The Mountain Thymes

This morning my "mountain farm" chores began a little after 7 before the 56 degree air warmed up.  I've been having difficulty staying in a sleep state past 4:40 a.m.  Pain isn't waking me and I'm coming out of my night's sleep slowing, gradually feeling the wake happen naturally.  So I lie in the dark quietly with relaxing Pandora music softly playing hoping to drift back into a light morning nap.  Doesn't happen............... Around 5:30 I get restless, sit up and read and wait for my coffee to begin the brewing sound at 5:50.  Our neighbors' honey bees arrive at the birdbaths as soon as the sun warms their hives and the right temperature begins their movement.  This morning before the bee activity began, I cleaned the birdbaths and refreshed the water for the birds and the bees ! We really enjoy the honey bees.  The more we learn about and observe them, the more amazed we become with their work ethics, their assigned tasks, and their short lives....

To satisfy your curiosity, there are seven music garlic bulbs in one pound. You never know when you might need to answer a trivia question or throw this fact out during a gathering.  Notice the Italian flag colors arrangement..........green, white, and red.  When placing my order for fall garlic with Mad River Garlic Growers, I needed to know how many garlic in a quarter-pound, half-pound and a full pound.  Luckily, I had six music garlic in the cupboard to place on my kitchen scale. I buy that type when I can find them because the cloves are large, peal easily, and the flavor is strong.  Each bulbs usually contains five to six cloves and I'm ordering a pound.  Some will be set in the large garden where I pulled up all the yellow beans and some will go in my container garden near the garage.  Cliff's going to buy me a few more large barrels for that area.  It'll be interesting to see if there's a difference in garlic growth. Kitchen garden...

Had a three-month follow-up with the doctor this morning.  I've so-o-o- careful about watching what I consume because I had easily gained four pounds in a short span and that weight put more stress on the knees and ankles.  I weighed myself at home before going so I knew what I had lost but when the adorable young nurse did my weigh-in and kept moving the weight higher and higher I hoped the scale was off balance.  The doctor had quietly walked up behind me and placed his foot on the scale.  He said he just couldn't resist the temptation and was testing my mood.  Visit was great and don't have to return until September unless I do something careless and injure myself.  I'm trying to behave. Cliff helped me construct a rustic bottle tree.  This is before John and Carolyn's weekend with us. By the time they left............... Not really.  A few of the bottles I had saved but hadn't removed labels yet.  But we did enjoy our wine and ...

Saturday John and Carolyn hopped a jet from Kansas City to Atlanta, picked up their rental car, and arrived on our mountain around 3 pm.  Before they got here I told Cliff we needed to get lots of pictures doing things together so I could post them.  Taking pictures has never been on his mind.  I have to ask him to take them of me doing things so I can post which is why you never see me on my posts.  Saturday afternoon and evening were spent sitting on the back porch relaxing and enjoying the calm.  Sunday we took them to the Ocoee Gorge to watch the kayaks and rafts navigate the rapids.  From there Cliff drove us to Hawg Wild in Hiawasee, GA for Fathers Day lunch.  Hawg Wild has the best bar-b-que.  The manager told us there would be a thirty-minute wait which was expected on Fathers Day. We had feeling it would be longer upon seeing lots of empty booths and tables and very few servers.  About an hour later we were seated.  Our server a...

After weeks and weeks of no rain, the weather pattern has finally changed and we're getting a wonderful thunderstorm.  Since I can't go out and play, I'll blog and make a chicken, spinach and orzo soup for tonight.  It's a toss up between the chicken soup or a nice bowl of pasta. I have a fresh bag of spinach and a bunch of Swiss chard from the farmers market that need to be eaten.  My garden chard has been slow to mature without the rain but after this rainy week we have ahead, the vegetables shouldn't be thirsty anymore.  The beets and carrots need to plump up. The flower beds were planted from packets of mixed seeds strewn onto the ground, patted down, and watered.  After that I never bothered with them.  I also don't know what some of the flowers are. After researching flower images, I found out these are larkspurs. These tall beautiful larkspurs grew from that mix of  broadcast seeds.  When we first moved here and Cliff joined st...

Fifty-one crisp degrees this morning at seven.  With our forest so lushly thick and an earlier sunrise, we can't see the brilliant rays peeking through the leaves until it's a bit higher on the mountain horizon.  The Carolina wren is our "rooster" perched on the porch rail or high on Cliff's shed tower with neck extended, head back, cheerfully singing just as loudly as his can.  From the back woods we hear the rose-breasted grosbeak's distinct melody of notes.  As soon as I finish breakfast, I head to the garden. Trees shade the garden until around noon so I have hours to enjoy the garden chores before it's too sunny and hot to work anymore. Cliff finished the north-side of the house today.  It's a difficult task moving the extension ladder and setting the leg extensions to fit securely and safely on the slope. It makes me nervous when he works on the north side.   He scraped the stain drips from the six windows on that side, cleaned away years o...

The front facing the road and the kitchen sides of our house are stained and Cliff's now in the process of staining the under-cover back porch.  The North side will be challenging due to the extreme sloping.  And he's having so much fun with his woodworking tools that he built a long table for his ham radio equipment. This past weekend we had 3+ inches of rain that beat up the vegetable garden knocking over everything upright, flowers, spinach, kale.  The temperature was a cool crisp 53 this morning when I got up at 6 and will only reach high 60 this afternoon.  Perfect outside weather for gardening.   Before our rain-drenched weekend.................... Foxglove flowers did a forward-fold touching the ground so I tied the stem to a support propped on a fence post hoping to save it.  The flowers are hummingbird and bee attractants.  Sweet smelling wisteria also attracts bees. With all the rain we've had throughout the winter a...