The Abundance of Summer

I decided to change up my blog - it's been awhile, and I was thinking something super ocean/summery, so there you go.

It's been an amazingly busy season in terms of the abundance of my garden. Not to mention my busy life of work, derby, and trying to maintain some sort of social life + housekeeping.

Yeah, housekeeping... I'm trying to catch up on that...

Today I woke up at 6 and, with a list of activities ready to go from the night before, I set about putting up all sorts of foods in the kitchen. Really, I was just picking up where I left off last night, when I picked all the peas in my garden, shucked them all and, tasting one from each pod, sorted them into one jar's worth of sugary peas and one jar's worth of starchy peas. These were, naturally, pressure canned and stowed away for a rainy day. Anyway, back to this morning: I managed to crank out two half-pints of blackberry jam (blackberries from my Community Supported Agriculture weekly box), one pint of pickled beets (beets from my CSA box), two quarter-pints of pickled ginger, and four half-pints of secret sauce (the main ingredient from my CSA box). And all this by 10 o'clock.

Ta-dah!

I went to my Monday knitting group and finished the second sleeve of my wedding cardigan - just the edging to go! - then came home and...

... wasted the rest of the afternoon on the computer.

Ok, and did a TON of dishes - because I also made my own cream corn from scratch (super easy and DELICIOUS!) last week, along with my latest divergence from the classic "clove cookies" recipe, and a chocolate zucchini cake-turned-mini-muffins (these were for a going-away party/potluck for one of our derby girls who is moving to Portland).

Delicious cream corn - corn courtesy of my CSA box.

Clove cookies! These were sweetened only with honey... maybe a little too much honey.

I also managed to get the laundry done today (and put away the clean laundry that I'd neglected in the dryer for the last couple weeks... oops...). And now it's 6 o'clock again. I told myself no Netflix until after 9pm today, so there's still a chance I may get some more things done. Like picking dandelions.

Seriously. That's on my list. I want to make dandelion wine and I picked half an oat container full of the flowers last weekend (and froze them), but I need to fill the container, and I'll be mowing the lawn this weekend, so I'd better get it done today or tomorrow.

Other things on the agenda for this weekend?

- weeding my flower garden (I seemed to have forgotten about it, but suddenly there's weeds growing there when it hasn't really been bothered all summer)

- mowing the lawn

- watering my veggie garden, weeding another section of it, and planting bok choy and green onions (my beets are starting to come up!!)

- an outdoor derby practice (the county fair is going on this week, so we're not using the fairgrounds facility until it's over)

- using my new vacuum cleaner for the first time, even though I've had it for a week or two now...

- getting totally on top of housecleaning so that I can start hosting couchsurfers again!!

Ok, that sounds like a pretty tall order, and I think I've psyched myself up to start getting busy again. So here I go!

Until next time!