Life on Snow Hill

It’s been a beautiful (but hot) last several days, and that has allowed Becky to get outside and work in her flower beds. I’ve done a little bit in the evenings after I’ve gotten home from work, but this week has worn me out. We’re short one at work, and it’s been one of the most busy weeks we’ve had in a long time.

Hopefully today when I get home from work I’ll get outside and cut down another tree to use for firewood. I’ve been needing to do that all Spring, and Spring has gotten away from me. I really want to try to have enough this coming Winter to last us all Winter long so we don’t have to run our electric heat any more than we have to.

There’s always work to be done in the garden. I’m actually kind of proud of it this year. Becky and I have been able to get out and keep it pretty clean from weeds and everything this year, so it looks much nicer than it did last year. We’re already getting some squash and zucchini out of it, and Becky has eaten a few cucumbers that have come in. Soon we’re going to be covered up by a lot of this stuff and we’ll be scrambling to get it canned and/or frozen.

Yard work never ends either. It seems like the yard was just mowed yesterday, and it needs it again. Hopefully I’ll get some time to take care of that this weekend sometime as well.

Yep, we’re staying busy. I mostly enjoy it though. I don’t enjoy being worn out from it, but I do enjoy the good sleep I get as a result.

Can you believe it’s already May, 2009?  It seems like just last week it was New Year’s, and we were thinking about what all we wanted to get accomplished this year. My WAIT program failed miserably because I wouldn’t stick with it. I haven’t stayed all that organized, either. I haven’t gotten any new firewood in a good while, either. It won’t have time to dry out by next Winter if I don’t get on the ball.

The faster time flies, the more things need to get done, and the less time you have to do it. Do you see a pattern here?

I suppose that the biggest reason I haven’t been able to get a lot accomplished lately is because it seems like it has rained non-stop. My garden is loving it, but I can’t give it any attention because if I try to walk through it, I’m up to my knees in mud.

My yard desperately needs to be mowed. I can’t, however, because, you guessed it – it’s raining! And the more rain it gets, the more (and faster) it grows.

Overall, I’m thankful for the rain. The last couple years were a little dry and the garden needed to be watered by hand. So far, there’s no need at all for that!

I’m looking forward to things drying out, though, so I can get back outside and take care of some work that really needs to be done.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been overwhelmed. Not in an “I’m so stressed out I can’t take it any more!” kind of way at all. Maybe it’s more of an “I’m so busy lately that I sleep much better at night!” situation. It’s true, actually – I’ve been getting such good, sound sleep lately. I just wish I could get more of it.

Things have been picking up at work, first of all. We have 9 servers that need to be rebuilt and reconfigured. These servers are what our virtual infrastructure runs on. “What’s that?” you may ask. I’m so glad you asked! In a nutshell, a virtual infrastructure is a set of servers and network configurations that run on other servers. This is a good thing, because on these 9 servers, we have over 100 virtual servers running. So rather than having over 100 physical, real servers sitting in our datacenter, we only have 9. But we still get the benefit of the power these 100 servers offer us.

At home, well, the weather is changing. Spring is here and grass is growing. Along with weeds. Flowers too. This means mowing, weed-eating (Gotta get that weed eater fixed!) and gardening. I’m honestly excited to start the garden again this year. It just needs to dry out long enough to be plowed and tilled really well so that I can get some seeds in the ground. Spring means it’s also time to start working on getting firewood for next Winter. I’ve blogged about that in the recent past, so I won’t say much other than that I’ve gotten a pretty good start, but there’s a lot more to do.

Lastly, but certainly not least, we’ve been busy at church. Becky and I are, as most of you already know, teaching the teenage Sunday School class. I’m also in charge of the youth choir. We’re also working towards getting a teen visitation program going, as well as other youth ministries. I’m not sure I knew exactly what I was in for when I became the Youth Director, but the Lord had it in His plan, and Becky and I have been reaping blessings from it already. We’re thankful the Lord is using us, and praying that He will continue to do so, doing our best to stay in His will. These youth are a great bunch to work with. Our prayer is that they’ll have such a desire for God that we’ll be the ones trying to keep up with them!

In the same spirit of my last post, Becky and I have been getting some things done around the house to prepare for Spring, and even next Winter! Becky has been doing quite a bit in the house getting things more organized and all that kind of thing, while I’ve been outside getting ready for next Winter.

In my last post I talked about how hard I worked for about 3 hours cutting and splitting firewood. Well, yesterday I did some more work with firewood. How exciting.

First of all, I woke up feeling like garbage. I really felt worthless, no joke. I was sick at my stomach, my head was all clogged up and I was still sore from the work I’d done on Saturday. Ashamedly I stayed in bed until 12:30 yesterday afternoon.

So once I woke up and got a little something to eat, I got a little strength and decided to do something useful. Last year I built a little shed on the end of the house to keep a decent amount of firewood closer to the house so we wouldn’t have to go halfway through the back yard to bring another load of it inside in freezing temperatures. I finally got the shingles put on it yesterday. I still need to trim the edges, but at least the rain won’t leak through the roof on it now.

I did a few other small things around the house after that, but nothing major until the evening. I used my dull chainsaw to cut down a very big oak tree to be cut up for firewood. It fell across the road, which was the plan, but it also tore up my yard in the process. It shouldn’t be too bad to fix up.

We (my dad and I) had to cut the tree in half for his tractor to be able to pull it on up into my yard. My goal this evening is to get my chainsaw sharpened and at least get started on cutting the tree up – I’ll probably focus on the top half for now so that I can avoid splitting more for now. Maybe this weekend I can do some more of that if it stays dry enough outside.

So yes, I’ve been taking advantage of this warm weather. It’s supposed to turn cool again this week, but at least it won’t be freezing outside the whole time. I’m ready for Spring to announce itself boldly and get things rolling.

Today was the first day I’ve really had in a while to get things done around the house that I’ve been needing to do.  Our church has been in revival for the past 2 weeks, which has been great.  The Lord has been working in my heart, as well as many others in the church.  Things around the house, though, have suffered.  I’m fine with that, I’m just saying why things have piled up.

The task I focused on today, for as long as I could, was to work on getting some firewood cut up and split.  There was a log in my yard that had been cut down at the beginning of Winter sometime, but I had never done anything with it until today.

So I broke out the dull chainsaw and whittled away at the log with it.  I finally got it cut up into several pieces and went to work splitting it.  I probably worked for about 3 hours on the whole thing.  My body isn’t used to hard manual labor, so that’s about all I could handle for today.

Oh!  I can’t forget to add this.  Someone told me recently that I needed more pictures here on my blog (you know who you are).  So I thought I’d add a boring picture to represent my boring day.  What is stacked is what I worked on today. What you can see in the background is what I still need to do something with.  I’ll split what I can, but the huge knots in some of them are more than I usually feel like dealing with.

Becky and I took a trip to Gatlinburg over the last few days.  We have a sort of trial timeshare with Diamond Resorts, and we decided to take advantage of it for a few days.  We plan to go again in late January to finish out our trial.

We had a good time while we were there.  We got to relax some, and were able to do a few fun things, too.  Of course, anyone that has been in or around Gatlinburg knows that the scenic views in the area can be breathtaking.  This particular photo was taken at Newfound Gap in the Smokies.

While we were there, we spent about a day and a half in Dollywood.  I don’t know if they do this all year, but we found that if you go in after 3pm on one day, you can get in the next day for free.  So we took advantage of that.  We enjoyed a couple of bluegrass bands, saw the Kingdom Heirs (We found that their piano player, Andy Stringfield, lives about a 20 minute drive from where we live), got sick on a couple of roller-coasters and shopped around a bit.

After Dollywood, we spent some time in the Great Smoky Mountains.  We drove up to Clingman’s Dome, took the .5 mile hike up to the top and enjoyed the view.  Don’t let that .5 mile fool you though – it’s steep, and pretty challenging.  Neither Becky or I are in the best shape, but we’re not in terrible shape either.  We had to take a few breaks on the way to the top.  Once we got there, the view was awesome, but the wind was chilling.  We enjoyed the view for a while, took some photos and made our way back down.  We spoke to a Marine, a Vietnam Vet, who had some interesting stories to tell.  We enjoyed talking to him for a little while, then had to move on.  On the way back down towards Gatlinburg, we stopped at Newfound Gap.  We took a few more photos, and learned a few things about the area that I’m sure most of you already know about.  There is a monument there where President FDR dedicated it and the National Park.  The Tennessee/North Carolina state line also runs right through the area where that monument was built.

That evening, we went to the Dixie Stampede.  This makes about the 3rd time we’ve gone, I believe.  It is expensive, but it’s always a fun show to watch, and the food is always very, very good.  I finally saw a mess-up for the first time in the show.  The girl that rides standing up on two horses fell off when she was trying to get them to bow at the end of her act.  She wasn’t hurt at all – she just had to jump off before she completely lost her balance.  Again, though, the show was a lot of fun as always.

We packed up and headed home Wednesday morning.  We had a lot of fun, but it’s always good to get back home.

If you’d like to see, here are a few more photos from the trip.

I went outside this morning to do a couple of things and I noticed these clouds in the sky (click on the image for a bigger photo).

Did you ever play that game as a kid where you tried to find shapes in the clouds?  You could find dolphins, rabbits, and even houses if you used your imagination.

These clouds just look wicked though.  I don’t know what it is about them, but if you look closely you can see different fiery creatures in them.  Maybe my mind was just bent that way at that moment for some reason.  Now those images will always be found in this photo.

Over the past several weeks, my dad has gotten into honeybees. He’s bought a few books, built a few hives and learned as much as he can about them. They’re actually very amazing creatures! From how they pick a queen and take care of her, to how they do a dance to show the worker bees where the flowers are, and how far away they are, they’re truly something.

Dad found a swarm in a tree where they’ve been making honey. He cut the tree above where most of their comb is, and put a hive on top of that. He also bought another hive with a swarm already in it.

I’ve tasted some of the honey myself, and it is really sweet and tasty. I know, honey is honey. But this was as fresh as it comes.

I spent a few minutes yesterday taking some pictures of the hive, and Dad started playing with the bees while I was down there, so you’ll see a picture with one of them getting honey off his finger. Enjoy!

Becky and I spent some time last night helping our pastor with his garden. Some deer had gotten into it, and some of it needed to be replanted. So we loaded up the tiller and headed that way.

The first thing we noticed were the trees that had been blown over from the storm the night before.  First of all, there was a branch that broke off one tree right next to their house, but didn’t hit the house.  In the other end of the yard, there were two trees that had been blown over into the woods.  It wasn’t until later that we saw several other trees in the woods that had been blown over.  These didn’t break…no…they were uprooted.  There was a line of trees – it’s almost as if a miniature tornado swept through there.

Anyway, we started working in the garden and as I was running the tiller through it, I noticed how rich the dirt was.  I think it’s the first time I’ve ever been jealous of somebody else’s dirt.  The dirt where I have my garden is rich, but this was much richer.

We only got enough dirt worked up to plant 3 rows of corn, and I worked up a little patch of dirt in the yard at the edge of the garden for their 8 tomato plants.  At that point it was too dark to do any more, but we were pleased with what we were able to accomplish.

As most of you know by now, I’ve been really excited about the arrival of Spring.  This week in particular has been really warm, with highs in the mid-70’s most of the time, and lows only as low as the 50’s.  I was even able to ride the motorcycle all week long to save a ton on gas.

Becky and I have been watching the tulips grow in our front yard.  We bought some bulbs last fall and planted them, not expecting any blooms for the first year.  But we noticed one red tulip getting ready to open up.  We were both surprised, and decided that would probably be the only one.  But after a couple of days, we noticed most of the others doing the same.  Needless to say, this area of our front yard is now a bright red and yellow reaffirmation that Spring is here to stay.

This weekend we’re coming into the ‘Dogwood Winter’.  It’s one of two cold snaps we get here in East Tennessee after Spring has arrived.  There will be another one in a week or two that we like to call ‘Blackberry Winter’.

For those of you not from the Tennessee area, I can hear you asking, “Why is it all about Dogwoods and Blackberries?”  You see, Dogwood Winter is right about the time Dogwood trees bloom, and the same goes for Blackberries.  So while things will get cool again a couple more times, Becky and I have been enjoying ourselves in this warm weather and getting lots of work done outside.  I love Spring.