Archive for the ‘Just Thoughts’ Category
September 1st, 2010 | 
Author: I can’t believe that it is September 1st already! This summer seems to have flown bye so quickly. In some ways it wasn’t quite the summer I had thought it would be. The year started off with heat waves in March, sooo not normal for us. Early summer was very dry, with gardens needing to be watered almost daily. Then the rains started… And seemed never ending for much of the summer. I think I lost count on how many times our gardens were flooded. We lost some things, like the new potato patch and 100 or so tomato plants and others were stunted. But other things did quite well! The huckleberries are loaded with fruit, potatoes in the dryer gardens have done nicely. Despite the squash bugs, the zucchinis yielded very well to.
I’m still working canning my way through the garden. We should be digging up the potatoes for storage in another week or two. I really am looking forward to Fall and Winter! I’m ready for a quieter time of year.
I haven’t been on here much lately. In between the gardens and canning, I’ve been reorganizing the house. Sorting, packing and purging. And lots of school lesson plans to! I’ll share a little about them latter. 
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This past week we’ve been fighting a flu like bug. It really knocked Hubby, ds and myself for a loop. The girls were a little sick as well. Thankfully it didn’t last long, although I’m still fighting it. I’m sure if I can get enough rest it will pass quickly.
Wednesday we had a cold front move through. Thankfully the heavy rain and storms staid south of us! I was finally well enough to head out to the garden this afternoon. I did a lot of weeding, still have much more to do before I will be caught up. But weeds or not, the garden is producing great!
I harvested a large bowl of cucumbers, 4 more zucchinis and our first cabbage. Then from the children garden we harvested more cucumbers, a few purple beans and cherry tomatoes.
Huckleberry’s
Okra finally starting! This will be our first time growing and eating this. Anyone have good recipes I can try?
Eggplant flower, I think they are pretty!
Sunflowers starting to bloom in the kids garden!
Well today was a busy day on the homestead. Today I canned 7 pints of pickled beets and 6 pints of cherry jam, if you don’t count the 3/4′s full jar. That’s getting tuck into the fridge to enjoy now.
We headed out to the gardens this afternoon, to find the Italian zucchinis had exploded with the last rain. We harvested a whole wheelbarrow full. Two had already been taken out before I took this photo. I will have a lot of canning and drying to do! I might start on my zucchini relish soon to.
I also picked 1/3 of a storage bin full of green beans. I guess I’m canning and drying beans tomorrow to!
Hubby just finished building a grape arbor for us. We have a grape vine planted on each end. I love having it as an entrance into the raised beds!
The Swish Chard is growing great to!
On one of our trips out a bossy little seagull stopped to say hello. Hubby got some nice shots of him.
Well the flooding in the gardens has gone down. Thankfully we have had no rain in the last 3 days. Although the weather has been very cool 16 to 18 C it has been windy. That has helped to dry up the ground.
This afternoon I headed out to do some weeding. The ground is still soft, but not as mucky. At least that makes weeding by hand easier! I finished weeding the Italian zucchinis, eggplant and two rows of tomatoes. Many more to go! LOL! I did harvest to large zucchinis and sadly found a few that had rotted during the heavy rains. I could hear water inside the stems of the zucchini plants to. But at least we are starting to harvest the zucchinis, we love them!
Since tomorrow is Canada Day here we’ll be enjoying a quiet day at home. And I hope to do more weeding.
We have been working at my sewing room renovations. It’s done!! So the last few days I’ve been unpacking bins of fabric and yarn. Its taking a while to get things set up the way I want. But I’ll share photos when I have it done. Now we can start working on the summer kitchen side again!
We are still working on renovating the summer kitchen. The sewing room side is almost done. When hubby lifted up the old boards were the cabinets used to be, we found some newspapers from 1920′s -30′s.
A few months ago we added a forum to our site. I had chosen Ning as the host. Well as many people may have heard Ning decided to shut down all of the free networks this summer. After looking over their options, I wasn’t happy with the pricing compared to features/service.
So I’ve moved our network back to our main website! It was a lot of work to build, but I love it and I hope you will to!
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Still working on the summer kitchen and sewing room renos! Coming a long nicely. Its real hard to hold a camera and drywall at the same time. lol
Burrr our summer weather has left and been replaced by cold wind and rain. Yesterday it changed to snow. Coming down very heavy at times. Only a dusting stuck to the ground and melted away by noon the next day.
