The Fourth Night of Chanukkah, 12'22

 

On the Forth Night of Chanukkah 

my true love gave to me

 a plate of 4 potato latkes, with sour cream, and applesauce

to be eaten

by the light of

four candles glowing

on the menorah. 

It doesn't get much more romantic than that!

Candle lighting on the Third Night of Chanukkah: 12 '22

 

Chag Sameach, Happy 2nd Night of Chanukkah: 12 '22

Chag Sameach!

Happy Second Night of Chanukkah

And for dinner we had 

prime rib, corn, and baked potato puffs with 

and apple dumplings for desert.

Happy First night of Chanukkah: 12 '22

 This year, Chanukkah falls, as it often does, right atop the Christmas Holiday

In 2022, the first of the eight days of this important Jewish Holiday

 starts at sundown on December 18th 

and runs through to end at sundown on December 26th.

On each of these nights, we light a candle on the menorah 

and recite a prayer from a prayer book  Bruce has carried with him for all of his adult life.

Then we have a feast. 

at our Chanukkah decorated table

The Tree and all its trimmings are up : 12 '22

Our Christms tree is  finally up and spreading cheer and goodwill  throughout the house.

Everything seems to be moving in slow motion this year. We had all the indoor trimmings out and waiting to put up on our Xmas tree by December 1st.   It was just that we were halfway through the month of December, (and almost into the first night of Chanukkah), before we finally found where we had stored our Christmas Tree.  

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas: 12'22

 We usually have the front of our home decorated for Christmas by December 1,

This year rain (and other matters beyond our control) conspired to delay the process.

It took us a while to locate all the ornaments we brought from Pawleys Island,

and a while longer to decide how to best display them in our much larger front yard,  

But now we have found places for them all in our new home.

I must say we are very pleased with the way 

the display turned out.

Fall Foliage: 12/22

 This is the first time in my life, that I have lived in a home

 that is surrounded by seasonal color,

Looking North in our backyard

 and I must say, I am loving the fall foliage.

Looking Southfrom our backyard

Looking west

Of course, there is a downside...

I think it may take me until 2023 to get all of the leaves 

that have fallen raked up

and 

into the compost pile.

Thanksgiving Dinner 11'22

    Thanks iving Dinner for 2022

was

Roast Duck

Herbed Stuffing with  Mushroom Gravy 

Green Beans  with mushrooms and fried onion crisps

Roasted Sweet Potatoes

Cranberry Orange Compote

followed by 

Pumpkin Pie  l mode 

(The pie is  not shown

because we were too full to eat it)

Getting ready forThanksgiving in our new home 2022

There's a Thanks giving party happening in our front yard

nd everyone is  welcome

Even Tom Samoset is back to greet you!

 

First Halloween in our new home 10 '22

Usually, we have our Halloween decorations up by the first weekend in October, but this year, we had trouble locating all of the decorations.

But I think we finally have both the inside and the outside decorated.

And when we finally did find them,  

it took us a while to find appropriate spots for everything.

  Some of you may recognize a few of the characters that used to hang around Pawleys.

Yes, Most of them are still with us.

But there are also a whole new set of characters floating around

Now, all we have to do is wait for the kids to arrive at our door.  There are not many children living in our neighborhood, and there's a big Halloween Party for kids going at our Ashley River Park this weekend, so I don't really know how many trick-or-treaters will show up on Halloween night.

Bruce and I are prepared to hand out candy to any one who does show up.

Ashley River Park 8 '22

I've mentioned a couple of times that our new home is located near

 one of the Ashley River Parks.

It is one of the newest  Parks in the Ashleley River Park System and provides an impressive set of recreational offerings available to the public.

Unlike the first Ashley River Park we visited , Boating is not a major focus of this park.

While there is a boat launch on the premise, 

most of the facilities are not watercraft oriented.

There is a large childrens play ground bordered by picnic shelters on each side  so that the young ones can burn off some energy, while their parents relax in the shade.

Much of the equipment is state of the art in terms ofphysical education.  I swear a four-year-old could  safely train to compete for American Ninja Warrior  in this play ground.

There is also a splash park to help the kids cool off during

 our hot and muggy Southern Summer months.

(and may to keep them from trying to cool off in one of the larger fishing ponds).

Of course, there are  also  some spots set aside for the fur babies,

both large and small.

For more mature residents, the park has a  concert stand

 that surrounded by a huge lawn which  can accomodate a huge audience.

Beyond the concert area, is a huge freshwater fishing pond

with lots of docks for fishing. It's all catch an release of, course, 

but try to tell that to this guy , 

or any of the osprey that are buidling nests in the man-made

 Osprey nesting stands adjacent to the ponds.

And of course like all  of the Ashley River parks, there are miles  of walking trails

both through the park,

 and continuing on along the banks of the Ashley River to the next park in the series.

Visiting with the neighbors to the east: 8'22

Every morning at sunrise we are awakened by the sound of owls hooting in the trees in our backyard and shortly after we are reminded to get up by the sound of a rooster crowing, hens cackling, and geese honking.

We haven't really been able to walk past our back fence to see what the neighborhood behind us is like because there is a small creek and wildlife corridor  running along the rear property line of our neighborhood which creates a physical barrier between our housing development and the homes due west of us. So today we decided to hop in the car and find out where that damn rooster lives.  

Using our GBS mapping application, it did not takes us very much time to get to the street nearest to the back of our home,   but even knowing that we were standing directly behind our home, we found it hard to see our home through all the trees and shrubbery along the creek and in our backyard.

When we had first moved in at the beginning of Summer, the creek was quite noisy with the sound of rushing water,

The creek's water level has dropped enough over the summer that it is now now more of a small , quiet spring gently flowing through a wildlife corridor that is filled with native semi-tropical wetland plants.  It is really quite pretty and it does form a natural privacy screen.

Because of a very tall wooden fence around the back yard of the home nearest our yard, we never could see any of the chickens or the geese, but we could definitely hear them.  Judging by the number of fruit trees and other edible plants I could see overhanging the fence, the owner of this property is very into self-sufficiency farming.

He wasn't alone.  

We spotted several other homes in that housing development that were growing massive fruit and vegetable gardens.  I loved it!

A Paradise in the Making

The interior of this home was in good shape when we moved in  but all the yards were badly in need of trimming.  The first week we were here, Bruce dived right in and began trimming all of the trees in the backyard so they weren't smacking us in the face every time we stepped outside.

All fourteen of them!  

We have a forest of deciduous trees in our backyard.

Meanwhile, I (CC) tackled cleaning up the front yard.

The front yard area does not have as many trees as the backyard has.

There's just one large silver palm in the center of the lawn,

and 

five (5) mature Cycads are scattered in the front flower beds.

BUT

none of these plants looked like they had ever been trimmed!

AND

There were massive fire-ant mounds all over the front lawn and flowerbeds.

It took both Bruce and I  two weeks to get all of the  Virginia Creeper pulled off of the silver palm tree,

 and it took me another week to remove all of the dead fronds skirting the cycads.

Meanwhile, we were both engaged in a constant battle with the fire-ant colonies that had taken up residence all over the front yard.  TBD who is winning that war; every time I think they're gone, we find a new fire ant's nest.

The previous tenant had used two sideyards on either side of the house as utility storage areas

The yard on the North side of the property (above)  was covered from the fence to the house with a healthy (but badly overgrown) St Augustine lawn.

I plan on making this area a cut-flower garden and have been carefully removing 18" of the healthy turf from along the fence and house walls to make room for the new flowering plants. 

The yard on the Southside of the property (shown above) appears to have been used as parking for a boat &/or a recreational vehicle. This area was supposed to be covered from the fence to the house with St Augustine grass but instead has a large area adjacent to the house that is barren and void of anything but weeds. We are planning to turn this into a small raised bed vegetable garden. So far, we have managed to weed and covered the barren area with landscape cloth.  Then we moved all of the potted herbs that we brought with us onto the landscape cloth. 

As you can see from the photos above, we haven't put many plants in the ground. Virtually all of the plants we brought with us from Pawleys Island remain in the pots we brought them in, as are all of the new plants we have purchased since we came here.

In part that is because we are still waiting to determine how much sunlight and/ or shade different areas get,  so they will all have a suitable light exposure.  We also are waiting to determine how much difference there is in rainfall between Summerville and Pawleys so we can figure out how much watering we will need to do in different portions of the yard. (There aren't any sprinkler systems for any of the yards).

Even though our yard is not yet the lush garden of Eden we are envisioning it will become, we are pleased with the progress we are making, and our new neighbors are ecstatic that we are keeping everything so trim and tidy.  That alone is a huge improvement in their minds.