The White Peacock

Recently, I walked out of a store and saw this white peacock in front of our truck. Um...

I went back inside, and told the clerk about it, thinking maybe someone had lost their peacock. She said it belonged next door and sometimes wandered over.

It was fascinated with our truck. I got in the driver's seat and carefully backed up. It came with me. I got out, and it was circling the truck. I got back in and could not tell where it was. I honked the horn hoping to scare it back a few feet, but it still stuck with me. I looked up, and the clerk apparently heard me honk, realized what was happening, and came out to help.

She motioned for me to go once the bird was far enough away. I did, and once I was closer to her, I stopped and we chatted a bit. She said the reason it was so fascinated with our truck is that he liked to look at himself in the bumper. So, it wasn't really the truck he liked, it was the handsome fellow in the mirror. Ha! 

 

That peacock made my day! 

 

Hovatter's Zoo and the Parakeet Experience

 In August, we went to Hovatter's Zoo in Kingwood, WV where we had a parakeet experience.

It started out innocently enough. John held out a food stick, and a parakeet flew over and landed on it. So sweet. And then...

Let's just say the parakeets weren't shy! It was crazy! It just took a few seconds until they were all over you. Note to self: make sure you wear a hat! We had a little trouble getting them out of my hair. It was fun, though a bit painful. Ha! Those teeny-weeny little bird feet claws are sharp!

The other animals were much calmer. The kids got to feed lots of animals, including the giraffes. 

Word of warning, the roads to Kingwood are very windy. I got a little seasick. Grace got very seasick, and we had to make a quick pullover in a store parking lot for her to throw up. A car stopped beside us to see if we needed help. Turned out to be (I think) the owner. He was so kind, which we appreciated more than he will ever know. 

Other than the motion sickness, it was a great day, and we will know to load up on Dramamine the next time! 

Scarecrows for the Wild Apple Festival

We had a lot of fun making scarecrows for the Wild Apple Festival which our son and daughter-in-law hold on their farm.

Wait a minute, those 2 on the ends aren't scarecrows!

We scattered our new creations around the field.

This guy is next to an old grain cleaner in the U-Pick Flower Patch.

This one is a short guy, with a short window and a short corn shock. 

Perfect size for little ones to pose with. 

If you look closely, you can see an arch with small pumpkins growing on it. The plan was for the vines to completely cover the arch, but a too wet Spring followed by a too dry Summer took its toll. The flowers in the background did great though! 

This one is at the top of the lane, helping to announce the two-weekend festival. 

And this guy was our biggest challenge. We named him Johnny Lee, because he is wearing grandson John's pants, and neighbor Lee's hat. But technically, he could be called Pappy Johnny Lee, because he is also wearing Pappy's shirt. 

He was the hardest to make, and the hardest to stage. We knew we wanted him to look like he was plowing. It took a little doing, and a few stakes, but it worked!

He is part of the Scavenger Hunt in the apple orchard. There is a list of 15 items to find in the orchard. Some natural, some added. Anyone who finds at least 12 of the items is entered to win a gift basket of Howard Family Farms products. 

And how do you get to the orchard? On a hayride! There are goats to admire, and pigs to feed. There are kid's games to play. Flowers to pick. A trailer load of home-grown pumpkins to choose from. 

This is the second year for the festival, and it's really taking off. 

Lots of people were there having fun this morning.... until the rain moved in this afternoon. Sigh. 

But tomorrow is another (supposed to be sunny!) day. 

Taking up Blogging Again after a Long Absence

I see I haven't posted anything since 2019. Yikes. In fact, I'm not sure I've even looked at my blog since then. Double yikes. As best I remember, my laptop had died, and for the next few years, I only had internet on my phone, which is not conducive to blogging, at least to me. I finally got another laptop, so no excuses now. 

I last talked about switching our shop to an Occasional Shop. Best business decision we ever made!! We did that for a few years and really enjoyed most aspects of it. But oh, the work! We were busier than ever, out picking for vintage items as often as we could, (the fun part), and then cleaning and pricing everything (the not so fun part). All that deserves its own post, or several posts. 

In 2023, we decided to close the shop, after being open for almost 21 years. It was time. All that furniture moving was taking its toll. And our son and his family (our grandkids!!) had moved 2 and a half hours away. We were spending more and more time on the road. visiting them and helping them get established on first a small farm, and then later a bigger one. That too will take several posts to cover!

After closing the store, we put the building up for sale. We took one last photo the day of the closing. It was so surreal. So much of our time was spent there, so many friends and memories made. But we had no regrets. We realized that our hearts were no longer in the store, they were at our son's farm. We bought a house just a mile or so from him, and for now, we are splitting our time between it and "back home". 

This was the day we closed on the house near him.

A very exciting day!!

And to make it even more exciting, when we are at this house, we are much closer to our daughter. It cuts our travel time to see her in half. We see her and her husband much more often now, which we love. A couple weeks ago, we met her in the middle just to see a movie, which is something we never would have done when we were 5 hours away from her. But now that we are only 2 and a half hours from her and can cut that in half again if we meet in the middle, an afternoon at the movies is doable. Especially if that movie is Hamilton! Gotta be in the room where it happens!

I'm excited to start blogging again. I look at it as a diary with photos. I wish I hadn't stopped. The last few days I have read all my old posts and have enjoyed that so much. Goodness, there were many that talked about things I had totally forgotten about. How I wish I would have had something like this when our own kids were growing up! And I missed out on recording a few years of the grandkids. 

Every moment is a gift. And I want to remember as many of those moments as I can.