Recent Events

The rain took a day off, so that meant the spectacular event called laundry.  The lines were loaded.  Followed by lots of dish washing, vacuuming and other various house cleaning.

Bedding washed, rugs washed, floors swept and mopped.  Sinks cleaned, toilets scrubbed....all so I could return home Sunday to a clean house.  Which by the way, didn't completely happen.

Those beautiful jars I recently canned were all labeled and put away too.  Most of them anyway.

Medicinal teas were brewed, essential oil steams were done, salt water "snorted".....all three of us caught the "creepy crud" and we were really wanting to feel 100% by Friday.

The best event?

Camping.  I wrote out a grocery list, with a meal plan, checked and rechecked the camping supplies, and we hit the road.  It happened to be the motivation Hubby had to get the new hitch put on the truck too.  It was a wedding reception/camp out.

(during our set up, we had a bit of a rough time, as we have not used the camper for almost 2 years).

Although we had a fun time, we were so tired arriving home.  Once we unpacked we literally did nothing.  The wedding reception was at the campground in an event center, and I am not used to being up that late.  While Hubby drove Youngest to the showers (she danced the entire night), I crawled into the air conditioned and passed out.  Those two stayed up much later, and it was very nice to get some sleep.

I am so afraid to go the garden this morning.  I may find myself a lot of work.  I'll admit it was nice to forget I had a garden for a few days (sort of a garden).  On Saturday we came home to feed the animals etc.

Camping is intended to be relaxing, but due to it being a combined family event, I'll admit it wore me out. I did some dancing myself.  I sure hope our next camping trip is actually relaxing.  I'm so tired this morning, as well as Hubby and Youngest.  

I didn't get many photos, but the campground had a pond with a beach, and our youngest daughter loved swimming in the heat.  It was very, very hot.  Too hot to really enjoy camping either.  In fact, we chose not to campfire cook Saturday for lunch. 

This was a new place to camp, and sort of strange.  Out of 140 sites, 120 were pipeliners in huge RV's.  Also, the bathrooms (shower combo) were in a trailer.  You had to pay $.25 each time you used them.  Never in my life have I seen that.  We also had a creepy kid that kept walking up into our campsites (son of a pipeliner), who just sat down where ever and started talking like he knew one of us.  He was starting to act strange, odd, and saying things about our daughter, and Hubby made him to leave.  He never came back to any of our sites after that.

I mentioned setting up was a rough time?  Well, the guy who owned the campground said he was bringing us a fire ring and a picnic table.  It never happened.  We literally had to take the truck and drive around the campground to find an empty lot and bring both back.  

And check this out.

They had other campers using our power supply pole and water.  We literally had no water hookup.  They had to supply us with an adapter, just so we could have air conditioning.  Let me say, I don't know I'll stay there again.  The water hookup (or one of their hoses) leaked and we had put a rug over it.  It was saturated, and covered in mud by the day we left.  Thankfully we had brought old rugs.  It was leaking right in front of our camper stove.  What a mess.  It was trip fest.  If you didn't have a flashlight at night, you were doomed.  One cord, from another camper, literally went under our doorway.

Sunday morning, before we put down the camper, family cooked breakfast for everyone that camped out for the wedding reception. 

I have no plan for today, other than check on the garden and tidy up the house.  Oh, and wash all of our camping bedding and repack it. Oh, and because we had no water, I'll be washing our camping skillets, etc.  Thankfully we had paper plates in the camper.  

Our 21 year old daughter showed up with her boyfriend Sunday about dinner time.  Raided the fridge (not much to raid), and did a ton of laundry.  

She brought Jesse to visit us, and he was very happy to see us.

Busy Kitchen

I hit it hard Monday morning with canning.  Well sort of.  I ran out of sugar so it continued into Tuesday too.  There has been no weeding, as the rain keeps coming, but just enough to keep me indoors.   Last night it poured and we are due for more today.

I brought in one 5 oz dinky serving of green beans, and two dinky hot banana peppers.  No yellow squash yet.   Our harvesting days are pretty pathetic lately.

Peach jam got canned., along with sweet pickle relish, cinnamon-blueberry jam and corn relish.  Whew!

A few zucchini's made it sliced, blanched and into the freezer, but the blackberries are still red.  Also, so far of what we've tasted, the blackberries are sour this year.  I'm not sure what I will do with them if they are all sour

More blueberries made it to the freezer.

We have run into a small sna-foo with the camper.  Once we hooked it up, only the turn signals work.  Brake lights and hazard lights are not working for some reason.  I'm sure my smart husband can figure it out before we do go camping.

I lied.  Our peach tree gave us one very nice looking peach this year.

I finally got around to making stuffed shells again, and some went into the freezer for an easy meal on a future busy day.

As you can see no more greens have made their way into the freezer. I am hoping this rain provides us some.

My back was pretty sore and my entire body pretty tired, so after washing a boat load of dishes and putting them away, I took my handiwork to the porch.