Random Tidbits

I haven't been around due to not much going on.  As a self-sufficient gardener, I should be acclimated to a bad harvest year and just get over my pity party.  I'll admit. It stinks, and it stinks worse to not have like minded neighbors.  We rely on garlic and hot peppers for health over winter, and it's gonna cost us, having to buy it this year.

A dozen dinky jalapenos made there way to the freezer.  

A very small amount of zucchini was blanched and went into the freezer.

Tomato harvest has not been good.  The late planting, and bad weather, the paste heirlooms are not much bigger than the cherry or grape.  

Here's what I did with some of those paste tomatoes - homemade Einkorn pizza crust, with home canned sauce, some gifted pulled pork with caramelized onions, garden tomatoes and green onion.  It was delicious. 

The second pizza was topped with my dinky (but very spicy) hot banana peppers, some green peppers, and onion.  Also, very delicious.

I guess, if it's the only thing I can stock up on, it may be freezing what I get, as I get it.  They are so small, I have doubts that I will get to can anything (but you never know).

The chickadee is still nesting in my flower pot, and the other day two chickadees flew up, one crawled in and it appeared to be the male, bringing food.  We may be seeing babies soon.  It's hard to get a close up photo, but I'll be trying.

We continued to get rain this week, so garden work and mucking the chicken coop is on hold.  As far as extreme clean, the book shelf is back in order, and another box is filled for the thrift.  

The kitchen clean up is almost a success (on the hunt for new curtains, possibly new rugs or make them myself).  I purged more recipes (try-it), purged my old articles and writing resources, purged old magazines, filed some recipes, filed some patterns I printed, and put the camping supplies, bedding and linens back in the camper.  Camper curtains are washed and will go back in when we pull it out for the next trip.  

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.