Thursday, August 9, 2012

Thoughts turning to fall

I know, yesterday was hot and steamy, we still have about 7 weeks til the first day of fall, but I am beginning to think along those lines.  We have had two days of real rainy weather here (Praise God), and before that we had pop up storms; so my time out in the garden has been limited.  I was able to get out there yesterday to pull weeds and with the ground wet it went pretty fast(though muddy).  Anyway, I digress.  Since we have had a few rainy days I was allowed to focus more on house work  I have started my "fall cleaning".  I usually start on one end of the house and work my way slowly but surely down to the other side.  It was a day of pulling out furniture, sweeping and mopping underneath, brushing down cobb webs and dust bunnies, washing windows and curtains.  So far I have one half of 1 room complete!  See I told you... slow going. I will work on more stuff today.  Little by little I will reclaim the house from a summer of gardening and canning.  Anyway.  As I take down curtains I am trading them for heavier curtains used during colder weather.  We keep the thermostat set at about 65 during the winter.  Needless to say everyone has their favorite blanket to carry around.  It is rather cooling to think of fall weather.
I think one of the reasons I am thinking fall is because I have had to get into that mindset with the garden.  You know making plans and such for what will have enough time to produce and what needs to be replaced.  Most of it will come up in the next few weeks.  I will plant some more beets, spinach and lettuce.  That with the beans I just got in (who are up out of the ground now), and hopefully the tomatoes will be the extent of my fall garden.  I can happily record that so far I have harvested 2 watermelons, 16lbs of broccoli, approximately 180 lbs of tomatoes, 6+ lbs onions, 4 lbs navy beans(so far), 8lbs lima(so far), 60 ears of corn(so far), 3 lbs bell peppers(so far), 6 lbs of jalapeno peppers(so far YIKES!  I don't need this many, any takers?), 1 lb pintos (so far), 35 lbs blueberries, 14lbs black berries, 4 lbs peaches, 60+lbs potatoes,parsley, mint, rosemary, oregano, thyme, lettuce, and spinach.  so a total so far of 331lbs of produce so far not counting the stuff I didn't weigh.  Still looking to harvest more tomatoes(hope), corn, green beans, lima, pinto, and navy beans, peanuts, parsley, mint, and later beets, spinach and lettuce.  Not too shaby for the season.  Not taking too much credit for this one, I just planted the seed.  God provided and for that I am truly thankful.  Come winter I will smile a little as I open a jar of Tomato sauce, BBQ sauce, jelly, salsa, beans, corn, peanut butter, etc.  Somehow when it gets to winter and I enjoy the product of a summer of hot dirty sweaty work, I forget how much work it took and the fact that at the end of the summer I am usually saying "never again".  That is usually when the seed catalogs arrive and I am once more lured into the thought of spring planting.

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