A Very Rainy Memorial Day Weekend

May 26, 2025

Today is Memorial Day in the United States. It is a time to pause and remember those who died in the service of our country.

Memorial Day is also the unofficial start of the summer. Public swimming pools, amusement parks and water parks open.

In the United States, Memorial Day is considered a family holiday with picnics and BBQs. I took out some pork ribs from the freezer for Memorial Day. That will be our Memorial Day dinner.

And now, for a completely unrelated topic, lots of rain….

Here, in the community of Ford City, Alabama, which has the mailing address of Muscle Shoals, we’ve had one thunderstorm after another roll through.

The storm on May 20th that took down three of our pine trees spawned at least 16 tornados in North Alabama. A tornado that touched down just a mile to the north of us, tore a 17.74 mile track to the east. Fortunately, there were no serious injuries.

We had several beautiful sunny days in the high 70’s and low 80’s degrees F after the brutal weather on Tuesday.

On Friday night (May 23), the rain started. It rained most of Saturday. It stopped in the early evening. We had a beautiful sunset.

Since I couldn’t do anything outside, I decided to try a cooking experiment. I have been wanting cinnamon rolls. Unfortunately, they take so long to make, they just aren’t feasible to make to eat them hot from the oven for breakfast.

After some thought, I decided to use a recipe for All Butter Angel Biscuits to make cinnamon rolls. I made the dough and put it in the refrigerator to use on Sunday morning.

On Sunday (May 25), I rolled out the dough, folded it and rolled it out to 1/2 inch. I cut 6 biscuits out of the end. I cut off the scraps from the end and gathered them into a pile. I set the pile aside and rolled the dough to 1/4 inch. I spread butter on the dough, sprinkled cinnamon sugar over it, rolled it up, pinched it closed, rolled the roll back and forth to make sure the pinched dough stayed closed and cut it the roll into cinnamon rolls. I placed the cinnamon rolls on a parchment lined baking sheet and baked until brown in a 400 F degree oven.

While the cinnamon rolls were baking, I rolled out the scraps and cut a few more biscuits out. I put the biscuits in the freezer to bake another day.

The cinnamon rolls came out well. Next time I do this, I’ll cut wider buns (rolls) when cutting the roll. I didn’t put frosting on the rolls since that makes them too sweet for Bruce.

Sunday morning wasn’t raining, so we took the opportunity to unload the bagged dirt from the truck by the gardens.

Walmart texted that my medications were ready. We went into town, got lunch out, watched it pour rain while we ate, drove to Walmart and picked up my medicine. It had stopped raining by the time we picked up my medicine, so we drove to Lowe’s and picked up some more bagged dirt.

On the way home, I took some pictures of the wheat fields, golden as they ripen.

When we got home, Bruce drove the truck into the back yard. The yard was soaked from the recent downpour and the truck’s tires wanted to spin. Bruce immediately put the truck into 4 wheel drive and slowly made the way back to the garden area. We unloaded the dirt and Bruce put the truck into garage.

The truck left tracks in the backyard. Sigh!

I spent some time tying up the tomatoes. While tying up the tomatoes, I discovered one of the cherry tomatoes was red, but not ripe yet.

I pulled up weeds from the garden. The vegetables and weeds are growing great.

I weeded the peppers in the buckets. I have been leaving the clover to grow in the buckets. I don’t consider it a weed as such. I found a four leaf clover.

The peppers in the buckets are growing very well. I am impressed!

I excitedly told Bruce about the almost ripe tomato when I went inside. Later, when walking around the yard and garden, Bruce wanted to see the tomato. He was just as excited as I was to see a tomato almost ready to eat!

It rained some more and then thunderstorms rolled through during the night with lots of rain.

So far today, we’ve had a light rain, currently cloudy and now it is overcast, with thunderstorms expected later.