Friday, Saturday, and the Mention of Monday

Friday night, Bulldog Man and I headed to Wal-Mart in town to pick up some crank bait for fishing early Saturday morning.  The clouds were very vibrant and building east of the store, and I thought I would share the pictures with you. 

Saturday morning, we were up at 4:00AM, the truck was loaded with our fishing gear; I just finished toasting some nice raisin bread to enjoy on the ride down to the Lake of the Arbuckles, with our coffee.  An hour later, we pulled up to the Lake, unloaded our truck, and set up for fishing.  Bulldog Man caught 2 bass, and I caught 2 also.  We each ended up tossing back a fish due to size. 

Temperatures started out at 68 degrees with heavy cloud cover, switched to a light sprinkle, and then the sun attempted to appear.  Overall, it was a beautiful morning out at the Lake.   We packed the truck back up, went into the town of Sulpher, and had lunch at this hole in the wall café, called Poor Girls Café.  If you’re ever passing through Sulpher, I would recommend stopping for a good home-cooked meal.

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Garden Updates

Instead of planting cucumbers in the garden beds, I planted seeds in two large pots and rigged up a wire trellis between the two pots.  It seems most of the cucumber eating in our home is from me, so I reduced the amount I planned on growing this season.  As you can see, I have plenty of flower blossoms.  Hopefully, I’ll have enough cucumbers to can some pickles.  

Here’s the tub of strawberries; several have ripened and are ready for harvest.  My other pots are doing well, and I should have another large batch of strawberries to harvest soon.

My green beans have produced many flowers, and when I lifted the leaves up, I was surprised to see beans almost ready for harvest.  In the next several days, I’ll need to go through all of the beans and harvest those ready for picking.  Wooohoooo, time to do some bean canning and freezing.

Half of my spinach garden box has started to bolt, I’ll be keeping an eye out for when they turn brown, so I can harvest the female plant for seeds.

The celery I started from cutting ends off of existing celery bundles are very large, and extremely healthy.  I believe from now on this will be the only way I will grow celery in the future, it makes life so much easier.

 

My pink Brandy Wine, Cherokee Purple, and yellow cherry tomatoes on the straw bales are producing beautiful tomatoes.  I’m just waiting for the appropriate time to harvest.  All the tomato blossoms and leaves are enjoying an Epsom salt treat.  I place….. 1 teaspoon of Epsom salt in a spray bottle and fill the container with water, shake, and spray directly on the blossoms and leaves when the sun is not out.  

Here are a few pictures of some of the flowers in bloom right now; I’m waiting for many more to start appearing.

 

This weekend has been very nice and relaxing.  I’ll be heading down to Texas early Monday morning to visit with the attorney handling my Dad’s estate.  We have papers to complete before going to court.

Tell me about your weekend……………………..

*****Winner Announced***** Sorry About The Delay!!!!

The winners have until Monday, June 2nd; to respond to me with your mailing address.

If the winner does not respond by 11:59PM on June 2nd ; I will have no choice but to select another winner.

SCIFICHICK please e-mail me your mailing address.

My E-mail is: SandyLivesay@gmail.com

Memorial Day at the Union Soldier's Cemetary & Msg to Pioneer Preppy

Memorial Day

Dear Heavenly Father,
As we remember those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom, we think of how they have followed in the footsteps of your son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. Please hold our service men and women in your strong arms. Cover them with your sheltering grace and presence as they stand in the gap for our protection.

We also remember the families of our troops, and ask for your unique blessings to fill their homes and your peace, provision and strength to fill their lives.

May the members of our armed forces be filled with courage to face each day and may they trust in the Lord's mighty power to accomplish each task. Let our military brothers and sisters feel our love and support.

In the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Source: Video, Youtube

& Prayer, Prayer  For The Day.com

Garden ****Picture Heavy****

Growing your own spinach and using it in a salad, meal, or canning it is just totally awesome.  Maybe I’m crazy, but I love eating spinach.  When I was a kid, I would eat it directly from the can……..I guess I watched Popeye too many times…………..LOL!!!!!

Here’s some of my fresh spinach in one of my garden beds.

Here’s the spinach plants after I gave the plants a haircut.

I used my water bath pot to carry in all the clipped spinach.

Each leave was washed, stemmed, and then cut with a pizza cutter.

Then I blanched the leaves for 1 minute straight, and canned these babies up in my pressure canner.  The end result, 4 and ½ quarts after clipping all of those spinach leaves.

 

Spinach condensed to 1/2 of each bottle. 

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Here are a few more updates on my garden.

The peas are slowly growing this year, and I don’t know why.

Here are the tomato plants planted in the straw bales, looking good with blossoms and some tomatoes.

My lettuce has taken off like crazy; this will be harvested throughout this week for all kinds of salads.

 

These look like button mushrooms found in one of my garden boxes.  I haven’t planted mushrooms; therefore, they will be pulled out and discarded.

Celery is looking good. The other day I needed to spray some of the leaves on a couple of the other plants, because a bug was eating away the leaves.  My homemade bug spray(water, alcohol, and Dawn) worked well.

The corn is getting bigger.

The green beans have taken off, and I can see little blossoms starting to peak.

Here is a picture of just some of my potato plants growing like weeds.

Swiss Chard (red and regular color) both need harvesting and processing, for putting in the freezer.

My onions are enjoying the sun.

Red beets, looking good, and needing a couple more weeks to get bigger.

Rutabaga coming along just fine too.

EMT Medic Gear Bag

Our EMT bag needed to be somewhat larger.  Bulldog Man and I have been keeping a look out for something larger, which didn’t cost an arm and leg.  We already had all of the medical supplies necessary. 

Bulldog Man found this bag on Amazon for $37.99 and the shipping was free.  It’s a large medic gear EMT bag, orange in color with the Star of Life on the cover.  The bag is a heavy nylon cordura construction with reinforced rubberized waterproof bottom panel with a padded liner, 8 adjustable and removable Velcro compartments and 2 windowed rip-free pouches.  

 

The bag loads up pretty good, with room to spare.  We’re happy, and I figured I would share this deal with you, just in case you’re looking for a similar type bag.