Offtopic pictures of things you love.

baymule said:

If I stopped spending money on our new place and saved up, we could do that next summer.

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August-September, the tourist rush is over then and the weather is still amazing. And the days are a wee bit shorter lol Mid-summer, June onwards we had midnight sunsets.

@sumi you are living in a fantastic area. A lot of us European descendants would love to take a trip back to where we came from. My ancestors were Scottish and came to the Americas in the early 1700's.

I am VERY fortunate to be able to live here! Really, hardly a day goes by that I don't say "thank you" and I've been here nearly a year now. My ancestors were the usual South African mix of German, French and Dutch, but so far I've only visited (and lived in, briefly) the Netherlands.

There is a lovely small (by castle standards) castle across the street from me where I live right now. I can't get a good angle on photographing it though as some genius put a shop in front of it and the owners put a huge gate next to that to keep people like me out If I go round the corner I can see it across the neighbours' yard, but when I explored that angle I got some funny looks from them, so I gave up!

Midnight sunsets? What is the weather the rest of the year?

Yes, you are truly blessed. I am so glad you got to Ireland, it must feel like a heavenly place to be.

04:30pm sunsets in winter But the climate is VERY mild in general and well... very wet! It rains here often, but thankfully not always heavily though we had some big storms and floods over November-December: http://www.rte.ie/news/2015/1117/742477-weather-storm-barney/

We moved 160 miles from a tiny city lot in Livingston, Tx to 8 acres north of Tyler, Tx to be close to our daughter, her husband and two daughters. And we will have another grand daughter to spoil in September! One of my favorite things to do is ride my horse and what better way to ride than with my oldest grand daughter?

These pictures were taken shortly after we moved and they serve to remind me that I need to ride more. The background has also changed considerably.

When we were looking for a place to buy, we looked at a stone house built in 1934 by the CCC. Civilian Conservation Corps. The CCC was a government program to employ young men doing public works. If I remember right, they were paid $5 a week, with most of it sent home to their parents. They built schools and parks, right here in this area, they terraced fields to prevent erosion and planted trees. There is an elementary school in town where the CCC built a stone fence around it. Anyway, we found their headquarter buildings on 15 acres that was fantastic. But the house was in such a state of disrepair that it would have taken a small fortune to restore it and we didn't have a couple hundred thousand to spend on it. It needed foundation work, plumbing, electrical, none of which we knew how to do. The whole thing needed to be gutted and done over. We still wish we could have bought it and restored it.









Sorry about the pictures being sideways. I have many talents, none of which are technical. Here's a close up of the stone work. The stone is a type of iron ore, which is plentiful here.



We found a stone fireplace surrounded by a stone foundation that we figured must have been the barracks for the young men.



This was close to the end of the house, had a dirt floor and was very cool, compared to the heat outside. We figured that it must have been used to hang meat in to feed the camp.

Love the pics, Bay!

Wonderful pics and history @baymule I love old stone buildings. It's a pity some of them are so expensive to to repair and restore their former glory though, that would be an incredible project.

My main problem for doing things that I love is I STILL don't have my truck! I can't haul my trailer and there's no place to really ride on the farm. And I can't throw my canoe on top of my Dad's Blazer and even if I could get it up on the Jeep, I wouldn't. It's a lease, so I don't want to chance scratching it up.