I finally was able to get the tiller on the JD and start plowing my garden. After chopping up the top few inches to kill the weeds, I need to go over it again take it down a few more inches. Since then we’ve had several days of thunderstorms and hot weather. We’ve gone from winter to summer and totally skipped spring. With all the rain, farmers aren’t able to get into the wheat fields to combine. A lot has been bloom down by the storms. One of the storms was going from east to west and produced a rainbow in the west. I’ve never seen one in the west before.
Last Saturday, while trying to put the belt back on my mower, Patches and Levi kept laying over my feet and up against my back worrying about the incoming storm. I finally gave up after the manual I downloaded didn’t match my mower deck. Everyone piled into the garage on the house and flopped down close to the door announcing they weren’t going to the other garage. So I closed down the door, went inside, took a shower and fixed supper. Shortly the storm hit. One of the boomers rattled the house so that Patches was at the door barking let me in. Soon they calmed down and were in the same spot the next morning; that is Patches and Levi. Blackie was after the chipmunk that was in one of my larger plants and turned over a bucket of worm tea in the process. That stuff is like crude oil when it starts drying.
Over three inches of rain in three days and another incoming band of weather has me planting my cucumbers and squash plants in my flowerbeds. The cucs are blooming and had to be put out. My Cherokee purple tomatoes will go up to a larger pot one more time. Here it is the middle of June and my garden is still bare. I did get a large sunflower patch planted for the birds before all this started. My daylilies and lilium have started blooming.
While mowing under the trees along the creek, and later spraying Chinese privet, I was bitten three times by ticks; one of them got me twice. I don’t know how many ticks Mom pulled off of us while we were growing up, and we never felt them attach. These felt like a wasp sting, and I removed them as soon as they bit. I had a welt for a couple of weeks afterwards. Last Thursday, I started running a sweating fever and had a headache. By the weekend, I was waking up, just drenched followed by chills. When I got to work Monday, I called my doctor and went in. He asked me three times if I had a rash, and I kept telling him not that I know. Finally he said that if I had the rash of Rocky Mountain spotted fever, I’d be in the unit. It was then I realized that I made a wise decision going in. Normally I’m one who keeps putting off going to the doctor. It’ll get better in a day or two. Hopefully I’ll be back to my normal abnormal self by the Helen Keller Festival in two weeks.
The Oak Ridge Boys were in Sheffield for an annual fundraiser for Northwest Shoals Community College. I was invited by David and Faye Johnson to take photographs, and I wish to thank them greatly. Travis Wammack (Scratchy, Easy Evil and Love Being Your Fool) and The Snakeman Band opened the show, and ended with a blazing Star Spangled Banner. As they finished, six vintage airplanes known as Red Thunder flew overhead. Chris and Elizabeth Golden came up next. Then The Oak Ridge Boys with some songs off of their new album and some of their classics.
Memorial Day, the American Legion Post No. 31 held its annual ceremony in Tuscumbia at the Colbert County Courthouse. Afterwards they invited the public for refreshments and to view the wall of locals who died during wartime. I didn’t realize the numbers until I visited the hall last year. Richard Sheridan met me last Saturday, and we spent an hour and a half taking each photo down so I could get a photograph for a blog post I’m planning. I want others to be aware how many from our area have made the sacrifice for our freedom.
