One of the biggest traditions my family has is... the eating of black eyed peas. It goes way back. My grandfather would make them for us every year. He used to say the peas would give you luck. The rice was for riches. The greens were the color of money.
I've heard lot's of stories of how this tradition first started. One of the stories goes... that during the civil war the Yankees were particularly brutal in their warring. They would come through and take everything of value. Take all the food, take the animals. Slaughter what they couldn't take and burn the rest. The crops left in the field the homes everything was decimated and unusable by the time they finally left town. In most towns it was just woman and children and old men left behind as all the men had gone to war. But there was no way a good Southern woman would let her babies and elders starve. 'Where there is a will there is a way!' became a saying. All that was left once the Yankee raiders left town, usually, was feed meant for the animals that no longer existed. That feed, often time, consisted of black eyed peas. They ate the animal feed to survive. And after that in order to commemorate that god finds a way... we eat black eyed peas on New Years Day.
But I usually eat some on New Years Eve too just to make sure I get all the good luck out of them.
My peas are doing an over night soak they will be ready for when I get home to start cooking.
After getting so full of Thanksgiving dinner we traditionally go for a walk around the block before eating desert. This year since we were at my Aunt's house we decided to walk her property.
Delicious and juicy bird.
We had to decide if we were going to wear jackets and shoes because for Florida it was pretty chilly. The high was only 63.
You can see the fireplace fire was pumping.
All my Aunt's animals decided to go for a walk too.
We acquired one of those plastic fish ponds set it up and be for we knew it we had a visitor. She's pretty unusual for a toad she was yellow. Kind of pretty for a toad. You can tell she is a toad and not a frog because toads have bumps on their backs.
Yellow toad
Southern toad or bufo terrestris.
Eventually we will try and put some gold fish in the pond. I think it is too small for koi. It has a recirculating system ( water drips over the rock in the middle) and so that should be good for air circulation. I don't know about algae that might grow in it. We are going to have to do some research on these things. The husband planted some lily pads that should also aid with the oxygenation and frog landings.
We have also been enjoying wonderful sunsets every night as Autumn moves in and brings cooler temperatures. Soon Thanks Giving will be here.
I went to let the dog out this morning when I found, right off the back porch, two armadillo's. One trapped in the cage and one desperately digging underneath the trap. Chris removed the trap and expected the other to run away but it didn't so.... sadly he had to shoot it. They do carry leprosy and we don't want to take a risk. Also it was digging up my back step the step is now moved away from the main step. I'm sure if it believed we were going to harm it's home it would have done the same to us. Still.... It is always sad to end the life of a living creature. The one in the trap was safely released into the national forest near by. The other was buried in the back yard.
What I woke up to.
Armadillo!
We decided to shore up the hole with some concrete to help keep the step from sliding away and hopefully to detour other armadillo's from digging in this same area. This makes six armadillo's that have been trapped. And one shot. I don't know why the corner of our house is so attractive for them.
This hole doesn't look large but it is huge.
As some of you may know I found a lump in the back of my head earlier in the month. Of course I would think the worst but fortunately it was just a enlarged blood vein or something. The doctor said nothing to worry about. My mother has been struggling with a bad esophagus for some time. And of course I worry that it could be the worst but they have not said that and are working to get it fixed. The problem is of undetermined cause. She is doing much better now. But may still need a operation to fully fix the problem. And then my daughter found a lump in her breast. Which the doctor said was very rare for her age 16. So she had to have it removed, which she faced like a trooper, and the preliminary test are all good. We should get the all clear on Wednesday. I want to thank everyone for their prayers and ask every one to keep them up until then.
We recently got our watermelon for the fourth. It's a little early but I wanted to be sure to get it before the guy sold out. It's just not summertime until you get that first watermelon. I remember as a kid having watermelon feast. We would eat so much that we wouldn't want any more, ever.
Last year we got that seedless watermelon everyone has been raving about from the grocery store. Don't like it. It had seeds. They were just white or clear and harder to find and I think there were twice as many of them. At first I tried picking them out and then ended up eating them. It was OK but it tasted like seeds and I'm sure everyone has heard about that girl who ate the watermelon seed and a watermelon grew in her belly. I don't want to eat seeds I'd rather have nice big black seeds I can spit out. Which reminds me of all the seed spitting contest we use to have when I was little.
On my way to work there is a large patch of land next to a tiny little church. Every year they have a big soul food day there. Any way, every morning, on my way to work, I watched the guy go out and plant and tend the water melon and so finally... he was sitting next to a big pile of watermelon. No signs just him and his pile of watermelons. Last year he did the same thing and I never stopped. So this year I stopped to see if he was selling them and got a big one for only $3. He had three sizes and two kinds, stripes and no stripes. He said the ones with out stripes were sweeter so that's what I got. I asked if they had seeds and he looked at me like I was crazy. "Yes, they have seeds." So I can't wait to bite into that sweet, sweet water melon and the taste of summer!
Over the past month or two we have been watching as two Sandhill cranes have grown up. We were lucky enough to have their parents choose our pond as their home. After about a month one of the parents came up missing it was very sad. Sandhill cranes mate for life. You could tell the other didn't know what to do. But did not abandon the babies. The lone parent carried on with the two chicks and now they are just about grown. They have become quite accustomed to us but still keep their distance.
Sandhill crane family back in March.
Babies were pretty camouflaged by the weeds from predators.
And here they are in May. click here It is amazing how quickly they grow up. Our birds are unique because usually Sandhills only have one chick at a time. We have twins.
Same chicks one on either side of parent.
And I found some pictures I took while oldest daughter was here for a visit. We went to the Swan Creek Candle Company in Leesburg where a friend of hers is now working.
We went in the back way.
Here is my daughter and granddaughter with her friend who works for the candle company.
I liked the candles that looked like food. And the grand baby liked to eat them. Luckily they are soy based and free of lead.
They have all kinds of candle and candle accessories.
Latte? No it's a candle!
Hot chocolate with wipe cream? No candle.
Some of the candles you would never guess was not food.
You could make your own candles. They had the kits.
Over view of the shop. Everything was so beautiful
I could go crazy making gift baskets for people in this shop. And the smell of yummy was almost over powering. Visiting the candle company was a lot of fun and I will definitely be back for my candle needs or at Christmas for gift ideas.
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Leesburg had bike fest , the largest 3 day festival in the country with estimated 300,000 people attending and Tavares had it's home town planes, trains and BBQ with a free air show and a state sanctioned BBQ contest. We decided Saturday we would do both, even though bike fest lasted for three days.
So we got up late and headed to Tavares. The 6th annual Planes, Trains and BBQ is a real small town event. We were looking forward to that BBQ contest with 27 different teams and were worried we would miss it.
Me and the daughter skipped the old car show, that the husband headed to, and went right to get the tickets. The public buys a ticket for $5 and then taste test all the different BBQ that had been cooked and numbered and then votes by putting the ticket in the best bbq's basket. Husband showed up just in time to get in line.There was a tie for the first place trophy. I personally liked #4 and #8 so I hope those were the two that won you don't know the names so it's hard to tell unless you stay for the trophy. After the contest we were stuffed it was a lot of BBQ to eat. You had your little cup to taste and then move to the next and grab a cup taste and so on. You had to be quick and I'm not used to eating that fast. So we really felt stuffed. I was surprised to taste all the completely different styles of bbqing flavors.
The line of BBQ to be tested.
Wondering around we found this being cooked up. I think it may have been for the personal use of the BBQ-ers.
In the end it turned out to be a
One of the many planes parked that you could check out. This one didn't have much to it. The owner was probably having a bite to eat at one of the local restaurants. Or the BB-Q contest.
And then we wondered around a while as the plane show began to start. I was expecting some sea planes to be flying over. Maybe a wing dip, yawn. But NO! There were all sorts of fancy flying even a dog fight right above us.
Going up!
Crop dusting the lake. I wonder if this will help with the mosquitoes for the summer.
Red, white on a blue background.
They flew up and dived straight down until you thought they were going to crash right on the lake. It was very exciting and definitely worth the price which was free! There were old and young alike sitting around on blankets and chairs watching the show and there were plenty of good spots in the shade. We will definitely do the air show in Tavares again.
And then we headed over to the newly built train station (It is a replica of one from the 1900's) to catch a ride on the Orange Blossom Cannonball . The most famous train in Florida, staring in such movies as True Grit”, “Appaloosa”, “3:10 to Yuma”, “There Will be Blood”, “Rosewood”, and “O Brother, Where Art Thou. They were offering old west train rides for $10 and there was a real chance of getting robbed by bandits. Which sounded like it would have been a lot of fun but we were running late as I said and missed our train. We snapped a picture as it was leaving the station. Oh well, next time.
And then we headed to Leesburg for bike fest which was no small event. There were bikers every where! Even in Tavares but the closer you got to Leesburg the louder the mufflers were. It was clear that the little town of Leesburg had been over run with bikers. In fact the event is so big the entire down town is shut down to biker traffic only. There are around 20 blocks of vender's and entertainment. We parked our car in a local church parking lot and walked the streets were lined with bikes as the sides of the roads was biker parking.
Walk to the event.
Getting closer
Our goal was to see the band Candle Box that was playing in the Town Square. So we had to make our way to the very middle of the biker event. We got to see a lot of cool bikes and strange biker things.
This guy was having fun.
The husband made friends as usual. This ladies friend was covered from head to toe in tattoos. I don't know why she even had to where close. Ha! They were advertising the tattoo place.
Every one was very nice and polite despite the fact that the event had booze and weapons everywhere. Not so much guns but I saw a few tents that were selling things. Mostly there were a lot of leather products, patches and decorations for jackets and bike accessories. And when they say 300,000 people I think they are under estimating.
Side street!
We thought we would duck down a side street and make it to the Town Square quicker. Boy were we wrong!
We ran into this!
We weaved our way through it.
Getting closer and closer!
We thought we had made it. We went into a tent with tables and I thought "Well, this isn't so bad with a big band like Candle box I expected there to be more people waiting to watch them but I figured maybe bikers were more interested in stunt riding. A nice man handed husband a business card for a shop that sold smoking accessories. " Then I looked around and noticed "Where's the courthouse? Where's the fountain?" Wait we hadn't made it. We left the tent and waded through even more people! We found town square and pushed our way through the crown. With the husband who is 6 foot 8 moving the bikers out of the way for us. We found a pretty great spot to stop and stand. Although the people behind us might not have liked it too much.
We made it!
In the crowd waiting for Candle Box.
I ended up standing next to this guy with tiny skulls in his beard. He was really nice. The guy in front of me was really nice. The couple making out in front of him was nice. The old guy who kept trying to lift his wife up on his shoulders they were nice. But the little punk kids in front of the daughter were not and almost caused a riot more than once. Once when husband threatened to kick the guys butt for bumping into his 16 year old daughter. And some other guy in the crowd wanted to help and then once when they pored their beer all over the guy in front of me. Lucky for those punks he was alone. Every time some one looked out of hand there was a police to save the situation from getting out of hand so we actually felt quite safe despite being in a crowd of 300,000 people.
Finally on the shoulders of her man!
Cover band that can really rock! We loved them. They sounded exactly like every band they covered. They were great!
The cover band finished up and there was about a hour till Candle Box. And then, no Candle Box. And then they announced Candle Box. But then, no Candle Box and the crowd started chanting "B.S." only they didn't use initials.
check, one, two.
But finally Candle Box came out and rocked the place!
Kevin Martin
With over 70 concerts at this event I'm sure there was a band for everyone. And they were all free!
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