This week, the garden has to catch up. Our youngest and her DH came over and I turned them loose in the hoop house. So I will not have to deal with zucchini or cucumbers unless these missed some. And that is okay with me. It appears there are enough tomatoes to keep me making paste and sauce all week and there are still cucumbers and zucchini in the refrigerator. So my plan this week is to catch up with using the produce. And we have planted more lettuce this weekend. The weather is promising 90-102 degree temperatures. So we probably won’t be moving much mid to late in the day. But we will be doing a lot of watering.
This morning (forgot to take photo) I picked 9# of blueberries. 5# will fill a gallon Ziploc bag FULL. I’m not as fast as I’d like to be as that took 2 hours. My mind and body are not on the same page. My mind has not connected with the fact that my body thinks it is older than 50. So it often times runs way ahead of what the body is willing to do. Next year maybe the blueberries will be higher on the plants and there won’t be so many at ground level.
Sock Progress has been slow, however, this afternoon I sat and knitted for a bit and turned the heel corner. I like this particular pattern which is a 7 stitch repeat. It is “Little Shell Socks” at http://www.knitting-and.com/knitlistgifts/2000/little-shell-socks.htm. My goal is to finish them before the end of August, maybe while enjoying the sun.
Today has been filled with too much excitement. I was blending some tomato sauce when the lid flew off. (no photo) The kitchen is a bit cleaner now. Then went out to put something in the freezer and found this freezer – which was over half full – has died. A quick transfer of ingredients to other freezers in the house saved the ingredients. Now all freezers are full and there will be more food coming in.
There was a bit of inattention going on here. No once, but twice. They had to be redone in the correct size. Now I have two cute little hedgehogs in a smaller size for what – I don’t know yet.
These embroidered hedgehog are from Hatched in Africa. They are darling (background on left is accurate color). It is a set of 10 that I will make into a baby blanket bit by bit. My aim is to embroider one or two each day between other chores.
The blueberries are nearly finished. I have 55# in the freezer and the rest that I pick we will just eat. This bowl had 4#15 oz this morning. My guess is that there will get another 3-4# this year and they will be done.
These sun gold and Oregon gold tomatoes don’t stop. There are a few Romas here. Every year I am not gong to keep any volunteers as they are always the little ones. However, every year, I give in and give most of them a place. This year they consumed about 45 linear feet of space. Please help me with my resolve next year to not keep more than 6 volunteers. I want only to plant half a dozen big tomatoes and half a dozen Romas. That should be plenty.
A day in the kitchen yielded another 13 cups of relish,
And an artichoke, potato, pepper casserole, that took too much time to create and was okay, but we won’t be having it again.
This one was hiding. But thankfully it went home with the daughter who found it. We now have 22 sizeable cukes in the refrigerator meaning over 8″ plus many more pickle size on the vines. I will be finding homes for 
Between picking blueberries and cucumbers, watering, working on the tomatoes, etc., I finished this little fellow. He will finish at 8″ square and will get a mate sometime in the next week. I do enjoy getting a chance to work on projects, but often during the summer, they have to take a back seat.
There is another double batch of cucumber relish now in the refrigerator. In the morning, I will rinse it, put the rest of the ingredients in and can it.
Beau, the dog in the foreground spent some time at the vet’s on Friday. He had to have stitches in two places and they updated his shots, which were way out of date. In two weeks we go back to have the stitches out. The window that he went through to cut himself now has fencing over it. He didn’t go through glass, it was a cutout, but had a nail where screening had previously been. However, we don’t enjoy spending money at the vet’s, so have that covered.
It was hot for here today. At 95 degrees, even the bees came out to get cooled off. See the mass of black on the gray box. That is just a mass of bees. I’ll check their box again tomorrow. Maybe they need another box for ventilation. See the fellow in the background? If they see me, their is one thing on their mind: FOOD. Yes, I am the food dispenser.
After all that fun and running around this morning, I was able to spend a bit of time in the studio (where it is also cooler) this afternoon. I think I will get this fellow finished on Sunday.
It was time for “Fiber adventures” with these 4 boys as it is time to leave their mothers. They are getting old enough to be potent and dumb enough to catch any female in their area including their mother and sisters.
So I recruited a friend and her two helpers. The lambs and mothers had the run of the property in the early spring, so these lambs knew their way around. They knew there were two ways around the garage, two ways around the house and they knew the complete circle around the hoop house. So they gave us all a good adventure. These dogs were hot and tired. Moving 4 boys 400 feet away from their mother so there was a complete pasture between them was a lot of work. Here the dogs are getting to cool off after all that running.
These 4 beautiful boys are now in their new pasture where they will stay until sold. They are beautiful with nice fine fleece. However, many of the rams do not get to play the breeding game. They are kept for their nice fleeces or become BBQ.
Washington State Quilters – this is the third month, I’m working on this small snowman quilt. The number chosen was #2, but I’m a bit behind with this one.
I’m linking up to