Jiggedy Jig!

Well, I know it's been a week since I posted, but I've been really busy! We left for Nashville on Thursday morning - the day that the TSA decided that toothpaste is extremely dangerous. The lines at the airport were really long in Cleveland, but we made it to our gate with time to spare.

We checked into the Opryland Hotel with no particular plans, but we still managed to find plenty of things to keep us busy! We went to Opry Mills Mall in the afternoon, where Dad found a pirate Pooh: Thursday evening we went to The Cock of the Walk for dinner, and we managed to get caught in the heaviest rain to hit Nashville in quite a while! The food was really good, and they had a giant rocking chair where you could channel Edith Ann to your heart's content:
On Friday, Mom and Michelle went back to the mall, and Dad, Rick, Kevin and I went out looking for historical things. We started off at The Parthenon

and it was extremely impressive! When somebody tells you that there's a 42 foot tall statue inside, it doesn't really hit how HUGE that is - until you see it! The gilding work on Athena was just astounding. From there, we went to Belle Meade Plantation. This was a 5400 acre horse farm in the 1800's, and the house and outbuildings were very interesting to tour. I forgot to take any pictures of the grounds (no pictures allowed in the house), but I did capture this in the parking lot:

On Saturday, the six of us went to The Hermitage. Again, no pictures in the house, but I did remember to use my camera on the grounds this time. Andrew Jackson himself was sitting on the back porch, and reminded me to please vote for him

The tomb of Andrew and Rachel Jackson was surrounded by beautiful flower gardens

Opryland had different "events" going on during our stay. You could see an aerialist

"Divine" was dressed as a giant vine, and wandered around slowly on her stilts throughout part of the day

And there were Chinese Acrobats (she's doing this on a stack of 9 chairs, which are balance on 4 wine bottles...)

The flowers and waterfalls were gorgeous

and I gained a few pounds from all of the rich food. :-) We came home Sunday - we were tired, but we had a great time!

When I came home, I discovered that my garden had exploded in the 4 days that I was gone (it must have been the toothpaste). I have beans and tomatoes everywhere, and I dug up my Yukon Gold potatoes and planted more for fall

I made zucchini muffins (within 10 minutes of taking them out of the oven, the plate was reduced from a dozen to 9...and by this morning, they're gone)

And I also picked these yesterday:

Please note - I live in Northeast Ohio. Okra isn't supposed to do very well here because it needs a longer growing season. I bought the shorter season seeds, but I'm not supposed to have anything ready until at least the middle of next month. Tell that to my 4' tall plants, though - it's been a really hot summer! In very short order, they became part of last night's dinner:

I've been plugging away on the wrap sweater - the sleeves are almost done. Pictures later. :-) I also finished the first skein (approx 150 yards) of the fleece that Jinny gave me, and I'm finished with one bobbin of the second - I should be able to get at least 3 skeins from the fleece

Right now I'm making a giant pot of bean and bacon soup to put up in quarts for the winter, and tonight I'm going to can more beans. School starts next week (UGH!), so I need to put up everything I can while I have the time!