Tomatoes Almost Ready

We have a couple of them turning red.  Conditions are hot.   See how the tomatoes are almost as tall as me?  Oh, and let me make it clear that I do not look that pale.  Twyla will attest to the fact that the bright sun and the imbalance in the shot make me look washed out.  I'm actually nicely tanned from all the farm work.

While I don't like watering every day, I'll do what I have to.  Best not to let them get dry and then water them or it rain because it will split the fruit.  I hate it when that happens.  You get a picture perfect 'mater just turning red in the summer heat, and while the plant doesn't look like it's too dry, you get a rainstorm or you finally get around to watering and all the ones that were closest to pickin' perfection split down the side from stem to stern.  Don't want to let that happen.  That's zucchini and yellow squash in the left of the pic.

I've got some green beans in the back that are ready to pick.  We've eaten lots of sugar snap peas.

Now I've got corn up to my shoulder, while many people barely have corn knee high. The corn grows about four inches a day.  Those are potatoes in the foreground. Pickles is only in the corn because I'm standing there for the picture.

Hard Rain

I wish I had captured a screen shot of the weather radar from Wednesday night.  We had family and friends calling us to see if we were all right, and at the time they called it wasn't even raining, even though the radar said it should have been.  There were tornadoes moving rapidly from the southwest in our direction.  It wasn't until about midnight that torrential rains like I hadn't experienced since living in Florida came crashing down on us.

Praise God that nothing else came crashing down with it.

I am always in awe of the power of water and gravity together.  We can get a lot of rain up here on this mountain, but it usually comes down at a rate that merely creates a nuisance in high volume.  Early Thursday morning it came down in enough volume to move hundreds of pounds of gravel many feet.

The pictures can only do it slight justice, since, without stereoscopic vision, you can't see how much of the gravel is heaped up down at the end where it is spilling over into the grass.  It took me many trips with a wheelbarrow to move it back up the hill and dump it into the washout areas. I'm still not done, and it's Friday morning.

The deepest part of this gully was more than 12 inches deep. I actually wish I had gotten out of bed and taken the flashlight out to try to see how much water was flowing past the house to move that much gravel. Many of the large pieces of granite you see in this picture are nearly two inches wide or long.

Along the steps where the Japanese iris are, it has been washed out to a depth of nine to twelve inches and what little amount of gravel was there got washed nearly forty feet down to the chicken coups.  For this to have been the only "damage" that we suffered makes me feel mighty blessed.  The good thing about where we are located is that we are to the east of the biggest mountain in Georgia, Brasstown Bald.  Twyla and I went up there recently.  You talk about a strong woman.  In spite of having Fibromyalgia and Lupus, she climbed the path from the parking area to the observation tower.  That's six tenths of a mile horizontally and about a thousand feet vertically.  Even I was sore the next day.

Historical marker at the top of the trail, just outside the observation tower.

The reason this makes our location so special is that it puts on the leeward or sheltered side of this big mountain.  We are actually kind of nested in the curve of a horseshoe shaped ridge of mountains.  So a weather system that comes rushing at us from the southwest has to slam into Brasstown Bald and the entire ridge before it can hit us.

You can't see our house from the observation deck, but you can see part of the Bald Mountain Park that is at the entrance to where we live.

Home is actually somewhere below that label in the picture.  Our house is at 2600 feet elevation and where we are standing on the observation deck taking that picture is about 4,800 feet.  And while the distance as the crow flies is just over 2.2 miles from there to the house, the shortest driving distance is 16.7 miles.

Someday soon, I might take my little GPS unit and try hiking a straight line from our house up to Brasstown Bald.  Can't say whether or not I'd be successful, since I don't know what obstacles might be between here and there.  I'm hoping to one day find a wild sassafrass sapling that I could transplant in our yard.  That's some of the best tasting tea you'll ever have and it's medicinal to boot.

They're Baaack

Well, it finally happened.  I've been in this house on this mountain for just over a year, and I've finally seen my first bear.  Live and in the flesh.  Thanks to the dogs Moxie and Beau.  Yes; the bears are back.

Moxie needs to learn that once the bear is a hundred yards off and still moving away, the alarm needs to stop.  She also needs to learn to come down off of "High Alert" once the bears have passed; that now everything that moves in the dark is not a potential threat.  We do need some sleep.

I know Twyla tends to write more about the animals than I do.  But today is one of those times I'll give you a break from the theological and the political.  And yes, I consider that last post in the political realm because ideas do have consequences.  I thought a lot about posting a follow up piece on that post below of the young moonbat below because I think it's important for people to understand why that presentation is so outrageous.  My, oh my, have I digressed from talking about bears.

If I remember right, it was between 02:00 and 03:00 that we were awakened to the sound of Moxie barking inside the house.  Beau was, of course, outside the house and barking.   This can not mean anything good.  Beau almost never barks.  Not at passing cars.  Then again; what passing cars?  One neighbor and a mailman.  When the UPS driver or FEDEX delivers, Moxie goes nuts.  Beau just hangs back and stays quiet, but looks intimidating.  If Beau is barking that alarm type bark, something is worth investigating.

I grab my trusty flashlight and head for the back door.  Out flies Moxie, that high pitched howling bark piercing the air.  My eyes still mostly acclimated to the dark, before I can even turn on the beam, I see a large shadow on the slope behind the house, barely twenty feet off the corner where our bedroom is.  He's going up the worn path that Moxie likes to run up into the tree line.  When the beam of my flashlight hits him, he stops to look at where it's coming from and I see those big green eyes that God designed to give such mammals the most amazing night vision that we could only dream of having.

He quickly decides it's time to move on and reaches the trees up above and I can see by how many trees he covers with the length of his body that he's a biggun'.  Gotta be 300 pounds at the least.  Probably more, but I don't want to sound like I'm embellishing this story.  Had I had my wits about me, I would have stepped into the office and grabbed my camera off my desk and maybe taken a picture.  But who thinks that well when they've been awakened from a sound sleep at that hour?

And poor Twyla was so tired from the days hard work, she wasn't about to get out of bed, so she missed seeing her first bear.

I am quite glad that this North American black bear was more afraid of me than I was of him.  I'm glad he was afraid of my two dogs. (Even though Beau is still in contract negotiations).  A good dog is a great thing to have as a living burglar alarm, as long as you properly train them.  Oh yeah, and I'm really glad trash collection happened earlier that afternoon.

Life in the mountains can have its exciting moments.  I'll try to get a picture next time.  Thanks for stopping by.

Shalom

I Hate THAT Light

I love sunshine, and someday I will blog about what a miraculous thing it is to have our privileged planet orbiting where it does around the sun and how ultraviolet radiation is such a great disinfectant and antimicrobial agent.  I love light.  I love to get a tan and soak up all the rays that let my skin produce the much needed vitamin D-3 that so many people are lacking because they buy into all the silly pseudo science that tells them that salt is bad, sunshine is bad, second hand tobacco smoke is killing people, etc.  The list is too long.

Yep. I got a real education after high school, years before I set foot on a college campus, and it drove my professors nuts.  Even worse, I was paying my own way through college and when someone told me to "shut up" in so many words, I let them know that I was paying my own hard earned dollars to be there and I expected some value for my money.  My, how I digress.

I like the sunshine, but I also like the night.  Since coming to the mountains and in my later years, I've learned to appreciate the natural things more than ever.  I go back to memories and think about how much more I appreciate or wish I could have those moments back so that I could appreciate them more.  Driving a 65 foot sportfishing boat on the Pacific Ocean toward the Channel Islands before dawn and watching flying fish popping up out of the water beside me, stunned at the beauty as they gracefully glide along using "ground effect" just inches above the waves.  Sometimes 10 to 20 seconds at a time; which may not seem like much, until you count it out and imagine a fish looking like it is hovering over the water's surface.

I like the night and the amazing beauty of the stars and the moon. The quietness of most things and the sound of the nocturnal creatures that have no enemies at night.  If you have been with me since the beginning of this blog, you know about the meteor shower that occurs in August.  It's worth staying up for, and I got to share it with my sweetie Twyla for her first time.  At least one time, we both saw a great streak of light across the sky.

Once, when I was on an eight day mission as a chase vessel out in the Pacific Ocean, I got to see the night sky with no light pollution.  We were 30 miles off the shore of Santa Barbara, and I was amazed at how much glow still came up off the horizon.  The view was stunning.  A moonless night, and yet the blanket of shimmering stars was enough to make you feel like you were inside of a dome with diamond dust scattered over the outside.

The only street light for miles.

Living so many years in coastal cities in Florida, I had totally forgotten how the night sky should look.  That somehow Adonai never intended for man to work throughout the night.  If you are young, that might be fine for a season.  In the military, owning the night in combat is essential. But ask anybody with a few decades of life and they'll tell you that the body seems to work best when in harmony with daylight and nighttime.  For heaven's sake folks, even plants need night time.  They spend the daylight hours with their chloroplasts furiously making sugar and storing it, but at night time, the hormone gibberellin  causes the plant to stretch and grow taller in the absence of light. Sleep studies show that only in total darkness does the human body produce the right amount of melatonin to help you achieve the restful REM type sleep that you need.

So, I hate a certain light.  I hate any unnecessary artificial light when it isn't needed.  I really hate this light. The people who had this property before Twyla bought it,  had this light installed.  I hate it.  It reminds me of being back in the metropolitan area.  If I drive the seven or eight miles in to Hiawassee, I am not going to see but maybe two or three porch lights on a house in the distance.  And the entire road from here to town doesn't have a single light anywhere on it.  I don't want any part of city life encroaching on life here in the mountains, and yet here is this #$%^ light in my very own back yard.  I don't need it. More importantly, every time I go outside at night I get irritated by it.  It's not something I can ignore by looking in another direction. It's light is cast all over and even if I step in the shadow of the house I am aware that it is still there.  It is like somebody's fingernails on a chalkboard.  But I can't seem to remember to ask Twyla to call the utility company and have that monstrosity removed.

But there is so much to do.  Lot's of other things take up my day and, overall, I love this place, my darling wife and all that goes on with farming and developing a self-sufficient life.  Eventually that light will no longer be there.  The lamp and the pole and the wire and everything else might be there, but the light will be gone.

My next post is guaranteed to be very uplifting and positive, because we've been redecorating the house and making preparations for Sukkot.  Or I might just post about the new dog.  I promise it will be happy.

Passion for Mystery

We walked across the road this afternoon to see if we could still get some grapes from the neighbor's vine, or maybe a few blueberries, but, alas, we had waited too long.   Pretty much all but a very few of the grapes were all gone except for a few little clusters here and there, but nothing worth carrying a pot over to collect anything.  But we gave our neighbor a dozen eggs and chatted, and while looking around, I spotted this fruit that I'd never seen before.  It's about the size of a goose egg, and I managed to get  one picture along with some grapes next to it for perspective on size.

Those tri-lobed leaves with the holes in the foreground are on the same vine as the fruit.  The third shot shows a flower but it's either on its way to closing or opening, I can't tell for sure.  It has fine little purple petals. The leaves are younger and easier to see in that shot.

Now, neither Twyla nor I have ever seen one of these in situ before, so we didn't have a clue what it might be, although I've seen pictures of paw-paws and thought it might be, since paw-paws are indigenous to this area.  But paw-paws grow on trees, not vines.  Being up here in the mountains of North Georgia, I would never suspect a subtropical type plant.

The neighbor said it was poppy, and that it was also a hallucinogen. None of that made sense to us since poppies are a flower that does not grow on a vine and poppies are an opioid, not a hallucinogen.  Well, curiosity got me, so I asked if I could take one and check it out.  After surfing the internet, I think I may have found the answer, but I would like to have someone with more experience confirm this for me.

You see, the fruit that I took is obviously pretty immature, and if the fruit is what I think it is, there are quite a few varieties and they can look very different from type to type depending on where they are grown.

Some varieties are purple and some are yellow.  Some pictures on the net show seeds about the size of apples or grapes, which is what I seem to have here, while some descriptions say you need cheesecloth or a fine sieve to separate the juice from the seed.


So help me out folks.  What do you think this is?

I will wait until another one of the fruits is ripe, and then cut it open and see if it more closely matches one of my suspected species.  Until then I'll just do a little more searching, or maybe one of my dear readers will make a positive identification.

Leave me a comment and let me know what you think it is.  Maybe I should come up with a prize for the first person who correctly identifies it.