Greg's General Store

Here are some friday bits and pieces: For a short week this one sure seemed long. Even though I only had to work 4 days this week it seemed more like 10. But we made it to Friday and today is starting out well. I got another good workout at the gym and I did weights today just to “mix-it-up”. See my Tuesday post for details. Last night the sky was a beautiful color. My father used to call it “sky blue pink” but I don’t know if that was something he made up or heard somewhere. The color is more like blue-orange than blue-pink. No matter what you call it, it is amazing. This morning I saw the most amazing creature. I think it was an albino raccoon. It took me by surprise and I started to turn around just to make sure I wasn’t seeing things but I was running late so I had to press on. I saw lots of other things this morning too including a large red fox and a deer in my neighbor’s yard. I blame it on the moon. I found another use for the grass catcher on my lawnmower. For those of you w...

Thankful Thursday I added the digging deep part because Blessings aren't always obvious and sometimes we have to dig deep to find them. They are still blessings. Where do I begin? Today I am reminded of a Jimmy Stewart western I saw once. If I remember correctly he was a single parent in that he had lost his wife for some reason or another. I can’t remember why but for whatever reason she was gone. He had a huge family of boys and they were all seated around the dinner table and the blessing went something like this: God we thank you for your blessings. We planted these crops, and when the drought came, we hauled water from the stream. When the locusts came we drove them away. We pulled the weeds and kept the cattle out of the fields. We harvested the crops and prepared them for this table. I really don’t know what you had to do with it but we thank you anyway. Amen Please forgive me I am working from memory and my memory isn’t what it used to be. Does anyone remember what movie th...

For those of you that have been playing along, I mean killing yourself along with me, it's time for phase 4 of the 30 X 5 Challenge hosted by the world famous Linda at 2nd cup of coffee. What's that you say, this is just another challenge and Linda's blog is just another blog? Well shut your mouth cause we can do it. First off, Linda is on the cutting edge of the blog fitness craze and secondly phase 4 was my idea. Well unless you hurt yourself doing it in which case, I had nothing to do with it, blame Linda. That's right this was my idea to do the switch up thingy. Just think pretty soon I am going to be like Ivan from Rocky 4 and you know what that means. You all will be saying things like; He isn't human, He's a machine, Somebody stop him before he makes another video. Not to worry, I won't make a video but "I will break you" if you get in my way. That was one of Ivan's famous lines in the movie. Anywhoo.....Picture me as Ivan. So what is ...

Wow what a weekend we had. It started with a great day at the Market on Saturday. The crowd was larger than usual because it was the first day of Spoleto. It is a festival that takes place every year here in Charleston and the town is full of tourists that came for the event. There are events all over town and a lot of them take place in and around Marion Square. There were bands,pony rides and tons of extra food and art vendors. There was a crazy band playing in the square and after playing for several hours they lead a parade through the streets of Charleston. Here are some photos I took as they were leaving the market area. I would have taken more but business was booming and I had to stay close to my booth. Sunday was great as well. We stayed close to home and just relaxed. Relaxing is something that my wife and I seldom do so it was a nice change. Today was Memorial Day. We started out by watching some memorial services around the country that were being shown on TV. After that, w...

Have you ever been in a tall building and stood there waiting on the elevator only to find out after a long wait that it wasn’t working? Or sometimes the elevator does arrive but it is full so you let it go and wait on another one? I know I have many times and I end up scolding myself for not taking the stairs in the first place. Truth is I am capable of walking up stairs and could use the exercise but I still find myself pushing the elevator button just because it's the easy way out or should I say “up”. When I was very young, we visited NYC and one of the places we went was the Empire State Building. At the time it was one of the tallest buildings in the world and we wanted to go to the top just to take in the view. When we got there however there was a very long line waiting to get into the elevator and the sign said that the wait was about an hour long. My father was very impatient and didn’t want to wait that long even though we had no place else to go. After seeing how many ...

It's Thursday and you know what that means. Time again for Thankful Thursday. Please join us over at Truth for the Journey and lets all be thankful for the little things in life. 1. I want to say again that I am so thankful for my family. Last night we all pitched in and raked under the magnolia tree. Now raking under a tree sounds kind of simple but this magnolia is the largest one I have ever seen and it takes hours just to rake under this one tree. (new photos to follow soon) 2. I am thankful that I have a full tank of gas and that my little car still gets over 40 mpg and that is without a government mandate. I highly recommend the Honda Civic. No one has to tell me to conserve. I just do it. 3. I am thankful that my job is going well even though I am totally overloaded. One thing for certain, it makes the work day go by really fast. 4. I am thankful that I am cutting back on my coffee and am not down to only two cups a day which shouldn’t be confused with Linda’s 2nd cup of co...

Wow it is Wednesday already. Where is the time going? I am busy as a beaver these days at work and at home but at least I am able to work. The clouds have begun to break up here and we have warmer weather on the way. How could I not wake up happy? And if that isn’t enough, look what I got in the mail last night: It was from Sonya over at “ Truth for the Journey ”. She has a wonderful blog and I enjoy reading it and participating in Thankful Thursday every week. I won a contest over there last week and this was the prize. I have heard about this book and wanted to read it so I put my name in the hat and I won. Also I am excited to be getting so many readers even though some of you are shy and don't leave any comments. I want to invite any new readers to leave comments when you visit, especially you visitors from far away places like; Canada, Mexico, Japan, Latvia, Denmark, Ireland and Germany just to name a few. Those were locations of some of my recent visitors. To tell the truth I...

When I was young, we would stop and pick up my Grandmother and take her to church. She always went with us. Now that I think back I actually never saw her drive and she didn't even own a car. I will have to do some digging and see if anyone knows why. She did love to garden though and in the summer she brought flowers from her garden to put in our church. I owe much of my love for gardening to her. So here are the new additions to our garden this Sunday and I would like to dedicate them to my Grandmother Green. If she were alive today she would be proud of my gardens. This is a Confederate Jasmine. Bottle brush. We have our first squash and they plants are blooming like crazy. This is a daylily that is a cross between a Leomnade and a Plum crazy. We don't have a name for it yet. This daylily is called Frankly Scarlett. This is Lantana that I picked one time when we were at a park down in Florida. I pulled up one little root and now I have a huge plant. This daylily is called ...

"Don’t look in the attic." Remember that movie? There were also “Don’t look in the basement”,” Don’t look under the stairs”, and “Don’t look behind you”. I was a horror movie junkie when I was younger. If I watched anything like that these days I would have nightmares. What about; “Don’t look in the back yard”? Remember that one? I remember it like it was yesterday. It wasn’t a movie; it was the story of my life as a child. My father was a saver. I am not talking about him being a lifesaver although as a fireman he was that as well. He had the mentality that a lot of people growing up in the depression era had that you should never, ever throw anything away because one day you just might need it. (might=probably won’t) Because of that, our backyard resembled a junkyard. Over the years that junk managed to work its way around to the sides of the house, into the garage and at times even into the front yard. Just picture Sanford and Son times 10. I spent many days cleaning and...

It's Thankful Thursday over at Truth for the Journey and I have so much to be thankful for, let me get started. 1. I am thankful for the rain we had last night. Our day lilies are getting close to blooming and this will be just the jumpstart that they need. 2. I am thankful for the birds that were singing as I left my house this morning and headed for the gym. I always love hearing the sounds of birds. 3. I am thankful for all my friends at the Gym. My attitude is rubbing off and everyone there is getting to know one another. Now when I come in, I am greeted with smiles and hearty good mornings. 4. I am thankful that I have a job to go to everyday and several more to keep me busy during the week. 5. I am thankful for lots of little things that keep me smiling even when I am surrounded by things that might otherwise get me down. Things like this shocking news that I heard this morning: "Swine Flu claims first celebrity. " The carrier has been identified!!! Have a great Tha...

One of the things we have been doing lately is weeding our plants. It takes a really long time to do it by hand. Of course we could use weed killer but are trying to stay as natural as possible so we don't. It is back breaking work but well worth it as our plants are really healthy. After I finished weeding tonight I decided to take a few more photos to share. These are sunflowers just getting started. The plants in the background are zinnias. We planted gourds to make bird houses but also just because we like them. My tomato plants are starting to get big and should have buds on them very soon. A little squash plant. And we have cucumbers on the vine already. This is called a society garlic. It smells like garlic when you brush against it so it helps keep animals out of the garden. And here are some of the potted day lilies that we have been weeding. Those are loquat trees in the background. As you know there is only one thing that really scares me and they love to live in th...

I know, I know I have been complacent in my blogging. I have been reading some of your blogs but I have been so busy that I haven't even stopped long enough to comment. Some blog buddy I am. Even the man in the moon hangs around more than I do. Friday golf. Tiger has nothing to be worried about. Let's just say that out of the 4 of us, I had the highest score and it wasn't even close. It was a great day though and any day off from work is a great day. Speaking of Tiger, Tigger Tiger likes to chase the golf balls when I am practicing in the front yard. Here he is waiting on the next shot. Saturday market was a success. After a wonderful breakfast wrap made by our Irish chef, we sold plants and wine like they were hotcakes. The lady selling hotcakes also said that they were selling like hotcakes. Now I promised Sara that I wouldn't blog about the strange sighting that we had on Saturday so I can't write about the guy wearing the flowery sun dress. I do keep my promises...