Water Leak, Burlap, Denim, Garden, Canning and Riding the Tractor! Our Friday and Saturday!

Louis Dean likes to say, "Wake up! Get organized. Talk to wife. Get re-organized."

Or in Friday's case, look around and see a leak that became visible once Sherry did some mowing up here for us. All his other plans went out the window and he settled down to fix that leak.

This area is behind the camper and the bathroom at the end section of the front room.

The pipe broke due to faulty workmanship and that was due to working in a hostile environment due to those mean vicious bees last spring. It took him the entire afternoon to  get it all done and put back together. The water was turned back on after the sun went down.

I spent the day doing some odd and end things.

At the feed store we noticed in the beekeeping section, some folded burlap strips packaged up as bee smoker material. I have burlap. As in an old feed sack. I bought several of them at Leon's Junction for the kids to do sack races when they came down. We never did that so I used them as a tree skirt on my country tree in the front room. I has another one just laying around.

That one's now packaged up and ready to use in Sherry's bee smoker

Look who's been hanging around with us!

I asked Sherry if I could name her July. She looks so much like Amber's cat she got on the 4th of July in 1992. Can you spy Sherry and Louis Dean in this pic?

She's a pretty little thing.

What's not to love about a cute kitten??

She is not the least bit intimidated by Rufus.

Sweet critters.

I had traced all the squares on the jeans and Friday I cut them all up!

That job's done. Every time we come down here, I bring some denim to whack.

Louis Dean spent some time watering the garden.

I picked okra and some tomatoes.

That okra grows so fast!

Just a man watering a garden.

Funny how satisfying doing these simple things are to our soul.

This morning (Saturday) was canning day!

Sherry picked one more round of okra and we settled down to pickle them.

She had everything set up in her kitchen and it was a lot of fun to work together and get it done!

She just sent me a text - all 8 of the jars sealed!

There  will be more canning in our future.

Back in the early 90's I canned just about anything I could find at Farmer's Market.

Jams and jellies, vegetables, stewed tomatoes, spiced peaches, even candied apple rings.

Vegetable soup was one of my favorites and pickles.

I would host canning parties and a few friends and I would meet at 4:00 in the morning and head over to downtown Dallas. One time I took us to a coffee shop I had read about in the paper. Except I took us to the wrong one. It.was.awful. Cockroaches crawling on the wall. Drunks slumped over tables.

The service was not good and the waiter said his help didn't show up that morning. My friend - Brenda Freeland was her name and she had taken a vacation day to do this adventure with me - said, "Of course, she didn't!Who would??" I don't know why we didn't leave but we stuck it out and then laughed and laughed about for years!

Dean had a couple of his karate students here for a class down in the meadow while Sherry and I were canning. They all went to town for lunch at B.Walker's Kitchen in Mart. They brought us back some burgers and fries.

Sherry took me back up the camper cabin on her tractor!!

That was so much fun!!

While we were visiting over lunch, she noticed one of our bees was on the red door.

I'm not a good photographer so I was pretty proud of myself for getting a decent pic of her.

I don't have pictures to prove it, but Sherry brought her zero radius mower up and mowed our 'front yard.' Then she let ME drive it!!!

Life is pretty exciting down here!!!!