This was one ass-kickin' MD weekend for me.
On Saturday, my brother and family came and we grilled burgers and dogs and brats, and the guys went fishing while my SIL and niece and grandson and I all played with kittens in the house. It was sunny, but the wind was brutal, so we ate indoors. The food was good and the beauty of spending a day with family as almost more than I could bear. Check this out:
They wound up taking 4 kittens instead of 3. We had the best day...so much love and laughter !
The guys went fishing out at the pond. My grandson was the first to catch a fish, and indeed, wound up catching 3. My brother caught several as well, some crappie and blue gill and bass. But the man of the hour was my beloved, and here he is with his "prize"---
A beautiful bass!! She was full of roe, and they gently released her back into the water, as they did with everything they caught. My niece, who is 7, is an avid fisherman herself. She goes with her dad all the time. For some reason she didn't want to fish though, she played and ran and had a ball out there with my grandson, who is really good with little kids. He's a big 13 now.
The fam left around 6:30 pm and grandson stayed the night. Then this morning around 11, my son came over. He just missed our big waffle and eggs breakfast. He brought me 6 African Cichlids for my fish tank. He helped the Irishman do a few chores around here, and we sat out in the beautiful sunshine for a good part of the day. We grilled a late lunch, and enjoyed ourselves immensely. He helped me water the garden, and promised that he would be by next week to hook up an outside spigot for me. The he and the Irishman moved the chooks out into the coop. They rigged up a piece of chicken wire to divide the run in half, and we will leave them that way for a couple of days. Give the older hens a chance to get used to them being in there to help lessen the chance of nasty attack on the newcomers. He also helped hubby with the big barrel composter, and they turned it around and cleaned it out. It was a really wonderful day, and having my son all to myself (his wife is out of town) was priceless. The boys cleaned up all the dishes and wouldn't let me help. lol We hung out in the yard and talked about the gardens and looked at the progress. The peas are finally up, the squash are germinating, the potatoes are FINALLY busting through the ground. There is a whole bed full of fingerling potatoes that came up volunteer from potatoes that we apparently missed. The tomatoes and peppers are looking great.
I hope to get some seeds in the ground tomorrow morning, one reason I am up this late trying to get the laundry finished. We had several days of rain coming last time I looked...but the weather forecast changes constantly, so who knows? lol I should probably go look again. I went ahead and watered today anyway.
My yard is looking grand. I have yellow and purple irises all in various stages of blooming, the Shasta daisies have started flowering as well. The peonies are ready to open any minute. The primroses are pretty in pink, the containers of allysum and nicotania I planted look gorgeous. My wisteria is growing like a weed, and I am getting some starts of a snowball bush from the neighbor...as soon as I figure out where to put it. lol All the lilies are huge and lush, though they won't flower for another month or thereabouts.The rose of Sharon is looking healthy and robust, and it will start to flower in a few weeks, probably. The grass is growing in where the water lines went in, and I probably need to buy another couple of pounds of seed and sow some more.
Okay. The dryer has stopped. I'll fold those and put the last washer load in the dryer. Then I'm heading off to bed.
I hope all you mothers had a wonderful day too...and those of you who aren't mothers as well.
Blessings on all your houses!!
Holy cow. This is a photo at about 5:30 pm today, out on the highway by our road. It was sunny and blue skies one minute and black and menacing the next. It looked like a monsoon out there! Then the hail started and we had large grape sized hail that came down for over 20 minutes. There was over a foot of ice in the ditches... The winds were roaring and the rains were flooding the yard and street. It got really foggy and the folks around here lost power for about 3 hours, because the straight line winds took down a bunch of telephone poles again--criss-crossed them over the highway. The road is shut down for now and the crewd are working feverishly to restore power. Somehow, ours did not go out.