No stress in July

The front window of the cabin looks out on early morning in Alabama.













Good morning to my friends. I thank you for taking the time to visit with me here a few moments.

I love learning about all of your lives and seeing what you're doing to keep your life fun and stay on the path of personal progress.

I thrive on the inspiration that I receive from each of you. I need help to get moving sometimes.

Blogger won't let me leave comments yet. I am reading all of your posts and continue to be frustrated because I can't leave messages on your pages, but I promise, I have been there , like a thief in the night! ( Editing note: Andrew, my blogger friend in Mobile, sent instuctions how to get around the problem in his comment below, so I'm posting comments again. Thanks, Andrew!)



Does anyone think I have too much furniture in this corner of the front room? Double click the picture and you'll see what I mean.

I really should hide the television.














Here's the opposite corner. Maybe I could go on a new show called


"Hoarders, 1860"









Corner number three. The theorem by Ann Rea ( the bird sitting on the basket handle) cost me fifty dollars.

She was a lovely lady who lived in Georgia but died. Her husband helped her grain paint the frames.

Now on ebay her pictures this size are over five hundred dollars. That is so sad to me.








Corner number four.
This is a clerk's desk from a post office in Bibb County, Alabama.

It's a monster at six feet long and seven feet tall.









Project #345. A walnut Alabama pie safe with several layers of paint.











I managed to get the green off of all the sides except the front.

I'm saving that for last because the punched tin will take lots of patience to clean just enough so it won't come out shiny.












This is a hollow log of a cherry tree. It was already ancient when I played under it as a child and ate the wild cherries it produced early each spring.

I am going to build a bee skeep and put it inside like they did in the 1840s here.










Here is a view looking down. The cherry wood is still red and solid.

I am amazed that everything else rotted away but this .

Tasha Tudor has one pictured in her Heirlooms book that she stored grain in , but up north I think they call them hornbeams.

Southerners, according to my father, used hollow logs to keep bees in.

One hollow limb was still there also. I sawed it into three and will hew the inside clean and also use a draw knife to clean the rotten bark from the outside.

I have some dried cherry boards so I can add a bottom and a lid. These will be great and authentic for the buttery.
















Some of the sunflowers are over nine feet tall now.












The pears made it through the forty days without water. This fall I'll cook them up for pear preserves.

In the movie "The Color Purple" it's either Miss Ciley or her sister who says that no one can look at purple flowers and not believe in God.

Sometimes I think yellow should be included in there, too.

Look at the egg gourds growing in the field garden!



It's as if hens are sneaking in at night and laying eggs in the dirt.

This fall, they will harden and be a beautiful shade of off-white and gray.

The field garden as seen from the pear tree. Indian corn, egg gourds, purple martin gourds, okra, silver queen corn, drinking gourds. Everything competing for sun and space.





Well. I guess that's more than enough for today.

The house is shaded in the morning by trees I planted 15 years ago.

The fig tree on the left is full of fruit.

The green thing in the middle of the porch is the primitive pie safe I am working on.

The little green plants in front of the porch are yellow angel trumpets. They will bloom in the fall.