It's been a while

Yes, it has been a while. I have taken a little break because I really didn't have much to say. My garden is not doing so well so I don't have pictures or updates on that. It has been very hot here but now we are having rains. I am happy about the rain! Love, love, love it! I do have potatoes almost ready to pluck out of their potato bags and will post on that soon.

The holiday is coming up and the whole month of July is filled with family and friend visits! We have plans to go tubing down the river again too and I am really looking forward to that!

I have also been in a kind of a funk lately. More on that later too.

My daughter is coming along nicely and she is having a sonogram to determine the sex of the baby on the 26th so we are excited about that also.

Stay tuned, I will be back soon.
Thanks for hanging in there.
xoxo
Bobbi

Barn Hop #16

It's that time of the week again. The Barn Hop! Click on the button above to check out what everyone is doing this week and to link up your post!

I have another garden update. My garden is doing the weirdest things lately. I think it is too hot, but you tell me, is any of this normal?

My baby corn. I mean really, is it really supposed to look like this? lolol. I seriously did not expect to harvest any corn, but it has been fun watching it grow. The birds can enjoy these little kernels.
This stalk is about two feet tall.

Next up is the strangest of the garden wonders. My tomato(?) in my potato bags! Look at this little thing? It looks like a tomato, but it is growing on the potato plant!! What is going on? LOL
the first picture is close up and the second you can see it below right. It is only about the size of a dime.

Next up are just pictures...

bean blossoms, I love them!

beans hiding underneath

Red pepper. looks like the bloom fell off so hopefully I will get a pepper soon.

Almost ready to eat. I don't think it will make it in to the house. I have been waiting a long time for this.

These are hunan peppers again. There are tons of blooms on them. :)

Pretty Dill.

These aren't veggies, but mom found them growing wild. So she pulled them up and stuck them into a bucket. They are called Frangipani's (Plumaria) and they have a very pretty fragrant flower. They make Hawaiian Lei's out them.  

That is about it for our little place. Have a wonderful week!

Preparedness Challenge #12



This week on the preparedness challenge I reread some chapters on vegetable gardening in my area of Florida. I am not getting this gardening thing down and have some really weird things happening with some of my veggies. I don't know what is going on but I will have a garden update on Monday and you can judge for yourself.

My mom gave me a book that has been in her household since at least 1958. It was my grandfathers, her father, and has his name written (by him) on the inside front cover. I love having something my grandfather held and wrote in. The book is called FOLK MEDICINE A Vermont Doctor's Guide to Good Health, by D.C. Jarvis. It. Is. Wonderful. Check it out at your library, buy it at Amazon, do what you have to do, but get it. It is simple common sense for everything.

Jarvis writes about the simple things; honey, apple cider vinegar and exercise. He states we can all learn from most animal behaviors and instincts. They know which herbs will heal their bodies. They don’t have doctors shoving pills down their throats. Here is a favorite excerpt of this book; “The body needs assistance to meet the complications, stresses and strains of modern civilization. Mercifully during childhood we are more or less protected by instincts. But when we leave the world of childhood, we are all too prone to consider these instincts old-fashioned. Happily it is never too late to learn them, if we are willing to observe the way Nature’s laws are followed by animals and by little children”. Or this one. “Honey is not only an excellent food, it is a food supplement too. It prevents fermentation in the gastrointestinal tract and is quickly absorbed”.

Every morning, mom & I drink 1 tsp of apple cider vinegar mixed with 1 tsp of honey in a glass of warm water. It adds a natural acid back in to your diet and the benefits are awesome. It makes you feel better, is a natural blood cleanser, clears up morning sickness (if applicable, lol) it helps even out the alkalinity in your system if you tend to eat too much protein. I love this book and refer back to it all the time.

It may not have a whole lot to do with modern day preparedness, but it is total common sense read when it comes to your health and simply taking care of yourself.

I also completed my 72 hour bags! They are ready to go if we need it. Just in time for hurricane season, although I have great confidence we will not need them. J

Have a nice week!

Banana Pudding Recipe

This is a great recipe from Ms. Paula Dean. It is SO good, and a nice cool dessert to have for these hot spring/summer days!

Not 'Yo Mama's Banana Pudding

2 packages Pepperidge Farm Chessman cookies
6-8 bananas
2 cups milk
1 (5oz) instant French vanilla pudding
1 (8oz) package cream cheese
1 (14oz) can sweetened condensed milk
1 (12oz) container frozen cool whip or other brand, thawed

photo credit

Line the bottom of a 13 x 9 x 2" dish with cookies and layer bananas on top. In a bowl, combine the milk and pudding mix and blend well using a handheld mixer. Using another bowl, combine the cream cheese and condensed milk together and mix until smooth. Fold the whipped topping into the cream cheese mixture. Add the cream cheese mixture to the pudding mixture and stir until well blended. Pour the mixture over the cookies and bananas and cover with the remaining cookies. Refrigerate until ready to serve. Makes about 12 servings and only takes about 30 minutes to make.

Nana!

My baby is having a baby!

I have actually known since Mother's day, but I wanted to wait for the first doctor appointment and confirmation that everything was ok. Her appointment was yesterday and she is 9 weeks pregnant and is due on January 10th. When I was pregnant with her, my due date was January 11th!

I am ecstatic! I never thought I could feel this way about being a grandmother, but I am. My nieces and nephews call me "Aunt Bob" and one of my grown nieces has it in her head that she will have the baby calling me "Grand-Bob", but we'll see. I would prefer Nana. My favorite Disney movie is Peter Pan and the pooch in the movie took care of the whole family and I can relate lol. Well the family calls it being bossy stemming from my German genes, lol. Whatever! :)

I may, on occasion, be writing to update you on the baby situation but I will try to keep those posts few. So far she is doing prenatal yoga and thinking of doing the hypnobirth method. I will be reading up on all this and will help her in any way I can.

Natural Highs!

Natural Highs
Think about them one at a time before going on to the next one. It Does Make You Feel Good, especially the thought at the end of #44.

1. Falling in love.
2. Laughing so hard your face hurts.
3. A hot shower.
4. No lines at the supermarket.
5. A special glance.
6. Getting mail.
7. Taking a drive on a pretty road.
8. Hearing your favorite song on the radio.
9. Lying in bed listening to the rain outside.
10. Hot towels fresh out of the dryer.
11. Chocolate milkshake (vanilla or strawberry ).
12. A bubble bath.
13. Giggling.
14. A good conversation.
15. The beach.
16. Finding a 20 dollar bill in your coat from last winter.
17. Laughing at yourself.
18. Looking into their eyes and knowing they Love you
19. Midnight phone calls that last for hours.
20. Running through sprinklers.
21. Laughing for absolutely no reason at all.
22. Having someone tell you that you're beautiful.
23. Laughing at an inside joke with FRIENDS
24. Accidentally overhearing someone say something nice about you.
25. Waking up and realizing you still have a few hours left to sleep. 26. Your first kiss (the very first).
27. Making new friends or spending time with old ones.
28. Playing with a new puppy.
29. Having someone play with your hair.
30. Sweet dreams.
31. Hot chocolate.
32. Road trips with friends.
33. Swinging on swings.
34. Making eye contact with a cute stranger.
35. Making chocolate chip cookies.
36. Having your friends send you homemade cookies. 37. Holding hands with someone you care about.
38. Running into an old friend and realizing that some things (good or bad) never change.
39. Watching the expression on someone's face as they open a much desired present from you.
40. Watching the sunrise.
41. Getting out of bed every morning and being grateful for another beautiful day.
42. Knowing that somebody misses you 43. Getting a hug from someone you care about deeply.
44. Knowing you've done the right thing, no matter what other people think.Enjoy your week and thanks for reading!

Barn Hop #15

Garden Update!

My garden; what a mess, lol. I am going to get out there this week and really make it shine. I have to tell you that I have had something get into my garden at night. I need a fence, but being unemployed it is not on the menu yet. My sister has a pool fince she is going to loan me but for now...we have all kinds of 'things' in the garden. And it is working! HAHA. We have badminton rackets, balls, gnomes, plants with shiny foil, poles, and obscene looking piece of coral and other various things. Whatever works! BUT the damage is: they pulled up my beans from seed so i had to buy some new ones. they pulled up my cucumber but I was able to save it. However, it is not doing much so it has probably been scarred for life. They pulled out all of my sweet potato slips, pepper and a coupld of small tomato plants, also some mini bells peppers and destroyed the nasturtiums. I think that is it. :(

So, back to what IS going on in the garden...

The Hunan Peppers are looking good. Buds and little babies all over most of the plants. I have found out they like lots of water.  We haven’t had much rain so I am watering most every day. At least we have a well and no water bill. J

The Dill is getting ready to go to seed, but I don't mind one bit. It is yummy and I threw some in my shrimp the other night.

These bean plants are doing so well and they are from last fall! Look at them go! The one below is new due to the animals.

What is up with my parsley? If you look real close, in the middle, the leaves are real thin and different looking. I followed this stalk and it is indeed part of the parsley! I have never seen anything like it, have you? We'll call it mutant parsley from now on. ;)

Tiny broccoli plant from last fall also. (I have issues with pulling up old plants, can you tell)? It actually looks like it is starting to come back...even though it is 98 degrees almost every day, go figure. 

Cucumber in the middle, lol. Poor little thing.

Watermelon is going strong. See the badminton racket? lol

The potatoes are doing real well, the bloomed so now we are just waiting for them to die back! :) I am sure we still have a ways to wait but we are almost there. I hope they turn out ok. Seems like this garden is weirding out on me, lol

 These are Stupice tomatoes!

Can you see that little white-ish yellow kernel? I guess it is a kernel. I have never tried to grow corn so I am not sure what (or even if) I will get. The animals pulled out most of this too. I put them back in and they would do well only to be pulled out again *sigh*. I finally gave up and just let it be. So far (with all our 'yard art') they have left them alone.

Beans!

Squash. Now I see everyone else is already canning theirs, lol. This too got pulled out and was replaced - late, so I am not even sure it will survive the heat. We'll see.

Green pepper

Obscene looking coral, lol. I purposely did not get a close up shot. You will just have to guess. :)

Glacier Tomatoes

Little bitty cabbage (leaves mostly).

The bugs got to this, but the middle seems to be doing ok and it looks like the bugs have stopped. I read somewhere that you can tie it up and try to make it make itself into a ball of cabbage.

Who knows what is going on, but it has been interesting (and maddeningly frustrating) to say the least. *sigh*

Now you can see why I am SO envious of everyone’s gardens, lol. Mine is the schleprock of all gardens. ;)

I am not giving up though. It is all practice, right? I have learned a lot already and can improve on that for my fall garden.

Have fun at the Barn Hop today!

Preparedness Challenge #11

This week has been especially hard on me for some reason when it has come to this blog. I apologize, I have had no motivation whatsoever. That said; I do want to participate in the Preparedness Challenge. If I do nothing else, I need to prepare.

So this week I have researched and made lists of what all I need to complete my 72 hour bags. They are really coming along nicely and I am please with them. I also talked to my family members about preparing in general and what all I feel we should do if we ever had to leave our house. Where we would go and (hopefully) we could follow one another in cars. Our plan is to drive north to my sister’s house and on a good travel day it is 9 hours away. (I guess we should let her in on the plan too, lol) If there were an emergency, everyone and their mother would be on the road and the 9 hours would probably be more like 24 or more. Who knows if gas stations would even be open and have gas? So that is something to think about also.

I also researched tents. I had no idea how many tents there are! I am NOT a camper; as a matter of fact my idea of camping is a Holiday Inn. However, I definitely want to purchase something in case we need it. But wait! I need a seam sealer and mattresses, waterproofing and cooking gear. Oh my, there is so much, the list goes on. Ok, I am being dramatic. Of course I would only pack the basics, but you get the picture. I was beingg sucked in and I totally got overwhelmed. LOL.

The only thing I did that was 'tangible' was to buy some Berkey Sport water bottles! I am so pleased with our system that I just had to buy the portable ones. If ever there was a testament to this water filter just go to the blog and read about our well water. You can see the difference and read the blog here.

I hope everyone had a good week. You can link up to the Preparedness Challenge here.