Making Memories

....and bread!


Our granddaughter, Symanthia, has been visiting with us this week. Symanthia is entering her second year of nursing at Itawamba Community College this fall. We are very proud to be her Pappy and Granny!

She has made this visit a learning experience. She told her Pappy that she wanted to learn to use some of his saws. They spent one afternoon working with the saws. She was proud to tell me that she learned to saw a straight line. Good for her. Most girls are too girly to want to learn about saws or anything else that can help them help themselves later on. But, not our Symanthia!

Then she told me that she would like to learn to make bread. She mentioned Banana Nut Bread. I explained the difference in making breads like Banana Nut Bread or Pumpkin Bread and the yeast breads. She decided she wanted to make the yeast bread.

We found a French Bread recipe and got all the ingredients together then she set to work.

I guided her as she measured and stirred the ingredients. We had to take time to smell the yeast after it was added to the warm water. There's nothing that smells any better than yeast when it's activating. Unless, it's the bread after it's baked.

When all the ingredients were well mixed, I showed her how to knead. I think she kind of like the kneading. She learned quickly how to pull the dough up and turn it. She worked the dough like a pro.




She put the bread into a bowl for it's first rising. When it was time to punch the dough down, I thought she was going to punch it OUT! LOL She did a good job of that too.

After she let the dough rest for 15 minutes she rolled it out into a rectangle and then made her loaf. She sprinkled the cornmeal onto the cookie sheet and then put the loaf of bread on the cookie sheet to let it rise the second time.



She enjoyed watching the bread rise and become a much larger loaf than what it was at the start. When it had risen the second time into the oven the bread went.



She was so excited. The bread was smelling heavenly and she couldn't wait for it to finish baking so she could taste her creation. But wait she did..........


When the bread was finished she put it on a baking rack to wait for it to cool. Well...folks we waited just long enough to get the butter and for her to slice her first loaf of homemade bread.

Top of newly baked loaf:


Bottom of loaf perfectly golden brown:



Symanthia cutting the first slice of her loaf of bread:



Slices waiting for the butter:


The bread is delicious. I know because I got the first piece. Wasn't that sweet of her to let her old Granny have the first piece of bread she ever baked? I slathered some butter on the bread and had some good homemade bread baked by my granddaughter.

My slice!



She's taking the rest of the loaf home with her tomorrow to share with her Mom, Dad and brother, Jonathan.

We made a memory today. Maybe, some day when I'm no longer around Symanthia will be serving fresh, homebaked, yeast bread and tell the story of baking her first loaf of homemade bread on a hot, Saturday afternoon in July with her Granny Jan.

Even if the story is never told and she never bakes another loaf of bread today has been a very special day. I spent the afternoon with one of my granddaughters. That's time well spent.

Marshmellows And Roasted Wieners, Anyone?

The pine limbs are being burned today. I was nervous about a fire being set so near the house but Chad and John know what they're doing. They still have quite a lot of pine limbs to burn but they're doing a good job. The yard is already looking better. We've been looking at dead pine limbs all summer. It's good to have them out of the way.

When we came home from shopping I jokingly told John we'd roast marshmellows and wieners. While I love both of those, I'm not sure if they would have tasted good if we'd done the roasting over burning pine.





Chad and John have a hot job. We had to park our truck at the end of the drive and walk in when we returned from shopping. The heat from the fire was rough walking by it and they are out there keeping the flames under control.



William and I are trying to keep them furnished with plenty of cool water to drink. I asked them if they had any water and Chad was getting ready to drink water from the water hose. YUCK! I won't say what that would have been like but it wouldn't have been good.



I've been looking at our trees we have growing in the front yard. The Chaste tree is blooming. This is the first year that it's bloomed. The purple flowers are pretty.





The Crepe Myrtle is in full bloom also. The limbs are heavy with blooms. The color of the blooms is called red but it is more of a deep pink. This is one that Jackie Matthews gave me when I was babysitting Trinity.





The Weeping Mulberry has limbs touching the ground. It's so pretty with the dark green leaves and weeping limbs. It's not yet tall enough for children to use it to hide under the limbs.

The Butterfly Bush has been pretty too. The blooms on this bush are such a dark purple that they appear black. I gave it a good pruning in the early spring but it's grown at least three feet since then. Most of the blooms are gone. I need to check to see if another pruning will give me another burst of blooms.

Daddy set Crepe Myrtles across their front yard next to the road. When suckers came up he brought me some of them. They were set near the road at the home where I lived at the time. I later move from that house. William and I married and bought the place where we live now. Sandi brought me one of the trees that had come up from the suckers Daddy had given me several years before. I put the one Sandi gave me in our backyard. It's beautiful this year. I now have one of the trees that came from Daddy's Crepe Myrtles. :)

I enjoy walking around in our yard looking at the trees, bushes and flowers. Most of them were given to me and bring back sweet memories.

I can't blog without mentioning the garden. The Dorothy's Mennonite Big Heart Tomatoes are beginning to turn pink. One of them feels soft so I don't know if it has blossom end rot or if a "critter" has bored into it. I have to remove the soft one to keep the others from becoming infected with whatever is wrong.



That's it for today. The limbs are still burning but the yard is looking so much better, I walked around making pictures of trees in ninety-six degree weather and got a snapshot or three of the tomatoes. If I had to sweat at least I enjoyed the getting sweaty part.

Thanks for coming in for a visit. Hope to see y'all soon.

It's Summer Time But The Living Isn't Easy.....

The house is comfortable but outside is like an oven set at 500 degrees. O.K. not that bad but hot enough.

The vegetables have been fertilized again and watered deeply this morning. I'm sure the heat will evaporate the moisture pretty quickly. At least they got a drink of water.....We'll just have to give them another drink in a couple of days.

The skies got a little dark a few minutes ago. Every time this happens my heart leaps just knowing rain is coming but the sun is shining again now. I know the rain will come so I'll not give up hope.

The younger tomato plants are beginning to give us ripe tomatoes. William picked some Tommy Toes and Red Pear tomatoes this morning. We still have several other varieties that have green tomatoes on them but none are ripening yet.

I've been watching the Dorothy's Mennonite Big Heart tomatoes. The fruit on those vines are large as a saucer. I hope they have a good taste. I know sometimes the large tomatoes aren't as good as the smaller ones but I have great hopes for these. If the Dinner Plate tomato produces larger fruit than the ones on Big Heart I can't wait to see them.

We going to rip the squash and zukes out, rework the soil and add some composted cow manure then plant tomatoes where the squash were. I have some Roma plants, Marianna's Conflict and the Jelly Bean plants almost large enough to set out. We doing this in hopes of having tomatoes until frost. :)

The green beans have some new blooms on them. Maybe the rain we received last week has caused the beans to start blooming again. The beans on the tepee aren't looking so healthy. Because of this we are thinking about ripping those vines out and replanting with some Louisiana Purple Pods. There's enough time before frost in our area for more beans to produce.

We're also thinking of digging an area to plant some late peas. We haven't gotten past the thinking part of this though. It's hot and the ground is hard. Thinking about the peas may be all we do. LOL

A side note: Today is the Fourth of July. The day we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence so many years ago. We have been a free country for a long time but only because our young men and women have been willing to fight to keep us free. I want to take this time to thank all our soldiers who have fought and died for this great country down through the years.

On a personal note I want to thank my Daddy, my Father-in-law, my sweet Husband, William, my precious son, Mark, my precious gift and grandson, Matt and my sweet son-in-law, Lance for their service to our country. I love you all and appreciate all that you've done to keep us free.

In rememberance: Joshua Shane Ladd; Rest In Peace precious one. Your family misses you. Your service to your country cost your life. We can never repay you. Thank you seems so inadequate. You'll never know the appreciation we have for you and your love for the United States of America. We do thank you, appreciate you, love and miss you.

To Blog Or Not To Blog.....

that is the question.

Nothing has changed since the last time I blogged. It's still too dang hot to be outside for any period of time and we still have a need for rain even though we had a good shower one night last week.

Our garden is just sitting there wanting water. We're getting tomatoes, cukes, hot peppers (and I do mean HOT!!!!!!) okra and some beans along but that's it for now. Not much of anything though.

There was one small incident that I can relate. Our water bill has always been wonky. One month it is twenty-two dollars but the next month it will be nearly fifty dollars. It seems the fifty dollar months are months we do not use an excess amount of water and usually a month that we get plenty of rain.

This morning an employee from the water company came calling. He was looking for the location of our water meter. hee hee hee....Go figure. Now I'm afraid to get this months water bill. It will probably be a hundred and fifty dollars. Why can't people do their jobs correctly. If they can't find a water meter ask where it's located before the bill runs sky high.

We still don't have our air conditioning unit fixed. But we should have a new one in the next couple of weeks. Window units come in handy when it's necessary. However, with the high water bill I'm expecting there will probably be an extremely high electric bill too. Looks like no food for August. ROFL

That's all the excitement around here. Fact is, I couldn't stand much excitement as hot as it is. :)

Thanks for dropping in. Maybe next time there'll be more to report.

Back To My Roots!

Our trip to Louisiana went wonderfully well. We got to visit with one of Daddy's sisters and the two surviving brothers. Aunt Betty was unable to come to the get together and she was sorely missed.

There's just nothing like sitting around a table with coffee cup in hand listening to my family reminisce about their earlier lives. It's a living history lesson.

Uncle Max gave me a picture of my Daddy and him when he was about seven or eight. Daddy must have been about nineteen or twenty. Daddy's face is not clear in this picture but the picture is around seventy years old so I guess that's to be expected. Even with his face blacked out my Daddy is a handsome man. :)



One of my first cousins, Cliff, came to visit with his parents while we were there. He brought three of his four children. I had not seen Cliff in near on fifty years. It was nice to get to know a little about him and his family while we were visiting Uncle Max and Aunt Jackie.

Becky also came over and brought her newest granddaughter, Shelby. Shelby is only four months old and a little beauty. Two of Becky's granddaughters stayed with their great-grandmother and great-grandfather on Friday. Bailey and Madison is their names. They are cuties.

Below is a picture of my sweet aunts and uncles: From left to right: Uncle Henry Teasley, Aunt Jackie Teasley, Aunt Shirley Smith and Uncle Melvin Smith. Seated is Uncle Max Teasley. Precious, precious people.



Cliff and his children; Katie, Sarah (in front) and Jeremy Teasley.



Cliff almost lost Sarah to William. She really took up with William and wanted to come home with us. :) All the children were sweeties.

Now is the time to share the pictures of the Great Tamale Eating Event:

Each year we visit with Aunt Jackie and Uncle Max they get tamales to have to nosh on before lunch. As Aunt Jackie calls them "They're just a little snack." before lunch.

Uncle Max goes to pick the tamales up and they are placed in the center of the table and everyone dives in. I'll admit I am one of the divers too. I don't allow any pictures of me and my tamales. Everyone else is fair game. :)





Along with the tamales, Aunt Jackie always lays out a feast for our lunch on the get together day. That woman is a wonderful cook and can work a circle around me even at her age of seventy-seven.

These wonderful people know that I love them but I don't think they will ever know just how much they mean to me. They're a part of my Daddy and that right there says it all.

This last picture is of the Red River as we traveled across it near the town of Clarence.



We had a long trip home. Uncle Max drew William a map that would take us through Natchez on our return trip. William missed his turn in Winnfield which sent us about seventy-five miles out of the way. We did get to see parts of Louisiana that we'd never seen nor would we have seen traveling interstates. However, most of the scenery was nothing but trees. LOL Sometimes I felt we were in "God Forsaken" country. We made it to Natchez but the missed turn caused us to have a longer trip home. Oh, well I was in good company. :)

We always have a wonderful time visiting Western Louisiana. I should say we have a wonderful time visiting my family in Western Louisiana. It's a treat each time we get the opportunity to go. I'm already looking forward to next year. I hope Aunt Betty can be at the get together then.

Thanks Uncle Max and Aunt Jackie for making each trip a trip we'll never forget. We love you all! God bless.

First Day Of Summer?

Could have fooled me! We've had summer for several weeks. When the temps get to the mid-nineties then it's summer time. LOL

Nothing much is going on in the garden except some harvesting. Oh, and watering. Lots of watering. I let the water go until there's at least an inch on the plants. When we get our water bill we may faint.

The beans that I planted around the tepee poles are beginning to make. We picked enough of the Italian flat beans to have for dinner last night. They were really good. William and I both like the Italian flat beans. We both like green beans in general.

The Louisiana Purple pods are doing pretty good. We're picking them in the morning and are going to take them to Louisiana to the Aunt's and Uncle's house. Along with the beans we will be taking some yellow squash, peppers and hopefully some ripe tomatoes.

The flowers in the hideaway will need to be watered before we leave on our trip. Everything is so dry. I suppose with heat indexes near one hundred five I can't expect anything else.

The tomato plants we have for our late tomatoes almost drowned when it rained Thursday night. I had the cups setting on some paper towels in a large plastic container. The towels held moisture so I didn't have to water every day. After the rain Thursday night, there was about two inches of water in the plastic container and the tomato plants were floating.

I recued them by taking the cups out of the container and adding more soil. They're looking all right now. Guess I need to put them back in the container with more paper towels and water them well before we leave on our trip. I'll put the container in the storage building just in case of rain.

We plan on putting these plants out by the middle of July for tomatoes until frost. I would hate to lose them to drowning. :(

That's about all that is happening around this area. I have to get back to my chores. Thanks for coming. Come again anytime you want to drop in. By the way, I will be posting some more pictures when we return from our trip. :)

It RAINED!!!!!!!

YES! We got a good, slow, soaking rain last night! In fact it rained for almost three hours. Our garden was so happy this morning that the plants all had their little limbs lifted up giving thanks. :)

We could use more rain but I am truly thankful for the water that fell last night. More will come and it will come right on time.

I had some small tomato plants in cups sitting in a plastic container. These tomatoes are for late tomatoes. This morning I check on them to make sure they got some water last night. Yep, they got plenty of water. The cups were floating in about three inches of water in the container. I emptied the water out of the cups while my nice husband put more soil around the roots of the tomatoes. They were looking pretty good when I looked at them this afternoon.

I was on the brink thinking I'd lost my fall tomatoes. But not everything is as it seems. Thank goodness.

I've gotten a few veggies put in the freezer but no canning done yet. I've never used a pressure canner by myself. I have a new pressure canner that has never been used. I read all the info about how to properly use it and was all set to can green beans. Well.......I couldn't get the blasted top to fit.

I was so frustrated when William got home from school bus driving license renewal workshop. He walks over to the canner....Picks the top up and "CLICK" it fits perfectly. GRRRRRR......He wanted to know where the beans were....I just smiled and said "In the freezer." :)

Next time, I hope he's here to put the top on the canner. He's sure handy to have around. Reckon he be's a keeper!

William is getting all the materials together to build us two more raised beds. He thinks there's room for two more sixteen foot beds. That would be really nice for collard greens, turnip greens, kale, swiss chard, mustard, radishes, and lettuces for fall.

I'm planning to plant more yellow squash, zucchini and cucumbers the middle of August. With the late tomatoes we'll be set until frost.

Time to call it a day. Thanks for dropping by. Come again anytime. :)