Monday, August 8, 2011

Monday, Monday

Man, what a busy week I've had! I'm not used to all this activity and sensory input.

I live a somewhat isolated life as far as face-to-face contact goes. I don't work outside my home, so I have no colleagues or co-workers with whom to interact. I volunteer at a federal prison one night a week, and see 100 inmates and my co-volunteers then. My husband and I visit his mother, who lives nearby, a couple times a week and I will occasionally stop at the grocery on one of those trips.

Most of the time, though, I'm here, at home, knitting, running walking, reaping and eating.

Last week I left on Tuesday for North Carolina and got home Thursday afternoon to greet weekend guests, who left yesterday. Today a friend is coming over to make pickles with me.

I might be morphing into a social animal. Heh.

I was able to feed our company from the garden – edamame, celery, onions and snap peas in a stir-fry on Friday; zucchini bread Saturday morning, and green beans, tomatoes, red-cabbage slaw and corn Saturday evening. The barbecued chicken seemed like a side dish with all those fresh vegetables!

After they left I spent Sunday afternoon turning 17 pounds of tomatoes into seven quarts. Total harvest so far is 29 pounds, and there's probably another 29 still on the vines. It's hard to say.

Everything seems to be ripening at the same time, keeping my hands busy (and dirty). Just the way I like it. I have a canner full of peach preserves on the stove right now, Virginia peaches I bought on the way home from North Carolina, and I expect by the end of the day there will be another dozen jars of pickles in the pantry.

Summer in the country.

3 comments:

gingersnapper said...

You have no idea how much I envy your garden! There's not a square inch on my property that gets more than three-quarters of an hour of sunlight. I guess I could grow mushrooms...

Kitten With a Whiplash said...

What a magnificent bounty! I'm an apartment dweller, and Mom can no longer really tend a garden. I miss the taste of veggies right off the vine.

Anonymous said...

I'm envious because you have tomatoes! We have had so little rain tha tthe vines have just dried up, and even the trees are going into dormancy. Sigh.

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