Preparing for a Slide Show

Recently I went on some garden tours and will be sharing some photos of the beautiful flowers with my Master Gardener group at our montly meeting tomorrow.


In order for everybody to be able to see the photos I have on my computer, I saved them to a Power Point Presentation CD which I put together this afternoon. I will put the CD in my laptop computer and hook it up to my projector, and project the photos to a large screen. Learning to do all of this has not been easy for someone who does not understand high technology. I have great difficulty coping with change when my computer decides to update programs that I have finally mastered, and people come up with new ideas and update things and I have to start all over learning how to use the new technology. Jim laughs at me because I get so frustrated and throw up my hands, exclaiming "I do not like change". I want things to stay the same so I don't have to learn something new. After reviewing the manual, I finally remembered how to project the images on the screen. Now if I can just remember which cable or cord goes to the right port to hook the laptop computer to the projector, I'll be ready to start the show.

The first tour photos I will be showing are from a Garden Tour I went on in Charlotte, NC in April when I visited my sister Alice one week-end. We went to several homes on the tour and all of the gardens were different. One of my favorites had a lot of fun things mixed in with the flowers. This sign was attached to an old bird house: Fixer Upper -- Available for a Song!

Our Master Gardener group went on a tour of a couple of gardens
in Hartford, AL a couple of weeks ago.

The first stop was a Prayer Garden at Hartford Baptist church. You enter the garden through a nice arbor where a sign hangs that says "Garden of Eden". The garden was started in 2005 and several members of the church work in the garden. We enjoyed the engraved plaques and sculptures. Many of the plants are mentioned in the Bible and scriptures were on the plant identification marker. This garden is so relaxing and there are many places to sit and look at all the beauty.  

The next stop was out in the country at the home of Buddy and

Patricia Guilford. Their huge yard is filled with many kinds of roses, and other flowers. One of the highlights of this tour was near the end of the walk around the big yard and you look over into a field and see the most wonderful wildflower display. It almost took my breath away! 

I also included in my slide show presentation some suggestions on landscaping - mainly things NOT to plant too close to the house. I

included some of my "mistakes".

I'm all set to go to the meeting tomorrow and plug in the computer and projector and take a deep breath, and pray that everything works as it should and the pictures will shine on the big screen so they can be enjoyed by all. And I do hope some of this modern technology will either slow down or get easier to use........

Enjoying Company this weekend

We enjoy having company come to visit and this week-end my sister Christine and her husband Al are visiting from Nanticoke, MD. They came to Elba for her 55th  Elba High School reunion today.

They arrived at our home mid-afternoon yesterday and we had fun visiting our brother Perry and his wife Carol after dinner last night. We sat on their big front porch and enjoyed talking about our growing up out in the country. There were 6 girls and one boy. Perry was in the middle. Our only brother is so special to all of us girls. He came to our house yesterday afternoon with a box of fresh veggies from his garden (new potatoes, squash, pepper and a dozen big red tomatoes). f

When Chris and Al got back home from their reunion this afternoon around 3 pm, our cousin Linda Westbrook stopped by for a visit. As she was getting ready to leave, her brother Tom and his wife Sharon Nix came over. Our afternoon was open - no plans, so we all had fun visiting.

We had so much fun remembering our past. I slipped into the kitchen and quickly put together an indoor picnic. We enjoyed hot dogs, slaw, butterbeans (left over), fresh corn on the cob, and an unusual dessert-orange jello with shredded carrots and pineapple! We ate on paper plates and had bottled water or canned diet Cokes.

What a fun afternoon! Tomorrow Linda heads for the NC mountains and on Monday, Tom and Sharon begin a long journey to Alaska in their motor home.

Next weekend all of us Wilson girls (6) and our families will be in Black Mountain, NC attending the wedding of our niece, our youngest sister Carolyn's daughter Beth Johnson.

We are one big happy family!  Twelve First cousins....

Mother's Day May 9, 2010

Mother's Day was celebrated on Sunday, May 9, this year; which is also granddaughter Nerissa's 21st birthday.


I am pictured here with flowers I received from granddaughter Allison, a student at North Texas University in Denton, TX.


They came on Saturday and today (Wed) they are still fresh and pretty. What a pleasant surprise to receive them from Ally.


The other photo is the arrangment we placed in church last Sunday
honoring granddaughter Nerissa who turned 21 on Mother's Day. They were also in memory of our mothers.


I didn't know anyone to pass the church flowers on to, so I am trying to keep them alive until this Sat. so they can be used in our church fellowship hall for a United Methodist Women's district meeting. I will replace dead ones with flowers from our yard.


When I was growing up, on Mother's Day we always pinned a rose to our lapel; red if our mothers were still living and a white rose if your mother was deceased. Everybody went to visit their mom on Mother's Day, and she usually ended up cooking the big meal.


Our mother died from a blood clot at such an early age, 48, that she never had the opportunity of having her 7 children and their families to come for Mother's Day. She had 6 grandchildren when she died; now there are 9 more and 17 great grandchildren.



Here is a photo of our mother when she was 33 years old. She is holding Alice, next to the youngest child who was born in Oct. 1946.


I enjoyed the calls from Ron and Bill on Mother's Day. Bill and girls were at Emerald Isle Beach in NC for the week-end and celebrated Mother's Day and Nerissa's birthday. They connected with me via Skype on Sunday evening. Ron called from Austin airport at 9 a.m. en route to Stamford, CT for a temporary job. Various delays kept him from getting to Stamford until 11 pm.

Back Yard project completed

We finished putting down the centipede sod in just 2 days and the evening of the 2nd day, it rained and watered our yard. No big puddles in the back yard anymore. I made the flower beds a little wider by the back porch and planted more hostas. They grow well in the shade. 

We have several hydrangea bushes at the back and they provide a good screen for the porch. Besides we love the big blue blossoms that are there most of the summer.

We ordered the centipede sod from a farm in our area. It was dug and delivered the same day we started planting it, so maybe it will grow fast and stay green. We have to water it every day for 14 days to get it rooted in the new soil underneath.

We enlarged the flower bed that is next to the greenhouse in the next photo. Half of the flower bed is now a vegetable garden, with 9 tomato plants, 4 pepper plants, 3 hills of cucumbers, and 2 hills of zucchini squash.

There is a day lily garden on the end where the bird bath is, under the oak tree that I planted. The greenhouse is used for storing pots and other garden supplies during the summer. Too hot to put plants in there during the summer.


I moved the bird feeder there that was sitting on the bench, and the birds are so upset. A couple of cardinals saw the feeder inside the greenhouse and were trying to get inside to get some feed. I felt guilty putting it away. They don't need to be fed in the summer when they can find plenty of food to eat. Maybe they'll keep the bugs out of my garden.

It looks so much better in our back yard with the new green lawn.

Our "instant" green lawn

For a long time we have struggled with weeds and big puddles or small lakes when it rains in our back yard. The soil is so poor in our back yard that even the weeds don't flourish. And of course the bermuda grass doesn't want to grow either.

Here in these photos you can see how the water stands and makes small lakes when it rains. We decided this spring to do something about this problem.

We ordered a dump truck load of top soil and hired someone to

spread the dirt in the low places in the back yard. The man came

to spread the dirt last Monday when Jim came to Montgomery to meet me at the airport after my week-end in NC. Fortunately he

spread it in places where Jim had placed some stakes.

Then we decided to buy centipede sod from a local sod farm instead of sowing seed. We didn't want to have to wait all summer for a new lawn.

Today a big truck came to bring us 2 and 1/2 pallets of sod for our

yard. When I came home from a Mental Health Foundation meeting at 4 pm, Jim greeted me at the door with the message that our sod was delivered around noon today. I hurried and changed clothes and the fun began.

We started placing the big rolls of sod on top of the prepared topsoil in the back yard. Our first thoughts were that it would take days to get all the grass planted and where would we get help to do this. Well, one hour into the job we saw a lot of progress and  2 hours later, we had emptied one of the pallets and covered a lot of the yard. We should be able to complete the rest of the yard by noon tomorrow, just before the rains move in.

Our yard is going to be so pretty and green this summer and we will enjoy looking at it when we sit on our back porch. Our flower bed in the middle of the back yard has been enlarged and we are going to use half of it for a vegetable garden. This is the next big project as well as planting more flowers in some of the existing flower beds.

I love working outdoors and planting things and watching them grow. Maybe this is because I grew up on a working farm and watched my daddy plant gardens and crops of peanuts, corn and cotton. We always had fresh garden vegetables in the summer. Maybe we can grow some this summer. We're going to try.

Our Easter trip to Charleston and Florence, SC

On March 31, we traveled to Charleston, SC which is on the bay/ocean. This is a view of the Charleston harbor and the old historic district. On the extreme left you see "The Battery", which is a beautiful park and beautiful old homes.

I took this picture when we were on a boat ride to visit Ft. Sumter, where the Civil War began in 1861, on a small island in the Charleston harbor. 

Here you see a  photo of 350 passengers loading on the boat to go

to Ft. Sumter. It was a beautiful, sunny and clear day. Lots of

school kids were on field trips that day.

In the background of this photo you can see the new Cooper Bridge which connects Charleston to Mt. Pleasant. You can also

cross the Cooper River via water taxi and ferry boats. On our return trip from Ft Sumter, we saw the WWII carrier, "Yorktown" located at Patriot's Point across the river.

We also witnessed a Chinese freighter "Yang Ming" coming in to

unload big cargo containers of goods being shipped to the US.


At the end of our Ft Sumter tour, we went to the SC Aquarium

which was next door to the Ft Sumter docking pier.


A huge tank of fish filled the center of the building, three stories tall. We saw a diver in the tank, feeding the fish. He would look

out the window and talk to us. Very interesting how he feeds

so many varieties and sizes of fish, including a shark.

We took our granddaughter Katie out to eat twice while we were

visiting in Charleston. She is a freshman at College of Charleston.

On Thursday night, we took Katie and 3 friends to dinner at a restaurant they selected on King Street in historic district near the college. We had so much fun getting to know her friends. They all seem like sisters.


Easter weekend we traveled to Florence, SC and took Katie home

for Easter. On the way home Friday afternoon, we stopped in

Santee at the big Santee Cooper Lakes for a cookout and boat ride at Bill's friend Kerry's place on the lake. Afterwards we headed to Florence, about an hour north.


Jim and I are pictured here with our youngest son, Bill. He has been a widower for 13 years and has been both Mom and Dad to his 3 beautiful daughters who were all home for Easter; Nerissa, a Jr at Clemson; Katie, freshman at College of Charleston, and the youngest, Caroline, an 8th grader at St Anthony school.



We had fun shopping on Saturday before Easter. I can't buy them clothes unless they are with me to pick them out and try them on.

Katie bought a new dress and sweater, Nerissa only wanted some new earrings, and Caroline wanted a new dress to wear to her school masquerade ball the end of April. Can you believe it took most of the day Sat. to buy these few items? Maybe you haven't shopped with young girls in awhile! It was so much fun being with them.

We loaded into 2 cars and headed for church at St Anthony's at 10:30 a.m. on Sunday. Had to get there early to get a seat for the 11 am mass. Came home afterwards and the girls helped me prepare the Sunday Easter meal and put it on the table.


Then Katie and Nerissa had to leave to go back to college after lunch. We hated to see them leave. They're all grown up now!


The rest of us gathered in the den and watched an old movie that made us laugh. When it was over, we all went to bed early. It had been a busy day - but fun to have everybody together for awhile. We headed back home on Monday, leaving Caroline asleep as she had the day off. Bill had to go back to work.

Uneventful trip back home (almost 9 hrs) except for the yellow fog, which was actually lots of pollen floating about in the air. I started reading a book when we left Florence and almost finished reading it before we reached home.

We had a great road trip to SC. Wish our other son Ronnie and his family in Austin, TX could have been with us. We will get to visit with them in May when we gather in Black Mountain, NC for my niece Beth's wedding on May 29th. Granddaughter Allison will be missing since she will be on a college trip to Italy.

Taking in the County Fair

Saturday we took Maddy, Anna, and Lindsay to the Sarasota County Fair. The fairgrounds are a permanent fixture just east of the city. Many years ago the area around the fairgrounds was all country - filled with orange and other citrus groves, and truck farming. Now the city has sprawled all the way from downtown to Interstate 75. The dairy farm adjoing my sisters home has been converted to subdivisions and  lately,  big box stores. A huge shopping center is within walking distance.

Judy's daughter Jennifer and her little girls arrived from Orlando on Friday afternoon and we took them on their first trip to "the fair". It was so much fun watching them as they enjoyed the many shows taking place. The first one was a pig race. I must admit that I have never seen pigs racing. I guess it was patterned after the Florida dog races. You should have seen those pigs run around the track!

Nobody wanted to ride the big elephant. But it was fun watching people climb up on top of the elephant and be led around a ring inside a big fenced area. I rode an elephant once and was afraid he might take off running.... but he just walked along the path at the Cincinnati zoo. We saw a tiger show and felt sorry for the tigers who stayed in a big covered truck between shows. I know it must have been hot inside that truck. They looked so sleepy when they came out.

Their favorite thing for the little nieces was riding all the wild rides. Even 5 year old Lindsay loved riding the ferris wheel, the swings that flew out into space, vertical drops, etc. I just stood back and watched!

We stopped to listen to the music shows: oldtime music, bluegrass, etc. We wanted to see the sea lion performance but the crowd was always too big and we couldn't get close.

The whole afternoon was so much fun since we had the little girls along and watched them with all their excitement. I can't believe they actually ate that big bag of cotton candy and the giant (very sweet) elephant ear.

We were there all afternoon and started to get a little sunburned, altho the temperature as in the low 70s and a slight breeze. A perfect day to go to the fair...........

Too bad Jim and Guy got "put in jail".