Patting Myself On The Back

I am proud of myself. I am doing good. I am doing what I need to do.

Yes, folks, right in the midst of harvest canning and preserving, lotsa work still to be done in the garden and yard, plenty of outside summer time tasks calling, planning and organization in getting geared up for fall chores and even doing a bit of work on the never-ending house remodeling, I am taking time to smell the roses.

I've been sitting and knitting. I've been in my quilt room working on (shhhh!) Christmas gifts. I have also been trying to do some reading in (gasp!) the middle of the day. But that's not working well because I keep falling asleep with the book in my lap.

Although I can easily be talked into doing some quilting any time, any day, at the drop of a thimble, lately my fingers have been itching to pick up the ol' knitting needles.

And so, that's what I've done.

I actually have two knitted projects started and am thinking seriously of another. The above pic shows the knit-from-the-top-down sweater I'm making for myself. A very simple stockinette stitch, open-fronted sweater to wear for that little extra warmth needed this winter. I'm planning wearing it over a turtleneck many days, if it turns out to be the comfortable sweater I hope it will be. The yarn I'm using is super-soft and has a nice, easy drape to it.

The sleeve stitches are on hold, waiting to be done when I finish the body of the sweater which I'm working on now.

The edge ribbing around the neck and down the front is picked up and knit when the body of the sweater is done.

I have to confess that all of the work on this sweater was not done while I was sitting on the front deck sipping iced mint tea. We made a supply run to the big city last Thursday and hubby was fine with doing all of the five hours of driving there and back so my time spent in the passenger seat flew by with my knitting needles happily clicking away.

Yep, I'm consciously concentrating on "letting" myself (leisurely) do things each day that I've put off (for way too many years) until "I have the time." I mean, duh! Just when do I think I'll "have the time?" When I'm 95 or 100 and don't have the energy to lace up my chore boots anymore? NOW is the time to start being nicer to myself. And I am.

Garden Bounty

I just collected thirteen of these beauties from the garden. (And they just keep comin'!)

We sure can't complain about our slicing cucumber crop this year! I had five plants spaced out in a 4 x 8' raised bed. Two of the plants mysteriously died just before bearing fruit, and it looks like the remaining three plants decided they had to make up for their fallen comrades!

Early Fall?

Ruth over at Hope, Joy and Faith Farm mentioned in her post this morning that on the southern Oregon coast where she lives fall seems to be arriving early this year.

I've had the same feeling about that in our neck o' the woods for a couple of weeks now.

Up here in northern Minnesota, we usually hit the middle of August when the temperatures at night suddenly turn and have a fallish kinda nip to them. This year it happened just about August first.

The few deciduous trees we have (we're primarily a pine forest) started turning color and even dropping a few leaves a couple of weeks ago. Now I know science tells us this phenomenon has everything to do with the amount of light during a day and nothing to do with temperature, but it still seems to be happening earlier this year to me.

The impatiens I plant in our flower boxes are already looking stressed and bedraggled.

Most years I feel badly about pulling them out of their boxes in the middle of October because they're still so lush and beautiful when I want to redo the boxes with fall foliage and miniature pumpkins. This year I think I'm gonna want to give them a decent burial long before that.

Who woulda thunk our super-hot summer would end so quickly and fall would come rushing in early?

Weighing In The Taters

I coerced Papa Pea into helping me dig up two rows of the potato patch this morning. These were the two rows that had gotten hit especially hard with blight and had virtually no vines left so I knew the potatoes in the soil weren't going to be doing any more growing.

I had dug up a portion of one of these rows a week or so ago to get some potatoes to eat because we haven't had any for ever so long, and I had a real hankering for some potato salad, plus my dear hubby had been dropping hints about how long it had been since we had had mashed potatoes and gravy. Potatoes have been selling at our organic co-op in town for $1.99 a pound and knowing I had some in the garden kept me from paying that. (I did get my potato salad after he got a meal of Swiss Steak, Mashed Potatoes and Gravy and Green Beans.)

I had taken 2-1/2 pounds when I raided the patch the other day and this morning we harvested another 9-1/2 pounds. So we got a total of 12 pounds from two rows each approximately 15 feet long. Admittedly, not a very good harvest.

The potatoes we sampled last week were solid, crisp and good flavored so these should be the same. The size has been disappointing though. I have a LOT of golf ball sized ones and only maybe three that I would call big. The rest are small to medium.

Now it'll be interesting to see what the other four rows in the patch yield. They will be our main crop of keepers for the winter . . . or as far into the winter as they will take us, so I'll leave them in the soil for a while yet.

A Short Garden Walk

Short because the skeeters were bitin' like crazy!

Have you ever seen so many green tomatoes? I really hope these don't all ripen at once. Heck, what am I saying? I just hope they ripen!

We be growin' some BIG pumpkins. So far, we be growin' some big, GREEN pumpkins. Not much orange showing on this one yet, huh?

This is my fall broccoli. Just barely reaches 5" tall. Not nearly as hale and hardy looking as Sue's fall broccoli. (Waaah!) Oh well. If we have a long fall, it just might make it yet. I only have sixteen servings (for two) of broccoli in the freezer from our main crop so I'd like to bump that number up a bit, if possible.

Not harvesting anything from the garden in the last couple of days except stealing a few onions for cooking. I'm giving beans away to anyone who will take them. I planted one fifteen foot row of green beans and one fifteen foot row of yellow wax beans and I cannot believe how prolific they have been this year. If nothing else, we can for sure chalk this up to a good bean year.

A Switcheroonie

After recently proclaiming that fall weather energizes me, today I was hit smack in the noggin with all that needs to be done around ye ol' homestead, both inside and out, before fall is plumb gone and Old Man Winter comes roaring onto the scene.

This has led to the disappearance of even a smidgeon of energy in my entire body and the appearance of something close to paralysis in the ability to do anything.

So what's the real problem here?

Seem to be in the summer, I'm perpetually trying to finish up chores I should have accomplished in spring.

Fall finds me scrambling to tie together a boatload of tasks I was sure I would get done in the summer.

Then winter . . .

Well, you see the pattern here.

Not intentionally meaning to sound ouchy and grouchy, just thinking out loud of changes I'd like to (need to) make because when I'm feeling that the hurrier I go, the behinder I get it doesn't leave much time for enjoying the here and now. (Wow, so insightful, Mama Pea, she says with eye roll.)

Well, there is no one who can make the changes but me. So I'm off to get ready for bed early, sit down with a glass of wine, paper and pencil and see if I can rearrange my less than satisfying modus operandi in order to regain some of that crisp, autumnal energy.