Good News Sunday

Umm...let's see. My Mother may be coming to visit this weekend. It's awful hard to get folks to visit Pensacola in the spring, when the temps are in the seventies and soft breezes are blowing and the colors are so very vivid. But, maybe she will come!

I am home right now, still nursing this blasted cold and stopped up ear. Oh wait, even though I was able to get four hours of extra sleep (instead of leaving the house by 6:30), it's still not really good news...I did enjoy that four extra hours of sleep part, though...

Night of Worship

Check out our website! Of course, for those of you out of the state, you might want to think twice before heading over for the Night of Worship.

Wordless Wednesday # Lighthouse

Check out more Wordless Wednesday participants here...

To the 60 or so people

Who honored us by coming to our 2nd annual Christmas Cookie Exchange, here's to you! Our friends really make our lives sweet. You are all such a blessing to us.

Merry Christmas to you all!!

To view a slideshow, please click on this link...

What's a dehumidifier?

There's a quote in one of the Little House Books where Pa looks at Laura and says: "The rich man gets his ice in the winter, but the poor man gets his in the summer." It's kind of odd these days to think of not having ice on demand (especially here in the South), but that's how folks lived for years. In fact, I would venture to say, only in the last eighty or so years have a majority of the people had ice or refrigeration on demand.

Why the rumination on ice? Well, I was looking over Wize's list of dehumidifiers and was astounded to see what prices run on these little buddies. The average price on these units is about $200: with the low being $22 and the high being over $300. I thought it rather amusing that several of the $200-$300 dehumidifiers ranked below the $22 unit. Just another reason Wize is such a useful site, I never would have known such an inexpensive unit existed! Granted, I don't think I'm going to be buying one of these little contraptions anytime soon, but some people will be glad to know they're around.

So, what does Laura Ingall's ice in cold weather have to do with these dehumidifiers? You knew I could link all this together, right? Well, here in Pensacola, we have a little problem with humidity. I once had a friend from Michigan state say that she figured southern girls had such beautiful skin because of the high humidity in our region. I'm not sure about that, but I do know that these days my skin has taken on the texture of dry paper. I can't drink enough water to rehydrate myself. Humidity is down to roughly 30% and I'm shriveling away to sawdust people! Can't I get some kind of happy medium here?

Video from Harvest Church

The following is copied directly from Pastor Bobby's blog. Go check it out! He always has something great to say!

If you want to listen to the podcast, go to the website Harvest Church Pensacola , then go to the link on the left for podcasts. The message title is "Created to Be An Original". Many people have said the this particular message had a tremendous impact on them, ...timely.

Rude Awakening and Jolie Victoria

Well, yesterday morning dawned bright and fair. Err, it was rainy but the morning dawned just the same. I went through my usual routine of scanning the gardens for new caterpillars and seedlings and then retired to the library to check up on email. Actually, let me digress. I was awakened about 6:30 AM by a ginormous clap of thunder. The dogs were quite perturbed--even to the point of jumping up onto my side of the bed, which never happens. Seems the girls wanted to go outside and run around so after I came inside, I left them in the yard to play.

While checking my email, I heard a noise like an unbalanced washing machine. For those of you who have ever heard the sound, it's quite loud and persistent. I wasn't doing laundry, so I was puzzled as to the origin of the sound. I sprang from my desk seat, searching for the noise. Then, I realized someone was banging on our front door. Yep, the unbalanced washing machine noise was in fact someone knocking. It was our neighbor. I jerked the door open to a neighbor who appeared to have been weeping for a few minutes and looked slightly angry.

Turns out, the girls had flipped the latch on our gate and were hightailing it down the road. And the neighbor? Was she crying? Well, no. Turns out she just looks like that in the morning. Dodi and Ariel (the dogs) came right back in the yard (not having any pressing engagements) while our neighbor proceeded to tell me about another tornado headed our way. The skies were awfully black so I woke James and we secured the dogs. Result? No tornado...thank God.

Our neighbor had frightened me so badly that I was shaking almost violently. I had no idea that a loud knocking on the door very early in the morning would be so disturbing. I hope it never happens again!

On a completely different note: here is a shot of my most recent shoes. They make me a good four inches taller!

Scary Tornado hits West Pensacola!

Too bad we didn't have any idea it was near. Looks like it waltzed right by (and I mean within a mile) our house and we had no clue. Since we don't have a television and don't listen to the radio, we didn't even know we were under a tornado warning. As far as we knew, we were just getting some good garden rain. In fact, I was outside in the potting shed for about twenty minutes. I even grabbed a shovel to plant some bulbs but the lightning scared me back inside. I'm gonna guess that's about the time the tornado was going over. Our power never even flickered!

I've been looking for a good photo for you all but can't seem to locate one.

Link to Pensacola News Journal

The red arrow on the map goes right below my house!

A gardening tip...of sorts

Most nursery owners/growers will tell you not to overwater your begonias. They will tell you that begonias do not like to be too wet.

Believe them.

Even if you seem to be having excellent luck with a begonia that you are watering daily. Even if you are blithely watering it from the top and it is thriving.

The day will come that your begonia will go away to that great greenhouse in the sky. When that day comes, you will repent that you overwatered your begonia. I tell you now...don't do it!

Note: This begonia is doing well. Its brother is in ICU. One can only hope...