Sunday night musings...

  I just love this...

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  11:30 PM, and I am sitting here with 5 quarts of marinara in the canner.  It turned out beautifully..I started chopping tomatoes and onions and peppers this morning right after breakfast, and then I simmered that bad boy all day.  In between there, I managed to pick the rest of the edamame from plot # 1, and wound up with a 2 day total of 4 quarts in the freezer, plus dried beans to save for seed for next year. WooHoo!  2 more plots to go. One is ready to pick and the other not ready yet.

  Been planting too....and cleaning up some of the spent beds. An hour later now, got the marinara out of the canner, the island full of canned things into canning jar boxes and labeled...Made some breakfast sandwiches for the Irishman for tomorrow, and since I had all the stuff out, made some for the boy too. He is leaving around 4 AM for all points south, and will work down there until Thursday. I thought he would appreciate not having to stop and grab something on his way down...I think it's about 2 and a quarter hours from here,  and they'll put the guys up in a motel.

  I sat outside for a while tonight while the canner was heating up to see if I could see any of the meteors from the Perseide shower tonight. It is winding down, but I saw about 5 of them. The thunder is rolling out there and the clouds were moving in...very pretty sky with lots of stars and the dippers visible and vague lightning in the distance. I sat until I actually got a little chilly.  lol    Anyway I read that the activity is stronger after midnight, and it's now after midnight, so maybe I should go out back and have a look, since everything in the kitchen is finished, including the cleanup.

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  Got the potatoes out for a day or two and now they are in a big basket in the mud room. I also harvested about a dozen and a half nice sized butternut squash...not a great crop, but still better than nothing, and certainly better than the rotted squash bug infested batch from last year. There are still a few smallish ones out there that aren't quite ready yet, and flowers everywhere. Kinda weird.  But I managed to only lose the stem on one of them--they store much better with the stems on. 

  I see that I have a whole new batch of flowers on the garlic chives too--thinking maybe I'll cut a bunch of them and freeze them and see how they do. There's more chives to freeze in general.  And I am going to cut the tops off a bunch of the walking onions and dry those. I dried a full dehydrator of okra slices, and put those away today.  I also bought some beet seed today, and hopefully will get that in the ground soon. I was looking for parsnip seed, but Pappy's didn't have any.  I want to plant some, because I can mulch them and leave them in the ground all winter. We have radishes coming up now, as well as spinach and one of the lettuces. 

  The pullets are laying regularly now--am getting 3-4 eggs a day from the 5 hens. I guess technically they aren't pullets any more once they start to lay. The eggs are still small, but it won't be long before they are a better size. They've been eating like Queens lately--lots of greens, and tomato trimmings and okra and soy bean plants. And they are as thankful for this cooler weather as I am.  Our temps the last few days have been barely in the 80's.  It was almost cold in the house this morning. lol  When I came into the living room, little Miss Roxie was wrapped up in her little blankie like a burrito !

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  As you can see, there's never a lack of fun things going on here at Honeysuckle Hill...we know how to have a good time.  'Maters and okra and beans and eggs.  I feel pretty blessed--was talking to Dolly down at the local market and she was saying they had a terrible garden year...lots of folks have. I attribute my bounty to organic , sustainable methods.  Lots of rich compost, heavy mulching and  companion planting.  

  And love. Lots of love...of the earth, of the plants and of family and friends.

  And dancing half naked under the stars...watching the meteors streak through the sky and the constellations dazzle and glow brightly.

  Sounds like it's starting to rain out there...I better go check the windows.

Sweet dreams!

Namaste.