Tired

I've been awake the past two nights from about 1:30 a.m. to 4:30 a.m. Can I blame it on the (almost) full moon?

Tonight I am feelin' tired. My wagon is draggin'. (It's a produce wagon. Haha.)

'Tis the time of year when I begin to fear the garden and harvests from the garden are taking over my life.

I'm so grateful our house stays relatively cool inside. But it's way too hot outside.

It's so hot outside that I had to pace myself all day so I didn't pass out between the beans and squash.

Not much energy to expend, but things had to be done.

Currently blueberries need to be picked every other day.

Raspberries need to be picked every other day, sometimes every day.

I picked and processed shell peas again today. I may get one more picking and then they will be done.

I got the first picking of green beans today.

I could have/should have picked yellow beans this afternoon, but I ran out of time . . . and gas. Have I mentioned I'm tired? And it's so hot out there. I promised the yellow beans I'd get to them tomorrow.

After a hot shower and fresh jammies, I think I'll feel better. Maybe I'll even have enough energy to make my list for tomorrow . . . and crawl into bed. And sleep straight through the whole night. I hope.

Start Of Week, End of Month

Two more days and the whole month of July is gone, gone, gone. Is this summer going by fast or what? Even though a lot of us have been bemoaning the crummy gardening season, the over-abundance of heat and humidity and are ready for this summer to be history, there are still many things around here that need to get accomplished before nasty weather arrives making it too difficult to work outside . . . or inside (painting, polying) without windows wide open for good ventilation. Guess this all means I need to shift into a higher gear and sprint (shuffle faster) toward the finish line.

Hubby and I painted inside the garage yesterday. He stayed with it nearly the whole day but I only worked there 'bout half the day. I had peas to process and freeze, raspberries to pick and raspberry juice to make.

There are now ten servings of garden peas in the freezer. Many thanks to my daughter for helping me shell the peas Saturday night. Not a bad job at all when you have good help and conversation to speed things along.

I had nearly a gallon of raspberries and I hope I didn't waste them. Since Papa Pea loves canned raspberries for the juice left in the jar(!), I decided to try to make raspberry juice so he can guzzle as much as his little heart desires.

Combining a few recipes I found on the good ol' Internet, I made what is supposed to be raspberry concentrate. For a delicious (hopefully) raspberry fruit juice drink, it's to be diluted with three or four parts of water. I got just short of 6 pints of the concentrate. The pint that was a smidge short is in the refrigerator and we'll sample it this morning with breakfast. Fingers crossed it's good stuff.

We had a couple of storms roll through yesterday afternoon. Our rain gauge collected right around 3/4" of rainfall. Then overnight we got another 7/10ths of an inch. We were getting mighty dry again so all of this moisture is good to have.

Saturday I planted two beds of fall crops. One bed of broccoli and another of kohlrabi, lettuce and chard. I still want to put in some radishes, which I love, but will wait a while longer before planting those. If I could find enough room somewhere I'd plant some more shell peas, too.

Even though a lot has been disappointing in the garden, I can't complain about my kohlrabi. Kohlrabi likes to grow in cool weather and the faster it matures (usually around 45 days), the more tender, crisp and good-flavored it is. Mine that is just coming mature now was planted April 29th right before it turned really warm up here. So it has been growing in not just warm but very hot weather. It should have been ready to eat around the middle of June. Here it is the end of July and it is just big enough to harvest. BUT darned if the stuff isn't sweet and tender and we're enjoying some almost every day. Go figure.

The recent rain has brought our temperatures down a little which is a welcomed relief. Cooler temps are in our forecast for the next week and I don't think anyone will complain if that actually comes to pass.

POSTSCRIPT: We did try the raspberry concentrate with our breakfast this morning. It didn't look thick to me so I made two sample glasses: One mixed with two parts water and one mixed with three parts water. We both agreed we think we can go with even more water so I'll try four to one next.

And the flavor? Lip-smackin' good! Score one for our side. I think I've got some good raspberry juice here. Maybe I should try making some blueberry juice next? (Heck, maybe I should finally buckle down and learn how to make WINE with this luscious fresh fruit!)

Life Is Just A Bowl Of Berries

Oh, num-num-num-num! The strawberries may be over and done with but now we have blueberries and raspberries. And we've been enjoying eating them fresh a couple of times a day.

After our classy (not) dinner tonight of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, we each had a bowl of berries with half cream, half milk. Papa Pea chose to mix blueberries and the luscious golden raspberries.

Me? I stuck with my favoritest . . . red raspberries. Can't beat 'em.

Sure, I work pretty hard at different times of the year to insure we have as good a crop of berries as Mother Nature will allow. But it's all worth it when we sit down to fresh berries that were on the bush less than an hour ago. Mmmm-mm!

A Discombobulated Day

Ever have one of those days that didn't go in the least bit the way you planned it would? "Course you have. Keeps life interesting. Or makes you tear your hair out. It's all in the way we handle it. (Handling it in the "better" way is sometimes more difficult than others.)

The good part of this day was that it drizzled lightly on and off all day. The rain gauge shows 4/10ths of an inch now a little before 7 p.m. More moisture (yay!). We'll take all we can get. Wish I could route some of it to those of you who still need it so badly.

Another day when I didn't get out to do the garden tour to blog about. Sigh. I will get it done one of these days. Just so I'd have a picture or two to include with this post, I tritzed out through the wet, wet grass and took these three shots.

This is a beautiful, healthy looking mound of pumpkin leaves. I can't figure out why it's staying so "all together" and refusing to send out vining tendrils.

The red kuri squash planted at the same time is running all over the place.

My experimental corn is doing very well. It's tasseled out and even has little ears of corn forming! I know this probably is far behind those of you growing corn down in the Banana Belt where you don't have any trouble getting yours to mature, but for us up here in the North, it's lookin' good.

Tomorrow is mapped out to be a very busy day. Hubby and I have errands to run in the morning including going to look at some black dirt we may invest in. The new raised beds we are putting in are deeper than the previous old ones and although we'll add compost to them this fall, some more dirt wouldn't hurt either.

Early afternoon will find me driving about twenty miles down the road to get some upholstery sample books so I can start making forward progress thinking about living room furniture.

Tomorrow night is Girls' Night Out for catch-up time with some friends. I'm pretty sure I'll have to fit harvesting blueberries and raspberries in the day somewhere, too. I haven't checked carefully, but some of my shell peas look as though they might be filled out enough for picking also.

Even if some raspberries would have to be sacrificed (by more rain that is forecast), that wouldn't be the worst thing because we still need the moisture. We'll just take whatever comes tomorrow and deal with it. In a good way.

Just A Quickie

They said we were going to get a nice rain last night . . . and we did! I just checked the rain gauge and it measured an honest two inches.

The rain has stopped now, although the forecast is for more all day today. Earlier this morning while it was still coming down, I had to put on rain gear and go walk through the garden.

It always amazes me how much a garden appreciates good, ol', natural rain. I am positive everything has grown about six inches overnight!

The inside of the house is quite dark this morning. A situation we haven't experienced in ever so long. No bright (HOT) sunlight shining in. I've put on little lights and lamps and it creates quite a cozy atmosphere.

Granddog Tucker looks like he's ready for a relaxing kinda day. (Is he giving me the Evil Eye for waking him?)

If the weather stays this way all day, I have big expectations for getting my desk cleared and caught up on correspondence. Fingers crossed that will happen . . . owhhi teb euyysat . . . but it's really hard to type that way.

Not Bragging

The following list of what I did today is not meant to impress you. It is meant as therapy for me so that I can learn to be content with what I get done in a day's time and quit feeling like I could/should have done more.

First thing this morning I decided that instead of crossing items off my rather (ahem) extensive To Do List, I would simply write down what I did all day.

* Put away dried dishes from last night while making my morning latte.
* Checked e-mail and drank my latte.
* Fixed and consumed breakfast.
* Picked 2/3 of the blueberries.
* Stopped to go up to the farm and get milk.
* Bottled milk and started a batch of cottage cheese.
* Did dishes from breakfast along with containers from milk.
* Finished picking remainder of blueberries.
* Picked all the raspberries.
* Finished ironing I was too tired to get done last night.
* Got some "old" towels from storage in back shed that are in better shape than the towels we're currently using.
* Prepped and ate lunch.
* Watered window boxes and flowers in pots.
* Finished making the cottage cheese.
* Tossed old flowers in vases and cut new ones.
* Emptied drip pans in two refrigerators.
* Cut up last third of watermelon.
* Put resurrected towels in washing machine.
* Sat and talked with daughter when she popped in for her (2 p.m. to 3 p.m.) lunch hour.
* Readied two raised beds for fall planting.
* Put towels in drier - too lazy to put up clothes lines and hang outside.
* Sat at computer and ordered a new supply of audio tapes from the library for hubby and for me.
* Neighbor stopped over on her way home from work to pick up raspberries and blueberries I had for her. Visited a short while.
* Ate dinner of leftover cold pasta salad.
* Planted kale and lettuce in raised beds.

Now that I see it all written down, I admit I did accomplish a lot. And I'll bet if any of you made a list of everything you did of a day's time, it would be much like mine.

How did I do on my To Do List? Not so good. There remain six important things I didn't get close to doing. And I still have dishes to wash again tonight. (See? That's what I have got to stop focusing on! The things not done. Professional therapy may have to be involved.)