Happy Thanksgiving!

Are you all ready?  We are!

You will note that the yams are not there, as I had them on the list but somehow missed picking them up.  Just the creamy carbs for us!  Stuffing, mashed potatoes, (not the ones pictured, though, real ones!), green bean casserole, and sweet potatoes with pecans and pineapple and little tiny marshmallows.
And the best thing of all:

Now what makes this turkey special is that we got it as a gift!  Remember years ago when employers gave out hams or turkeys for Thanksgiving and Christmas as a nice thank you bonus for employees?  Well this one came from Jerry's boss.  He was so pleased when he called me to tell me we had a turkey and that I didn't have to buy one!  And just the right size, around 10 pounds, for us.
Everyone have a wonderful turkey day!

I have the best friends in the entire world!

A very dear friend sent me a gift this week.  Her name is Ruth Davis, she is in her early 80s.  About 10 or 12 years ago, she kept pestering me to find her a needle point canvas with a corgi on it.  I'd seen some around but frankly, they weren't very good.  I knew that Linda Ozelis had a friend that painted some, though, that were just stunning.  So I bided my time and waited until the next National specialty and bought one of these lovely works of art.  I brought it home and presented it to Ruth and she was just thrilled and I was delighted that I'd made her so happy.  And then I just forgot about it.
Fast forward to the current date and yes, she sent me the needlepoint.  It was around an 18 count which means 18 teeny tiny little stitches to the inch.  Further, Ruth is fighting macular degeneration in her eyes.  This means her sight is going.  She did this needlepoint for me and had it framed.  The holes were so tiny she had to use 3 strands of embroidery thread and match up the colors.  She did this because she loves me.  I cannot believe she did it for me.  So let me share it with you.  It is a real work of art and it is going up on my wall in a day or two (we have to have the rain stop so Jerry can get in his workshop and find the right nail thingies that go in the wall and make it very secure).
Thank you, Ruth...I love you so much!

Breakfast

There are a lot of yummy things served for breakfast in Kentucky and I'm sure in the rest of the USA, too, but our favorite thing is bacon and biscuits.  I have posted before about the search for a very good biscuit, I won't say perfect as I need to leave the door open for the perfect biscuit.  But bacon has been a problem lately. For one thing, the price has increased quite a bit since we moved here.  It used to be that I could find a pound of bacon for around 4.00 and sometimes it would even be somewhat lean.  However, it's gone up to around 5.29 now and mostly fatty. I found some less expensive bacon at one of the less expensive grocery stores but it was very stringy and not very tender.
This week I found 2 1/2 lbs of bacon for 9.99!  And the name of the product was, of course, perfect.

 Look how lean it is!

 I have learned to cook bacon in the oven, 400 degrees for about 25 minutes.  My oven cooks a little cooler, normally it would be around 375, so experiment with your oven.  I have also learned to use parchment paper which makes clean up so much easier, and good heavy aluminum pans.

 It comes out so crispy and brown and without leaving your stove top a greasy mess!

Then add in the very good biscuits...Yum!

I must talk about grits sometime, too!

My favorite subject: Sunrises!

Just sit back and enjoy.  These were taken a couple of days ago:

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Only it's not cold.  And there is no snow.  And although it is cloudy today and rainy for the next few days, still in the 60s and 70s.  Just a lovely Fall overall!
But our friends at Wal Mart have begun to play carols.  Loudly.  So loud yesterday that I could barely think of what I needed at the store. And this brings up a story from last year that was continued today.
Last December 26th, I got up at 5:00 am and left from home at 5:30 in order to hit the early sales of leftover Christmas stuff at our local WalMart.  I was at the door at 6:00 am. The road had been slightly icy and it was black black black outside.  Eww.  And I was surprised that there was no one there, a dozen cars in the lot which I supposed belonged to the employees. But where were the people?  Don't people in Kentucky take advantage of saving some money on their Christmas items by getting them for half price?
I entered the store and quickly got the things I'd had my eye on.  One of these was a new Christmas tree.  We didn't have room or time to put up a tree last year.  As a matter of fact, I only have felt like my life was my own again the past couple of months.  Moving across the country and after having roots down for years and years really means it takes a while to get settled in.  Although I wanted a tree, I was darned if I was going to buy one at full price. But they had this darling one at WalMart and it was half off.

Our new tree has been in the box now for almost 11 months.  Today, Jerry couldn't stand it anymore.  He wanted his new tree up, with the lights already on it.  He brought it up from where we had stored it, we discussed where it should go.  I wasn't real jazzed about putting it up before Thanksgiving but I can't remember when we had a tree last so I figured putting it up a week or two earlier was probably all right.  It was assembled up on a small table to discourage small black noses from getting involved in a disassembling project!  But something went wrong.  Have you ever heard of truth in advertising?  Apparently it doesn't apply to Christmas trees.

Well this is it.  I could pitch a softball through the spaces.  Jerry tried to make the best of it.  "Why, it just needs to be fluffed out some".  OK. So I fluffed a bit but said "there is no way we can fluff up over these holes!"  "Oh, but when we turn the lights on, it will look better".  I was doubtful that the lights would even come on but he tried.  He stood across the room.  "I don't think the lights helped" he pointed out. Well, uh...no!  Really!  Someone in the factory forget to wire half the branches on and they don't even come down all the way down the trunk.  So we packed up the Charlie Brown tree and put it down for the garage sale stuff.  Someone will find it useful, I'm sure.  Poor tree.
So I will be looking for a new tree this year, I'm afraid.  I like the ones they have at Lowe's, so maybe will get one from there.

Craig's List in Kentucky

There is nothing to add to this.  Just enjoy the fact that yes, moonshine is still very actively produced down here!

Ain't

I know that there have been some small earthquakes around the nation lately, California, the east coast, even Oklahoma.  These have NOT been caused by the usually tectonic plates moving about.  No, not at all.  They have been caused by my mother.  How, you may ask, did this happen?
Well, turns out Momma rolled over in her grave last week.  Yes, indeed, my highly educated, double degree'd mom heard something come out her daughter's mouth.  It wasn't French.  Hell, it wasn't even Anglo Saxon, the only other language that I can speak besides English....  :)
It was the word "ain't".  I said it in an actual sentence to an actual person.
Now this wasn't just a fun "I AIN'T gonna do that..." kind of statement where you might use the word to make an emphasis on something.  Oh, no, this was in casual conversation.  I thought, "did I just say ain't in a sentence?"  And yes, I had.
I know that we belong to the family of primates and one of the things about primates is that they imitate things.  There was a sister in the parochial school I attended, in the 9th grade.  She was a dear lady and I loved her a lot. She taught social studies but had a fascinating habit of lifting her eyebrows into a surprised look about every 10 seconds.  I have never seen anyone do this since.  And I actually started to do it to see what it felt like and then it wasn't quite a habit but, it seemed I was doing it some.  And once I realized this, I made an effort to stop it.
So I know that we imitate facial expressions and also speech patterns.  I have been very careful to not say some of the things that are said down here, ain't being one of them.  I have started to pick up the habit of saying "you need to get you some pancakes for breakfast" instead of "you need to get some pancakes for breakfast".  I have never heard this extra use of the word you anywhere else and do say it on occasion.  I have not said "I need to carry Jerry to town" instead of "I need to take Jerry to town".  There are lots of other idioms that I hear, I smile about and I try not to say.  :)
Will this keep me from being a genuine redneck?  Gosh, I hope not.  I am hearing my voice soften, though, drawing out words like nine and five, and I'm not saying "no problem" instead of "thank you" so much anymore.  You really do imitate a lot in life.

I hate Thistles!

Yep, well I do. The flowers are ever so pretty.

But the plant is deadly. Not in terms of poison but in terms of thorns and in terms of taking over the pasture.  So pastures have to be regularly bush hogged (meaning mowed down) two or three times a year to keep these invasive plants away.  We also have some cockleburrs that I might actually be winning the war against.  And I am winning the war against the thistles.
They get so big, some are 5 feet tall and they have multiple flowers which then bear thousands of little seeds.  Birds like the seeds and eat a lot of them and the butterflies like them, too.
They are biennial which means they sprout and grow the first year, and are large and flat type of plants, so kind of hard to find unless they are really big. The next year, they bear flowers/seeds and then die.

I spent all summer, a few minutes a week, cutting them down, spraying them and removing the flowers and seed pods.  I really went after them and saw great success. But a few got away from me so I've been thistle hunting this month.  Lots of them out there, some very tiny, but others just humongous.  I use the Kill Death Murder spray on them (so named by Jerry) and it works very, very well!  I killed off at least 70 today, I spend a half hour criss crossing the fields and find them there.  They are just nasty, thorned things!

Post Number 100!

No kidding!  I started this blog last fall and we are now at post 100!  Honestly, I never thought I'd find this much to write about.  The blog began as a way to celebrate our life here, the wonderful and fun things we have seen and experienced with some overflow into my personal life.  And I still have things to write about!
Today's post will be a little bit about this and that.
Here is yesterday's sunrise:

 And this is what it looked like to the west, the sun was reflecting off these clouds:

 And about 10 minutes later, the sun came up....

I love to start my day this way!
Here is another photo, we finally got the second stained glass up in the front room.  We didn't want to block the view so we hung it up by the entry way and it looks pretty good there.  I may actually take out the spindles at some point in the future.

The plant is one that Rose, the lady who used to live here, left behind.  I had to trim it down some, it was so healthy and had vines at least 10 feet long!  But it was taking over the front room.  It has been trimmed, dead branches removed, yellow leaves picked off.  It had a great summer outside in the front yard being a wild plant with the Christmas cacti.  And they are very happy, too, you can see them blooming:

They are so happy here that they bloomed three times this past year, spring, summer and now fall!
Tomorrow I will talk about some plants that I hate.