Skunk. I thought that I knew what a skunk smelled like after all I have driven by many unfortunate skunks that had been struck by cars; they stink. Well…… last night I learned that when your dog gets sprayed by a skunk it smells worse than you can ever know. When the girl dog came in last night just as I was eating my dinner my olfactory nerve was struck by a odor so noxious that it brought tears to my eyes. Needless to say dinner was over and the girl had a bath there and then! Not that it did a whole lot of good but had to do something. This morning I bathed her again this time in vinegar. It helped for a while but after she “helped” split wood and then ran round the yard for awhile and laid in the sun she stunk again. I bathed her again this afternoon. While at EMT class this evening I asked the folks who live here how they deal with skunk smell the consensus is use tomato juice followed up with a concoction of baking soda, vinegar and dawn dish soap. Tomorrow I will try their recommendations.

I saw my first lady bug today. Not the first one I have seen all summer but the first one of the fall lady bug blitz. These are not really lady bugs per say. These are the orange and black , real lady bugs are red and black. Every fall they congregate in my camper I am usually not here, this is my first full fall in Willis, but every spring I clean thousands of dead lady bugs out of my camper. They are attracted to the white siding of the camper and the warm interior but unbeknownst to them it is not a safe place to be; I spray the camper for bugs when I close it up for the final time in the fall.

Fall colors are starting to really stand out. The reds and yellows against the deep greens with bright afternoon sun light filtering through is just amazing. Ahhhh. I love the cool mornings and warm afternoons that fall brings and the night time sky is so deeply black that the stars just shine like bright clear white light. It could stay this way all year for me.

Today I have spent the day doing as little as possible. This past week has been very busy. My builder started on the house, I have been splitting and stacking firewood, I helped place a dog who needed a new home, spent a few days explaining to Amerlink why I needed my logs delivered, went to EMT class, took a friend to the doctor and I worked a little with the church yard sale (there must have been a million of those this weekend). Tomorrow starts a new week and hopefully Amerlink will deliver the logs tomorrow morning as promised; that would sure be a good start to what will most likely be another busy week.

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

My brother and his wife live in Harvey La. just outside of New Orleans in Jefferson Parish. Katrina flooded their home 3 years ago and it has been less than two year's since they were able to move back into that house. New Orleans has been through many hurricanes and most likely will be just fine but the wound that is Katrina is still too fresh to allow its residents to relax. Every storm is going to have people asking : Is this the big one? Is this the one that wipes the crescent city from the map?

Yesterday was a good photo day as can be seen by the photos I have posted today. I could not post them yesterday because I only have a dial up internet connection and it would have taken hours to down load.

My contractor is suppose to break ground on the cabin today but we will see. X-tropical storm Fay is threatening to drop some much needed rain all this week so I won’t be surprised if nothing happens this week. I’ll be disappointed but not surprised. The guy who is going to clean up the fire mess said he will be here rain or shine Wednesday so something should get done around here this week!!

Oh another week has just flown by and as I sit here I can’t think of all that much that has happened. Oh yea I did take a quick trip back to the beach. I left on Monday and was back Wednesday night. I needed to get my certificates so I can prove I can do what I can do and get a job and they were at the beach so the dogs and I took a trip. All I can say is I miss my family and friends but I do not miss the beach, not this time of year!! (To those of you I did not see in town sorry... the next time I will be there for a week and I will definitely hook up with you) I did not tell many people that I was heading down that way because to be honest I did not want folks to know that I was away. The fire debris is still there and I fence is still down and to be quite frank I don’t want my other barn burned down so I stayed mum on the subject.

I did have a good time visiting with my family and a few friends but the traffic was horrible. I was almost hit twice by the same car. This person was what we called a wanker. The first time she almost hit me she was riding in the left lane with her left signal on when she decided that she really needed to turn right so she cut right in front of me I’m telling you she looked me right in the eye and did not even mouth sorry. That woman missed me by inches. I pulled in to the bank did my business and got back on the road. Now I went into the left lane because I was going to be turning left went down the road a little ways when this same woman whooshed in front of me and stopped halfway in my lane and the turn lane. Luckily there was no one to my right so I was able to cut around her but the guy behind me had to screech to a halt. God I hate the Outer Banks in the summer. Give me the spring and fall, that’s the time to go!!

While the dogs and I were away I put the cat in a kennel and she came home a changed kitty. This cat has never been affectionate. She was separated from her mother before she was fully weaned and they say that when this happens the cats are less social. She does seem to like the company of dogs and I but she never seemed to like to be petted. She not the kind of cat that would lie in a ball in your lap enjoying a pat: she would rather nip you but after 4 days in the kennel she has become almost too affectionate! She still won’t get on my lap but she curls up in a ball right next to me on the bench and when I go some where she is very voicetress when I get home. She seems almost to be saying “why did you leave me? You can’t do that! You can’t leave me!!!” Cats….

It’s nice to be back in Willis. You can’t beat the weather and aside from the arsonist the folks around hear are a lot like the folks on the Banks in the winter very nice. I’m working on my work applications and I hope to get them out buy Tuesday. I’m just looking for part time employment; with the construction of the cabin starting soon I want to be available as much as possible but it will be nice to have some inward cash flow even if it’s just a little bit

Well time is passing quickly tomorrow is one week since the barn fire and things are for the most part unchanged. It looks like the fire was set and the scuttle butt is that we have a piro around here who has set fire to quite a few buildings in the past few years. If what is said is true this person or persons is good at covering their foot prints. Well such is life, its discouraging that there are people like that around and I’m not happy that I will have to take measures I did not plan on taking to make my property less inviting. As Mr. Burns would say close the gate and "send out the hounds”.

Other than the fire things have been good. I made the first draw payment on the cabin. My builder hopes to start next week. I can’t wait!!! I had some trees removed and I am very happy with David Zemmer of DZ Tree Removal. There will be much to keep me busy this year. Does any one know what kind of splitter I should get? There is a LOT of wood to split. I don’t have any wood for this year but I’m probably set for the next few years after that.

The roses are doing well in the raised beds I made for them. I will most likely lose at least one of them but at least I tried. The bougainvilleas are not happy. Next year they will most likely have to stay inside better yet I should build a small green house for them. I know it seems foolish to worry over a plant but I have had one of the bougainvillea longer than I have had 2 of my 3 kids and the person who had it before me had it for quit a while; something that like that is worth a little extra work.

For the most part it has been a nice few months. I have never taken this much time off from work but it was worth it. Unfortunately the bank account is down low and end of summer is coming so that means its time to look for a job, besides I’m ready to get back in the swing of things and meet more people. Its going to be hard to go back to work. I will miss coming and going as I please, sitting on my “porch” with lap top in hand listening to good music as I alternate between just looking at the things around me and pounding on the keys writing aimlessly about nothing all that important..

This morning my dogs woke me up and for good reasons my lower barn was on fire. I’m a little loss for words at this time but I want to thank the Floyd county fire department for there help.

Well another week has gone by and for me it has been a good one punctuated by a great Saturday. Today a friend and I went out to check on wood stoves but after finding out that the store we were going to visit was not open on Saturday we decided to see what we could find in Floyd. We spent the day checking out the shops. We found some wood stoves at the Farmers Supply on Main Street that gave me something to think about. We went to the Jacksonville Center and looked at what the artist had to offer. On the second floor they had an art gallery and a room where they exhibited quilts. I found the Star Trek quilt very interesting. We then checked out a few of the antique shops in town and then went El Charro Mexican restraint for lunch. The food and atmosphere were very good but the service was a little lacking. I will give the service a little leeway this time because they were busy and did not seem to have a lot of help. After lunch we checked out the shops that were in the same building as the restaurant. In one shop that sells variety of local artist’s work we met one of the artist Gretchen St Lawrence. She gave us a history of how the art shop came to be and told us a little bit about her life. Be sure and check out her website she has some nice art work posted.

After all this eating, talking and walking we decided it was time to head on home. The weather for the day had been great, neither of us was hot or cold, it was like the baby bears porridge, to Goldilocks, just right. In fact it was so nice that when I got home I put the top down on the Jeep so that I could enjoy an open air evening ride to and from church. I’m ending the day listening to “The Thistle and Shamrock” (Irish music) on NPR. Some times it’s great to be alive!!

I’m in heaven today, cool temperatures very little humidity and lots of sun is what greeted me this morning. Last night the Buffalo was surrounded by fluffy pink clouds and as I was taking in the view the old saying “Red sky at night sailor’s delight” popped into my head along with the wish that today would be fair. That wish has been fulfilled.

Things are moving along on the cabin. I went to check out windows and doors and have talked to the cabinet man. Hopefully the foundation will be down by the end of the month and the cabin dried in by the end of September. I have been told that the cabin should be ready for me to move in to by November but I’m hoping I'm in by the first of the year. November is doable the house is only 720sf but………

Well I’m off to clean and organize the shed; my project for today.

Over the past month I have had a bit of work done on my property but I really have not done anything myself so to get my hands dirty I have started building raised beds for my roses. I brought the roses from my home on the Outer Banks and I am hoping they make it up here. Each of the rose bushes has a meaning to me most were given to me by someone close and it would be very sad for me if any of them did not make it through the winter but any time a plant is moved there is the chance that the plant won’t make it. We shall see what the spring brings.

The swing bench in the foreground is one of my favorite rest areas. In the early morning and late evening I enjoy sitting and just looking at the view. At night it’s a great place to look at the stars. The heavens here are so different from the Beach. There seems to be so many more stars. Last night I saw a few shooting stars and I hope to see a lot more, the Perseids meteor showers appear in August.