A South Carolina Chain Saw Massacre

Posted on November 29, 2011 by Cindy

This is the chainsaw that Brian’s mom and sister bought for him and presented on Thanksgiving Day.

What had happened, a week earlier, Brian’s sister came for a visit and while helping us dig out stumps, she noticed the difficulty Brian was having using his 18’’ Poulan. The new chain saw is a spectacular gift and Brian is very thankful!

We have much chain saw work to do on our little five acre spread. Most of it has to do with big stumps left after the wrath of Hurricane Hugo in 1989. Not only was there tremendous damage along the South Carolina coast and the city of Charleston, but damage was incredibly extensive inland, too. Folks out our way were without power for weeks and in our yard alone, probably 20 huge trees came down, leaving broken stumps throughout the yard. Over the course of time, different owners of the property either planted bushes to camouflage the damage or just let nature take over the areas around the stumps.

We’ve cleared out several of those areas already. It’s hard work cutting away all the tangled brush and digging around old root systems. One time, a couple of years ago, we used my 4×4 Ford Explorer to wench out a big old azalea root ball and about pulled off my rear bumper!

So, back to the stump we were trying to dig out when Brian’s sister was here.

It’s the stump of an old pine tree and the wood is harder than concrete. Once we got all the brush around it cleared away we could see that some previous homeowner had tried to burn it out with no luck. We dug down around the stump about three feet, with the intent of putting our little chain saw to it to cut it below ground level so we could cover it with dirt and then grow some grass. (We would never be able to pull this stump out, it probably goes down at least six more feet into the ground!) Of course, Brian’s little chain saw couldn’t handle it and after much struggle, we gave up. I guess we could hire a back hoe or stump grinder to defeat it. But, we’d also need to hire one for the 15 or so other huge stumps that need to come out, too.

The picture below is one of many wild growth areas that need cleaned out. Each one, I’m sure has a huge stump in the middle.

So, we’re excited happy resolved to do this project ourselves with the new chainsaw. Winter is the right season around these parts to tackle such an undertaking. There’s nothing (other than any little excuse we can find) to stop us now from finally getting more of it done. I’m calling the project, The South Carolina Chain Saw Massacre.

On a side note, this is the turkey we smoked for our Thanksgiving dinner. My good friend, Pam Groth, shared with me her dad’s secret brine recipe several years ago and it is killer good! We also used apple wood chips in our cylindrical smoker and cooked the bird upright on a utensil we call “stick up its ass,” (for obvious reasons) for about five hours.

And, I also made some kick ass collards and BACON with greens just picked from our garden.

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Pinterest Interest

Posted on November 25, 2011 by Cindy

Or, How I Finally Got Motivated Blog-o-vated!

I discovered a new social website recently called Pinterest. It’s a social photo sharing website where members can collect and manage images they find on the internet of interesting, funny, unusual, unique, scary, whatever (pick any descriptive adjective here) stuff. These pictures are ‘pinned’ onto the users’ own theme-based boards and shared with other Pinterest members that like the same stuff. And, OMG, this can be such a fun time sucker!

So, I found myself gravitating to the gardening, outdoor, food and organizing boards of other users to look at the images they ‘pinned’ on them. I spent hours, that’s a lie, much much longer, literally days perusing pictures, and pinning some on my own boards and then visiting the websites that originally posted the photos and reading the stories that inspired the snapshots. Ergo, I found a bunch of websites of bloggers after my own heart that love to get their hands in the dirt and live more simply. And, lo and behold, after spending months in a writing funk and blogging lethargy, I am re-inspired to write about the things I love.

So, today I begin a renewed writing journey, about gardens and mushrooms and gourds and birds and pets and food and living simply and family and whatever.

If you’d like an invitation to Pinterest, just ask me. The easiest way is to provide me with the email address you use for Facebook. In the meantime, please look at Cindy’s Pinterest (that’s me). The button is over there, on your right, the red box with the white loopy ‘P’ inside.

Hooray for inspiration!

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July 4th, 1980

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Cindy

I like writing stories for this blog, but sometimes, I’m stumped as to what to write about. Whenever that happens, I go to the hall closet and pull out the old photographs to peruse, because I always find something there! And, then I write about a thousand words. So here goes! Today’s photo was taken on July 4, 1980.

Cindy, Pam, Bonnie, Linda, Dennis

It’s a photo of me and my siblings, sitting from right to left in our birth order. Since I’m the youngest I am on the left wearing my ELO (Electric Light Orchestra) tee-shirt.

And, since I brought up the tee-shirt, I guess I’ll start this story with it. I got the ELO tee-shirt from my friend, Tina, who went to ELO’s famous “Big Night” concert tour in Pittsburgh in 1978 without me. I had wanted to go, and can’t remember now why I could not go, but Tina bought me a tee-shirt that I absolutely loved and that I only ever wore on special occasions.

Me, Pam, Bonnie, Linda and Dennis are sitting on the picnic table in my parents’ yard at their stone house. It was the 4^th of July, which meant my parents were having a family picnic. In 1980, all five of us kids were married, and four of us had kids of our own, too. So, by then the picnics were not the same as when we were younger and all living at home.

But, back in the day, aunts, uncles, two grandmas and cousins from both mom and dad’s side of the families would come for the family picnic. Us kids would play badminton or jarts (a game using huge darts with these dangerously long sharp points that you would throw and try to stick in a ring, that essentially would kill you or at least put your eye out if you were unluckily standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, or were in the path of an errant toss) or dodge ball or go gallivanting out in the woods at Devil’s Canyon (rock formations) and play hide and seek after it got dark. We also got to light sparklers after dark. Picture a handful of kids running around in the dark with an eight inch wand of pyrotechnic fuel reaching about 3000 degrees Farenheit in each hand! The men would drink beer, play horseshoes, then usually switch to poker after it got dark. The women would set up all the eats, clean up all the messes, and finally retreat to the kitchen to chat (and laugh hysterically) about adult stuff after it got dark.

I remember one year my Uncle Bobby from the big city of Pittsburgh, knowledgeable in all big city things, spiked a watermelon with rum.

And, I remember snow flurries one year during the annual summer picnic, unusual even for Pennsylvanians.

So, back to the photo. I was 22 years old in 1980. And, I was married and already a mom, too. Our cousins were grown with their own families and not too interested in our family 4^th of July picnics anymore. But, because of the photo, I can see that in 1980 all of us siblings were there together. I think Brian and I might have lived on a farm in a nearby community at the time. Pam and her husband Gary would be moving to Colorado soon. Bonnie and her husband lived just a few miles down the road. Linda was not too far away, living in Pittsburgh with her husband. I’m not sure where my brother Dennis was in his life in 1980. He might have been living with his family in the old hometown, or home from Texas for a visit.

There we all were, grown siblings with a long history of 4^th of July gatherings posing for a picture for our mother on July 4, 1980. My nephew, Dennis Jr, was 13. His sister, Lori was 11. My daughter Carrie was not quite four years old. Her cousin, Shani was also three years old. Jason would be turning three in another month or so and Kara had recently celebrated her first birthday. My other nieces, Kelly and Shannon were not born yet.

We probably had hot dogs and hamburgers and pickled eggs, and potato salad, maybe some ham salad, corn on the cob and watermelon for this picnic fete. My dad would have had the horse shoe pit set up. He and his son and the sons-in-law might have played some poker after it got dark. My sisters and I would have been sitting around the kitchen with our mom chatting (and laughing hysterically) after dark.