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It's that time of the year. You know, the time when you put a piggy bank on top of a bunch of books in front of a yellow wall and take a blogging break.
This is a replica of General Elijah Clark's homeplace in Lincolnton, Georgia. During certain celebrations, the park hosts a lot of pioneer demonstrations to show how people survived during the early years of our country.
Here is what I dubbed, some silly name that I can't even remember but for now, I'll just call it, "Nails o' plenty". These are all of the metal (and a few plastic) sharp objects that the park service took out of the trees. From the looks of the sign, apparently, it is illegal to nail things into the trees at a state park.
This is "Bob' the turtle shell. Obviously, Bob is without a home at the moment. At least that's what Rolly Polley Girl thinks. Ok, that's what's going on- I'm not taking it any further than that.
Take a look at that. The lake was reeeeeeeaaaaaaalllllllyyy low according to the depth marker. Years ago, that yellow barrier would have been floating atop water that was about 9 feet deep or so. Can you say, "drought" conditions? Even a couple of months ago the kids swam in water that came up to the 3 foot mark. We were shocked at how fast the water had went down.
I took this before we left from a rather quiet camp site that we stopped at when we were walking about the camp area. Years ago, I remember the water coming up to that farthest tree in the photo. 
Our fun began in the park office. Someone pulled a scale out and all of the men standing around started weighing themselves. (Ladies, you know what the women were doing- standing around going, "You are going on a diet now fellas".) Why the men wanted to weigh themselves publicly, I will never know but, I do know that the scale in the above picture was waaaaaaayyyy off. According to that scale, my poor brother in law had gained 28 pounds in 1 week and a half!! My Scott had gained almost 15 pounds since we left the house earlier in the day. Well, however off the scale was, it prompted a lot of the men in the surrounding area to start walking everyday.
This is the putt putt course that we played on. We tried to start playing early in the day but certain, lets say, "obstacles" were making a normal game, quite difficult.
Here is a photo of one of the many "obstacles" that we encountered. Have you ever played putt putt when the carpet was raised up all over the place? Hopefully, the new carpet will be down when we go back next year...
Hey, I thought I was free from the evil that is called, "fire ants". Oh foot, they have them here too!!! The good thing is that they pretty much left us alone and didn't come looking for innocent toes to bite like the one's back home do.
Bumble bees were crawling all over these pretties. Can you believe that this brave bee didn't care that I got this close. I wondered if he was dead- eventually, he moved a leg so he was alive. I think the deliciousness of the flower intoxicated him temporarily.
My mother has this pretty bunch of cone flowers on her back step. It really helps the matter that my sister works at a greenhouse and can supply her with plenty of "flowery goodies". She says that the mosquito plant (to the right) really does help to repel those little nasties.
This is the Virginia Creeper that is already turning for fall.
This deformed apple is the last one on the tree. It was out of reach, which is ok since I'm not sure I'd want to eat a deformed apple. It kind of looks like the "wormies" have already sampled it anyway.
Just a few more lavender shaded pretties.
This is the last Rose of Sharon left on this tree.
Two pears left on this tiny pear tree. We sampled one last month but it wasn't quite ready yet. I'm just not sure how to tell when pears are ready. Anyone have any ideas?
Pretty, pretty, but I'm sure they are poisonous. Ok, I'm not really that sure but if the birds aren't eating them, I could only guess that they are.
Screeeeeeeeeech, screeeeech, screeeeeeeeech (imagine the sound of finger nails on a chalk board here), tap, tap, tap.
"Hmmmph, that didn't get their attention, I'll just "mosey" up here for awhile and wait for some unsuspecting person to walk through this door...mhwaa,ha ha (think Bela Lugosi's voice here)
"Oh drat, and I was wanting to scare somebody good today!"
"Hey, you lookin' at me or something? I'll be back..." (think Arnold Schwarzenegger here).
This morning glory is holding it's own despite it's pretty blossom being eaten. I can only suspect that the viscous and ravenous fire ants are the culprits here. The proof was directly under the poor plant. They were everywhere- looking for unsuspecting toes to nibble on (the fire ants- not the morning glories).
Uncle Bubba's Moon and Stars watermelons didn't have a chance with Mr. Groundhog living somewhere in the woods nearby. At least he (Mr. Groundhog-not Uncle Bubba) could have eaten the entire thing instead of eating only part and leaving the rest to rot....
We were minutes away from saving this jewel. What bothers me is that those are mighty big "peck" holes in that watermelon. I couldn't help but look over both shoulders and over my head when I saw this mess. I wonder if birds (and groundhogs for that matter) are attracted to watermelons when they are covered in yellow spots? We can only wonder what these goodies would have tasted like. The other baby watermelons aren't doing so well in the drought and if it does manage to rain, I'm sure the critters will be stalking them at every moment.
Yes, I know that this photo shows only two bags of bananas. Someone or some people ate an entire bag when I wasn't looking. Oh, I forgot to mention, these bananas are organic! Hooray! Organic bananas taste so much better than plain old bananas- yum yum- (and I'm really not that crazy about bananas!). We came across these jewels by accident when our local grocery store was putting them out on clearance since a new shipment was coming in.
I guess you make a lot of muffins if you have 3 (um, scratch that) 2 bags of bananas. Can you tell I make muffins a lot? Hey, they are portable breakfast food- everyone loves portable breakfast food!
The idea struck me the other day that instead of making and listing more of these cuties that maybe, if I made a listing where people could purchase and tell me what they want, it might be more efficient for me. (At least I'll have more storage room that way) So, I gathered up all of these guys (and gals) and snapped a group photo.
I figured that when I get that "Design Your Own Bear" listing up, I'll also put up a "Design Your Own Dragon" listing at Minnie Maes too.
I found this super cute bunny and lime green fabric the other day on a clearance table. I fell in love with it and set out to make my first diaper bag to sell in my Etsy shop. The picture above the end result. I looked at a lot of patterns and picked out the features that I liked the most for this prototype. This bag is unlined (in the photo, it's stuffed with a couple dish towels) but any that I make in the future will be lined with batting so they will stand up by themselves. There are 6 pockets on the outside of the bag and it does have a zipper on top. The pattern that I came up with could be turned into a purse if desired but I'm not sure if people would want pockets on the outside of their bag or not!
I have this ongoing project that I have been working on for almost a year. That project is what I call, "patchwork ponies". This patchwork pony was made from some scraps leftover from the diaper bag above. This pony is my latest disaster. The poor thing can't even stand up on it's own so I'm forced to go back to the drawing board again. One of these days I'll finally get those pony legs right- or at least I sure do hope so.
This is a picture of what is left of the garden. We grew a bumper crop of grass this year. (If I had a sharp sling blade, I would harvest that bumper crop, come to think of it....) I took a stroll through that knee high grass and peeked around to see what might be left. I actually found three okra pods and a half eaten (no thanks to Mr. Groundhog) zucchini squash. Uncle Bubba has some watermelons that look pretty happy though. You can't see them here but they are at the end of those corn stalks in the little clearing that you can see in the top right of the photo. The peanut plants (that are left of the grass in this photo) seem to be doing quite well. We'll just have to see what happens with those guys.
I visited my mother's yard and took some photos of flowers that mean summer is on the way out. Here are some of them for you to see.
Mr. Dogwood has red berries- fall is coming for sure....
Mr. Brother-In-Law bush has purple berries on it. I don't know the technical name for this bush but Brother In Law bush is what my uncle calls it. He says that he is allergic to it and as long as it is next to the front porch, my mother's brother-in-law can not expect a visit from him any time soon.
Lastly, here is some fall crocus that popped up just recently to announce that summer is almost over. Mr. Butterfly was seen taking advantage of these beauties. See him? He is a tiny little guy on the middle right of a crocus bloom.
This is Rupert. Well, um, the makings of Rupert anyway.
Ok, officially, Meet Rupert. 
It all started when I pulled out one of the plastic tubs (that I store my Etsy goodies in), to see what treasures were in there that needed to be put online. I had forgotten about my saddle pads. How could I forget about my saddle pads? What's wrong with me anyway. Ok, I'm too hard on myself. I took this photo during a brief (and I mean really, really brief) moment, in the hopes that I would be able to list this saddle pad that same day in my Etsy shop. Didn't happen. This photo is as far as it got. Anyway, that's the story behind photo #1.
Photo #2 was what I call a mistake. What you see above is actually, chocolate popcorn. Yeah, I know, the idea is good, it even tasted alright, but it was a complete absent minded, last minute, flop. While having a chocolate craving and noticing that I was almost out of butter (so brownies were out of the question), I thought, "Hey, I'll make some popcorn and make some kind of chocolate mixture to pour over the top of it'. Good idea at first I guess but it just didn't turn out the way I had hoped. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't bad, but it wasn't "good" either. The kids devoured it in an instant so all was not lost.
Photo #3 is a grass hopper that caught Roly Polley Girl's attention at the garden. He ended up being quite attentive and didn't mind getting his picture taken at all.
Can you guess what monstrosity this is? You will never guess in a million years. Ok, if you read my blog frequently, you can guess what this is. It is my poor, neglected compost pile. Hey, it's rich enough already. Look at the pretty weeds and, is that a ?tree? growing out of the top of it? Yes, I've been too busy to take care of my precious compost pile. If I am correct with my calculations, it's been 1 month and 1/2 since I've been by to turn it. That's sad. It's going to take a weed eater to find it again. I sure hope that the fire ants didn't move in once it stopped "working".
Photo #5- These are the "Mammoth" sunflowers that grew from the seeds that claimed the name, "Mammoth". What's up here? This is the 3rd time something different grew from seeds that claimed to be something else. Yes, I am aware of the grass growing ever so happily around that line of skinny, excuses for sunflowers. I was surprised that they made it at all believe it or not! By the way, in the top left corner of the photo is the new compost pile that Uncle Bubba started. I guess he got tired of weeding through the weeds. That or the weed eater wasn't working..... Just so you know, the fire ants have already claimed this compost pile as their own as Go-Cart boy found out the hard way.
The last photo is of one of the two sunflowers that I planted behind the house. Yeah, it's a mammoth variety too. I'm beginning to wonder if the dictionary has changed the meaning of words or are these seed companies getting really slack? Anyway, Roley Polley girl thinks it's awesome that she has been able to watch it grow from a seed. That's what matters the most I guess, even if it didn't turn out to be what we thought it would be. Sorry birds, no seeds for you this year....
