Done

It took forever and Miss Kitty flipping it up in the air didn't help.  This was a difficult puzzle.  I was beginning to think I'd never finish it.  The colors in the sky, street and tablecloth were virtually identical.
I was wondering if I was the only one who found it difficult so I went to Amazon and read some reviews on it and low and behold nearly everyone said it was a difficult puzzle and took a bit of time to finish.  So I'm not the only one.
Notice the one missing puzzle piece.  We looked everywhere for it and it was not to be found.  Isn't it nice that it's right smack in the middle of the puzzle.
A new puzzle awaits me, gotta keep those little grey cells working.

Words of Wisdom

Not me, but what it felt like

Words of wisdom learned the hard way.

1.  Don't fry or sautein a low-cut top.


2.  Don't sniff a steaming pot of food.


3.  And never, never smile while mowing the grass.

Low Country Boil

In the pot

As promised, I made a Low Country Boil today and while getting the recipe I looked at its history.  According to Coastal Living magazine it was invented by Richard Gay a South Carolina National Guardsman who had to feed a 100 people.  He was from a tiny town called Frogmore so many called it Frogmore Stew.  Whatever you call it, it's delicious.
This was my first time making it, usually we have a crowd over and someone else does the cooking.  So I went online to my southern cooking specialist, Paula Deen, and got her recipe.  It was so easy.



Here's her recipe:
Old Bay Crab Boil, 2 teaspoons per quart of water
red new potatoes
smoked sausage link sausage
fresh  corn
shrimp, unpeeled

Directions

Fill a large pot with enough water to cover all of the ingredients. Add the Old Bay Crab Boil and bring to a boil. Adjust the Crab Boil to suit your taste. When the water boils, add the potatoes and sausage. Cook on medium heat for 20 minutes. Add corn and cook for an additional 10 minutes. Add shrimp and cook for no more than 3 minutes. Drain and serve with warm bread.

I took out the amounts she put in because she was cooking for a crowd and I was just making it for Mac and me.  I used about 3 quarts of water, 10 small red potatoes, whatever sausage Mac had in the refrigerator, 2 ears of corn broke in half, Vidalia onion cut in half   and about a 1/2 pound of frozen shrimp.

I cooked it just exactly as she said and it turned out perfectly.  What a great meal to start the Summer with.

In the bowl

Bellringers

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, when we were in England last summer we rented a cottage that we'd stayed in before.
As it turned out our landlord L was a bellringer and we told him that all we knew about bellringing was  that Tristan from the old tv series All Creatures Great and Small used bellringing as an excuse to go to the pub.
L said there was a lot of truth in that because often the bellringers were hefty farm folk who rang the bells and then headed off to the pub for a refreshing pint.
He offered to take us to the church where he rang and let us observe.  So that's how we spent a lovely Sunday morning.
Back home Mac decided he wanted to paint some bellringers in old-time clothes and in the middle of them he put L.
For some reason our camera isn't focusing right and the photos don't do the painting justice.  We sent a copy to L and it amused him.

Here's L in his red vest.

Our Weekend Forecast

The Beaufort area in South Carolina is going to get the brunt of Tropical Storm Bonnie, but the Savannah area is going to get up to 5 inches of rain by Monday.
Hope folks don't have too many outdoor activities planned.
We had our first rain this afternoon, just barely got the clothes off the line.
So I stayed in, no swimming, worked on my puzzle, it's almost done, I'll finish it tomorrow and burn it.  It's been a bugger.

Five on Friday

It's time to join in with the rest of the bloggers at Amy's Love Made My Home site.  It's a beautiful day here in coastal Georgia, but seeing as it's Memorial Day weekend the forecast is for rain, starting tomorrow and going right through Monday.  I don't know how many times we've planned get-to-gethers on Memorial Day and had them rained out.  We don't even bother any more.

But that's ok, we'll be doing a Low Country Boil for the 2 of us.  I'll write about that on Monday.

Here's my five, in no particular order.

One:  I had to go see my Retina specialist on Tuesday to have my wonky eye lasered.  It went quickly, though it was a little achy afterwards.  It tends to be my dry eye and the laser may have dried it more.  But it quickly settled down and all is well.  While I was having it done Mac went and bought me flowers for being a brave little girl.

Two:   Mac cut some Hydrangeas for me and I changed my kitchen plate to match the colors.  I think this is the first year we've had lavender Hydrangeas.

Three:   The roses on some of our smaller bushes are blooming and the colors are gorgeous.

Four:   The pool is open!  I went in it today and I didn't scream, it felt wonderful.  Mac has done so much work on it and now it's my turn to start netting out debris and brushing down the sides.  I expected the water to be cooler, but it felt great, I'd keep it this temperature all year if I could.

Mac dries his paintings on the deck because it's so hot out there.  Since he took this picture he's brought out the chairs for the table and the umbrella.

Five:  The laundry room has been put back together and finally stopped smelling like new paint.  Next I need to paint part of the back hall.  It's been painted once, but life has banged it up a bit.

That's my Five, hope you have a good weekend wherever you are.

A Not So Good Season

In addition to it being watermelon season it's Deer Fly season.  That season runs from Mother's Day to Father's Day and it's a real bummer.
Deer Fly are a member of the Horse Fly family and they're vicious. Here's what Wikipedia says about them:  They are smaller than wasps, and have coloured eyes and dark bands across their wings. While female deer flies feed on blood, males instead collect pollen. When feeding, females use knife-like mandibles and maxillae to make a cross-shaped incision and then lap up the blood. Their bite can be painful.
What an understatement!  Their bite is beyond painful, you feel like something has taken a hacksaw to you.  Mac says that if they were classified as a weapon the Geneva Convention would outlaw them because of their ferocity.
There is nothing you can spray on, wipe on or wear that will detract them.  They'll bite right through  you clothing.
A neighbor showed us how to get rid of them.   It seems that they are attracted to the color blue----the flies, not the neighbor---and you can trap them.  You paint a bottle blue, we use bleach and soap bottle, and then coat the bottles in a product called Tanglefoot.  It's very sticky and will trap the flies.
You might think that sounds cruel, but obviously you've never been bitten by a deer fly.  We have blue bottles all over our yard,  so it's not too bad out there.  But our morning walk has become an obstacle course as we try to avoid the flies.  I've been bitten a number of times this week and it's no fun.

Can't wait for Father's Day.

Tis the Season

What season you say, well watermelon of course.  We love watermelon and we're always glad to start seeing it in the markets.  Only trouble is that with there just being the 2 of us we can't eat a whole melon, they turn bad before we can finish them.  Thank goodness for being able to buy part of a melon.  Two advantages, they're small enough for us to finish and you can get a good look at how ripe they are.  I don't care how much I thump on a whole one I can't tell it it's ripe or not.  The one disadvantage is that cut watermelon is more expensive than whole ones.  But I can live with that, after all the watermelon is a treat.
Today at the market though they had no cut melon, just sliced and that's too expensive even for a treat.  But we were lucky, they had small melons, just right for 2 people.  So now we can sit and spit, 'cause these melons have seeds.

One of the cut sections is just about right for us.

Here's the little one we got today, I sliced it up and it's in the refrigerator getting cool.

Winter Work Done in Summer

It should have been done months ago.  We had the paint, we had the rollers, but every time it came right down to it I postponed it.  We haven't painted the laundry room, it looks the same as when we moved in, but worse.  The paint in this house, and it was a custom built house, was worse than builder grade, in fact I've always said the place looked like it was primed white and left.
So today was going to be the day, to quote Oasis, we were finally going to paint the laundry room.  We got out brushes, paint, rags and sort of a roller, the only one Mac could find was a teeny, tiny one about 4 inches long.  We had 3 brand new roller covers, but nothing to hold them.  Mac said we could wait until we got the right size roller holder or use the teeny, tiny one.  I was not going to put it off any longer, so we dragged the dryer away from the wall and got to work.  Surprisingly enough the teeny, tiny roller did the job.
Mac is in there now finishing up trim, but it's done and it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be.
Kitty's bathroom is next, but not this week, it's supposed to be 90ª by Wednesday.

What I thought I'd be painting with.

What I actually painted with, half the size and not nearly as fluffy.

More or less done, waiting for it to dry so we can put things back in.

Sunday in the Swamp

Beautiful Sunday here in the swamp, but oh so humid!!  They promised lower humidity, but they lied!! After all the rain this week most of our tomatoes are dying, can't believe it, Mac has worked so hard and he doesn't even eat them, he grows them for me.
Busy morning hanging out laundry, putting laundry from yesterday away, cleaning parts of the house I've been avoiding and now it's exercise time.
Learned a new German word: haustier and I should have recognized it because I know haus is house and tier is animal.  It means a pet.  Already knew kuh (cow), pferd (horse), hund (dog) and katze (cat).  Also learned spinne (spider) and biene (bee).  The last one is kind of important because I'm allergic to bee and wasp stings, so I need to learn the word for wasp too.
Had to stop and go exercise, but now I'm back with a question.  One of the songs on my MP3 today was Shotgun Rider be Tim McGraw.  Now in this country if someone calls shotgun we know exactly what they mean, they want the front passenger seat.  So my question is, does riding shotgun have the same meaning in other countries?

Five on Friday

It's time to join in with Amy at Love Made My Home for a weekly Five on Friday.  Hope you join in too, I've met some wonderful bloggers through these Friday posts.  The weeks just keep flying by, can't believe we're more than half way through May already.  We Skyped with our daughter on Wednesday, she'd been traveling, instead of our normal Sunday and I went around all day yesterday thinking it was Monday.  Doesn't take much to throw me off.

So for my Five I'll start with the them for my week---RAIN.  We've had a mess of rain.  After going weeks with little or no rain and having to water the garden everyday the heavens opened up on Tuesday and poured.  We got more than 3 1/2 inches of rain, then clouds on Wednesday and yesterday nearly 3/4's of an inch more.  And for this afternoon and evening they're forecasting heavy thunderstorms.  We've had a stalled cold front (we're in the 80's, so it's not very cold)  all week.  It should finally move out sometime Saturday afternoon.

For my second are some of the new German words I learned this week:

tschüss    Bye    I only knew Auf Wiedersehen or Ciao

Gern Geschehen   Thank you  Formerly I just said Danke

Ahnung   idea   I don't think I'd ever heard this word before

In Ordnung     Alright

Gemüse      Vegetable   Can't believe I didn't know this word, know the names for lots of veggies but not the general name


My third is a book I finished in a little over a day and it was nearly 400 pages, I devoured it.  It's The Daughter by Jane Shemilt.  It's the story of the disappearance of a 15 year daughter, the secrets hidden and the destruction of a family.  Really enjoyed it.

The fourth are the Hydrangeas blooming in the yard.  We have blue, pink and almost purple.  You can change the colors of your Hydrangeas by changing the ph of the soil.  White ones  can't be change, but blues can be changed to pink by adding aluminum  sulphate or potassium to the soil.  We did it with an old spoon. You can change pink to blue by adding lime phosphate.

And number Five are my squash, they're flowering and I actually have a baby squash.  I'm excited, we've never been able to grow them before.

That's my Five for this week, what are yours?