Long Weekend

I had a rough week last week. Tuesday morning I pinched or pulled something in my neck and during the week the pain wandered slowly down my back. I normally don't take painkillers because "I can live with pain but not without my liver", but it got so bad that I actually took one twice, nothing heavy, just some ibuprofen. By the end of the week it was much better and we were able to do some things on the weekend.

Friday night we did our usual weekly shopping. Our Dollar Tree store occasionally has books for sale. This time these three looked interesting and I bought them. I already read "Days of Atonement" over the weekend and loved it. I have his first book on hold at the library.

Saturday we went to the farmer's market as usual, we made a slight shift from Summer to Fall by buying plums and a butternut squash and fewer peaches. The peaches are coming to an end, they are no longer as good as they were a few weeks ago. We also got some chicken, peppers, onions and eggs.

The excitement of the weekend was provided by a bee swarm in one of our trees. We called a beekeeper to take a look at it and he told us that the swarm was too small and so late in the year it would not survive if he would capture it. They pose no danger to anyone, so we just left them alone, they will eventually move on.

On Sunday and Monday we spent the morning working in the garden, we worked on the non-edible part of the property which, admittedly, gets a little neglected during Summer. We weeded, mowed, pulled, sawed and hacked our way through the jungle and it looks much better now. We decided to abandon our plan of making the veggie garden bigger. We do not want to invest every extra dollar into the garden, we are not getting any younger, and we can buy really good produce from local farmers. Instead we are going to put some money by for "fun stuff" like day trips and such.

Sunday afternoon we took a little road trip through the area south of us and it was quite depressing. So many houses and businesses are for sale or rent. I can not help wonder what happened to the people. Are the homeless now, did they move away because they found work elsewhere? One thing we discovered is that the next bigger town down south - Asheboro - looks a lot livelier than our own and we will check it out in the coming weeks, maybe we can go there for some things we can't get here anymore instead of driving to Winston-Salem all the time. I spotted at least three big thrift stores that need to be explored, a quilt store and who knows, there might even be a yarn store hiding somewhere. :-)

It is raining today and it is supposed to stay this way for the rest of the week. I have some housework to catch up on and hope to be able to work on some of my UFOs. And I still have two new books to read.

Have a great rest of the week everyone!