Check out this cool collage I made using Picassa. I love the Sepia tone. It gives the photos a timeless quality. These are my kids and nephew and niece. 

Feed Me I'm Starving

Look at the mouths on these bluebird hatchlings. They remind me a little bit of dinner time around our house. Four starving young'ins willing to bite your fingers off if you get too close to their mouths.

The hatchlings are about 2 weeks old here. They start out with grey fluff, and turn blue later. Their eyes are open now and you can see the little shafts on their wings. Pretty soon feathers will begin sprouting from the shafts.
The birds are in a nestbox my dad built and mounted to an electrical pole in our back yard. Several wires (about 20 feet above the nestbox) run from the pole to our house and barns - (don't worry, this story isn't about how we electricuted four helpless birds).

Below, Mama and Papa Bluebird sit on the wire waiting for us to leave so they can fly down, enter the nestbox through the tiny hole in front and feed the hatchlings. Mama Bluebird is on the left and Papa on the right.

My husband always teases me saying Papa is much more colorful than his realtively drab female counterpart. If you ask me, what woman wants a guy who looks "pretty." I better not catch my husband putting on make-up!

If you question my dedication to keeping this blog up, you should see my ankles right now. Fire ants have built a hill right underneath the nest and they are quite vicious!

CHOW TIME!

It took me quite a while for me to get these pictures, the adult bluebirds are very skittish creatures! The male bluebird is pictured here with a poor-soon to be devoured-insect in his mouth.

My dad made the bluebird house without a little peg in front of the hole as a perch since the bluebirds prefer to perch on the hole.

One of the parent bluebirds returns about every two minutes with another meal. The baby bluebirds get rather loud when their parent appears competing for the meal.

FEED ME!

All four of the eggs hatched a few days ago. Their wings look like little arms. They are covered in grey "fuzz," and their eyes are not opened yet. I will continue to track their progress in pictures on this blog. Have a great day!

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!

This is what we got to enjoy after a day full of swimming and barbequeing.
My friend Kim made this beautiful patriotic cake complete with sparkler candles. The fruit was sooo good with the chocolate cake and sour cream icing.

MORE BLUEBIRD EGGS

After the last set of bluebirds learned to fly a different bluebird came and built a new nest. She didn't even give me time to clean the box out. She laid these pretty little blue eggs. I will post a picture of the babies when they hatch. 

CORN AND SAUSAGE CHOWDER

1 lb. mild sausage (about 2 links)
1 large onion
3 potatoes – peeled
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tsp dried basil
2 cups water
1-17 oz. can creamed style corn
1 16-1/2 oz. can skimmed, evaporated milk

Remove sausage from “skin,” scramble in water, pour off grease.
Repeat, drain well.
Sauté onion in 1 tsp. olive oil, add meat and all other ingredients except evaporated milk and corn.
Simmer 15 minutes.
Add milk and corn.
Heat, and then serve.

This is one of my favorite recipes that many have requested from me. Real easy to make and soo good! I got it from my mom. Enjoy!

CORN, PEACHES, AND BLUEBERRIES

We took the kids over to my parents' farm in Cairo to pick some corn, peaches and blueberries. They own 250 acres that is leased out to a farmer.

This year the corn he planted is an improved Silver Queen variety. It is the best corn I have ever tasted! It is so sweet and creamy that you don't have to add any butter to it.

We had a little competetion between the kids to see who could collect the most ears of corn in five minutes and my son Jacob won with 25! Now we have corn coming out of our ears!
After this we went over to a friend's house who has a pool and sat beside the pool and shucked all the corn. After we got all hot and sticky with corn juice we jumped into the pool and cleaned off.

My daughter Caroline collected peaches. As for the blueberries; they were so good that they all got eaten before they could make it in the house.

BLUEBIRDS

My Dad built this bluebird house for us last year. He told me to hang it on a tree or pole in an open area. And to place it a good distance from the house, at about 4-6 feet high, and bluebirds would come and make their nest.

I nailed it to an electric pole in the backyard and the next day bluebirds began to appear in our backyard. Before this, I only rarely saw bluebirds, and before I knew it, they were building a nest in the bird house.

The one pictured here is a female. I often see both the male and female working together to feed their babies. Wouldn't that be nice! :)

HARVESTING VEGGIES

This is my first bell pepper of the season. I bought the pepper plant at Wal-Mart. It is the "Big Bertha" variety. I wish it had grown a bit wider. When I cut into it the walls were very thin. I've been told in the past by my grandma that I have a brown thumb.

Since we have moved out to the country, I have been trying my hand at gardening. It has also given me the opportunity to expirement more since we have more land and sun exposure out here. I have started trying the "Square Foot Garden(ing)" method. My husband built me a small raised bed and I have been hewning my gardening skills. I hope that my thumb will become greener!

Last year my son's elementary school handed out "oversized cabbage" plants to all the 3rd graders. They told them that whoever could grow the biggest cabbage would win $1,000. Along with some occasional Miracle Grow applications, my son managed to grow the second place winner! Great job Stephen!

SNAKES ALIVE!!!!

Our family ate at Sonny's Real Pit Barbeque tonight. When we got home there was a snake slithering across the backyard. We couldn't figure out what kind of snake it was so we looked it up online. We found a website on snakes that indicated we had found a "Mud Snake." We found out the Mud Snake was not poisonous, did not bite and is a rather uncommon snake. My husband told our oldest son, Stephen, that if he were the first person to pick up the snake he would be a stud. After petting the snake a few times he got up the courage and picked it up.

Our youngest son, Jacob, was not quite as enthusiastic about holding the snake. It wasn't until we were about to let it go that Jacob mustered the courage to hold it. That was short lived, however, for when the snake began to slither up Jacob's shirt he quickly threw it to the ground.

This was the friendliest snake I have ever seen. It didn't seem to want to leave so we had to pick it up and move it away from the house and under the fig tree. I bet it will like it there. The only problem is now I am afraid to walk around outside in the dark. I guess I will have to drag my feet around so I don't step on him. Yikes!

WELCOME TO CAIRO, GEORGIA

Our family moved here three years ago from Tallahassee, Florida. Not really much of a move geographically (Tallahassee is only 30 minutes south of us) but nearly a world away culturally. In Tallahassee we had wall to wall neighbors (after nine years we still didn't know their names), lived in a shoebox and spent 30 minutes fighting traffic to leave our subdivision in the morning. Not in Cairo. We now have 10 acres, two ponds, a 2,800 square foot home, chickens, a garden and all the amenities of farm life; all for roughly what we sold our shoebox for in Tallahassee. Our neighbors are hard working and pleasant farmers who have gone out of their way to help our citified family adjust to life in the country. Today was hot. The temperature got up to 89 degrees but (like it says on the Weather Channel) it felt like 95. We had one of those strange southern Georgia rains where the sun was shining, not a cloud in the sky, but it rained like crazy.I hope you enjoy the comments and pictures of our life here in Cairo, Georgia. Oh, by the way, the natives in Cairo pronounce it Kay-row.