It’s hard to write a blog when not much is going on and you’re looking at the life of two old people!
Summer has mostly passed; it was notable for very hot temperatures and high humidity for an extended time, neither of which we’re fond of anymore. We’re cooler now but still rainy, so the garden has slowed some. I suspect within a couple of weeks it’ll breathe its last productive gasp and I’ll spend a day pulling up dead and dying plants. The cherry tomatoes produced extraordinarily well though; we got thousands out of two plants. I have even been dehydrating them and freezing as a way to try and make use of them. I also peeled, cored and cut lots of apples this year (we have three trees) for freezing for yummy baked goods later this winter.
I turned my mother’s old time zucchini bread recipe into a way to use up the yellow summer squash and boy, was it a hit. It turned out wonderful. Prior to that I had been taking lots of it to the shelter to share, even with the bunnies and guinea pigs. Chard loves colder temps and is still doing well; I had to also freeze lots of that as I love it in soups and omelets.
The shelter auction did well in late August and out of 32 items I had made (jewelry and art) and contributed, all but three or four sold. After the auction, I worked at helping with the sorting and then the dispersal of the items to the winners for several days. Prior to that and during, I was also baking my bread and freezing it in anticipation of having twenty loaves for the bake sale that happens for the city Fall O Rama, which was the 20th. For the first time I can ever remember, it stormed badly that day and as soon as we set up we got caught up in the deluge and thunder and lightning. Many items were ruined as we only had two small canopy covers and the powers-that-be came around and said they were closing it down. We were able to pack up and move indoors to a local car dealership which was having a pet adoption event so we tried to piggyback on their endeavors but it wasn’t the same. After all that work by so many of us baking, it was a huge disappointment. As I’m sure it was for all the craft and food vendors who then had nowhere to go. Of course, my bread can always find a home or we’ll eat it ourselves!
Marc decided he needed some exercise help so recently bought an E bike and has been setting it up for extended riding. He’s been good about getting out almost daily and is fortunate that the county has many riding/hiking trails, some of which run over 30 miles into other small towns. He fashioned a quick trailer to haul the bike in and at some point I’ll be dropping him off and picking him up at some further point with it and the truck.
Speaking of trucks, Marc finally sold the old Dodge truck
which he purchased new thirty years ago! We parked it out front on the highway
and it sold in less than three hours. Given that new, one ton dually diesel
trucks are pushing $80-100,00 I can see why….It still ran and had only 160,000
miles on the best Cummins motor Dodge ever used. It now lives just down the
road from us!
Nothing earth-shattering is coming up for us; Marc will be having a contractor friend down soon with his forklift and dump trailer to help us dismantle and scrap out the old Travel Supreme so we can finally get that eyesore outa here! I’ll definitely take pictures of that. I have a couple of possible things coming up for the shelter; a Victorian Halloween house tour (I featured that last year) and a craft fair held in mid-November at an assisted living center where we usually sit with some puppies and me with my wares for sale. We have no plans for any of the holidays and will, I’m sure, spend them alone.
I have decided to turn my hobby efforts in another direction;
I am doing more jewelry and probably will continue with that and I’ve developed
an interest in learning how to sew totes and handbags. I’ve ordered some neat
fabrics and some instructions and patterns and am just starting on my first
“practice” one using some leftover scraps of material. If successful, those
will go in the February shelter online auction and we’ll see how they do. Due
to the fact that most fabrics are manufactured overseas and given Trump’s
stupid tariff regime, the price of fabrics has gone up leaps and bounds so they
aren’t going to be cheap to make! It’s a good thing I’ve got a lot of fabrics
on hand to get started with. I also do lots of reading and have a jigsaw puzzle
going at all times. I try as hard as I can to stay away from the news as it
drives me totally insane…
