Merry Christmas from DeSha Ranch 2012

Boys

Boys

My oldest boy doesn't like to have his photo taken, by his momma.

Here he's hiding on the tractor with another favorite boy who calls himself the 'ass rider'. He's gone off to northern Oklahoma to work. I hope he finds his way. I'm sure going to miss him and his mules.

This is my boy's boy, on the left. He's lovely like his daddy.

That's a cousin on the right, he's a great boy too!

My boy's two little boys, just a few years ago.

 

Posting on my blog is something I rarely do anymore.

Not that I don't want to, I often think of it, but just don't take the time.



Jessie Lee

October 16, 1982

~

August 1, 2002



What the heart has once known it shall never forget

Finally finished along with beet greens for dinner!

A year later, I've finally completed my project of painting some of the brick on the exterior of the house. My husband, the Bear, is a brick mason, so we had to have a brick home when we built. I, the one who makes things complicated and difficult, wanted some contrast. The solution was to paint the walls on the porch. Break up the red brick pattern a bit. This is the inspirational house that my brother found to create my vision. Keep in mind that painting brick is against all law and code in the brick mason world.

The picture below is my house, after the brick was painted. My husband suffered quite a bit of trama, but I think he's getting used to it now. He said it was like graffitti or defacing art work. But I just had to do it!

Now I have to decide whether to paint the doors a deep red or keep them white.

I'm happy with decisions to paint, maybe because once you paint brick, you can never go back to the original. But seriously, I do think it "breaks up the brick" and gives me the contrast I wanted. I'm so trying to achieve the look of an "old house".
Saturday we traveled to the farmer's market, oh what a treat. We came home with all sorts of goodies. Tiger melons were a new fruit we tried. We bought vegetables to substitute what we didn't have from our garden to make vegetable soup to freeze. I made 7 quarts, and it's lovely, but I have no pictures. Then we finished off the night with steak and fresh vegetables. Also fried the beet greens with little onion in bacon gease. Yummie!

I would have found a more photogenic plate, but was not planning on taking a photograph, until I saw those beets and greens together! Thank you to all who participated in providing this food!

Salsa with fresh vegetables from our garden

The time is here. Time to harvest the many blessings from our garden. This is my first batch of salsa this year. The tomatoes are from our garden, pepper, onion and garlic purchased. We have some really nice jalepeno pepper plants, but not enough peppers for salsa yet. I hope to make at least one more batch this summer. Our weather is so hot and dry, I'm afraid we may not be able to water enough to keep the garden going very long. We have already watered the pear trees, when they started dropping their pears. I've never watered the pear trees before.

Aren't these tomatoes just a lovely color of red? So grateful for this bountiful harvest!

I love the vibrant colors of fresh peppers!

Here's the final outcome. I didn't get the picture downloaded of it all mixed together in the pot.

Yum! Now for some warm salsa on tortilla chips!

It's a little warm with peppers.

What a beautiful night for a sled ride!

We finally received some rain. We have been in dire need of rain on our lawns, gardens and pastures. All the grass is brown, and the roadways have been catching fire nearly every day. Then it rained. We were so blessed. We got about three inches. This also gave me the opportunity to move some thorn bushes that had been cut down to a burn pile to burn, since we got some rain. We've been under a burn ban for awhile. This is my low budget operation to transport these thorns to a suitable place to burn them. Drag a 16 foot 'cattle panel' behind the four wheeler, and pile thorn bushes on the panel, then drag to the fire. The Bear actually thought of this idea. It wasn't without glitches, but after a few minor adjustments, it worked just fine.

Here are the thorns after their sled ride to the fire! I heard a piece on NPR about someone had invented a competitive sport of eradicating some vine (probably Kudzu) in some southern state. I must think up something like that to get rid of these thorns. We've let them go for several years, and they are threatening to take over.

This is the worst lightening strike I've ever witnessed. It blew the top of this tree all apart and shredded  the trunk down to the ground. See how far the large pieces were blown away from the trunk. There are even large pieces of the trunk hanging in trees.

Mr. Green Snake. He is very large for a green snake.

Another shady project

I began my project, that I've put off for over a year now. I like to think I had good reason to take so long in finishing this part of our house. But breast cancer does have a way of taking some of your time and energy. So now that we're past all that, I got back to my brick painting. I wanted to give our house a little contrast and paint the interior walls on my front porch. I didn't want the paint to completely cover the brick. I wanted it to have a light, washed effect. So here is the wall with all the windows.

I began by power washing the whole porch. Then the prep work, covering the windows, ceiling and floor. I'm a little distracted, the Bear says I've got ADD. So I tend to start projects before the prep work is complete. Just to see how it goes. I suspect that I inherited this trait from my father. My mother would agree.

So this is the paper covering the ceiling. And we have this nifty little tool that was well worth the money. It attaches the tape to the paper as you roll it out.

There's my chigger bitten hand and the wonderful tool. The Bear talked me into that when we painted the interior of the house.

This would be the point in my preparation that I began to anticipate what it was going to look like. So I decided to start painting before I had all four windows covered. I had a strategy, not a very good one, as it turned out, but I had one. This would create problems for me later, but it all worked out in the end. My eagerness usually creates extra work for me. But hey, I like hard work.

And this is how the first wall looks when completed. Next I'll turn the corner. I have two more walls to paint. I've watered down my paint, 3 parts water/ one paint, and am spraying it from a hand sprayer.

And here's a shot of the house, just a little too far away to see the painted wall, but you get an idea of where this is going. The color matches the siding on either side of the chimney. Next I'll paint the front walls on either side of the chimney.  My husband, the Bear, is quite apprehensive about this project. He's a brick mason, laid all the brick on this house, and it's against brick mason law to paint brick. I hope he forgives me when this is done!