Hail Storm....

My driveway covered with Hail......
On my back porch....... This was a terrible storm. I was in town when it started raining like poring it out of a bathtub. My clothes were on the line at home. I hurried home and the sun was shining a little. As soon as I got the last piece down it started raining like I have never seen it rain before. And then the hail came. My clothes were saved!!!!!

Farewell To Summer!!!!!

This is blooming in my back yard. It is always the last thing I have to bloom....that's why I call it Farewell To Summer. It is a member of the Aster family.

Holston Mountain.....

This mountain is between Boone NC and Bristol, TN. I was about two miles from my house when I made this picture. There is a fruit stand you can barely see....where we go buy the BEST tomatoes and all kinds of fruit.

Grapes Anyone?????

Here's a couple of picture of my grape vine. I haven't done anything with them this year but eat them off the vine. They are really ripe right now and so sweet. A bird had a nest here earlier.

Me and Ryan.....

Here are four more pictures I made at the beach.

Ryan in "Surry"

Sunrise at VA Beach....

The Highlanders at VA Beach....

This is the group my son plays with. He is in the back row with the smaller drum. He is learning to play the bagpipes. He wants to play at weddings and funerals. Groups with bagpipes are getting to be rare.

Tallest Sand Castle in Virginia Beach....

Scroll down to see three more pictures of the tallest sand castle. This fascinated me because of all the detail work. Note how small the people look. Think of what will happen when it rains......all that work to be washed away, but it was beautiful while it lasted.

I'm Back From The Beach.....

I'm home from Virginia Beach. We had a marvelous time. The weather was perfect. (7o to 75 degrees) I saw on the news about all the rain Tn and KY were getting and it didn't rain one drop on us. The parade was wonderful, but anyone that has ever had anything to do with Shriners know how they go the limit on everything! The parade lasted almost three hours. It was like Macy's Day parade in New York City. We had a good view from our second floor balcony. The sand castle on the beach is what fascinated me more than anything I saw. It was huge. Everything was so detailed. The faces looked real. I have been trying to post pictures and Blogger won't let me. I will try again later.

Going to Va. Beach.....

My son is a Shriner. This week-end is a Shriner's Convention in Virginia Beach. He will be in the parade. Bill and I are going and Ryan (my grandson) is going with us. So, I'm getting everything together so we can leave Thursday Morning bright and early. Will be back Sunday..... I'm excited to be going away for a few days. Ryan is excited along with me. He has never been on a "vacation" without his Mom and Dad. Look for my post when I return!!!!

My Car......

I took my car this morning to have the brakes checked. It seems they had been "grabbing". That's the only way I know to describe it. I was prepared to leave it and my son was coming to pick me up. Well, the man took me right in and had my car up on the rack before I could say Jack Rabbit. He came back out in about five minutes and said there was nothing wrong with the brakes. They looked like new. The air suspension switch in my trunk was off. All he had to do was turn it back on. How lucky can that be? I was prepared to pay about two hundred for new brakes. I asked him how much I owed him and he said nothing. Now how honest is that? He could have pretended to fix my brakes and I would have never known the difference. I handed him a twenty for being honest! It's good to know there are some of them left on this earth.

I don't know what it is about me, but everytime somebody looses something, they think I know where it is or can find it. Last night at 12 o'clock midnight, my dear son came into my room and said he couldn't find his glasses. He had been looking for over an hour. He had been reading in bed, so they couldn't be far. He had all the covers off his bed and I shook them all again and looked under his pillows and behind and under the bed. I was about to give up myself when I thought to raise up the mattress and the box springs. Well, at first I didn't see anything, and then I saw them. They were lodged between the board and the side of the bed. You know the railings that you lay across for the box springs to rest on. Right at the end of the board is where I found them. It took me forever to go back to sleep. And then here is the rest of the story..... Today , Bill, my DH drove the lawn mower up into the back yard to get some apples. I thought he had been gone a long time and I started out the back door to go find him. He met me at the back porch and said he had lost his glasses. I thought to myself, here we go again. He was sitting on the mower underneath the tree and had a limb pulled down and the limb let go and grabbed his glasses off his face. He had been looking for an hour to no avail. Well, I started looking and about the time I was going to give up, I saw them in the leaves under the lawn mower. They were right between the wheels. Its a thousand wonders he didn't run over them. I hope nobody else looses anything today. I'm really tired of looking!!!!

Remembering.....

In memory of the people who died and blessings for the families left behind, I hung my flag out this morning.

Sunday....1:40 PM

I deleted the picture, but I'm still here ...I was trying to get it into my profile and it tells me there are illegal characters. How do I know which ones are illegal? LOL I hope its not talking about me!!!!! I'm cooking a chicken for our meal tonight. Think I will make some dumplings to go with it. It's a beautiful day here in Northeast TN.....just enjoying the sunshine and being lazy!

Patsy, this one is for you......

What do you think this Rooster is saying to his "girls'? Write a caption. I think he is saying, "O.K. girls, since I'm King of the Roost, let me go first".

The Price of Gas Today in Bristol Today....

I think the gas companies uses physiology on us. After you get used to paying almost 3.00 a gal....then when it comes down to 2.47....you think it is cheap. Today, I was really happy to fill 'er up. That's the same feeling I had when it was .16 cents a gal. Can anyone else remember that? It was sometime in the fifties.

Bristol Regional Medical Center...

Here's a picture of just one small corner of our hospital in Bristol Tn. My husband had to go for a check-up and I just happened to have my camera with me. It is a wonderful hospital. They have some equipment that no other hospitals have in the eastern U>S>...One being the cyber knife. I'm not sure exactly how it works, but I think they can detect tumors and operate long before they would have found them otherwise. Maybe the nurses that read this will know a lot more than me!

My Cold Water Pickles.....

This is my favorite pickle and they are soooooo easy to make. You want to use about a medium cucumber. Wash the cucumbers and pack as many as you can in a gallon jar. Place 3 TBS. pickling spice, 3 TBS alum, 3 TBS salt on top. Cover with vinegar. Close and let sit for three months. Drain pickles....Slice and put back into jar with 3 or 4 cups of sugar. Place in refrigerator and when the sugar is melted they are ready to eat. I usually shake mine a time or two. They will make their own juice. GOOD!!!!!

What Happened To Me Sunday.....

See this shelf? It fell off the wall. I told my grandson last week..."That shelf is going to fall one of these day". I didn't know it would be so soon. My husband collects hot sauces. I knew the shelf was getting heavy and I knew the screws that were holding it weren't big enough! Only four bottles broke, but what a mess.... wish I had made a picture while they were on the floor. It looked like somebody had been shot in my kitchen. Now the screws are bigger and they go all the way through the shelf far into the wall. Don't have a hankerin' to clean that up again......

Clematis Virginiana or Sweet Autumn Clematis....Close Up....

Annie, Thanks, I looked at your blog site, and yours is the same as mine.....Clematis Virginiana . I'm happy to know the name. Someone else said it was also called Sweet Autumn Clematis.

The "Big Apple"...and it isn't New York City....

This is a wolf river apple. It is one that was left on my tree after the big limbs broke. I cooked this one apple and we ate apple sauce for three days. These are good for making apple butter. Yummy!!!!!

Update on Water Problem.....

The Septic Tank People came Saturday and opened up the drain pipe going into my tank. It is now flowing like a river....PTL..... They are coming back today to install a "T" on the end of that drain in belief it will help the toilet tissuee to dissolve. I have no clue as to whether it will or not. It doesn't really make sense to me . It seems to me if you put something over the end of that drain, it would make it even harder to drain. And then I wonder if it happens again...will they be able to get the snake up in there to open it up? I'm not an expert on the matter. I am just trusting they are doing the best thing. This gets to be a nuisance after a time.

It's a good morning here in TN. The rain is slowly coming down, making a fine morning for reading or taking another nap. I walked out into the rain and made the above picture of a climitus on my back fence. It doesn't look the same as other climitus' I have seen. The lady who gave it to me said it was a climitus. It seems I have seen it growing along sides of the road. It isn't honey suckle......but I like it....whatever it be!!!!!

Water Problems.....

I'm still pumping water this morning. My septic tank is not taking the water. The field lines shouldn't be full and we just had the tank pumped out last year. It seems to go down until I wash a load of clothes. I wish the drainage from my washing machine didn't go into the septic tank but that's the way it is. My dear son is going to dig down and take the lid off the tank and run a snake up in the drain pipe. That's what the septic tank people did one time about five years ago when I had the same problem.....cost me three hundred dollars....so Gary is going to try to do it this time. Three hundred dollars doesn't come easy. That brings me to another subject. I don't know if any of you are on the Medicare Part D plan that our president or somebody came up with. The plan was supposed to be so good and we weren't going to have to pay a tremendous amount for a medicine. Well, that's not true. I'm paying more now than I ever have in all my life. We are in the "gap or the do-nut hole"....where after the insurance pays for so much medicine, you pay 100% out of your pocket.....until you get up to a certain point.....we lack 2,300.00 being to the point where they will pay 95%. We will not get there this year. At the first of each year the plan starts over. I think the only people it really helped are the low income people. I know my Mother-in-law gets all of her prescriptions for two dollars each and there's no "do-nut" hole. I think that is wonderful, but "they" shouldn't make it so hard on us middle class people that has worked their fingers to the bone all their life....and end up having to take care of every one else. My husband take 19 prescriptions Ukkkk!!!!! I live at the drug store. The other day I went to get ONE filled and it was 187.00 for 30 pills. Now there's something wrong with that!!!! I tell the girls at the Pharmacy.... I am writing a song and it's called..."Shall we Gather at the Pharmacy"......The Over Priced ....Over Priced Pharmacy". They laugh.....it's not their fault! Well, I'm going back to check on my water.....Stay Happy....that's what I'm trying to do!!!!!