Purchases, Trade Days, planting, dining with friends, Joshua’s birthday

Friday evening before RU Mama and I went to visit Peggy, a lady in our church. She has a lot of little things for sale. When I sat a lot, she has a house full along with several large shop buildings completely full of items from tools to tables to heavy machinery. Her husband loved to accumulate things and had big plans for a wood working shop, a mechanic shop and who knows what else but he died before he was able to follow through on those plans.

She had a set of shelving Mama and I wanted to get for our shop; the kind that is on wheels so I can move them as needed. These shelves are wider by six inches than the ones I have had for several years. We managed to get the three of them into the back of the truck like it was made for them and Mama added two tabled and two tricycles to the load. Peggy also gave Mama three small pictures from the house and a light fixture – a really ugly one. I am not sure what Mama has in mind for it.

Mama and I have been interested in her property and have thought seriously about selling the farm to buy it but we have not acted on that impulse. It is one of those things that pique an interest but when the cost is counted we settle back into the farm and the long term options we have with it; in spite of the work that lies ahead of us.

Trade Days was particularly fun on Saturday. We spent almost all our time visiting with friends who set up a booth every month. Mama was not able to get any more boots because the lady did not have anything she was interested in.  What boots she did have were brown – Mama already has three pairs of brown boots – and most of the pairs were pretty gaudy; not what Mama was looking for. It saved me $60.

After we got back from Trade Days we worked in the garden. I marked off rows while Mama and Victoria put seeds in the rows. We put out a lot of seeds. If they all produce we will have a pretty nice garden. We planted onions, corn, beans, peas, brussel sprouts, beats, cucumbers, zucchini, Indian corn and carrots. At this point my biggest concern is getting help to care for the garden when we spend two weeks in Florida.

I set stakes at the end of each row or the end of each seed planted if the row contained more than one type of seed. If I did not it is nearly impossible to tell where the rows are until the seeds sprout. On some of them I stapled the package the seeds came from to the stake. With the winds we endure in this part of Texas I do not know if the packages will last until the harvest but it was worth a try.

We were a little disappointed that we did not get any rain Sunday through the morning and afternoon; heavy thunderstorms were predicted. It was not until we got home from church last night that we discovered that we had finally gotten some rainfall. Mama and I were worried about getting the newly planted seeds their first drink of water but the Lord took care of that for us.

We had to pick up Andrew for both church services yesterday. That is always fun. Since we had to make sure he got some lunch we took him out after church. We had planned on going to Cici’s pizza but Mama invited Kim and Kenny Cantrell to go with us and Kenny is on a restricted diet so pizza was out. We opted for Chinese instead – Andrew does not like Chinese.

We had a delightful time with the Cantrell’s. Mama and Kim are very good friends. Since we were at a buffet everyone got plenty to eat. Andrew even found a few things he had not tried before. Several that he liked enough that he went back for seconds – after his second helping ice cream and pudding.

Joshua turns 31 today. I would call but I do not know if he had a working phone so I texted him instead.