Seeing New Friends and Longer Term Friends

September 28, 2025

On September 25 (Thursday), I had invited some new friends for lunch. I went out to the garden and the back pasture to pick some foliage and flowers for a flower arrangement. The purple basil (purple leaves and flowers), sweet potatoes vines (heart shaped leaves) with flowers (purple trumpet flowers), goldenrod (yellow flowers), hairy clustervine (small blue flowers), hairy aster (small white flowers), and broom straw for height looked pretty to me, so that’s what I picked.

I made a flower arrangement for the table with the foliage and flowers.

For lunch, I made guacamole, flour tortillas, black beans, lime and cilantro rice, and steak fajitas with bell peppers and sweet onions. I heated tamales from El Tamalero in Aurora, CO. I put out salsa for those who wanted it. Our friends brought a strawberry cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory.

Bruce took them on a tour of the house while I and finished rolling out and cooking the flour tortillas. We all went on the property tour.

We had a great time! After eating, we hung out talking for a couple of hours.

On Friday (September 28), we drove to the Jules J Berta winery in Albertville, AL to meet with a couple of friends we made while we were fulltime RVing.

As we drove into the parking lot, we saw our friends getting out of their truck.

We followed the signs to the entrance and discovered it was outdoor or patio seating. The setting was very attractive.

The gift shop and wine sales were in one building and the kitchen was in another building.

The service was outstanding. They replaced the glass of wine Bruce spilled all over the table, concrete, and his shorts. He even managed to get some wine on my pants!

The wood fired pizza was excellent and the salad was delicious. If they weren’t two hours away, we’d go there all the time.

I asked if they did tours and the server said they didn’t do private tours, but we were welcome to walk around the vineyard.

After eating, we paid for our meal and walked around the vineyard.

The winery is moving to the building by the lake. The current location is the owner’s backyard and they want it back.

I drove home since Bruce had a glass of wine.

Once we got home, Bruce decided he could do some tree trimming along our south fence line. He cut several of the trees down at fence level.

We walked around the back pasture at sunset.