Yes, no, maybe so

What's the best use of garden space? I have lots of yard, but the plowed garden is limited. Now that the growing season is ending, it's time to make some decisions for next year. Under the Reaping and Eating categories of the blog, I give you (drumroll):

The only perfect red pepper I was able to grow this year.

I'm saving the seeds from this baby! The flesh was just the right thickness, the flavor was sweet and I managed to pick it before any bugs, worms, slugs or critters got to it. I used it in a stir-fry for dinner last night (along with the homegrown celery to the right of the pepper).

The entire cranberry bean harvest fits in a one-pint jar.

This photo represents a 25-foot row of cranberry bean plants. To be fair, I lost some of the plants to bean rust, but still. I can buy a one-pound bag of dried cranberry beans for $1.39. I think I paid $2.29 for the seeds. I won't be doing this again.

A dried black-eyed pea pod.

I soaked a few (20, maybe) black-eyed peas in a wet paper towel one night, and threw them in a short (10 feet, maybe) row just to see what would happen. This is a very cool-looking plant, and each pod yields several beans, sometimes as many as 10 per pod.

Several pods' worth of dried black-eyed peas.

I have half a bucket of dried pods left to shell, which is a pleasant and mindless task sitting at the picnic table in our pine grove. I probably will plant these again, because I think it's my good fortune to grow my own black-eyed peas for New Years' Day Hoppin' John.

There are, of course, lots of decisions left to make about next year's crops. It's helpful to start the list when you're still working in the garden. Once the snow flies, it's easy to be tempted by those pretty pictures in the catalogs. You know … the cranberry bean ones.

So where was I?

Oh, right, on the couch, hacking my lungs out.

I'm feeling better, but still got a lot of couch time over the weekend. The cough just won't go away. I don't have time to be sick any more, can I just will this thing away?

Remember when I said my dad and his wife would be here in 17 days? Well, knock 10 days off – they've changed their travel plans and will be here sooner rather than later. Which is great for us, the sooner we can see him the better. But I'm not sure I care much for the reason he wants to get back to Florida – he's having some breathing problems and his legs are bothering him a lot. He needs to see his doctor.

Please let the breathing problems have more to do with the difference in climate between Florida and Ohio. Please let his leg problems be something that can be fixed. (There's been talk of replacing his knee replacements, a difficult procedure with a long recovery period, but still – fixable.)

Anyhoo … it's time to make a long to-do list and start systematically checking things off. Things like mowing, tidying up the garden, cleaning the guest room/guest bathroom (not to mention the rest of the house!), figuring out menus for the week they'll be here … I'm amazingly calm about the amount of work that needs to fit into the amount of time available.

I guess I've learned – finally – that it all gets done, eventually. And that no one is going to think less of me if there's a cobweb in the corner.

’Specially my dad. Heh.

Friday Quote Day

There is no pleasure in having nothing to do;

the fun is having lots to do and not doing it.

~ Mary Wilson Little

Wish I'd known about the second part of that quote earlier this week. I had lots to do, but I sure didn't have fun not doing it. I felt the weight of the weeds – and the rotting tomatoes and the slug-attacked cantaloupes and the not-too-late-to-plant greens – as surely as if I'd been carrying a heavy load of compost from the bin to the garden.

Oh. Well.

The first part of the quote I've known all my life. I always feel better when I have something to look forward to. I have a little countdown calendar widget that I can update with the next event; it tells me how many days until, for instance, my Dad comes to visit (17). I could put several of them up on my computer for upcoming events in September. I'm busy every weekend next month.

The more I think about it, the second part of that quote doesn't apply to me at all. If I have lots to do, I'm excited and engaged and, well, busy, which is what I want my life to look like. My husband thinks I do too much. His theory is I got sick because I was doing too much and my immune system was compromised and the first germ I ran into stuck like glue.

The four most important words in the world are "You could be right," and he could be. But I maintain that staying busy is better for me, even when I eventually get knocked down for a few days, because  busy-ness means I don't have time to eat.

I'm Debbi and I just proved I have an eating disorder. Heh.

Hope your weekend is better than my week. I'm not only going to remain vertical today, I'm going to venture out. I need eggs, flour and sugar from the Amish store; fruit from the farmer's market, and milk from Elora. I may have to collapse in a heap when I get home this afternoon.

Second Harvest

When I've gardened in the past, I planted all the seeds at once and that was it. Once I was done planting, I was DONE. But I didn't feel that way this year, and managed to get a second harvest of snow peas. I stir-fried them with mushrooms, rice, sesame oil and soy sauce, and we had grilled chicken sandwiches for a main course. Mmmm!

Sent from my U.S. Cellular BlackBerry® smartphone

Where is my lung?

If, in addition to reading the blog, you're one of my Facebook friends, you know I've been sick. It's easier to send a short status report from a two-inch keyboard than it is to create a blog post.

I shall try.

I started coughing Sunday evening and haven't stopped since. Cough syrup helps, but when four hours have passed (the elapsed time between recommended doses), believe me, I know it.

I could have gotten so much done the last couple of days. Apparently I can't learn to slow down and take it easy on my own; I need to cough up a lung in order to take a break.

I'm reading and playing solitaire and knitting and napping. All I need is a cat and I'd qualify as an Old Woman.

Cough, cough.

Sent from my U.S. Cellular BlackBerry® smartphone

In a fog

Cotton candy in the mountains, 8/21/10

This is what the landscape looks like most mornings here in the Middle of Nowhere. I love how the clouds kind of settle in in front of the mountains.

This morning, the fog is as thick as pea soup, how's that for an unimaginative comparison? I can barely make out the woods a hundred yards behind our house.

The fog in my head is equally thick. I've somehow picked up a summer cold, I guess. I've been taking antibiotics for a sinus infection, and they've helped that issue, but I now have a hacking cough and wheezing in my chest and it hurts, people, it hurts! I just hope none of the children who visited us this weekend were infected. I really didn't start coughing until after they left, which means it was incubating while they were here. Grrr.

The children belong to my husband's son and his wife – three two-year-old boys and their five-week-old sister. They have traveling down to a science, I don't know if I'd be brave enough to try it. All went well, the boys are delightful and the baby is adorable.

In case I ever wondered, God had a good plan when he made women my age infertile. I do believe if I had a young child now it would have to raise itself. I'd be passed out on the couch after a couple of hours!

Our evening meal Saturday was nearly all from the garden; the meat and eggs came from nearby sources and everyone ate heartily and appreciatively. They went home with a box of jelly, jam and pickles; a bag of tomatoes and three spaghetti squash. We couldn't fit a cushaw into the car. Imagine that! Four children, two adults and enough gear for a battalion and we couldn't find room for a 20-pound squash. Heh.

Friday Quote Day

Never complain, never explain.

If you don't like the way things are, change them,

and if you're not willing to change them

then don't complain.

~ Henry Ford

Henry sounds like a stern old grandmother, doesn't he? But those stern old grandmothers carried and shared a lot of wisdom, often when you least expected it.

You'd think when you complained to someone (especially your grandmother), you'd get a little sympathy, or at least a little helpful advice, right? None of this "never complain, never explain" nonsense. How unhelpful is that?

The things I've been complaining about lately have an end date, thank goodness, and I'm not really complaining. I've been, um, busy with the produce: picking, canning, freezing, cooking, and otherwise using or storing the fruits and vegetables of my spring and summer labor. I love it! I stopped at the grocery last night and was completely underwhelmed by what I saw; my pantry and freezer look so much better to me than what you can buy at the market.

I did bend a little and picked up a couple bags of tortilla chips. I made and canned some salsa, and we're having company this weekend. Might as well serve it, rather than just look at it sitting on the shelf. Chips are almost never on my grocery list. At least I bought the good kind: Garden of Eatin' Blue and Black Bean varieties.

But I'm looking forward to that end date, the day the garden gets put to bed for the winter. At that point, the garlic will be planted and heavily mulched with straw and the rest of the space will be cleared of the detritus of dried cornstalks and a fairly good crop of purslane. (What does it say about my soil that purslane grows so well in it?)

My friend Elora calls this time of year "garden fatigue," and she's absolutely right. It's not that there's so much physical work to do in the dirt, but there's a lot of work to do taking care of the harvest and, frankly, sometimes you'd just like to run through a drive-thru and get your dinner in a bag. Well, she wouldn't, but I'm tempted!

I'm not even going to try to bring this post around to weight loss or fitness or getting in shape. I've nothing to complain about in that department. I've come to accept the fact that if I stay busy I don't eat as much, and if I don't eat as much I'll s-l-o-o-o-w-l-y drop about a pound a month.

And believe me, I've been busy!