Thursday rides again!!

 The tail end of the 2012 peaches...waiting in my sink for me to get busy...

  And I am in here stalling. I have so many things to do today, I don't know where to start. My day was filled up yesterday with my neighbors (delightfully) and I didn't do anything here except feed and water the critters and get the garden watered all by 8 AM.  This morning, it's all staring me in the face, lol.

  I was up at 7...in bed at 11 too-so I got some much needed rest.  I've been operating on way too little sleep lately, getting only 4-5 hours per night, for one reason or another. We've been watching the Olympics, for some reason, lol.  And staying up too late.  And then getting up too early, to make sure I can get the gardens all watered before the day gets too hot. We've just had another long string of those 102+ days...sigh....it's getting really old.  Today is supposed to be 99-100 though, and then 90's for the next week. (Mid-high 90's, but 90's just the same). It will seem like Paradise. lol

  My son helped me pick the rest of the peaches this morning. Trees are both bare now. I have about a bushel in there between the ones this morning and the ones that have been being picked  the past few days. I should be able to get them done today and get some peach salsa made too. I have a lot of peaches in the freezer, and some jam and salsa already canned. 

  The two worst jobs of the year,  for me,  are the peaches and the tomatoes. Both are the messiest of all the fruits/veggies to work with. You wind up having to completely clean your kitchen by the time you're trying to finish up, wiping down cabinet fronts, mopping floors and wiping down the walls behind the counter. No matter how hard I try to be neat about it,. it just ain't happening.  lol  It's SO worth it--don't get me wrong, but it's a mess. And my tomatoes are still loaded with greenies out there, so I just may be doing tomatoes until October.  Grateful to have them--absolutely!!!  I've already dried quite a few tomatoes, as they were coming in sporadically, and I happened to have room in a dehydrator. That's the beauty of dehydrating...it's easy enough to get that little machine out and do a few. When you're canning, it's a lot of work just setting up for it, and you need to have X amount of jars to run the pressure canner.  So you need a bounty of tomatoes for that.

  That being said...I gleefully look forward to the peaches and tomatoes every year, because there is absolutely NOTHING in the world like fresh peaches from the freezer in the middle of February...or home canned tomatoes for spaghetti sauce.  And the kid in me probably LOVES making the messes...just wishes someone else had to do the clean up.  lol

 Guess I should put the dogs outside for a while...soon it will be too hot. They are spending lots of time in the house these days, preferring to go outside later in the evening when the heat isn't so brutal. Can't blame them. But 4 dogs under your feet gets annoying sometimes. And if I'm in the kitchen doing anything, believe me, they are under my feet, waiting for something--anything-- to be tossed their way.  lol

  I really don't have any more to say this morning. lol  But like I said earlier, I'm stalling.  Once I get up from here, it's probably gonna be nonstop until I quit for supper.  Well...I'll just put on some lively music and get moving--that always helps.  It also helps if I shut off my brain and just get doing and stop sitting here thinking about it. LOL

  Adios, amigos!  I'm outta here, baby!!

Namaste.

Beginning again...

The week, that is. It's been busy busy garden time around these parts, and naturally, I'm trying to juggle too many things. sigh...no rest for the wicked.

 This picture is not from this year. I haven't been out there with my camera in a bit. But you get the idea, lol. I have about 15 pounds of green beans in the fridge ready to can. They are producing like crazy. The peppers are coming into their own...beautiful and shiny, red and green and ivory and yellow. The okra is teasing me with a good sized pod here and there, but is flowering profusely. And the tomatoes are all starting to ripen...cherries and romas and several varieties of large beefy beauties. I've dried some cucumbers yesterday. They dried beautifully, and the idea is that in the dead of winter they can be crumbled into salads for a taste of summer. We'll see.  I'm going to dry some tomatoes in the next few days too, and hopefully I'll get enough onions to dry some of those too. The price of onions (well, everything, almost) has gone through the roof in the markets. Where I was buying a 3 lb bag for anywhere from 49-99 cents at Aldi's, they are now 2-3 dollars. It's crazy. I'm using them like they were truffles...lol.  

  We spent a time on Friday weeding and clearing the garden. Sunday morning we had a monsoon rain that lasted about 2 hours, drenching everything. A nice drink, although it was very windy and knocked out the power a couple of times and blew down a lot of small to medium sized branches. I got the call to go sit with my little lady, as she is terrified of storms due to having been banged about in a tornado that lifted their house off the ground when she was a child. Of course, by the time I got there it was over and she had forgotten about it all. I have noticed she often speaks of herself in the third person, as if she were watching her long life (80 years) as though it were a play. She has 5 cats and a little male dog named Princess. lol  I took her a small tomato and cucumber and zucchini from my garden, and she was tickled to death. She told me some great stories...

  I have an appointment this morning at 9, and it's 7:45 now. Guess I'd better haul my sweet self into the shower.  Maybe I will come back later and edit and add some more, and maybe I won't. Depends on how busy the day gets.  I strained my back a little out in the garden yesterday and this morning I am stiff as a board.  I put some icy hot on it, and have used a heating bag while sitting here... hopefully a nice hot shower will loosen the rest of the kinks,

  Have a bountiful and blessed day....

Namaste.