Quiet moments...

 This has been a day of quiet moments..interspersed with not-so-quiet-moments, to be sure. But I have appreciated the lot of it, and feel grateful to be in a place where I can .."smile, breathe and go slowly" as I need to. And so, I work some and sit some and work some more.  I went to the local Dollar Store and got 2 gallon sized  containers of dishwashing liquid..one Ajax citrus and one Palmolive Original.  I bought some other things too, some bleach and some carpet stuff.   And there must have been more than that, because I spent about 25 dollars. I think. Then I stopped at our little Pappy's market, and picked up a few things, including nearly 20 dollars worth of beautiful pecan halves. And some black plums. And I sashayed back home, thinking that I kind of had a whole day with no real plans. And my heart and soul felt soothed by the thought of it. lol

 Well.....I barely returned home when my phone rang and it as the local produce guy (whose little business I try to support when I can) telling me that he had found me some okra. 15 pounds of it, to be exact.. YIKES. But... I had asked him to find me some.  So I told him I'd be over directly to pick it up.  I do grow my own okra, but this years crazy weather has had it coming in spits and spots, with barely enough to do anything with at a time.  I have dehydrated some (and will be dehydrating more, it appears) and I did can a few jars of pickled okra the other day. Sooooo....I spent the bigger part of this day canning pickled okra (20 pints) and canning okra, tomatoes and onions (10 pints) and I still have a gallon ice cream bucket full. I will dehydrate it, and maybe freeze some.  Maybe.

 When the Irishman got home from work, we had a little conversation about the weekend...seems he forgot that he has to go Mt. Vernon for a Regional Forum, and he is supposed to be there tomorrow by 2 o'clock. He will not come back home until Sunday early evening. Sigh...we spent the next two hours out in the garden digging potatoes so that I can plant the green beans tomorrow. We harvested a good 40 pounds of potatoes...maybe more. And they are beautiful..no bugs, no mole chomps...just gorgeous. And nice sized too...many pretty big ones. SO tomorrow morning I will get them spread out to harden off before we store them for the winter. And where I had super mulched the Kennebecs at the top end of that bed...the taters were just laying right up on top of the dirt. Our theory is that because it was so dry, they didn't go too far into the dirt. It felt like a very successful harvest, considering the bad drought and the blistering heat. We have probably already eaten 15 pounds or more that I harvested here and there.  Almost all of the red potatoes and quite a few of the Irish Cobblers.  And boy..the dirt in that bed is magnificent. All the composting and mulching  is blessing us with some awesome dirt.  I will plant our second planting of the Blue Lake Bush Beans there.  The temps for the next week are supposed to be low to mid eighties...so maybe we are finally finished with the heat waves.

  We had a doozy of a thunderstorm last night...complete with winds and hail and massive lightning strikes.  I sat out on the front porch watching it and more than once thunder was so loud and close that I nearly jumped out of my chair.  It dropped over an inch of rain on us, thank goodness, over the course of the evening. The power went out twice, for only a few minutes each time, but I had closed down the computer and unplugged every thing--just in case.  We need some more rains like that..about a weeks worth. lol 

  I'll be picking tomatoes again tomorrow. And drying them I think. I used about 20 pounds of tomatoes in the okra mix I put up today.  I'll also be picking edamame starting tomorrow. That's a job to shell, but it is easier once you get the beans all blanched. Then they kind of shoot right out of the pods. A good job to do sitting in front of the television with a Lifetime movie on.  lol   It gets frozen, in quart bags.

  And that is this life...this time of year. This woman stays busy and certainly gets her fill of playing in the dirt. One of my friends wants to stop by tomorrow, but then called and said she had grandsons coming, so could we do it next week ?  Surely we can, lol, and maybe by then I can even get the kitchen cleaned up and all the jars labelled and organize this chaos just a little.  Maybe. And I need to pull some of the older canned goods from last year and the year before (not much of that left) and get the newer stuff rotated to the back of the pantry shelves to ensure that we use the older stuff first.I was thinking I might check into those plums too...because wouldn't a batch of plum preserves be a great thing to have????

  I must be totally insane.  I have last years blackberries and raspberries in there waiting to be made into jam. Not to mention peaches. But still....plum. Mmmmm...Maybe I could even can my own plum sauce for some of my Asian dishes.  Although traditionally they use Umeboshi plums...wonder how different they are and would anybody (namely ME) notice ?  lol

  And I need to get a new batch of kimchi started and I want to try to make Paejon (thanks Kymber!!) which is a Korean pancake type thing that makes a main entree meal.  The pictures almost look like a version of an egg foo yung...though much more delicate. Seems easy enough to make--maybe I'll try it this weekend when I'm only feeding me.

  I need to stop thinking about all the things I need to get started and just focus on the things I already have going.  One thing I will say...I'm one heck of a multi-tasker !!!!!!  (Which, of course, is in direct opposition to the mindfulness I strive for.)  LOL

  Alright. It's past midnight and I need to hit the hay. Morning comes pretty early around here and it will be a full day--full of blessings, full of love, full of honest work.

  The kind of life dreams are made of...

Namaste.