Last post of the year.

Wow. This year went by so quickly! It didn't seem that way weeding the garden this summer, but tomorrow is New Year's Eve.

Our trip to NC went well. Too fast, but well. The house there is empty, so we stopped by to look at it. The company that is handling the rental said this is the worst market they've seen in 36 years! That's what happens when it's a military economy and the military is being given pink slips.
We'll just have to hope for the best.

We took two days to get there. Rented a U-haul. Left it at son's apartment to load. We went to eat dinner at a favorite restaurant in New Bern, and found it had closed. However, a similar restaurant, Osaka Express Grill in James City (called New Bern also) was open so we decided to eat there. The meal was excellent.

On the way home we drove through because there was a really bad thunderstorm going through from Texas, to Louisiana and Mississippi. We were fortunate that it was mostly just rain when it hit Alabama and Georgia. Five people were killed in Mississippi.
We were blessed. Our youngest boy was home alone with the three cats. He messaged us several times about the rain and wind. We told him to stay inside. We had received a tornado warning; but didn't tell him that as he would have freaked out.

The power went out about ten PM that night. The impetus for us to consume mass quantities of caffeine and get home as soon as possible.
At one point the youngest boy told us he could smell smoke. Fortunately it was not our house.
The power came on about an hour before we drove in the driveway.
No internet as the modem had fried.

Turns out lightning had hit an oak tree in the pasture.

Very grateful it hit the oak tree and not a pecan. A house about a mile from us had a pecan tree hit by lightning and pieces of the tree went through their windows and into the next yard as it exploded. Hubby told me oak trees are very hard wood.
We've got two oak trees in the pasture close to the house. The one most recently hit is about 70 feet from the house. The other one I'm pretty sure that's been hit, is about 150 feet from the house.
Very thankful it was the oak tree.

We bought a new modem.
Middle son is settling in. Took him to the VA hospital to get him in the system. Took him to the VA office downtown to get paperwork started for hearing loss, and possible PTSD from his two tours in Iraq. He commented after being here only a day that he saw more help wanted signs in town than there were businesses in Havelock where we left.

We've talked about all the work he can help us with and right now he is more than willing to do it.

We're looking at rain most of Thursday, Friday and Saturday. All this rain usually comes more in February. We'll see.
It's nice to be home.

Hope you all have a safe New Year's Eve and a wonderful, blessed New Year. ♥

P.S. Pecans are up to seventy cents a pound. Life is good.

Because I can

Spent 2 hours waiting for hubby to see a doctor at the local VA hospital. Not too bad. (It was the emergency room after all.)
And another 5 hours to get a 2 hour antibiotic IV. We thought he had a sinus infection, but now it seems it may be a tooth problem, since they gave him a referral to see a dentist there.
Time will tell.

Our first potato. :-)Haven't dug it up yet. Need a potato fork, maybe?

Found it while doing some aggressive weeding. Covered it to hopefully keep it from turning green like many of the potatoes in the store...

Bell pepper...

Little pea and grape size tomatoes...

The joke is on me, haha. This plant is one of two that grew after I planted a couple of heirloom seeds I got a few years ago.
I thought they were going to be regular tomatoes. But when I took the time to actually research them, turns out they are 'cherry' or 'currant' tomatoes. (Whatever currants are...) The variety was labeled Tess's Landrace Tomato. Hence my confusion. I figured. Okay. Tomato. But when I Googled it, the name is Tess's Landrace 'Currant' Tomato. They are supposed to be small like cherry tomatoes though, and real good to eat raw and on salads. Time will tell!

We had a crazy thunderstorm last night. About three inches of rain. Nice for the garden. It was all needing water.

I have a question for those of you who use compost. How long can you keep compost before it goes... 'bad', if there is such a thing? Hubby likes to use it as soon as it turns dark. That's all fine and dandy if we have someplace to use it, but right now we don't. I told him we can leave it age, he said 'but then it just turns into dirt'.
Isn't that the whole point? He likes to use it while you can still see what some of the compostable items were. I expect this is okay, but can't you keep these piles for months before they get used?

Hope you're all having a great Tuesday!

It's pecan season again.

After all the green pecans that fell early, we are slowly finding 'ripe' pecans on the ground. Last we looked, the price was 45 cents a pound.
A couple days ago we had a really strange thunderstorm. Rain, lightning, but no thunder. How do you have a thunderstorm with no thunder? Was it a lightning storm? There wasn't that much lightning. The lack of thunder unnerved my hubby a bit, too.

The next morning we found this.

I was standing in that spot the day before collecting pecans.
The strange thing? That branch came from the other side of the tree!

Strange storm. As far we know there were no reports of tornadoes in the area.
Glad we planted those trees last year to replace this one.

Have a wonderful week!

It's raining, it's pouring

So we are under a severe thunderstorm watch.
We had a severe thunderstorm last night.
And this morning.

And a lovely rain a couple days ago that hubby and I shared in the house for a bit. It smelled really nice.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend! ♥