Our Angel in a Cowboy Hat

Yes, posts are scarce these days. I haven't been this busy in a long time. We spent the month of April cleaning and moving into our new home out in the country. And I mean 'country!' Our little town has less than 200 people in it. We put in new carpet upstairs and my husband has been slowly putting in wood floors downstairs in the evenings after his day job. The first picture at the bottom of this post shows what our living room looks like right now. Nasty, nasty... We've been living in the kitchen and bedrooms and I have a feeling it will be this way a long time. It's going slow.

Meanwhile, I have been cleaning out the bugs and cobwebs from inside the house while the kids scrape the swallows and wasps nests off of the eaves and porches. A door or window must have been left open for a long time while it remained empty. I've never seen so many critters in a house. We are also trying to clean out and cut the tall grass around the house because we have a lot of cottonmouths and copperheads. But, oh how I love this place! It is picture perfect. I can't wait to share my nature finds with you over at Crammed with Heaven, our sadly neglected nature blog.

We didn't know anyone around us very well and was wondering how to find a tractor to plow our field so we could put in a big garden. It should have been in two weeks ago. Lo and behold, yesterday morning bright and early, our next-door neighbor drives up the lane with his tractor. He had heard about our plight through the grapevine and offered to help. This gentleman is 89 years old and still farming! I chatted with our angel in a cowboy hat while 13 yr old Raora ran to the house and whipped up something sweet. Sharing ice water and carrot cake under the shade of a big tree, the children and I listened to him recall tales about his adventures as a soldier during World War II and the history of our new little old town. A few hours later, our new friend went on home, but by nightfall, we had plowed and disced an acre and planted about 1/3 of it in beans, tomatoes, peppers, watermelon and cantaloupe. Tomorrow, we hope to finish putting in the okra, cucumbers, squash, herbs and corn.

So please forgive me for not responding to your kind comments and emails. It may be a week or two before I can get to them.

Here's some pics...

Living room. Office- wood floors and wallpaper falling down

School room in progress. DH and the kids taking a walk. I don't trust that bull.

Pippi scraping nests off the eaves. Our pretty breakfast room

Still to unpack...




one step at a time...