Hot, hot, hotter....

Now that yesterday's rain is gone, we're back to our 100-degree days. There have been days since moving here in mid-May when the temperature got up to 108.... totally broiling outside. We don't have the Gulf breezes that we had in Clear Lake, and being that we're in the middle of all these acres, there is nothing to absorb the heat except for our house and property.

Friends from Clear Lake have visited..... ooohing and aaahing over the house and the fields. We are still pinching ourselves, and I say that out loud all the time. It is amazing to me to look out of all our windows and see nothing but land that we own.

Speaking of windows, there are 52 in this house, plus four in The Cottage, and six in the guest rooms of The Barn. Plus doors all over the place leading to the outside..... 8 in the house, two in The Cottage, two in The Barn. The Cottage is cozy, shabby-chic, very cottage-y. The Barn is purely Texas..... two bedrooms, living room, bathroom, full kitchen on the second floor of a huge barn that was built to hold farming equipment and livestock. The Barn holds nothing except all the Texas-country decor and furnishings on the second floor. We are not into farming equipment and livestock. Not yet. (I have learned to never say never.)

The previous owners lived in the upstairs of The Barn for two years while they were renovating this house. Built in 1907, they moved it here from a nearby town, and set it down on this hill overlooking the 23 acres. This prairie-style Victorian farm house was lovingly updated and fitted with central air-conditioning and all the nice stuff that makes for comfortable living, but the integrity of its 1907 history is all intact, complete with original stained glass windows, original wood flooring, a grand staircase, and original cupboards in the kitchen and dining room.

I knew from the minute I saw this house that it was meant to be for us. The wrap-around porch, the columns, the porch railing.... so much of this house is similar in style to the house I grew up in, back in Woodhaven. So many years ago.... a life-time ago. Millions of memories ago.

This house has a good feeling to it...... I knew that the minute we walked into it. During other house-hunting searches, I would walk right out of houses that didn't feel good. I can't explain it, but I can sense it when I feel it.... and out I would walk, not wanting to see anything else in those houses.

We are very much at home here, and I'm hoping and praying that we never have to move again. This move was a big one..... it totally exhausted and overwhelmed me for so many weeks. While my husband was out and about meeting neighbors and shopping for groceries, I stayed right here and unpacked all the boxes that I packed back in Clear Lake. Over 200 of them. When I think of those boxes now, it's hard to believe that the unpacking is all done. This is a larger house than we had in Clear Lake, so the furniture and everything else is arranged in more rooms...... and everything looks as if it's always been here.

But....... the heat..... and the lack of rain. That's been exhausting as well. Such high temperatures really wear you down. We've been trying to get errands done in the morning, so when the sun really kicks in around noon-time, we're back here and not broiling in the middle of the Wal-Mart parking lot.

About the only thing that gets us outside in the heat of the afternoon is when the neighbor's goats jump the fence and start munching on the grass on our property. I don't care that they're nibbling on the tall grasses out there..... I just don't want them in our backyard or in our garage.... they will eat "anything not nailed down," according to our neighbor D. I don't want to walk outside one morning and find goat teeth-marks in the porch furniture or the little green frog statue by our back door..... and don't even let me think about goat footprints on top of my car, for goodness sake.

When we were in Navasota yesterday, a few people sitting around one of the antique shops were talking about goats. One man said that his wife should quit naming the goats, because the goats tended to die as soon as she figured out a name for them. He didn't seem to care that the goats kicked the proverbial bucket, however, because he had some good "family hand-me-down recipes" for goat stew.

Goat stew for dead-in-the field goats. A frying pan for non-egg-laying chickens. And did I tell you the one about having white ceramic eggs in and around the hen house to keep the snakes away? The snakes will swallow those heavy ceramic eggs and then slither away and die because they can't digest those heavy unnatural eggs. Nice. Sort of a humane way to kill off the snakes that might kill your chickens.

This is where the theme song for "Green Acres" starts going through my mind, but I refuse to sing it out loud anymore.