Our Granddaughter's Confirmation and Graduation

Caroline Rose Gilmer, our youngest grandchild (out of 5) was confirmed by the Bishop of Charleston (SC) Diocese at St. Anthony's Church, Florence, SC, on Sunday, May 29, 2010. She is standing by the Bishop. Most of the kids in the photo have just completed the 8th grade.


We were unable to attend since we were at my niece's wedding the same day. The confirmation date was set after we made plans to attend Beth's and Matt's wedding.

I helped her pick out her confirmation dress when we were visiting them at Easter. Here she is pictured with Bill, her dad (our youngest son).

The next photo is of Caroline with her sisters, Katie and Nerissa. They are both in college (Nerissa a Senior at Clemson and Katie a Sophomore. at College of Charleston).

For her confirmation, Caroline had to prepare a scrapbook of her journey in life. It contained photos of her 14-1/2 years, as well as momentos of her years at St. Anthony.

We arrived in Florence on Tuesday morning around noon and spent the afternoon with the girls, planning a graduation party for the next day at noon.

The two big sisters were busy as beavers getting things together. Katie wanted to bake the cake and decorate and got up early on Wed. to bake it. My sister Alice and her husband Jerry arrived from Charlotte, NC,  in time for lunch on Wed.  

The girls' mother died when they were very young (Caroline was 1 year old) and Alice was always there to help them out and attend their school functions, ball games, etc. She is like a grandmother to them. They call her "Great Aunt Alice Dearest".


Graduation was at 6:30 pm on Wed., June 2 at St. Anthony catholic church. Just as we arrived at the church, it started raining and there was lots of lightning and thunder during graduation.


It was a mass as well as graduation so we were there an hour or longer. There were only 6 students in the 8th grade and next year they will all enter the 9th grade at different schools. Caroline will go to West Florence and be in a class of over 400 students. When I asked if she was nervous, she replied that she was going to play soccer  and that she was excited about the big class, just thinking of all the new friends she will have. I guess that's one way of looking at it.

Caroline won all of the awards in her class but one and it was in Music. She was an A student and excelled in everything, including Spanish, computer, art, principal's award, highest achiever, and some more. When graduation was over, we went to the Parish Hall for refreshments, just as a big fire truck pulled up to the church with lights flashing. Seems the lightning caused the fire alarm to go off!

So Caroline's graduation ended with natural fireworks and red lights flashing! And it continued to rain most of the night.

We came home the next day and Caroline went to Myrtle Beach with her classmates and several adult chaperones for 3 days.

On the way home we realized we have been going to events at St. Anthony school since Nerissa started to 4K there in 1992 - a total of 18 years. We are going to miss all the events but will still go to church with them at St Anthony's when we visit.

My niece gets married

Weddings area always such happy occasions. On Saturday, May 29, 2010, we traveled to Black Mountain, NC for my niece Beth Johnson's wedding to Matthew Peabody. The wedding took place at a Presbyterian Church on the Warren Wilson college campus at 4 p.m. Beautiful violin music filled the church before and during the wedding.

It was a family event with many young cousins attending. They passed out the small vials of bubble soap for everybody to blow bubbles to the newlywed couple as they exited the church.

We left the church and went to the Wild Hare 
restaurant in Black Mountain, NC,  for the reception.

Here you see Matt and Beth with her mother Carolyn on her left,

and her aunt; Susan on front, then left to right on back: Judy, Nell,

Chris and Alice.

It was a beautiful wedding and we enjoyed meeting Matt's family from Indiana and other states. Beth's brothers Doug and Greg as well as their wives Michelle and Robin were in the wedding.

The Wild Hare is a place that caters special events. The reception buffet meal was delicious and after dinner, a DJ friend from New Orleans was there to provide music for dancing in the ballroom. Following a toast from the best man and the fathers of the bride and groom, a slide show of Beth and Matt growing up was enjoyed by all. The bride's cousin Bill Gilmer prepared the slide show, complete with music. Then the beautiful wedding cake was cut and enjoyed by all.

The bride's 5 aunts (her mother's sisters) hosted a luncheon the day of the wedding for guests coming from out of town to the wedding. A large table of deli foods with cold drinks and cookies was served in the Senior Center building overlooking Lake Tomahawk.

The only member of our immediate family that could attend was granddaughter Liz who flew to the wedding from Austin, TX. We enjoyed visiting with her.

We left Black Mountain on Monday and attended our youngest granddaughter Caroline's 8th grade graduation in Florence, SC on June 2nd at 6:30 p.m. More about that later.

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.