Weekending 8/29/22

 Hello and good Morning!

It's kind of grey and overcast here (dare we hope for rain??) which is causing me to feel rather sluggish this morning.  I'm sipping coffee, but the jolt has not yet set in.

More snapdragons - they just keep coming and coming.

How was your weekend?  Mine was very nice.  It started on Friday when our cleaning girl/woman showed up for the first time.  Oh man!  What a fabulous job she did,  The house looked so clean and smelled so good by the time she finished.  Karyn brings her own supplies for cleaning except we gave her the stuff we use on our hardwood floors and she uses our vacuum.  Except, as luck would have it, our vacuum stopped working on Friday.  LOL  It was old (had been my parents, so it had an extremely long life) and both Fletch and I had noticed it wasn't sucking very well recently.  Oh well.  I had another, cheap little stick vacuum that she could use and I ordered another vacuum before Karyn left on Friday.  The new one was delivered on Saturday and all I can say is that our carpets have not been this clean in years!  It's a powerful thing!

I met up with Dee on Saturday morning for our usual chatter, knitting and sipping.  My knitting was about nil - nothing was working for me that morning.  But, I managed to unload some of the zucchini cookies (which are very good BTW), some zucchini bread with cranberries, some tomatoes and a few jalapenos.  The tomatoes continue to come in like gangbusters.  Yesterday I picked 8 large tomatoes and over 50 sungold cherry tomatoes.  We are overrun!

Saturday my friends the crows showed up.  I enjoy them so much and we often have a few around but on Saturday there were eight - a murder!

This group wasn't all that vocal and they didn't stay there too long.  Soon they were flying over our house on their way to somewhere else.

The other week Kym had one of her "garden dispatch" posts that showed a hummingbird.  Fletch and I usually see hummers in the afternoon while sitting on the patio.  I tried to get a picture on Saturday, but it is HARD.  Using just my cell phone's camera doesn't help.  But, Sunday morning, early, I noticed one flying around our Rose of Sharon.  Then it went to the feeder we have hanging on the clothesline and then, finally, perched on the line and I was able to snap a picture!

A little blurry, but you can see the hummingbird and it's long beak on the clothesline just to the left of the feeder.  Our hummers are not real colorful.  I've only seen a ruby throat here once or twice.  Ours are mostly a dull green/grey on the back with a pale chest.

I don't know about you, but growing up there were things that my Mom fixed that I didn't really care for.  Some I still don't (liver, for example, yuck!).  But some I now love.  Parsnips and turnips fall into that category.  I am particularly fond of Gilfeather Turnips and in years past I would always pick one up at a country store in Wardsboro, Vermont when we were up there.  This past year I found an organic seed company that carries Gilfeather seeds.  I was thrilled and got two packages...one for my brother who gardens a ton and one for Fletch.  This weekend we harvested our first!

Not the most attractive item, but boy did they smell sweet right out of the ground.  Typically they are harvested after the first hard frost, but we could not wait.  I peeled them and cut them up and then boiled them.  After an hour they were still hard!  So, we did not have them last night as planned.  Instead I let them continue to cook while we ate and we will have them tonight.  Once they had softened up, I simply mashed them with butter and pepper.  The tiny bit that I tasted was delicious - so sweet.  I think we may let the rest stay in the ground until after a frost.  The other ones are small still, but I'm thrilled that we've been able to grow them!

And now it is time for another cup of coffee and to get started on Monday.  I hope your week is off to a great start.