Reservations, travel plans, produce

I had a busy morning this morning. Arranging accommodations for Mama and the kids as they travel. Amending my travel plans to help her get home on the second leg of her trip. Completing all the required paperwork to make all my business travel work out within the company guidelines. Gathering the class materials for the class next Tuesday. Getting permissions for two other instructors that have classes coming up that also require travel. All of that while navigating through a more than normally occupied office. It is hard to find a quiet place to make the phone calls. At least, quiet enough that I can hear what is being said by the person speaking with me. Anyway, reservations are made in Jacksonville, FL and in Pensacola, FL for those respective nights of travel. I told Mama, hotels are expensive. Especially when you think about sleeping there for only one night. I suppose it is a necessary part of traveling, but it is a ridiculously high cost for a night’s sleep.

Mama is making her plans to travel as we head into the weekend. There has been a good bit of discussion about how and when to tell the children that they will be leaving with Grammy Monday morning. I am not sure a timeline has been settled yet, but the consensus it would be better to tell Cathryn and Walter either Sunday night or Monday morning that they are traveling. All in all, it depends largely on how Maggie and Aaron react on the morning the kids are being packed into Grammy’s vehicle. Right now, they are spending a lot of time with Grammy. One more trip with Grammy would not seem out of the ordinary. Happy faces on the part of the parents would confirm the happy nature of the trip. Sad faces would only instill fear. Send them off happy and Mama will deal with the rest. A written letter of permission to travel with and to treat the kids if necessary would help if such explanations or permissions are required at any point. But I do not know if that is being done yet.  

Having Maggie, Cathryn and Walter will fill the Sequoia as we travel to Victoria next month. We will have the three of them, me, Mama, Victoria, and Jake. How we are going to manage travel in Victoria is somewhat in question as well because we pick up Brittany and the girls at Bush International in Houston on day then we well be picking up Cori at the same airport. On another day. That brings our total to eleven. The Sequoia has seating designed for seven. With all the space we typically use for luggage being taken up by passengers, we will be short on that space as well. We will figure it out. Two vehicles leaving the farm together. Renting a car in Victoria. Borrowing a car from friend or family. We have time to work on the best solution. It is going to be a fun challenge.

Summer is almost here. We are in an extended time of pleasant evenings. Most evenings are in the high 60s or low 70s. The daytime temperatures are creeping into the mid-90s. Triple digit temperatures are only a couple weeks away, but we have had an unusual reprieve from the heat, and we are enjoying it. A portion of our vegetables were planted in plastic tubs the cattle had licked clean of the minerals and molasses they once contained. That has worked out well for us. As the temperatures have crept higher, I was able to move the tubs into less sunny areas. They still get six to eight hours of direct sun but are shaded from the brutality of the late afternoon sun. For the tomatoes, watering is required every day. After several years of not getting any tomatoes, we are pleased how well the plants are producing this year.

The peaches will be ready to pick by the time Mama and I get back to the farm next week. The blueberries are ripening six to ten at a time with hundreds in various stages of maturing. Our grapevine has several clusters of grapes, but I am not sure if it will let the fruit ripen. Some of those very tiny grapes in the clusters have already turned into raisins. All but a few of the blackberries produced by the plants I relocated have been eaten before we got to harvest them. I am willing to share, but some critters have been quite selfish. I may have to relocate the blackberries to the back yard this Fall so Mama and I can enjoy them.

Our cucumbers, pumpkins and beets are still doing very well. The cucumbers we are getting are about two feet long. I do not eat cucumbers, so I have given them away in Mama’s absence. Okra was a failure this year. You win some. You lose some.

Fortunately, we do not rely on what we can produce for our food supply. If we did, Mam and I would have no problem getting down to our desired weight.