Chit-Chat on a Summer Evening

We have a niece and nephew visiting from California so our daily schedule is obviously different than usual.  But it's a good thing as we're doing some fun type things that we don't always seem to make the time for otherwise.

This isn't to say we haven't taken them up on their kind and very willing offers of "help" on projects that wait for no man . . . or visiting relatives.  Harvests from the garden, mowing and such can't be put off this time of year.  At least not for very long anyway.

Today I harvested and dehydrated a quart jar full of peppermint from the garden.  Yesterday we socked away a quart of parsley for winter use.  Tomorrow I know strawberries will have to be picked again and I think this batch will be made into more jam.  Most of the berries from last week were smooshed and frozen (without sugar), and we're hoping to try making some wine this winter with them.  Homemade strawberry wine?  That could become addicting.  (Or not . . . depending on our beginner's luck at wine making.)

We picked some of the haskap berries about a week ago.  We stopped after harvesting only about two cups of them because despite the fact that all berries on a bush are supposed to ripen at the same time, in our taste testing as we picked we found some of them were still much too sour! tarter than others.  But now we see they're starting to fall on the ground so methinks tomorrow they should be harvested.

Tomorrow dear daughter, niece and I will be meeting with an old friend.

When we first moved up here we lived in a leaky, cold, old, tin can of a mobile trailer which we moved from Illinois to our (empty) eighty acres.  One of our first construction jobs was a building we could use as a workshop for the gazillion building projects we had ahead of us.

Then dear daughter started to going to a Montessori school in town a couple of days a week when she was three years old because there were no other children near her age in the boonies where we lived and we wanted to provide some socialization for her.  The young gal who was an assistant at the school found herself in a position of desperately needing a place to live so we ended up remodeling our "workshop" into a cozy cabin for her.  She lived with us on the property for a couple of years before packing up her car and heading for new adventures on the East Coast where she ended up settling.  We've kept in touch over the years -- 40-some now -- and on the occasions when she makes the trek back to our area to visit we try to get together.

The other happy circumstance is that our niece, who came to spend several weeks with us the summer she was sixteen, and who formed a special bond with our friend, is here now also.  The two of them have not seen each other in those 40-some years, but will meet again tomorrow.  I have a feeling a lot of memories will be shared and old times relived.  It should be fun.  (And I hope not too embarrassing for me, the cranky, old, spoil-sport mother figure who probably, during that time long ago, may have been a little "hard" occasionally on her three girls!)