Life on Snow Hill

My nephew, Braden, had his birthday party at Mom & Dad’s this evening. It was a fun family get-together. My dad somehow wound up on one of those razor scooters racing against Daniel…

We bought Braden an RC boat, and he was dying to take it out to the pond to try it out. He was pretty excited.

It’s always fun to get to spend some time together with family. It made for a relaxing evening, even though the bugs were out like crazy. Oh, and it was hot and humid.

Last night I got home from work and got straight to work in the garden. I enjoy it for the most part, but it took me the rest of the night to get everything done – it was almost dark when I came inside.

The first thing I did was get the tiller and run it through the whole garden. It was beginning to look like part of the yard with all the grass..er..weeds growing in it. That by itself cleaned things up nicely.

I had 14 healthy tomato plants, plus one more that was really thirsty. I got those in the ground. We’re not planting quite as many things this year, so I had some extra room for tomatoes. I left extra space between the plants so it would be easier to get around them all once they start bearing.

I also got 4 each of some bell pepper and jalapeño pepper plants. Those all looked good except for one..it was a little thirsty as well.

I had wanted to plant some gourds, but never got any seeds from them last year. Well, where they were growing last year, some more started to come up. So I moved some of those plants to another part of the garden.

The same thing happened with cucumbers. We bought some seeds this year, but some of them didn’t come up very well. Some of the old cucumbers from last year started growing again, so I moved those plants to the cucumber row.

I planted some beans that a family in our church gave us – Turkey Craw. Everybody seems to like them pretty well, so we thought we’d give them a try.

I also had to replant the okra. I saved some seeds from a few pods last year, but those never came up.

It was a nice evening to work, and a great time to get it finished. We got some good rain last night, and the thirsty tomato and pepper plants revived and looked strong.

You can’t see much yet, but here is the garden as of this morning. (Click to enlarge)

Well, it’s about that time of year again. Spring is in full swing – the air is filled with…er..pollen, and the sun is shining when April showers aren’t falling. We got the garden area plowed up a few weeks ago, and just over last weekend we got it tilled up and ready to plant.

Monday evening when I came home from work, Becky and I set to work in the garden. First, one little bit of something funny. We let the garden go last year. We didn’t get near as much out of it as we should have. It got all grown up with weeds so that we couldn’t do anything at all toward the end of the growing season. Onions are hearty little plants. Before anything else started doing anything, whether it was grass, flowers, trees – you name it – we had onions in our garden from last year. We have two perfect rows already. Sweet! One less thing to have to worry about planting this year!

So I got the tiller out on Monday and worked up the ground a little more where we’d be planting. We put out okra, corn, cucumbers, carrots, squash and watermelon. We still need to put out some green beans, peppers and tomatoes.

Now I’ll be outside every day checking to see which seeds have sprouted first. Then we get to work hard to keep weeds out of it this year. I’m determined not to lose it this time!

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.