Muscadine : The South's Own Grape

Soul asked me what a muscadine was so I thought I'd post a picture and a little information about this wild (or cultivated) southern grape.

They're a good bit larger than most grape varieties and they're very good for you, even better than blueberries and blackberries some say. The skin is tougher than regular grapes and after I bite into one and enjoy the sweet, juicy insides, I love to chew on the skin to get that last burst of muscadine flavor. Grandma used to make purple muscadine jelly from the skins and white muscadine jelly from the insides.

Delicious!

Another favorite way to enjoy this fruit is muscadine wine. Post Familie winery in Arkansas makes some of my favorite varities; red, white, blush, all wonderful!

Whenever I taste a muscadine it brings back memories of walking along the cotton field turn rows in September looking for vines loaded with those wonderful fruits.

Happy Fall Y'all!

The farm stand a few miles down the road is all decorated for Fall.

Fall is a lovely season, but it makes me sad too cause the days are getting shorter and shorter,

And I know that Fall leads to Winter and I so hate to be cold.

Maybe Winter will pass in a flash like our summer did
and it'll be Spring then Summer again.

Short List

We thought Willie died, but he didn't. His brother did die though and that's very sad news for Willie.



Jillian, aka, Beans, declined her asparagus at supper and decided she rather have a taste of the Elephant Ear plants growing in the flower beds. She bled, she swelled, she couldn't swallow for a bit, but the poison control center said Elephant Ear caladiums are not poisonous but she will have those icky reactions (mouth bleeding, swelling, problems swallowing) for a few hours. We need to find a better way for her to get her greens.

Photo Challenge - Food

A Kid's favorite cuisine always includes fast food burgers and fries. Wendy's burgers are almost bearable.

These next photos are of some of our babies enjoying so cool, sweet, watermelon. From looking at Bean's size these were taken about 3 years ago. The first one is of Jordan.

Here you have the Beans.

The Chick and Beans.

This is one of my snacks, a cup of coffee and a cookie for dunking.

Miz Donna chose food as our challenge prompt this time and I've had to scrounge through some old photos to find some. Time just got away from me; not because I've been busy or anything, but just in a fog and quite lazy about doing most everything.

Anyway, y'all don't forget to go over to the Photo challenge Blog and click on the links in the comments to see everyone's Food challenge photos.

Remembering Ben

In memory and in honor of her sweet grandson, Ben, Miz Sally is having a wonderful giveaway for a lucky young person. All you Mommas, and Aunties, and Grandmas, Grandpas, Uncles, and Daddies too, should hop on over there to see what it's all about!

7th Grade Barton Bears Football

We've got little uns

and

We've got a couple of big uns.

They all looked like real ball players out there, even with their coaches assisting them to keep them lined up like they were supposed to be.

Those were some big ol' boys raised on the banks of the White River that our little Bears played last night. But that's ok, ours will grow and losing their first game by just one touchdown ain't bad.

A Waste of Time

I've been thinking for some time now about some of the problems going on in this great country of ours and I spent quite some time doing research so that I'd have all the facts to support my opinions.

I've decided now that it's all just a waste of time because, if the truth be known, the citizens in this great country of ours could not get together and agree on anything if their lives, or even their children's lives depended on it.

For every truth one finds 20 untruths and, as often is the case, it doesn't seem to be about if something read, or said, is the truth or not, but it's whoever can protest, yell, and holler, or afford the cheesiest television ads who gets noticed and who is eventually believed by a whole lot of people who don't know any better.

And you know something else that is so sad? The conservatives who expressed this terrible fear over the past week that the president's address to our students would be used to push a partisan political agenda, that's what.

Friends, we shouldn't worry about what terrorists might do to our country. We're well on the road to destroying it ourselves.

Photo Challenge - Purple

This was a hard one for me cause there's not much of anything the color purple around my house and neighborhood. But our Beans did wear purple to school on Tuesday so I was able to snap her cute self posing in purple.

These are some pretty little weeds that were growing beside the highway. I had to slam on my brakes and back up to get this shot. Luckily it was a rural highway and the traffic was almost nothing.

My purple morning glories.

It's that time again! Upload anything purple that you've snapped with your camera, post them to your blog, then go over to our photo challenge blog and follow the directions to leave a comment about your post.

It's fun!

And we love to see your work!

Thank you Miz Donna for the purple idea!

Sports Equipment Stupid

Zach is playing jr. high sports and they've been practicing football. Yesterday he brought home his mouth guard with instructions for me to "boil it so I can form it to my mouth."

So I did,,,for several minutes cause I forgot about it.

It started out looking something like the ones in the top photo. The end result was the strange object below.

What he meant to say was "put it in boiling water" for a minute. He's pretty mad at me for following his instructions. We both now know that mouth guards are not boilable.

And he forgot to take money this morning to replace it. I reckon I'm in hot water again.