Beautiful Summer Days

July 11th - Sunday - Beautiful Summer Day w/ low humidity

As most of you know the weather here on the eastern part of the United States has been very hot. We had six (6) days of above 90 degrees, with relief finally coming on Friday night with thundershowers.

Lou and I have been getting up very early so we can be at his house to pick blueberries before the heat of the day is unbearable. On Thursday, I had a mid afternoon dental appointment, and Lou went along with me, think we both needed a break from the day to day work we had been trying to get done. We stayed in the rest of the day and I made two lemonaide pies to have for refreshments after square dancing on Friday night.

The group of friends that we dance with on Friday night are very faithful and showed up right at 7:00 pm just as the heavens opened up with rain. I had the air-conditioner in the garage turned on, as we all prefer the cooler, dry air to dance in; however, the electricity went off also, so we danced anyhow and still had a good time. After dancing we enjoyed the pie, which was a new recipe and very tasty. I made a blueberry topping to serve over it along with freshly brewed coffee, it hit the spot for all of us.

Saturday was certainly a reprieve from the hot humid weather we

had experienced, it was a joy to be outside; however, Lou and I needed to get the berries that we had picked frozen. We prepared eight quarts for the freezer, then we were off to the grocery. We also took time for Lou to secure his hunting licence. Had to go three different places to find a place that he wouldn't have to stand in line for two hours. At one point he was about to give up, and perhaps not hunt this year; however, he looks forward to the time he spends with his son, Preston and several other men that he hunts with, and now he is glad that he did stand a wait a bit. Now to send in the application for the doe licence.

After the groceries were all put away, we grilled hamburgers for dinner and ate outside and enjoyed the weather in the final hours of sunlight.

The "varmints" have really been giving us a "fit". We have the three raccoons that come each night and they have now destroyed our fern bed, along with my ground cover by the back deck. Lou and I tackled that bed, cut all of the fern out, replaced the feeders and put down fresh mulch. We finished that job as it was getting dark. We didn't put any feed in the feeders hoping they will move on to happier hunting grounds. The red squirrels are living inside of one of our feeders, the rabbits are eating our garden and the woodchucks are digging out around the rocks in the flowers beds. When we get a chance we are going to put up an electric fence and see if that will deter some of the "varmints".

Today, Lou and I went to Williamsport to attend church. Our pastor is away for a month at school, so we thought we would sneak out one week and attend a church where a former pastor of Lou's is now the active pastor. We attended St. Paul-Calvary United Methodist Church and finally got to meet Rev. Robin L. Baer. Lou had told me so much about her and he had shared our courtship with her, so finally we were able to meet. I was very impressed by she and her church and her church family. It was a very warm and welcoming congregation. Pastor Robin preached from Amos which was to my delight. I feel we never hear enough from the Old Testament and all too quickly her message was over and we all received communion together. It was a delightful day all the way around. After our service we ate at Red Lobster and spent some time shopping in Williamsport.

We knew we needed to be home by 5:00 pm as Lou had to mark out a grave at Whitneyville and was to meet with Allyn to help with the digging of the grave.

It looks like we are going to have a problem getting back and forth to Lou's house for the rest of the summer. The Charleston Road is going to be closed going into Whitneyville, due to a replacement of a bridge, we haven't really figured out how we are going to travel back and forth.

Tomorrow the blueberries will call us and Tuesday we are going to meet Preston and Susie for lunch in Williamsport. We are excited about that, as we haven't seen Susie since we returned from Florida and we never seem to see either of them often enough. Will be a fun day for all of us.

The picture of Lou and Estee is another of the "spoils", Lou has gotten her so she will drink water from his hand when he uses the hose. The picture of the red rose, is called Black Velvet, it darkens as it ages and truly looks like a piece of velvet at its peak.

Aunt Hettie's Book

July 7th - Wednesday - Hot and Humid

With this extremely humid and hot weather, I have been working inside each afternoon. I am catching up on things I have put off in-order to get caught up outside.

Yesterday, my project was a scrapbook for Lou's Aunt Hettie, if you remember we visited her on our way back from Florida. She lives in a personal care home in Herferd, North Carolina. We had promised her we would stop on our way home and take her back to her home town of Gum Neck, NC. We did that and we had a wonderful day with her, hearing stories from she and Lou made the day very memorable. Unfortunately, Aunt Hettie has problems with short term memory, so I told her I would take all of the pictures that she wanted and would make a scrapbook of our day and send it to her.

I made the scrapbook and labeled each picture and wrote a story telling of our day and the memories Lou and I had of the day. She had told me that she loves to read and prefers her Bible for reading each night before she goes to sleep. Lou and I found a wonderful picture story book of Paul's footsteps through the Holy Land, so we added that to her box and got all of it into the mail this morning. We also sent along some extra pictures of our home and flowers so she can see where we live and what things look like here in Pennsylvania. It has been several years since she has been able to visit our state, so know she will enjoy seeing where we live now. She told me she had about worn out the pictures that I mailed her last year.

It has been a joy to do this for her knowing that she will receive many hours of enjoyed from them. I think we often forget our family members in their final days upon the earth.

Another family member that we have been visiting in a nursing home had the rare privilege of returning home last week. This is Brion's father and a gentleman that we certainly have enjoyed visiting with weekly at the Green Home. We pray that his health and strength will continue to improve and he and his wife will spend quality time in their home once again.

Lou's son-in-law had successful surgery yesterday to remove a kidney and of course, all are anxious to get the final biopsy report back on Friday. Seems like our prayer list continues to grow; however, we have seen several people dropped from our prayer list over the last few months. Praise God for his healing powers.

Tonight is square dancing, thankfully we have an air-conditioned place to dance. I often wonder how people survived prior to air-conditioning, the ladies in their many layers of clothing, baking and canning with wood stoves. The men working in the fields, loading hay by hand with their pitch forks, I don't remember hearing my parents complain, as kids we knew we had better have a cold drink for Daddy when he came in the driveway with a load of hay, and he always had a smile ready for us as we handed him a cool glass of ice-tea and mother would make his a mason jar of tea to take back on the hill with him. Grandma Gerow always made switchel when the men folks were haying and of course, being Grandma, she always made sure we had come also.

Lou and I have had two interesting evenings, Monday night when we came back from the fireworks, Estee stayed outside and sorta came and went all evening, finally at bedtime, I went out on the deck to see what she was doing and she was sitting at the base of the cherry tree and looking up, so I got the flashlight to see what was up in the tree, I didn't see anything, so I brought her back in, only to have her dash out again. I went back out and this time something growled at me. I came back in and got Lou out of bed, (he was reading), and told him something had growled at me. He took the gun and followed me out to the deck. I finally found what Estee was seeing, not one but three young raccoons munching on a suet cake and growling at each other... At this point, we closed the "doggie door" and went back to bed. While we were outside, I also heard the foxes down by the barn, Lou had taken his hearing aids out so he didn't get to hear them.

Last night, I was awakened by Estee barking, so once again, I went out and this time these three little rascals were at the top of our lattice work on the deck, all huddled together. I woke Lou up so he could see them up close, and he had to agree they were really cute, and we enjoyed watching them for a few minutes before we returned to bed. Once again, we brought Estee in and closed her door. After we got back into bed, we remembered several days ago, Krista had called and asked us if we had seen a mother raccoon around, perhaps, hit in the road, because she had three babies at her house. Perhaps these are the same little guys. Such is life in the country and we wouldn't trade it for the city.

Happy Fourth of July

July 4th - Sunday - Hot 92 degrees, beautiful cloudless blue sky

This has been perfect weather for the 4th of July, the typical hot weather that we think of when we think of the holiday. Thankfully, we have had a light breeze and the humidity has been low.

Saturday morning, Lou did get the wheels changed on his push mower and gave it a try and found that it was like a new machine, will walk right along, in fact Lou said he almost had to run to keep up with it. I was able to get my house cleaned up a bit and the laundry done while he was gone.

We set off for the Bark Peelers' Convention outside of Galeton, and we went right to the saw mill and watched them saw up a huge hemlock. It was a bit dark in the mill, but were able to capture a picture. From there we moved on to the kitchen, where a lady was making homemade buttermilk biscuits and baking them in a wood stove. We sampled them with freshly churned butter, a delight to withhold.

You will see a picture of a cake that was baked that resembles a tree, the sign will tell you how the care is made. We thought it was rather interesting.

We listened to Sadie Green Sales perform. I have a special interest in this group, as one of the singers was my tour guide when Michelle and I went to Prague.

We toured the rest of the museum and once again found it a wonderful place to visit. We would like to go back in the fall when it is a bit cooler and not so many people, that was we can spend more time in the museum.

We did get to see the "greased pole competition" and the "log rolling competition". Lou and I decided it was much more difficult than it looked.

We stopped at the Ox Yoke Inn on the way home and had a wonderful dinner along with a baked apple dumpling for dessert.

We went to Mansfield to watch the fireworks there. Lou was able to find a parking place by the ball diamond, so we could sit in the car and have a wonderful view. We were able to get in and out quickly and enjoyed the display of fireworks.

Today we went to church, on to George's for lunch where we met two old friends and enjoyed catching up with them on the happenings in their lives. We ended up staying until after 2:00 chatting with them. We stopped to get gas in town and met up with Brion, Janet and Casey, so had a chance to talk briefly with them. They were on their way back to Lou's house where they stayed last night and then they were returning to Camp Hill.

Lou and I spent the afternoon, getting caught up on paper work and what a great feeling that is to have those things out of the way. We had a light supper and Lou, Estee and I were off to see the firework at Ives Run. That was the first time I have ever been over into the camp area. We had a wonderful view from where we parked our car. You can see we all enjoyed the sights and the fireworks were much superior to what we viewed in Mansfield.

Seems like this has been a week for auto accidents. Lou's grandson was also involved in an accident and spent last night in the hospital. He has a compression fracture at c-7 and will be in a brace for six weeks. Lou talked to him tonight and he sounded in good spirits. He will be staying with his parents for a few days. His father is due to have surgery this week to have a kidney removed. We understand all things happen for a reason and I am sure Lou's daughter is wondering what those reasons are. We would appreciate prayers for both the father and the son.

Time for Blueberries

July 2nd - Friday Warmer and beautiful blue skies with low humidity

Here came July and with it came blueberries that are ready to be picked, Lou and I spent the last two mornings picking berries, sorting them and today froze some of them. So far we have picked about 10 quarts and they are turning very quickly. They are about two weeks earlier this year than last year.

Now to back up and catch up on our week since Wednesday. Square dancing went really well. I danced with some very seasoned dancers and they were very good at pushing me or pulling me in the direction we were to go. Yes, I did remember how to "load the boat" and we also learned a new call and it is "relay the ducie", that took some working for all of the new members, but think I can master that better than the last call. Barbara and Joe along with Spike and Kay are really good to help me along and I so appreciate their help with no scolding. The couples that come here each Friday evening are very special to me as they give of their time each week to spur me along. Lou was already very close to these folks and they have been so very accepting of me and we are really having a lot of fun together.

Thursday, we spent most of the day and afternoon with the blueberries, which took us by surprise, but we are off to a good start.

Lou's sister had an accident with her car, so she is without a car, so Lou and I have loaned her our Buick to drive until she can work out something until she can either get a new car or have hers repaired. Thankfully, God was watching for her and she does not have any serious injuries. This is the second incident with car accidents in our family this week. Steve also had an accident with the company truck and thank God his injuries were not serious at this point and he has been cleared to go back to work.

Today, we did laundry and hung all of the bedding on the line and set out for Lou's house to pick more berries. We got home about 2:00, had a quick lunch and we tackled our yard work. Lou used the riding mower and I used the push mower and did the weed eating. Just as I was about finished, I hit a rock and it got lodged between the blade and the mower and I used a rock to try and dislodge it and was successful in my task, but managed to smash both of my thumbs, one popped open and isn't nearly as painful as the thumb that just turned black under the nail. Lou thought he could poke a hole in the nail to let the pressure off, but I was a little antsy with him burning the hole in the nail, so hopefully, tomorrow it will be all better. As far as DH is concerned, that thumb will be perfectly healed!!!

Lou had to order new tires for his push mower, and they arrived today so his goal for the morning tomorrow is to get them installed, and I want to get my house cleaned up in the morning and then we are off to The Bark Peelers' Convention for the afternoon and then tomorrow night we will take Estee and go to the fireworks in Mansfield. Sound silly to take the dog, not in the least, she has watched the fireworks from the time she was a puppy. The Fourth of July was one of our favorite holidays, as Krista and Steve always had a lovely display of fireworks and my late husband loved to watch them and looked forward to seeing them in his own back yard every year, and of course, where ever Al went, as did Estee. She would sit on his lap and watch every explosion and get excited watching them. Never a bark, just nodding her head in the direction of the pretty light.

Along came Lou and Estee found a new best friend. My dad once told me to look for a man that loved animals and was good to his parents and one other thing, that none of us can remember. The first time Estee met Lou, she did not even bark at him. He sat down on the sofa and she was in his lap and to this day, when he sits down, Estee is right there. We all joke about Al spoiling Estee, but he didn't hold a candle to the way Lou treats her now. How could I have been so lucky to find another man that Estee and I could love. God is good.

Happy Fourth of July to all.