Not the greatest but still nothing to hang my head in shame over...I was really pleased with how it turned out. It is 57 1/2 inches by 64 1/2 inches.

This is another of the pictures I took the other day in nearby Parke County...almost every bit of the snow is now gone. It has rained and drizzled off and on all day long. We are supposed to get freezing rain towards morning. I really hope they are wrong about this...

Wednesday I take Mama Cat and the Princess to be spayed. I am sure hoping the weather is accommodating that day. I am taking them to a vet in the south end of Terre Haute instead of to the vet in our little town. I called out there about the age they have to be and got two different answers, so I called down there and got what I thought I had been told before, plus what I had read. And he is the vet we used when we first married--and also when Sarah got her dog from the shelter a few years ago, we got a deal on getting her spayed by going to him. We also left her with him when my mom died...he got so tickled at how glad she was to see us when we got home that he followed us out to our car/van talking to us and laughing about her. He really likes animals.

When we were first married I had a dachshund that jumped off my lap while I was setting on a step stool. She got down in her back till she could hardly walk and that on New Year's eve...we called him and his response was so immediate--meet him at his office in 15 minutes. There was no outrageous charge--just the normal office charge and charge for the medicine...I don't remember if he gave her a shot or not. But I think his quick response was a big part of her recovery...she never had another bit of back trouble in the rest of her years...

Change of topic--I finally finished the binding on my small quilt while watching the Indianapolis Colts play tonight! I want to try to get a good picture of it tomorrow but don't know how possible that will be. I am convinced that the flash on my camera is not even up to par for normal pop-up flashes. Maybe I should ask for a good flash for Christmas--but I don't use the flash that much.

Can you guess that I love barns? This barn is along highway 41, in Parke County. Maybe it is because I spent so many happy hours in the barn when I was a child. It was one of my favorite places to play...going to the barn to milk the cow, feed the pigs, and feed the cows in general was never a chore for me. And even though that has been over 30 years ago, the smell of cow or horse barn is a pleasant smell to me that takes me instantly back to my childhood.

We were dirt poor in so many ways. We raised almost all the food we ate...we raised and butchered four hogs every year, we almost always had a cow or two that we milked, and raised all our vegetables. And we picked wild blackberries, as well as there was a couple old apple trees that my mom gathered apples from to make jelly with. To this day my favorite job on earth is to pick blackberries. Why I don't know...as a kid I always ended up with bunches of chiggers...if you have never had them you haven't missed anything other than misery!

My mom filled every jar she had and also had a deep freezer that was always stuffed to the brim with food we raised. And there would be guys bring truckloads of peaches up from Georgia and drive along the roads and stop and ask if you wanted to buy peaches...my mom always bought a couple bushels and we would freeze and can them. It is so refreshing to come in from hoeing the garden and to have peaches that are just beginning to thaw--that are still in that crystallized state. I am getting hungry just thinking about them.

We had cornbread almost every day of our life, and my mom made biscuits every morning too...there were a few times when she got bronchitis that she didn't get up and make biscuits but I bet that was not five times a year. And her biscuits were unlike anybody's I have ever seen. But oh, so yummy good! When grand kids were home, I have seen them have her make them a pan of biscuits after breakfast and they would eat every one of them.

She didn't measure anything, just mixed them up by feel. And she didn't roll them out and cut with a cookie cutter, she just pinched off a little bit of the dough, and worked it between her hands, and placed in the pan. And every one was the same size! I do not know how to explain what they were like...but I would give anything to have a pan of them right now!

Another thing I never hear of any where up here is shucked beans...or do not even hear them called dried beans. We always took green beans and snapped the ends off them, and if need be we took the 'strings' off--I wonder if anyone that is reading this knows what I mean? Anyway, then we would have just use regular string/or crocheting thread and a big needle and would run the beans on the strings and hang them to dry. And everyone called them shucked beans down there...they had a sort of strong flavor, but I really liked them. I think I have a picture somewhere of some...I will hunt for it after while and scan it in...

Enough reminiscing for now...