No update last week because we were all off having fun. We went to the coast and wreaked havoc on all the sand we could reach. Well, I suppose it was mainly the Spawn that did that. She was terribly excited about getting to finally visit the ocean again. And sand, of course, is a toddler's best friend. This despite extremely changable weather. It was sunny, it was windy, it rained, it was sunny, it rained, stir and repeat for the whole of one four day weekend.
We explained the concept of towns and countries to her over the weekend. I have no idea how well she's grasped it, but she does know we live in Vancouver, we visited Seaside, and we stopped at the park in Longview. In fact, she's decided that all her pants are "Longview pants". This is opposed to short pants. When we're in the midst of a drama-fest with her, I remember that she now has a sense of humour and that surely has to count for something.
In other news, we have processed three cases of incredibly tasty peaches. One case is turning into peach wine with another waiting the same fate. Two cases were either eaten or frozen for later eating. There's something very surreal about a row of peeled peaches. They're so...shiny. They still have all their peach colour, but they lack that essential peachy fuzziness. The chickens have been happy to deal with all the peach skin though.
We're also in the process of processing six cases of tomatoes and most of a case of pickling cucumbers. The tomatoes are cooking down into sauce and will be canned in our shiny new pressure canner. After all, it didn't explode when we canned broth.... It will be interesting to see how many quarts of sauce we end up with. The cucumbers will be turned into dill pickles for the Better Half and the Spawn. Well, I expect I'll eat a few too, but I like my lime pickles better. Lucky me, I'm the only one in the house who does like them.
The turkeys have been a right royal headache lately. They have become escape artists. The Better Half clipped their wings again, which will hopefully put an end to all that for a bit. If it doesn't help, we shall be having our turkey dinner a bit early this year. The poor Better Half was trying to get all six of them back inside the fence earlier this week. They were running around and around the trees and the Spawn's climber. The Spawn thought it was the funniest thing she'd ever seen, but the Better Half was definitely avicidal.
We now have stuff planted in the winter garden, hurrah! Just lettuce and spinach so far, but other stuff will follow soon. We're going to do beets and kale too, at the very least. Possibly bok choi and cabbage (not my choice, but we can always pickle it) as well. It will be interesting to see if the tree trimming the Better Half did makes the garden space viable for a winter garden. It's pretty marginal for a summer one, unfortunately. Though we should get a few pumpkins and delicata squash before first frost.
My current class, Political Geography, is being several shades of unprintable. The textbooks didn't arrive until the first week was halfway over. The writing assignments were hidden in a new spot on the web site. There are now five places I know of where such things can be found. What's wrong with consistency? And the professor is in the process of changing textbooks, so half the documents for the class reflect the new book and half the old. It's just a tad confusing. And annoying. To say the least.
I feel sure there's something brilliant and insightful I'm neglecting to say or something terribly cute that the Spawn's done, but we're all a bit short on sleep today and there are an awful lot of tomatoes on the counter so....
Good night!
No comments:
Post a Comment