summer harvests

If there was any doubt that spring has given way to summer, if the heat, the humidity, and the mosquitos didn't clue you in, last night's and this morning's cicada serenade was certainly proof. Double orange daylilies and ripening tomatoes are also good clues.

These are off the Big Boy and Beefsteak. Not so big, are they. There was also a ripe Old German but we ate that the day I picked it. It was surprising mild, bland even. I also acquired a dozen or so tomatoes of varying size that one of the other volunteers at SHARE brought in from his garden to share with us. There was only an hour left so I assumed everyone had gotten what they wanted and took the whole bag but then one guy wanted two, another volunteer wanted one to eat with her lunch. Take as many as you want I told them.

The Farmer's Market today had three vendors with produce and I got a cantaloupe, 2 cucumbers, a yellow squash, and some okra. I won't buy tomatoes there because the vendors get together and all charge the same amount which is $5 a pound and which I think is robbery. You might get two tomatoes for $5 if they're big, three if smaller unless it's cherries but I don't buy those anyway. I'll wait til the end of the season and see if anyone wants to unload tomatoes if they have any left. I'm just going to make tomato sauce with them.

The 4 dozen ears of corn I requested from my neighbor Leonard's brother's garden came on Thursday, fresh picked that morning. I ordered 4 dozen because my sister asked for a dozen, they're small the guy says so give her five dozen, but then she only took 6 since she had gotten six from the previous corn that Jose had brought us. So minus two bad ones and four that we've eaten, I had another 4 dozen ears on top of the two dozen I had already put up. Friday Marc shucked while I blanched, cut it off the cob, and vacuum sealed it. What we didn't get done yesterday, we finished up today, me blanching and packaging while Marc cut it all off the cobs.

Last Wednesday because my potato plants had yellowed and were dying I dug up my potatoes. Too late planting and then all that rain did not make for a good harvest. I could hold the entire amount in one hand. I'll try again in the fall.

Thursday before I left for SHARE we noticed a vulture eating on something in the ditch in front of the house. When I got home there were about a dozen. Curious as to what had died in my ditch, I shooed them away and looked...an armadillo. Wednesday I had seen quite a few big excavations, bigger than the possum makes looking for food and so now I know what had made them. Unfortunately, the vultures never came back, just one now and then and by Friday afternoon it really stank so after I walked the dog I got the big shovel out, scooped it up, and threw it into the wild space at the back of the property, actually in back of my neighbor to the east's property. He's rarely in residence so I didn't think it mattered. And no I did not take a picture of a dead stinky armadillo but here's a picture of a live one I got off the internet.

photo via https://pestcss.com/armadillos/

Two weeks after my haircut my hair has started to remember some of it's curls and waves, still flat on the sides but in a few more weeks it ought to fill out some though I got lots of compliments at SHARE on Thursday.

This is just a test sentence to see if the blogger mobile app still translates comic sans into something wacky and unreadable.