The Mountain Thymes

This week our 6 AM temperatures have been around 59-61.  A few mornings I wrapped my shoulders in a quilt while sitting on the porch with my coffee waiting for the hummingbirds to appear.  Yellow jackets and wasps are a nuisance this time of year.  Mary, on upper Boulder Creek Rd, takes her HB feeders down when the pesky bees hover around her feeders because she and Jim can't sit on their porch without being buzzed.  We benefit when she removes her feeders because her HBs come to our feeders and the entertainment heightens.  So now I make 3 cups of nectar daily to keep up with their sugar habit.  When we leave the mountain to go to town or to the gym, we play shuffle the feeders placing the small tube feeders in different places so the squirrels can't locate them and drink the tubes dry.  Half of our squirrels belong to the hood .  They ride in on motorcycles wearing their little leather jackets and rip the feeders down, chew the plastic flowers...

Cliff brought up the blog and reminded me that I haven't posted in weeks.  Since we've added our rooms in the garage, we spend less time in the house so I spend less time on the computer. Can't remember what I've posted and too lazy to reread so if my post is repetitious, pretend I'm old and repeating myself..  After a very rainy season and a ruined spring/summer crop, I wasn't even going to think about fall planting.  Last week I dug up the rest of the beets and carrots and turned over the soil.  Yesterday I put seeds in for five fall broccoli where the beets and carrots were.  Can't help myself.  Most of the potatoes have been dug up.  Five plants are still green so will give those plants a few more days before digging the last potatoes.  Sunday on the way to Chattanooga, we stopped at  the Ocoee Gorge to watch the white-water rafting.  We arrived just in time to watch the river rise.  Alarms sounded and a verbal warning an...

 I sat down at the computer earlier this week to post but never finished, got involved in other projects as I usually do, so will post what I started and add some. Earlier this week............... I believe many of my garden crops have given up the ghost.  Yesterday we had a few minutes of sun, here and there, for the first time in over a week.  Our average July rainfall is 1.13 inches.  To date, we have received 7.02 inches.  We're approximately 16 inches ahead of schedule for the year.  It's so uplifting to see the sun today. My poor tomatoes! Since that writing, we've had more rain.  I think everybody's bones and joints ache from lack of sun. Today, July 12, we see blue sky with a few fair weather clouds and warm wonderful sunshine.  In the next couple of days, we'll start digging up the potatoes to see what's happening underground.  The plants are brown and pitiful looking.  We have more slugs this year and snails large eno...

In July of 1966, I had a "bun in the oven", as it was whispered in those days.  I was only 18 when Mark and I married in May of 1965 and the Italians in our little neighborhood kept an eye on my abdomen for me.  They watched and they waited.....................patiently.  When I became pregnant and  received advice from my co-workers at Digital Equipment Corp and the superstitious Italians, I was positive our first baby would be born cross-eyed or with two heads.  Of course this event was pre-internet so I resorted to Parent's Magazine and Woman's Day articles for reliable prenatal information and what to expect in the coming months.  On the morning of July 3, I had abdominal cramps and blamed the disconfort on the pizza we ate the night before.  After 30 hours of pizza cramps, Michael Mark was born at the Marlborough Hospital weighing in at 8 lbs. 7 oz. With treasured memories of this first birth, I wish Michael a very Happy Birthday!