After 24 years of living in Louisiana we're legally Texicans again. Got
our vehicle registration transferred to Texas today and also got our
driver's licenses and voter registration done. It's good to be home
again. I'm a Native Texan and Miz Anne is a born again Texan. We lived
most of our married life in Texas until we moved across the border to
Cajun Land.

Unpacking is going slowly, we obviously didn't label all the boxes we
packed adequately. They just have room names on most of them so you have
to open them all to find anything. The one thing easy to identify is all
our canning supplies and the cases of canned food we put over the last
year. I labeled them myself so I could find something to eat.

Miz Anne has been worrying over me of late, trying to get me to eat
more. I've dropped from 220 to 190 during the packing, moving, and all
the stress of selling one house and buying another. I'm sort of liking
to be getting down to my fighting weight again.

It will probably be at least a year before we can can anything unless we
start hitting the farmer's markets and the pick-it-yourself farms in the
vicinity. Really going to have to put a lot of work into our small
backyard in order to grow veggies and/or fruit trees. No nearby
neighbors with overloaded fruit trees here, it's mostly all new
subdivisions under ten years in age.

We're slowly getting to know our neighbors, mostly young people in their
twenties to thirties, most with a flock of kids. Of course the kids came
to us first, seems they recognize grand and great grand parents on
sight. Since the elementary school bus stop is in front of our house we
get to meet a lot of them and, in the main, they're a good lot of
rambunctious kids. One little girl wanted me to ride her tiny little
push scooter but I begged off, didn't want them to see a crazy old man
falling off the scooter.

We had green beans we had canned earlier in the year as a side dish for
our dinner tonight, tasted right good too. This is the batch I put a
teaspoon of marjoram in each jar, sort of "brightened" the taste in my
opinion.

George

George Shirley wrote:
> After 24 years of living in Louisiana we're legally Texicans again. Got
> our vehicle registration transferred to Texas today and also got our
> driver's licenses and voter registration done. It's good to be home
> again. I'm a Native Texan and Miz Anne is a born again Texan. We lived
> most of our married life in Texas until we moved across the border to
> Cajun Land.

Feels good, don't it? :-)

> It will probably be at least a year before we can can anything unless we
> start hitting the farmer's markets and the pick-it-yourself farms in the
> vicinity. Really going to have to put a lot of work into our small
> backyard in order to grow veggies and/or fruit trees. No nearby
> neighbors with overloaded fruit trees here, it's mostly all new
> subdivisions under ten years in age.

I bet you can find some pyracantha berries in your neighborhood. I hear
they make decent jelly. (I never got around to trying it, and now I
live up here in the frozen north -- the one good thing about that is
free crabapples)

Plant some Youngberries. They'll produce heavily in 2 years. Get your
kids to pick them for you in exchange for jam or a pie, the thorns are
awful.

> We're slowly getting to know our neighbors, mostly young people in their
> twenties to thirties, most with a flock of kids. Of course the kids came
> to us first, seems they recognize grand and great grand parents on
> sight. Since the elementary school bus stop is in front of our house we
> get to meet a lot of them and, in the main, they're a good lot of
> rambunctious kids. One little girl wanted me to ride her tiny little
> push scooter but I begged off, didn't want them to see a crazy old man
> falling off the scooter.

That was probably a smart move. I fell off a bike this summer and
messed up my knee, and it's still not quite right yet. (it's getting
better, very slowly) I had a friend about your age fell off a bike at a
chemical plant and broke his femur and was laid-up for about a year.
(good thing he got worker's comp)

Glad you're back where you belong. And you can probably cook better
gumbo now for having lived in LA.

Bob

On 12/18/2012 11:16 PM, zxcvbob wrote:
> George Shirley wrote:
>> After 24 years of living in Louisiana we're legally Texicans again.
>> Got our vehicle registration transferred to Texas today and also got
>> our driver's licenses and voter registration done. It's good to be
>> home again. I'm a Native Texan and Miz Anne is a born again Texan. We
>> lived most of our married life in Texas until we moved across the
>> border to Cajun Land.
>
> Feels good, don't it? :-)
>
>> It will probably be at least a year before we can can anything unless
>> we start hitting the farmer's markets and the pick-it-yourself farms
>> in the vicinity. Really going to have to put a lot of work into our
>> small backyard in order to grow veggies and/or fruit trees. No nearby
>> neighbors with overloaded fruit trees here, it's mostly all new
>> subdivisions under ten years in age.
>
> I bet you can find some pyracantha berries in your neighborhood. I hear
> they make decent jelly. (I never got around to trying it, and now I
> live up here in the frozen north -- the one good thing about that is
> free crabapples)
We used to pyracantha bushes all over the area in Orange and in Sulphur.
I had heard of jelly from them but never made any.
>
> Plant some Youngberries. They'll produce heavily in 2 years. Get your
> kids to pick them for you in exchange for jam or a pie, the thorns are
> awful.
The one I want is the Doyle blackberry, just one will produce more
berries than we could can. Look them up, I believe they will even grow
in your area.
>
>> We're slowly getting to know our neighbors, mostly young people in
>> their twenties to thirties, most with a flock of kids. Of course the
>> kids came to us first, seems they recognize grand and great grand
>> parents on sight. Since the elementary school bus stop is in front of
>> our house we get to meet a lot of them and, in the main, they're a
>> good lot of rambunctious kids. One little girl wanted me to ride her
>> tiny little push scooter but I begged off, didn't want them to see a
>> crazy old man falling off the scooter.
>
> That was probably a smart move. I fell off a bike this summer and
> messed up my knee, and it's still not quite right yet. (it's getting
> better, very slowly) I had a friend about your age fell off a bike at a
> chemical plant and broke his femur and was laid-up for about a year.
> (good thing he got worker's comp)
I'm 73 years old and have never broken a bone, yet. Have had multiple
minor breaks on my fingers due to playing a lot of baseball when I was
young.
>
> Glad you're back where you belong. And you can probably cook better
> gumbo now for having lived in LA.
>
> Bob

Nope, still cook it the way I always did. My Dad was from Louisiana and
some of his brothers married Cajuns who could cook like nobody's
business. My dirty rice, jambalaya. and my gumbos are pretty good. I
think I know this because all of those get eaten up when we have a feed.

Good to hear from you Bob, next time you come home drop me a note and
maybe we can meet somewhere.

George