Guilt

I'm not sure how this happened, but what started out as a compliment, suddenly has become a flurry of guilt-induced activity. The odd thing about it is, the guilt is flying back and forth over 4700 miles and 8 time zones.

Hedgewizard keeps an impressive list of all that is coming from his garden and pantry on his humorous blog. He held a "Delurking Day", so I delurked and dared to say that I hoped to have as productive a garden as his. Somehow that made him feel guilty, and sent him into a frenzy of activity, which he claims is my fault. Guess I should've stayed a lurker?

Of course I feel guilty about setting all this about, even though I didn't mean to. I've been known to put my foot in my mouth before. Being the guilt-driven person I am, I have since cleared the strawberry bed of weeds and runners, replanting where needed, watered all the veggie beds, totally cleaned the kitchen, which looked like a bomb had gone off in it, done three loads of laundry and hung them on the clothesline to dry, restocked the wood shed, and restacked the leftover wood, since the pile had fallen over, and am about to attack the herb garden. And did I mention that it's 86 degrees outside?

I know, us Northwesterners are weather wimps. I can handle cold temps and rain, but heat I cannot bear. Very few of us around here have air conditioning, since there are so few days that we need it. But I suffer when it gets towards 90.

I'm actually enjoying this little bit of summer, since it won't last long. I saw geese flying South today; more signs of fall. I'm anxiously awaiting the Oregon Climate Service's winter weather predictions. Some people think that we're going to have a mild winter after a crummy summer, others think that we're in for another bad one like last winter (floods, windstorm, and snow).

Until then, it's work outside during the sunny days. Even if it's 86 degrees, and guilt-ridden.

Harvest Time

It's really starting to feel like fall now. The weather has turned cold and damp again, and I just picked 14 lbs of apples from our Alkemene (or for those in the UK, Early Windsor) tree. The Akane apples are just about ready, too, although I think I only have a couple of pounds of them this year. My harvest tally is really going up now, having pulled the potatoes this week, too. Now I need to figure out a way to store all of this....

My original goal was to harvest 100lbs of food from our yard. I'm pretty sure I'll make it, since I still have all the tomatoes on the vine, at least 20lbs of acorn squash, 5lbs of cabbages, plus carrots, lettuce, and spinach, and the apples from two more trees (although not as productive as Alkemene). So maybe I'll hit 120lbs or so. Next year, I'm thinking 200lbs would be a good goal. But I think I'll go metric. 100kg? Adding up ounces and pounds is a royal pain, especially since I try to use a calculator as little as possible. Why? It keeps the little gray cells active.

I spent all day out in the yard yesterday. After the week of vacation, and a summer of general neglect, it was time to weed out the veg beds (400sq feet), and the herb beds. I accomplished quite a bit, and it should reduce the amount of weeding that I'll need to do once the rains come and all of the weed seeds germinate. One more day and I should have the edibles beds taken care of. I need to pull out the thyme and replace it, and totally get rid of the horehound. That stuff is nasty, and seeds itself all over the place. And since I've never actually used it, it'll make room for things I will use, like marjoram. I probably won't get to the front yard until after school starts, but we'll see.

I am a convert to mulching. I used some dry lawn clippings on half the carrots and some broccoli. The carrots on the mulched half were larger, and had fewer bug problems, and less weedy. The broccoli had been plagued by fluffy little evil wascawy wabbits. Apparently they don't like stepping on lawn clippings, because as soon as I put down a couple inches of grass, they left those broccoli alone. AHA! Now if I can just keep them away from the peas in the spring....

I know, put up a fence. But I don't want a fence, and the way the beds are set up - 4ft wide beds with 4ft wide path of grass in between - Mr. E wouldn't be able to mow. No, I'll just figure out other means, and keep chasing them off like Mr. MacGregor. I just need the coyotes to come back, and whoever keeps shooting them, to knock it off.

Last night I snuggled with the boys, and read three chapters of Pride and Prejudice to them. If Mr. E can corrupt their minds by introducing them to Rush's music, I can at least try to give them a little culture through good literature, right? They groaned about it before I started, but once started, didn't want me to stop. Thing 1 giggled over Mr. Bennet's comments about his wife and children. Thing 2 commented about the "bad" grammer. I'll see if they want me to read to them some more tonight. Now that there will be no more Harry Potter books, I'll need to find something else to read to them. I've read all of the HP books out loud to the boys, even when they were old enough to read them by themselves. I put in the voices for the characters, and they prefer my reading to the book-on-tape version, except for when my voice cracks during emotional scenes.

Mr. E did a wonderful thing last night. We were at a bookstore, and they had all these Jane Austen books in hardback. I've nearly worn out my Emma, and the others aren't going to last long. So I told him, for Christmas/birthday, I'd like the books in hardback. What do you think he did? Bought me one of each of the books they had to enjoy now! Awwwww. Thanks, honey! I'm missing Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility, but he said to order them online. Now I have reading material for cold, blustery nights.

Isn't that what fall is all about? Preparing for winter?

Getting Back in the Swing

Bread! Tuesday I had to make more bread since we were out. Here's what my loaves look like. Half a loaf disappears that first day. Each loaf is a little over 1-1/2 lbs. I figure if I'm to bake all my own bread, we'd need somewhere on the order of 160lbs of flour each year. That's not including the flour for pizza, muffins, and everything else. I'll try and post photos of other things around our homestead, as I take them.

By the way, what is the definition of a homestead? Does my house, acre, veggie and herb garden, strawberry bed, and eight fruit trees count? Or do you have to raise chickens, or something?

Summer seriously throws me for a loop. I miss the routines of the school year. Not school itself, mind you. When I finally manage to get something of a summer routine going, something throws itself in my path like vacation or day camp, and I have to start all over again.

We finally have some sun and warm temps, so I got up at a reasonable hour and got the sheets washed and on the line. Load #2 is on there now. Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny as well, and I think I'll try and get the sleeping bags washed and on the line, or at least some of them. My clothesline isn't in the best of places, right behind the garage, and the sugar maples cast shade in the morning, and, by this time of year, the house in the afternoons. Since Mr. E originally didn't approve of my clothesline, I tried to put it in the most non-visible part of my yard. Now he approves, after smelling how fresh the sheets are coming from the line.

Fall is definitely in the air. The vine maples in the woods behind us are red already. Most of the plants are in a state of confusion. The blackberries are just now starting to flower. The lawn is mostly green, even though we've never watered it. Usually by now it's totally brown. I feel like summer hasn't really been here at all. It seems like we've had May/June weather in July and August. Hopefully we'll have a nice Indian Summer. Some years we do, and it's pleasant to go to soccer practice in weather that's not cold and raining, and taking home cold, wet, muddy boys.

Time to check the clothes on the line....