Welcome to September........

and what a welcome we got with Ernesto roaring in with some much needed rain. We actually fared fairly well considering the damage and flooding further up the coast. We were without power for about 7 hours and cable modem for about 15 hours. We lost power right about the time Mom was going to bed so we switched her over to the auxilary large tank that will give us 72 hours of air without needing electric. The one thing we didn't take into account is her bed is a power bed and she couldn't get it set right for sleeping so she slept in her recliner so she could have her head elevated like she likes. She sleeps there alot of the time so it wasn't much of a change for her. Both Tom and I slept in the family room to be closer to her if she needed us and listened to the wind and rain. It never did get real bad even tho the eye passed about 30miles to the east of us. Tom had about 11 wheelbarrels of debris (twigs, small branches, ect) to pick up but the gardens suffered very little damage. Some of the taller lanky plants fell over and we pulled them out but the season is winding down anyway so we chalked it up to early fall cleanup.

With the rain our gardens are waking back up again - getting out of their summer slump. I was pleasantly surprised to see that new nastursiums are sprouting, violas are blooming again, new growth is showing on some other plants so we should have a nice flush of flowers the end of September and into October till the first hard frost which can be well into December. This is why I love gardening down here. We will have some cold days maybe even some snow but most of the time something will be in bloom and we will get out and enjoy it till the heat of July and August drives us and the plants in 'wilt' - lol. I LOVE gardening in the south. The fall veggie garden is coming up - will probably be able to pick the first of the lettuce in a couple of weeks. We are still getting tomatoes, peppers and now cukes are coming again. We need to get sugar snaps in for a nice fall crop.

We had a very pleasant Labor day cookout with the kids and grandkids again featuring Tom's excellent babyback ribs and barbecue chicken wings. Celeste is tentatively walking now. You all remember those bumbling first few steps - it was so cute to watch her. She just smiles ALL the time and spent a lot of time with her great grandma smiling and interacting with her.What a joy to see Mom be able to enjoy her great grandkids. The grandsons start their regular football games tomorrow and we hope to get to some of them and get pictures of the boys doing their thing. John's games are every Saturday AM at the same field each week. Brad and Andrew play Saturday evenings and have some away games but even tho they are in different age divisions they have the same schedules which will make it easy on Dawn.

Tom will follow in a couple of days with some updated pictures but as you can see - Life, while very simple and mundane to some, continues to be wonderful here in the 'Heartland' and that is just the way we like it..........

Lynne ~~he who plants a seed - believes in tomorrow~~