The Mountain Thymes

Happy Birthday, Mark!! I hope your long weekend has been relaxing and enjoyable. May your birthday be all that you hoped it would be. Love you and wish I were celebrating with all of you out there. Have a great day and "pop a top" for me. Today was also my father's birthday. He would have been 95 today. (if I did my math right!) He was a loving husband, a wonderful father, and an endearing grandfather/great-grandfather.

through the kitchen screen from the front porch taken quickly as the hail bounces......I have an affinity to lightning! some were quarter-size I felt like Chicken Little when the hail started pounding on the roof. It came suddenly and was so loud Cliff couldn't hear me talk.....or so he said. of course, I put all the plants out on the porch to get some nice fresh rain We got over two inches of rain in 40 minutes and the temp went from about 85 down to 60 here on the mountain. Cliff's out on a barn fire call and it just began pouring and thundering again. an hour after posting Just ran out between rumbles and checked my veggie garden....tomato plants all broken and toppled over, bean leaves full of holes. Don't have to worry about bunnies or deer eating the leaves anymore.

Bought a new lounger to relax in and placed it at the end of the porch where I can see the deer and the antelope play. Just finished reading one mindless trashy novel, Wild Mountain Honey by Carol Finch. Have another novel sitting in the red car that I pick up(the novel, not the red car)and read in intervals. If Cliff responds to an emergency call and reports to the station and it may be about an hour, I just sit in the lounger at the station and read. If it's longer, I take the car and head home. Have two more novels started, read according to what mood I'm in. Most of the time Maxine beats me to my chair. She watches the deer and anything else that moves in the woods..... then snoozes........which is what she does best. Cliff has joined another volunteer fire dept. It's not unusual here to belong to 2 or even 3 depts. Sometimes weeks go by with no calls and he wants to keep his skills sharp. So he now belongs to Bellview and Martin's Creek volunteer fire dept...

Went to the downtown open market for fresh eggs, hand-picked spinach, red-leaf lettuce and radishes grown by our local farmers. I can hardly wait to go out to my garden and pick our own eggplants, tomatoes, beans, zucchini, cukes and squash. The morning glories are finally popping out of the ground and are about 2" tall. Don't know if they will actually get a chance to vine on the tepee or if the deer and rabbit will enjoy them for breakfast first. I left some clover growing wildly hoping that the animals will prefer the sweet clover over the morning glories. Cliff spent the day preparing for a benefit for one of our firefighters who has cancer. Our local butcher shop donated and cooked all the pork butts. Other local merchants donated Cole slaw, garden salad, potato salad, beans, rolls, drinks, and spouses baked desserts. At noon, Cliff and a few others met at the community center and began pulling pork while it was still hot. When our friendly greeter at the transf...

Happy Birthday, John!!! May you be surrounded by people who love and appreciate your qualities. Celebrate your accomplishments, learn from your mistakes, and rejoice each morning when your feet hit the floor. Pursue your dreams..........................life comes at you fast!

I took the 4-hour Advanced CPR course Tuesday night at Tri -County Community College. After Cliff had to use his training up here on the mountain to save a life, the reality of being so remote hit me. Very interesting course. I practiced with the AED , used a bag-valve mask, both new to me, and was updated on the newest information on compressions and the Heimlich Maneuver . Everyone should take the course or update their skills. I feel empowered............but hope I never need to use this.

Just looked out our bathroom window and spotted the deer grazing. Such peaceful creatures. These are a little blurry ..........zoom lens and through the screen.

Hummingbird just sitting around. Built a tepee for my morning glories to attach their little tendrils to, if the seeds get a chance to grow. Squirrels have dug holes around the poles to get at the seeds. Miserable squirrels have too much time on their hands. They've also destroyed one of my hummingbird feeders to get at the sweet juice. Scoundrels chewed the plastic flowers, then tipped the bottle and drank the all the sugar water........hope they go into a diabetic coma! Found a spot on our acerage where I think I might have enough sun for my raised veggie garden. It's only a 5' X 10'. But it'll give me a chance to play in the soil. Planted my early girl tomatoes that I started from seed in the house at the beginning of April. Went to Waynes' Feed and Grain store for the eggplant, squash, peppers, cukes. I love to go in Wayne's. Some of the locals are always in there hanging around, talking, and are very helpful about how and what to plant. Have a...

Scroll down past the party post to read the Mother's Day post. I began writing last night, saved it to complete this morning. Forgot it would show up in the order I started it.

Outside at Deb and Larry's Tiki Bar. Party pictures of cinco de mayo from the tiki bar. Weather was good, food was great. After a couple of margaritas, we all spoke spanish!

Nona and Nono Happy Mother's Day with with endearing memories of Nona, my Mother, and Grandma Still. I was at a loss for words, (imagine!) didn't know what else to write in my tribute to these three very important women in my life until I read a "forward" from my sister-in-law, Maryellen . How serendipitous . During the era when these women cared for their homes and families, aprons were donned each morning to start the day. Nona wore three aprons, one atop another. The first one to protect her dress, the middle to protect the first, and the third one to catch the flour dust as she made her own pasta on the large wooden board in her kitchen. Her apron also flapped at the crows and other garden invaders as she yelled "brigande!!! Their aprons carried vegetables from their gardens to the kitchen sinks. Aprons wiped tears when children needed consoling, carried eggs in from the chicken coops, and on Sunday and holiday gatherings when a fancier apron was worn,...

Just made the cinnamon cookie recipe for today's cinco de mayo fiesta and need to post what I changed in the recipe for a better dough texture. My dough did not form into a good firm dough so I added about another 1/4 cup of confectioners sugar (not flour), a little at a time, to the batter until I got the dough firmness I desired. The cookies rolled nicely and I like the smooth silky feeling of the dough. Kids could roll these because the dough didn't stick to my hands. Also, the full cup of conf. sugar for rolling the cookies in is too much and is wasted unless you save it to use in something else. I had to bake them for the full 20 minutes in my oven. For cooks who touch their baking food quickly, like I do, to check for bounce and doneness, this is not recommended for this recipe. The conf. sugar sticks to your finger not matter how quickly you poke the cookie and it leaves a blistered burn! But the cookies are delicious!!!

Driving down U.S. 64 towards the Ocoee Gorge in Tennessee. This is a great stretch to ride a motorcycle, but we haven't taken our bikes out for such a long time. Our dirt road from the house to the paved road has been so full of ruts and dangerous that we can't get down safely so we don't ride. Bridge over the Ocoee River. Site of the 1996 Summer Olympics view from the bridge This was just a day after a torrential rain and the sound was thunderous. There were only 4 kayakers that Sunday in the rapids. They stayed in this one area and we watched them practice rolling over in the rapids and coming upright again......over and over. The guy in the yellow kayak had just rolled back upright after submerging, probably banging his head on boulders while he was under. It's a nice drive, only about 30 minutes from our house and we often come down to watch the people raft and kayak on a Sunday. There are quite a few rafting companies along 64 so in the summer the rapids are ...