Another week has flown by, almost another month. This week had kinda been a work week. I personally, with my own two hands (and a pick ax, shovel and post hole digger) built a fence where the old barn had been. The girl dog had stopped worrying about the “electric” wire fence I had put across the area and any time she thought she could get away with it she went through it. The road I live on is not that busy but it is my responsibility as a pet owner to keep my animal under control. I needed a fence and until I can afford to have a better one built this one will have to do!!

These past few days we have been getting some much needed rain (that’s what they tell me anyway). This rain hampers my ability to do stuff. With two good size dogs and a cat there’s not much use cleaning a 19ft camper when its raining so for the past few days I have reading and watching movies. This mornings view was a pleasant sight; patches of blue sky and morning mist. My living conditions are not ideal but I am so fortunate to live here.

When I moved from the beach I left a lot of my plants. I had tons of geraniums and hanging baskets. I had grown these from cuttings of plants I had for many years. Each year I would take my plants indoors for the winter clean them up and do a few more cuttings all in anticipation for the next spring. Getting things ready for the move up here I could tell it would take more than one trailer load to move all my plants so I decided to give all but a few away. My logic being that all the plants I had started out as cuttings so I’ll just do more cuttings up here. These are the first 6 new geraniums. If as in the past they all make it to spring I will have a nice spread of flowers.

My plants I brought up here seem to be doing well, the fox glove my #2 son gave me last Christmas is really happy.

It has been raining today, a nice light rain that brings with it perfect reading weather.
The rain has been coming and going.
I can tell when it starts and stops by the noise the rain makes on the roof of the camper.
When I stepped out of the camper during one of the times the rain had stopped I was confused for a moment, for while I did not see the rain I did hear it.
All around me was that soft sound that I have heard rain make on my walks in the woods.
So after that moment of confusion I was able to take in the gentle breeze that shook the leaves and caused the rain to rain again.
I love days like this.

For the young man who lost his mom and his friends surfing is a way to be together in this unfortunate time.
Two of these young men are my sons and one is like a son to me.

I’m back from my visit to the Outer Banks and while it was a trip I am sorry I had to take but I am darn glad I went.

September on the Banks is a great time to visit. The weather is still warm, this weekend was darn right hot, and there are a lot fewer people. As you can see from these photos the water is still good for swimming and surfing.

Sunset on the sound

A friend of mine passed away early this week and I returned to the beach for her funeral. It was a nice service; my condolences to her son and the rest of her family. It was nice to see so many young men attend the funeral in support of her son. She would have been pleased.

Living in a 19ft camper gets to be a bit cramped especially on a rainy day but Jean Gray my cat has a comfortable perch near the window. Jean very seldom stays inside but today she is enjoying a long nap. Me…. I guess I will just sit here and study. I am taking an EMT course and while I have been a nurse for quite awhile there are differences in what an EMT can do and what a nurse can do. I have learned that I need to get away from “how it’s done” and back to “how it is suppose to be done”. The class is turning into a good refresher course.

Its seams OPEC is not happy with the fall in oil prices and are going to pull back on oil production. I say good for the US. By cutting back on production and keeping oil prices up it gives the US entrepreneurs a financial incentive to go ahead with alternative energy and other energy innovations. In the 70’s when oil prices went up conservation and innovation became a big deal but as time went on and the 80’s gave the American public a false sense of energy security we put the worry about the cost of energy on the back burner and forgot about it. Well that pot is burning and we need to do something about it. Now we Americans have a short attention span and if oil prices go down too much we will add a little water to the pot, put the pot back on the back burner and forget about it again. We need to try to think in the long term and do what is good for now and the future.

The cost of energy affects me just like it does everyone else; I drive a Jeep wrangler and live 4 miles from the nearest convenience store, 15 miles from the nearest town and almost 30 miles from the nearest Wal-mart. To save money on gas I kept my sons Sentra that was wrecked back in May (her tail looks bad but she gets better than 30mpg) and I drive it when the weather is fair. I feel safer on these mountain roads at night and in bad weather in my Jeep. I keep a list of what I need and plan my road trips accordingly. I have planned the placement of my home to take advantage of solar energy and while I can’t afford to put solar panels on it now the placement of windows will help heat the house using passive solar techniques. I hope that the US government will support the advancement of alternative energy. I hope some day to be able to afford to put solar panels on my house and be able to buy an alternative energy vehicle that would meet my needs. As long as the American people are adversely affected by the cost of energy I believe that energy innovation will be supported by the people and therefore by the government so good for OPEC, they are doing more to promote energy innovation in this country than any of us tree huggers ever could.

The dogs have gotten into the habit of an evening walk/run and they don’t care if I want to walk or not they pester me until we walk. At the end of the walk we go through the fruit trees. Theses trees are a sad sight. They have not been taken care of and are surrounded by wild roses and some type of scrub tree with 2 inch thorns. My plan is to clear the brush out from under and around the trees this winter. I am hoping that by cleaning things up the fruit will look better. I am fortunate to have apples, pears, cherries, peaches and grapes.

I have been cooking apples for about a month now. I don’t know what kind they are but they are green turning to red and right now kinda tart. The redder they get the sweeter they become. There is so much brush and dead branches around the tree that it is difficult for me to pick the apples. Every day I pick up the apples that fall to the ground keeping the ones that are not damaged and tossing the others over the fence for the deer to eat. I am hoping that next year I will be better able to harvest them for apples sauce and such. The pear tree is also producing well and I should be able to pick some of them soon.

It’s been a long three weeks but today I got rid of the last bit of fire debris. I took a load of old tires that were in and around the barn that burned down. I had options on how to dispose of the debris the cheapest was to bury it on my property the most expensive was to have it removed. The only place I had to bury it was down near the small creak that flows through my property. This is the area I hope to build a pond and while some folks told me this would not be a problem I did not believe them. It looked like it would create a big problem in the future not to mention my “earthy” side just could not do it. Burying it would be bad for the environment. The waste from that fire had to be bad for the water that was nearby. So I opted for the more expensive way, a way that was not in my budget but the only way I could live with, I had it removed. The person who cleaned it up Booth Creak excavating removed everything but the old tires, today I got rid of the tires and it really did not cost that much.

I took 23 tires to the Floyd recycling center. It cost me $1 per tire ($23), 2 hours of my time I feel I’m worth $20 hour ;-) ($40) and 2 gallons of gas (We will figure high $8) for a total of $71 of which just $31 was out of pocket. It does not cost much to do the little things that help our world so much.

This is not a political blog but…..

I am deeply disturbed with my fellow Democrats. I have had many conversations with people who like me voted for Clinton and are not real happy with Obama. More than one of these folks tell me they are not voting for Obama in fact many are not planning on voting at all. Here is my answer to that: If you don’t vote you are voting for McCain, If you vote based on race Obama is half white vote for his white half, vote for the candidate that offers you what you want.

Here is what I want:

I want a president that will help keep the county strong. I want my president to be willing to protect the US and its allies but not be quick to anger. My president must work to make the US a respectable country by being willing to listen to what the world has to say while at the same time paying attention to what his people are telling him they want. The president is not a king he is accountable to the people.

I want a president that promotes alternative energy and is environmentally friendly. My president needs to listen to the scientist that tell us that more drilling will not be a “cure for all” and that we need to put our money into real ways to make the US as energy independent as possible.

I want a president that will promote some type of universal health care in this country. I am so tired of seeing families lose everything they have because of health issues. I am tired of seeing emergency rooms used as primary care providers because people can’t afford to go to the doctor. I am tired of sick people not going to any doctor because they know they can’t pay for it. I’m in the medical profession; I know what I am talking about here.

And most importantly I want a president that will help keep the Supreme Court balanced. The next president has the potential of placing three new Supreme Court Justices.

Obama is young and somewhat inexperienced but I feel of the candidates we have to choose from now he is the one who will give me more of what I want.

There goes the metal!!!

Wow its September 1^st already my golly where has the time gone?

Things with me are going ok. They still have not started on the house, maybe tomorrow. I’m getting to the point where I will believe the house will be built when it happens. The barn debris has been cleaned up. Yeaaaaaa….. Tim Boone of Booth Creak Excavating finished the job today and it was very well done. While I did not intend to spend the money to clean that area at this time and the clean up will make things a little tight financially it does look a lot better. It should look real nice next summer. This spring maybe I can put a pond in that would look great, we shall see.

I haven’t heard from my brother, he and his wife live in Harvey La right outside of New Orleans. They went to my sisters in Pensacola fl to wait out the storm. I tried to call them today and as could be expected the message I got was that all the circuits were busy. I’ll try again tomorrow. We won’t know if everything is OK levee wise for a few days anyway. Now all eyes will turn to Hanna. Looks like it will be an east coast storm but if it stays on its projected path I’ll get more rain up here than my family on the North Carolina coast; oh boy