Bragg Family South

Lil' dirty face Stephen plays with Bella and Draco... As you can see in the picture above, we've continued to get considerable rainfall this month. This picture is at the Isgrig archeological site I've been working at, and each of those square depressions are excavation units we've been working (some more than others). The picture below is of a potsherd I found the other weekend, notable because of the handle on the rim (by my index finger). This is an unusual attribute to the pottery around here, making this an interesting find... My diggin ' isn't the only big even--Kenny FINALLY lost his final front tooth, after resisting our attempts to pull it for weeks. Towards the end, it was dangling by a thread, and Kenny was not eating properly because it was uncomfortable to eat. Finally, one morning in the guise of some play wrestling, I pinned him to the couch, and Hope raced in to "tickle" him, only to snatch that loose tooth out of his mouth! K...

You ever have one of those days when you just shouldn't have gotten out of bed and gone to work? I'm sure the skidder driver from the picture above wishes he had just stayed home the day he buried his skidder in the mud. I took the picture above today while driving around town following our recent spate of wet, stormy weather. After a largely wet summer (with the noticeable exception of 7+ inches of rain in July), we looked to be in for a dry fall, with little rain in August or the first couple weeks of September. However, since September 12 we have gotten over 18 inches of rain, including 4.2 inches of rain yesterday!! It was raining so hard that many local roads were covered in water, and they let Kenny's school out early to make sure kids could get home safely (especially for the rural bus routes). In addition, yesterday's downpour hastened the demise of the old building pictured below: This building (currently vacant) is on the downtown square, and I suspect...

Don't let the lushness of the picture above fool you--what you are looking at is one of the many scourges of the South--the infamous kudzu! This exotic legume (a plant related to peas and beans) was brought over from Asia decades ago to do what you see it doing here--it was used to keep areas from eroding away. It does this wonderfully, but as you see on the trees in the background, kudzu doesn't know when to quit. It grows rapidly and thickly, smothering out vegetation (even full sized trees) and covering buildings, cars, roads, etc. I took this picture along a highway in Mississippi, while I was driving to Georgia and Florida for my recent week-long business trip. Our first stops in southern Georgia (I was on a tour of southern forestry practices for silviculture instructors) focused on longleaf pine management. Below is a picture of some old-growth longleaf pine: Longleaf pine is an important species in much of the South, although it only covers a few percent of...

Kenny's expression above is priceless--even if a bit goofy. As you can tell, he's happy to be fishing with his dad and grandfather Rich Pruden (aka Bumpa ). I haven't posted in a while, so I've got some odds and ends images to post. Below are two pictures (taken with my cell phone, so the picture quality isn't good) of the minor fender-bender I was in a couple weeks ago. While I was waiting for traffic to move at a stop sign, a small car had neglected to stop (low speed, fortunately) and bumped the small maroon Chevy pick-up behind me, pushing him into my rear bumper. You can see the damage was notably worse for his vehicle than mine: Believe it or not, my bumper actually did get bent a little bit, just to the right of the receiver hitch. The Chevy truck's damage is likely to run into the thousands of dollars, and mine is actually more costly than you'd think--they would need to replace the bumper and the plastic on the top to the tune of almost $70...

We are all about big changes this week... The first ones are apparent in the pictures above. We finally got serious looking at finding replacements for our beloved Mooch, who was put down earlier this year following a long illness. After a couple failed attempts at getting cats (don't get us started about that debacle), we finally got a call from a local vet that they had cats to give away (we've brought stray kittens into this vet for years, and she's always found homes for them). We went over to look at them one day this week. The three young kittens she had were REALLY timid and scared around Beth and Stephen, and obviously were a bit on the feral side. However, Judy had some older kittens that were much better around people. The grey tabby on the top is Kenny's cat, a male he named "Draco" ( hmmm .... a Harry Potter inspiration, eh?), and the calico on the bottom is Beth's cat, a female she named "Bella". Both cats seem to be adjust...

Here's Beth and some of her compatriots at the beginning of preschool this year. Beth did so well in preschool last year that we knew we'd have to get her in it again this year. Because she's in the older class, she now goes three days a week during the mornings. We've gradually worked back into our late summer routine, with both kids going to school and Hope and I trying to get used to a new routine. Another end of summer happening is the appearance of these garden spiders, or orb-weaver spiders: This large, beautiful spider has taken up residence on our shed in the backyard, and we hope she catches a whole bunch of bugs... Here's Stephen's megawatt smile: And here's Kenny's, which is a few watts shorter... Note the missing tooth... As proud as he is about now having lost it, it was a BEAR to get out. It dangled loose in his mouth for a couple weeks and no amount of persuading or our attempting to turn it out did much good. It finally got so ...