Another barn from 2008

This is another barn from our road trip in 2008.  I just cannot resist posting it though I thought about saving it for Theresa's Good Fences. Remember you can click on the photos to expand the view.

It is beautiful weather here in Indiana...lots of blue skies and sunshine.  And I for one am happy to have them.  Days and days of clouds really get to me.  I am a person that needs lots and lots of sunshine.

Drive-bys

A few years ago, we went north...to Mackinaw City, Michigan and when we came home we went up over and across the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and down through Wisconsi.  These are some of the shots from that trip.

I thought I had died and gone to heave...the only thing, there was not enough time to stop and take all the pictures I wanted.  So I snapped what I could.

There were places that there were so many barns I could not snap pictures fast enough to get them all!

I think I counted and had taken almost 300 pictures of barns during that trip...I do not remember if that was 300 different barns or counting the ones where I managed to snap two or three.  Knowing me, it would have been almost 300 different ones.  Not saying they were all salvageable. 

*******
I finished the binding on my quilt but going to be a few days before pictures are taken.   I am so glad to have it finished.

*****
I am going to be busy the next few days.  So, I may or may not blog.  I am hoping to get some visiting done at night, though.

Before and after Sepia Scene

To join Sepia Scenes, or just to see more click on the above badge...today's Mr. Linky isn't open yet. I am posting this early cause I may be in Terre Haute later. If I am there when it is open, I can join from Sarah's computer...but I couldn't post pictures from there so will get it ready now.
I kind of like seeing the before and after shots...so thought I would show both. I think they are a little dark, but then the day was very dark and dreary.
I went in and lightened them just a tad bit with Photoshop and thought maybe you could tell me which set you like the best.

Looking forward....

These are supposed to enlarge when clicked, but with the trouble I had with my other blog, I can only hope.

This top photo is scanned from a slide of early 1994, so it had to be the fall of 1993. It is one of my favorite barns in our area. I bet I have 50-100 pictures of it. No one is ever near it when I am there...if I ever see anyone there I am going to ask permission to look inside. The other side had storm damage this spring, not too terrible, but they are repairing it for which I am thankful.
This leaf was actually taken just a few weeks ago....on one of my cloud chasing trips. Seeing it sort of made me long for fall.
And this is from another slide--1998 this time. Isn't that tree gorgeous! I think fall is my favorite season. Just something about all the colors and things sort of slowing down. Kind of sad in some ways...yet it makes me look forward to staying inside and maybe sewing a little or settling down with a good book. Or something I have done since getting the internet a few years ago is to look up old diaries, journals, letters, and photos from the early settlement of this country. Reading and seeing some of those early times sure makes one appreciate the ease with which we heat, keep clean, cook, travel, etc.

Random post

I am too weary to make much sense so I am posting pictures to fill up space. These two flowers were taken last summer while walking the dog over by the railroad.

And these barns were taken near the orchard I drove to the other day. I love the cloudy skies in each shot. I think they add greatly to the photos, especially the first barn.

How about a couple barn pictures? It is about all I am able to come up with right now.
The first one is a barn in Tennessee. It is huge but it is on this real curvy road and this is the only view I could get. But it was a really loooonnnnnngggg barn. Probably at least 2 1/2 times as long as it is wide, if not longer.

And the one below is a barn from Parke County, probably 15 minutes away from me. I have never been in it....but we do know the brothers who own it. We were told that their mother was a mail order bride but I do not know if it is true or not.

The past week or so I have been sort of distracted by various things. Some of it not too great, other not really bad, just frustrating. Such as we have two maple trees on the south side of this house. One is older and really needs to be taken down and even the other one is continually having a limb break out of it. Here a month or two ago, a limb about 5 or 6 inches through broke out during a storm and just missed our daughter's car, and only missed our house by less than 10 feet.

So we have been trying to find someone to take them both out. And both my husband and I would rather have someone that was recommended to us. So, we got the name of a couple different people, and I started calling. No luck. I left messages....no luck. I thought maybe since some students are on spring break that maybe they had taken off with their kids.

So, I started again this week...and I had seen an ad in our local paper and called it. He wanted more than what I had expected for either tree. The old tree we really preferred it to be taken totally down, but the other I would have been fine with topping it. Anyway, to totally take out the huge old tree that is really beginning to scare me, he wanted $1200, or to top it $800. And to top the other tree he wanted $650. So I told him I was checking with a couple other places.

Well, the one never did call me, but the other one I managed to get in touch with and he stopped by tonight and talked to us. He will take down both trees for less than the other guy wanted to take down just the one old tree. And I felt confident in his abilities and that he would do it when he said he would. So that is one huge thing off my mind...maybe in the next day or two I will have something that is new to both me and you to show.

Yes, I am ready for warmer weather, with green growing things. I am ready to be outside without a coat on. I am even ready and willing to mow the yard again! I am so ready for tomatoes out of my own garden. (Yes that is tomato blooms in the second picture) And I am ready to hang out clothes again--at least when I want to. I could now but they would be coming in frozen stiff as a board. And I do remember when my mom had no other choice. I can remember her bringing in jeans that would stand on their own. But I don't remember what she did with them when she brought them in like that.

Speaking of jeans, I also remember having to iron them...I remember when almost everything was ironed. Speaking of ironing leads to todays challenges...I had laundry going and was going to make the backings for the baby quilts. I had to iron the last two borders on the last baby quilt. I ironed the first and sewed the second border on and was trying to iron it...I discover that my iron has quit. I switched plugs just to make sure...no luck.

I came upstairs and checked on the QYW forum to see what others had recommended in the past...while doing that I happened to think about consumer reports. Their tests were from a year or two past, but the highest recommended was one of the Black and Decker models...
so with it in mind plus the other two best buys recommended, I headed to our local Walmart. The shelves there were almost bare!

I decided to come home and call a few stores to see what I could find...it did take me at least an hour to check with 6 places. Everyone seemed to be working short-handed. So it took longer....but finally found one at Sears. The one with the highest rating...so I called my husband to stop on his way home from work and pick it up for me. I just did not feel like getting back out in the cold. It did make me appreciate the fact that I didn't have to, that I don't have to hang clothes outside in weather like this, that I have a warm and safe house to sleep in....yet I can't help but be ready for spring to arrive.

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...