BUSY MONTH

August has turned out to be a busy month for us. We had a visit from Alma and Warren from Dallas, and then Wes Mays from Coppell came and spent a couple of days. The weather was beautiful. We didn't do much except sit around and relax and visit and walk around the property and relax. We ate way too much! And we got the Desoto out and on the road. It is fun to drive through the Park -- everyone looks and waves to us.

Andy is hard at work on the addition to the third bedroom, which was his dad's room at the south end of the house. He has taken the outside brick off the wall, had some cement brought in for wall foundations, and set some of the plumbing for that bathroom. He had to trim off several limbs of a big tree that overhung that end of the house, but we'll be able to keep the tree itself. Andy has also done other trimming of trees around the property to let more light in for the lawn and gardens. The weather right now is perfect -- it was 65 degrees this morning and the high will only be around 84-88 degrees. We are hoping for some rain on Sunday, but Saturday is supposed to be really nice. We've been invited to help harvest grapes for one of the local wineries, so if the weather is nice Andy and I will join in that activity this weekend.

We've done some canning of vegetables from our garden: bread & butter pickles w/jalapenos, and pickled okra. We've been living on fresh salsa from homegrown tomatoes and peppers and jalapenos. We made some pesto from the basil we're growing in the front herb garden. We have some eggplant coming on right now. I planted some castor bean seeds around the barn garden in the spring, which was supposed to keep the gophers away. I don't know if that worked, but the castor bean plants have grown up and are gorgeous, with large red and green leaves and exotic flowers on a six-foot tall stalk! They are annuals, so I can't wait to collect seeds and plant them all around the property for next year.