it if I haven't done it by now the chances of me doing so are slim to none.

So what's a gal to do? I was really feeling a bit limited at what I was able to do using auto and frankly I was feeling like a bit of a creative cheat. The other day I went out and let it all hang out..... I switched my camera off the auto setting and put on the menu and started experimenting with the settings. I grew up in the sixties so I can be a bit of a wild child when I put my mind to it.

I had difficulty getting shots that were focused on things close up on auto. What's photography without a close up? Take the half ripe blueberries below for instance I did that off auto. Now why didn't I do this sooner?  By the way Bill and I are going on vacation this Friday. I'm sure by the time we get back the birds or deer will have enjoyed all of these luscious berries!

This is proof that Bill needed to mow the lawn. Dear little buttercup, sweet little buttercup, my little buttercup, I love you! Didn't know singing was another one of my many talents huh?

Have I mentioned we live in a small town? Of course I have! There are a few stores a bank, pharmacy, a grocery, a couple of gas station and one stop sign. The local hardware closed last year and that was the place you could get everything including our seed potatoes. This year we just let some potatoes from the grocery store grow eyes and used them in our garden. I was really skeptical that this would be a good potato year. Below is one potato plant. I think the eye's have it. Wink!

So now you've seen my photography without training wheels. We've yet to see what my vacation photographs will look like when we get back from the Bahama's next week. If by chance they're horrible I already have my excuse prepared.

 I'll blame it on the rum!

While we're on vacation our house is being guarded by our vicious guard turtle. So don't think about stealing my blueberries or my potatoes.

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our attempted break in-country style

Tonight after my husband and I finished our dinner we went off to our respective computers. His is out in the den, it's a desk-top. And mine is a lap-top which I usually use while sitting on the couch while the TV drones on in the back round. Have you noticed how bad TV is lately?

All of the sudden I heard this rustling noise by the deck, my husband went out to investigate.....nothing. It almost sounded as if someone had banged against the furniture on the deck. We were curious but found nothing. Maybe a stray dog or cat? After a quick investigation which resulted in finding nothing we went back all was forgotten.

A few hours later I heard this God awful banging, the den door was closed so Bill didn't hear it but it sounded as if someone was bashing against the duct work under the house. Let's not go into the fact that Bill needs to get his hearing checked, that's another story!  Now I'm thinking to myself, if these are burglars they are dumb as dirt since we have a crawl space not a basement! And frankly we have a bazillion guns since hubby's a gun collector so they'd be making a really really big mistake picking this house.


This time however we did find the culprits trying to break into the crawlspace door and making quite the racket doing it.  I'm thinking their intention was for a night of romance out of the rain and cold. They had a bit more hair and much sharper teeth than the average criminal! As it turns out it was a pair of Opossums, they are nasty little suckers. And the last thing I need is a mating pair taking up family life under my house.

This type of thing is occurring more and more often since a timber company came in and removed about a square mile of trees on a property closely neighboring ours. I swear I don't understand what people are thinking when they clear cut like that.


Tomorrow Bill will put some type of tasty morsel in our 'have a heart trap' and see what we can do about relocating these two to another location, preferably not near my house or anyone else's for that matter.

when it rains it pours

When it rains it pours..... And I'm not talking about the weather, although it's been rainy the past few days here at my house. This got me to wondering if bad news runs in spurts or patches. I have to say every time the phone rang these past few days it's been another bit of bad news.

My sister-in-law's father who is in the late stages of MS (he's had it for 40 years) is in the hospital, he has pneumonia.

 My friend and neighbor Becky who was my son's second grade teacher is having a double mastectomy today.

Another woman I know, Debbie has just been diagnosed with MS, she's probably had it for years and had been ignoring her symptoms but finally got diagnosed and is getting the proper medications and therapies.

My husbands best friend Harry had hiatal hernia surgery the other day and his stitches keep on popping!

Then tonight my friend Bertha called, her mother took a fall and although she didn't break anything thank goodness she's undergoing some test to rule out mini strokes and such.

It just seems like an awful lot of sickness and illness touching those around me all at the same time. I can see myself responding to each and every situation in one way or another.   How do you show you care when your friends and family are dealing with illness?  Do you have any special or unique ways in which you respond other than the usual card or flowers?

lights out

We still have no power here. We have heard from the county estimates anywhere between 5-7 days, my daughter works with someone who heard 14 days, crap I say! In the interest of conserving gasoline we usually turn the generator off about 9:30 p.m and then turn in. Kinda on the early side but we do what we have to do to get by.

Then I lay there stressing about things like the mounting pile of laundry and if we're going to have enough gas to last until they repair our lines. My husband and I are not old or anything but my Mom is in her mid 80's and I want her to be as comfortable as possible while she's here. She can't stay in her house because you guessed it; she's without power!

In the mean time we're trying to do what we can to keep comfortable. We keep rotating opening the windows depending on the location of the sun and the ceiling fans are very effective at keeping the house cool. We also have those really good windows with the blinds in between the window panes in every room. I don't know what I did my whole life before moving to the south, we NEVER had an air conditioner.

We're spoiled rotten I ashamed to say and times like this it makes me wonder what I'm really made of. What I really like about these times is the extra contact we have with our neighbors; calling and walking back and forth between our houses checking on each other; that makes me feel good more connected.

Anyway in order to do something I went out today and swept tons and tons of leaves off of our deck and the other porches now that everything is nice and dry. We've been lucky that the weather has been rather agreeable the past two days not much more that 82 or so degrees during the day so it's not at all difficult to manage.

Last night an awful hound dog barked and barked most of  the night and into the early morning hours, then one of my neighbors shot off a gun and it must have ran off. That, my friends is the down side of sleeping with the windows open.

Till next time....

it was my first earthquake

Sitting in my usual position on the couch, laptop perched on my lap.

Cat curled at my side.

The glasses in the china closet started to rattle, my feet feel the rumble from below.

My cat panics, jumps to the floor and it shutters beneath his paws.

My house ebbs and it flow, my house sways and rocks like a train on its tracks.

As I gaze around the room the picture frames fall, the chandelier sways.

Then I wonder if its an uneven load in the washer; sorry Maytag!

My stomach clenches and I worry for a little minute if something bad happened; maybe terrorist or nuclear.

Then after twenty very long seconds when it has stopped I begin to think.

And then I knew.

It was scary and exciting.

Did I forget to mention I'm grateful I don't live on the west coast?

I had just experienced what was my very first earthquake.

my crappy neighbor

We own a house in Florida that we don't live in and use infrequently. With the economy as it is and the housing market in the toilet I would venture a guess that my second home is worth about two cents right now. My husband has some rather strong feelings about being absentee landlords so we use it when we can. Lately however our time has been taken up with family time and health concerns so our trips have been far and few between.

Anyway because we live in Virginia, we had an agreement with the neighbor he would check on the house and mow the grass for a fee, plus we gave them our riding mower as part of the agreement. This all went perfectly well until the neighbor got a job outside the country and passed the job to his stepson. He is in his late twenties so we didn't anticipate any problems as far as whether he's be of a responsible age.

At first things seemed to be OK, it turns out however he was misusing the key we gave him in case of emergencies. One of the other neighbors called one weekend night several months ago saying there was a rather noisy party going on in my house. You see he has this pack of male friends, I've often wondered what in the world they do since they are around at all times of  the day and night. I don't think they work with any regularity or go to college for that matter. So I wasn't shocked after the police arrived at our request to hear that several people were arrested for illegal possession of who knows what and they along with our not so trustworthy neighbor were all taken out of our house in handcuffs.

My husband and my son Matthew changed the locks and I was happy about that. But for me I felt so betrayed. It bothered me that all those strange people were in my house touching my stuff. It bothered me that he betrayed my trust when I thought he was worthy of it. It bothered me that he didn't care that it was our space-our home when he was free to have parties in his parents house right next door.

My neighbor just called again today, it seems he's a little slow in the head he and his friends parked a moving truck in my driveway. I'm not sure what part of don't come on my property he doesn't understand but one of the men from down the block confronted him about being on the property and he and his friends moved.

There is still no beach for me because of my leg but it's time for me and my husband to hit the Florida sunshine and make our presence known to our crappy neighbor. My leg is just good enough to give him a swift kick in the rear end. So Monday after my wound doctor appointment appointment we'll be off for a few days to see what's going on. Then we can pay a nice visit and have a cold one with the good neighbors; yes we actually do have a few!

I have really good neighbors in the town where I live and I have a hard time imagining what it would be like having to live with bad neighbors all the time, it must be horrible. This guy down in Florida really bugs me to no end. Have you ever had a crappy neighbor or been betrayed by one?

don't blink or you'll miss my town

When I moved to the south from Long Island it took a teensy bit of time for me to adjust to the climate change, the driving on interstates to go everywhere, that there were no street lights and that the people were so darn friendly.

The other thing that took a bit of getting used to was the size of our little town, it's pretty small, very small actually. One drug store, a fire house, a bank, our hardware just closed, a library, a hair salon, barber shop, post office, computer store, food market, dairy freeze, pizza place, dollar store, a small garden center and a couple of gas stations and many many churches.

Today the local business owners' there aren't many on the main street opened their doors and had a bit of a fair of sorts. Local farmers, people from our community, business owners, the mayor and others gathered and on the streets on a perfect 80ish degree day.

Some vendors had tents and sold their wears, fresh produce, jewelry, canned vegies ( I got some pickled beets)  and many other crafts and items. They had a bouncie house and face painting for the little ones by the bank.

There was an 80% sale on some of the left over items at our local hardware that recently was closed by the owners so they could peruse their new love (a grandson) when they weren't teaching which is their regular jobs.

The grocery store Wallace's sponsored  free hot dogs and lemonade to all who attended and the booth was manned by The Bank Of McKenney's personnel in the banks parking lot.

I have come to enjoy this type of day and we made new friends over at the new computer store (moving up in the world our town is with a computer store wow!). This couple are friends with the owners of the business, he's in construction and she's in healthcare; very nice people. They have chicken's that  lay blueish green eggs; no lie! Have you ever seen such a thing?

This is a big hit with the little boys; what little boy doesn't dream of being a fireman?

And of course there were no beers here so you couldn't get a pint but you could give a pint!

I think it is rather quaint and I have never once regretted bringing my children here to live a more simple life free of the rush-rush-rush of the the north. I love that when you meet on the street here the people really care to hear about how you are and listen with genuine interest. It makes me happy since I feel the same way about them too.

Truth be told I used to think this was pretty hokey stuff, not anymore.
What about you. How do you feel about how and where you live?