Thought I should do another update.

The pecan season is upon us.

Pecan prices are the best we have seen since we retired. 80 cents a pound right now. pecans are so so, but the season is just starting.

While we were picking pecans, we saw this out in the pasture.

To give you an idea, I pushed it around a little and put my pecan picker on the ground beside it. The pecan picker is four feet long..

And a close-up of the 'head'.

I feel like it gives me a fair outline of the snake's head/nose/eye area. Or so it seems, haha. It was(is) probably a corn snake or rat snake. If so, neither is poisonous and actually good to have around.
Especially if I don't see it while it is alive. ;-)

The weather has been really nice. We actually had a couple nights in the 40s. Thought maybe "winter" was finally here; but nope. Getting another warmup. Not the 90s, hopefully. I think the last I read in Farmer's Almanac was wetter warmer. We'll see.

Since I never did the other update on our Florida trip, I'll add a couple pictures here. Sister-in-law and hubby took us fishing on a pier. The great 'blue' herons there are not really afraid of people. They will steal your catch or bait right out of your bucket if you're not careful. Some people feed them, which adds to the lack of fear.

Most of the people weren't catching anything. And when they were catching, They caught these little mango- or mangrove snapper, I think they were called.

The evening was gorgeous. Just enough breeze to cool the 90 degree weather. The moon was out early, and as the sun began to set, most people packed up to go home.

And it was just as well we left then, because we were barely into the truck when it started pouring!

But is was a good trip, even if we didn't catch anything.

You all be safe and God bless.

Only a little pier fishing

Didn't really catch anything. Small ones to throw back. A gar, that I didn't take a picture of; and a snake bird or Anhinga. Didn't get a picture of that either. Have you ever noticed that your eye can see things clearly that your camera can't? Pretty amazing, don't you think? Hubby and I were discussing that yesterday. The driver in front of us was quite obviously texting while driving. We discussed taking a picture and turning them in to the police. But the camera would have had to focus past our windshield, and past the reflection on the back window of said car, to get a picture of the cell phone in the driver's hand while they were tapping their message.
While the human eye can sort past all the distraction to see the evidence, the camera often can not. Just pretty amazing.

I did take a picture or two of where we were fishing.

The funny thing about this spot. There is a place where they obviously used to do boat rentals, but don't any more because of the huge weed infestation. One of the trees in another area actually has a sign that indicates canoe trail. I don't think even a canoe could get through this stuff. Last year they did a draw down on the lake to reduce weeds. Not sure what weeds, but it obviously didn't affect the water lilies. Some of the leaf pads were big enough you could almost imagine walking on them. I was disappointed not to see any frogs on them, haha!

If you look to the right of my fishing pole, you will see a lighter green tree between two darker ones (cypress all, I believe). The dark spot in that lighter green tree is the Anhinga. I watched it closely because the first I saw of it, it was pushing itself out of the water onto the tree and I didn't really know what was going on at the time. I lost sight for a minute, but then saw it again as it flapped its wings. That was when I realized it was an Anhinga. Then it would hop to a higher branch and 'shake' its wings again. It did this for several branches and may have well reached a top branch to sun itself dry; but we had decided to to leave before that point. All we were catching and seeing, as I said earlier, were little ones. It was 95 degrees plus humidity, so we didn't see any reason to stay longer.

Birthday and anniversary coming up. 64 and 42 respectively. Yay? Don't get me wrong, I am happy on both counts. We are truly blessed. It is just I never expected to see the decline of America. And certainly not in my lifetime.
I pray that God may take pity on us.
I pray that you are all having a safe and happy Independence Day weekend.
Please pray for the firefighters and people in or near the area of all the wild fires. Sad and scary.
Have a blessed weekend and a safe and blessed week!

Hot hot.

Prayers for West Virginia.

We have been doing afternoon/evening fishing because of the heat. We caught 2 yesterday and 3 today. Just pan fish, but we both like those. They fry up well.

No pictures of the fish, just pictures of the lake, and a turtle that kept checking us out yesterday.

It's hard to see the turtle here. sort of lower left, but in the green area just above the white reflection. Sorry. Haha. I can see it because I know where it was. It kept popping its head out. Then it would go under, swim a bit, and pop its head up again.

It's a little more clear in this picture. Not sure why it kept checking us out, but it did.

Changing to afternoon/evening fishing isn't perfect at 90 plus degrees, but it has helped a lot.

And today we got to help a turtle. We selected a spot to fish - I'll try to get pictures next time - and we saw this big splash. When we got out to the tree we were going to tie up to, I noticed a trot line tied around it and going down into the water. I looked down and a turtle was caught on one of the hooks. I had to use my cane to grab the line because it was wrapped around the tree maybe 6 inches under the water. I tried to pull the line up, but another hook was hooked to an underwater stump. I got hubby to come help and he cut the line to the hook that was hooked in the turtle's leg. Then we cut the trot line off the tree and brought it home to throw away.
For those of you who don't know, a trot line is a long line with hooks every few inches. The hooks are baited and tossed into the water, usually for catching catfish. The line is supposed to be tagged with the person's information, and checked daily. It should have been removed when the person finished with it. Who knows why it wasn't.

I have a mild sinus headache right now, but it was a really nice day for fishing.

Hope you are all having a blessed weekend!

No fish again

But I'll share a few pictures of where we fished.

Maybe next time.

Hope you are all doing well and have a blessed week!

September

The year is almost three-fourths over. Haven't been posting a lot. Haven't done anything I wanted to share, really.
Been doing a lot of fishing, but not a lot of catching. This new header, that's a little fishing buddy we encountered Saturday when we were fishing. He was about two feet long, maybe three. He was very interested in what we were doing.

We've had a little break in the heat, but not so much rain lately.

I am very sad for my country right now. Things are worse than they were in the 60s. I keep praying that we won't have martial law; but right now it just scares me.

I've been praying for California, Oregon and Washington, too. Drought, forest fires, not good.

I hope you are all well. Take care and God bless. ♥

Random Things

We went fishing on Fort Polk last Thursday. They have a small lake there. We only caught a couple small bream, which we tossed back; but apparently there is a small herd of wild horses there. We saw them in the woods, and while we were fishing, they came out to feed on the grass at the park.

The horses are a reminder of Fort Polk's calvary past. Apparently the numbers in the herd go up and down and people on the base get upset when the government tries to get rid of them altogether.

There are a lot of 'mushroom villages' around the property. Last month they looked like this.

Now, they look like this.

Larger, and darker. As you can see in the second photo, fire ants have taken over one of the 'townhouses'.

It's pecan season.

The collection is mediocre. Partly because we are doing better financially this year, so we don't need to sell them to make it until the end of the month; and partly because hubby is still not 100%. So I spend more time in the house watching out for him.
There are a lot that still need to ripen and fall, too.

Hubby makes a great peach pie! This from a person who didn't like peach pie until he started making them.

Hope you all have a blessed week! ♥

What a day today was.

Aside from being rather warm today.

Hubby was working in the pasture and the neighbor ran up waving the newspaper at him. She said, "I don't mean to be minding your business, but your property is listed here for sale for overdue taxes."
What?
All the junk mail the post office forwards and they didn't forward a tax notice?
Not to mention that we applied for homestead exemption in JULY! (Taxes are mailed in November or some such.)
So, hubby called the assessors (?) office and she looked at the records and saw that we were clearly living here when tax bills were mailed.
She gave hubby a number to call and I went to find our Exemption receipt.
By the time I found it and got ready to leave, hubby said she had called back, talked to the person she told hubby to call, and since it was their mistake, they were going to waive our taxes.
Hubby said "Thank you, but I'd rather pay them."
She had also told him that we would probably get a bill this November for .77 cents!
Anyway, we drove into town, went to the tax office, but the lady there couldn't find the tax bill listed in the newspaper. All she saw was the .77 cents.
Which she wouldn't let us pay! She had a.... fund. In an envelope she kept in a drawer. And whenever her drawer was over or under or someone came in with a bill for less than a dollar, she takes it out of the envelope!
And she apologized for us having to go through it all!
And what could we have lost the farm for, had it not been for our neighbor?
Basically $47.
Louisiana is like that.
And there were a lot of listings for less than $100.

So, after freaking out and rushing downtown, we came out okay.

And when we got home, we realized we had a septic tank problem.

The toilet has been... slow.

Hubby was working on some steps (Yes, his shoulder is still bad and he still needs surgery. Probably in July.) and said he smelled something not good. I replied I had just flushed the toilet. So, he decided he needed to go under the house.
And found that One of the lines had had a... rubber hose used as a... flimsy what, he couldn't tell. It had basically rotted, and the line was leaking out on the ground.
Yes, it was that special.
So, we are staying in the trailer again for the next few days until it dries out enough under the house so that he can repair the leak and hopefully clear whatever is clogging the line.

Oh well.

Maybe we'll go fishing tomorrow.
Happy Hump Day! ;-)

Went fishing today

Wanted to check out our fishing spot on base to see if it survived the storm. And it did. Sorry for the quality of the pictures. Took them with my phone. Maybe at the end of the pier you can see the bittern that decided to join us for a little bit.

We didn't catch any keepers, but this year's hatch is getting bigger. Maybe by November there'll be some keepers. As we were leaving, I took a picture showing where the waterline was during or just after the storm.

That brown line shows where it was. The pier, and the steps leading to it, were completely under water. I told the hubby I'm glad I didn't see that, or I might not have felt comfortable fishing on the pier today, haha. Happy Sunday to you all! :-)

Wacky weekend

No fish. Lots of smoke. No rain, but we did get spritz yesterday.
Another farm picture from our trip in May.

Hubby said he thinks this is some sort of holly. If the berries turn red and there are any there when we go back to mow some more, most likely in August, then we'll know for sure. :)

This, as near as I have been able to research, is something called Peppervine. I thought maybe poison ivy, but I knew it didn't look quite right. Apparently it is often confused with poison ivy (oak, etc.); but the difference is in the paired, or opposite leaves.

It's apparently a native of Texas and related to grapes, though it is a nuisance plant like poison ivy.
Other common names are Buckvine and Cow Itch...

Ah well. Happy Saturday to you all! :)

Happy Mother's Day!

Got some plants. Two grape plants (white and concord seedless), a blue berry bush and a blackberry bush. No pictures because there's nothing to see yet. ;-)
And I got seeds! Added them to my own little seed vault. :-)

Also went fishing. Forgot the camera, but that's just as well because it mostly rained while we were there.
And my phone is still being too smart for me because it wouldn't take any pictures when I wanted it to.
We saw an Osprey hoping for a fish dinner, and a little while later we saw a heron that had more luck than the Osprey did.

We caught half a dozen nice panfish. Going to grill steak for dinner though. :-)
I started to get a chill so we came home. Was good we did as it really poured just after we got home.
It's almost dry now, but still cloudy. We're probably going to try and finish loading the trailer.
We're leaving Friday after hubby gets off work.

Hope you're all having a Blessed day!

It was a very nice Easter

Easter Sunday started out foggy, but the sun soon cleared that away.
We went fishing. Got to watch gar mating. ;)
And some ducks, too. Didn't get pictures, sorry. Was just enjoying the beautiful day. Just enough wind to keep the humidity from being too warm.
Hooked an Alligator snapping turtle. Fortunately it was small enough that I was able to flip it back a bit and get my hook back.
Caught lots of small panfish. Mostly pumpkin seed. We threw them back along with any females that still needed to spawn.
But we did catch a few keepers and a really nice channel catfish. :)

We had a very nice Easter dinner with the fish and we have enough left over for another meal today or tomorrow.

And now we're getting ready for our next trip to the farm.
Hope you all have a Blessed week!

More fishing, no Wally.

Yup. It's that time of year. We went fishing again. Lost a nice flathead catfish. First one we've seen around here.
Ken figures it was about 10 pounds, but we weren't rigged for something like that. We use light-wire hooks because of the small bluegill/panfish, and all the branch trout that like to eat lines.
Light-wire hooks bend so that more often you get your rig back.
Ah well. To ensure we don't catch that catfish again, we're going to see if we can find one of our landing nets to take with us. ;-)

We also caught a couple nice bass. Fun to catch but we throw them back because we don't like to eat them. Don't even know the regulations to keep them.
Watched some gar spawning. Saw an eagle, too, but no pictures.

I did take pictures of the half-dozen bluegill panfish we caught though. :)

I think we've managed to catch enough to eat with some stir fried onions and bell peppers; and maybe add some brown bread. We'll figure something out.

An early Blessed Easter to you all!

We've been fishing!

It is blowing like crazy today! Someone is going to find a nice blue bucket with a grey handle because the wind blew ours into the creek. Which empties into Slocum Creek - called, interestingly enough - Alligator Gut creek on Google maps.
Which empties into the Neuse River, though given the direction the wind is blowing today, it will probably end up in the North branch of Slocum Creek.
Usually the place we fish is protected from wind. But not today. We lost some hooks too when hubby opened the tackle box and the wind blew the packages out of it. ;)
We've been fishing a little Thursday, Friday and today. In the mornings. An hour or two. The first day he was really tired, but he's been catching the best keepers. Not a lot. Most of the blue gill are full of eggs, so we throw them back; but he caught one male yesterday that was probably 3/4 pound. Great fish!
We're freezing them until we have enough for a fry.
Today he felt good enough to clean the fish himself. Which is good because I can't filet to save my life and we end up with little mangled bits of fish.
No Wally today, but a Resource officer came by (yesterday and today, strangely; the one yesterday asked to see our licenses. ;) ) and asked us if we'd seen an alligator. Turns out they weren't asking us about Wally, but about Wally's GRANDPA. haha.
The officer today said the one they're watching for is about 12 FEET LONG! And he likes our little branch of water, too, because he can swim through the tunnel under the road up towards the pond where there is often a beaver dam.
Nope. We've definitely not seen that one, and frankly, I'd rather see Wally. ;)
Happy Saturday to you all! Stay safe and God Bless. ♥

Sunny Sunday

Quite a surprise after the downpour we had a couple hours ago. Though maybe the rain was the surprise. It poured for about a half hour. We had thunder too, but now the sun is out like nothing happened.
We went fishing yesterday morning and today. No keepers. I still think the water is high, but it's not particularly high anywhere else we've fished, so hubby thinks it's just that the alligator tree that has moved. But I think the base has probably taken out a beaver dam upstream. They do that periodically. I don't use just the tree as an indicator.
Oh well.
We're getting anxious for our next trip to the property in Louisiana. Just a little over a month to go! :-)

Good weekend

No fish. The water is still too high. It's allowing brackish water to get in to where it's usually mostly fresh water. So no edible fish. Just little ones. No Wally this weekend, either. Probably plenty to find on the other side of our little stream.

We have 3 vehicles for 4 drivers. One was down for a week, but we got it fixed this weekend. There's been a bad electrical outlet in the youngest son's room. Got that fixed this weekend.
The youngest works part time at Sears. Tonight they had their Family and Friends night, so we went shopping for stuff for the farmhouse. Stuff we'll be using now and stuff for later. It was a 20% discount between the sales night and the son's employee discount.
Got hubby an early birthday present.

A 12 inch sliding compound miter saw and a stand to use it on. Not sure if this is the exact model, but it's close enough to show you what it looks like.

And, I got a late birthday, early Christmas present.

This will come in handy as I plan on doing a lot more baking in our nice big kitchen. :)

Hope you all have a wonderful week!

Wow. Wednesday

Time is flying by.

Well, the weekend ended with no edible fish caught and no sign of Wally. As I think I mentioned earlier, the game warden said Wally is usually in the part of the stream that we can't get to. Plus, they are still in the process of clearing on the other side of the road and doing something, but I have no idea what.
All that is probably keeping Wally where he (or she) feels safer.

Won't be long and we'll be headed back to the farm for more mowing and painting and trash hauling. :)

Well, it has certainly been an interesting weekend so far.

Been having problems with my laptop keyboard. Then had router problems. Then had to rebuild the desktop on the laptop. Lost a few things, but nothing too important.
Had no internet time yesterday because of it all.
Now I'm playing catch-up again.

Was real nice this morning. 62 degrees. Went fishing. Only caught junk fish. Don't think we saw Wally. Base game warden said he usually hangs out in the other branch of our little stream - which I figured. We saw something, but it was too far away to be sure. It was moving too fast to be a turtle, so it was either Wally or a snake...

Now it's 96 in the shade and hubby is trying to help the youngest boy fix a power steering problem.

Hope you're all having a good weekend. :)

TGIF!

So, Earl was pretty much a bust 30 or so miles inland from the coast. We've had thunderstorms with more punch. ;)
Don't know what we'll be doing this holiday weekend. It was on us before I knew and I have no clue what we'll be doing, except maybe fishing.
Going to be sunny and hot. I'm ready for fall!

Have a blessed weekend, all. :)

TGIF!

Happy Friday everyone. Haven't written much. Not much to say. No one wants to hear about laundry and ironing. ;)
I'm watching a gardening show on the local PBS channel. Well, one of them. Interesting. Explained how to grow coneflowers as an annual. I expect my brother already knew this information, but my memory is such that it's good to have this reminder now and then. Of course I didn't know it to begin with..

Just keep the flowers cut off for a year. No flowers = more roots = annual flowers. Or so they said...
Or is that perennial. I am hopeless. I can never remember all these garden terms. (o.0)
And you can use old hose for covering the handles of buckets.
Yes, I have that little to post about. ;)
I think we're going fishing tomorrow morning before it gets too hot.

That's about all I can think of. You all have a great weekend! :)

Weekend

So since it's been cooler, cooler being low 90s instead of 100s, we went fishing yesterday and today. You remember the alligator I told you about here, we hadn't seen him since then, but yesterday and today we saw him both days.

Well, yesterday he attacked the hubby's bobber and got an arm tangled in the fishing line. It let us get a good look at him, and his teeth, from the safety of that little pier we fish on. Turns out the hook was only caught on a scale or something because between the two of them, the gator swam off and my hubby got hook, line, and bobber back safely.

But, we were both so surprised, neither of us thought to take pictures. Today, he was there again. And while he didn't attack the bobber, he did definitely show an interest in it being in his territory.

And I did take a couple pics, but all I had was my phone, so I'm sorry for the quality of the pics. It was really gray out, so I used picasa to make the pictures a little clearer.

It poured shortly after I took the pictures, which is why they were so dark.
And naturally, I've named him Wally. ;)

We think the reason he particularly likes my husband's rig is the green/yellow bobber that rattles. My husband is using a 6 foot Ugly Stick, Medium Light Action. And no, I don't know for certain it's a he, but that's what I'm calling him. ;)

We only caught 2 keepers yesterday, fish wise, haha, but we fried them up with the fish we had frozen over the last month and it made a tasty meal for 3 with some leftovers for today or tomorrow. Today we only caught one keeper - with lots of little ones - so we let him go to catch again another day.

Hope you all have a wonderful, blessed week! :)