The End of the Season

Life has gone crazy around The Garden of Weeden. Business is starting to go well, the garden kept me busier than a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, the processing and harvesting has kept me deliciously busy and well that has kept me from doing other things I enjoy....like sleeping. I apologize to all my online friends for neglecting y'all so much lately.

We survived our birthdays. That old saying, "Life is like a roll of toilet paper, the closer to the end it gets, the faster it spins." is becoming more apparently true. I still deal with pain almost daily, but I refuse to let it stop me. I did learn about another herb to try, that's supposed to be as effective on pain as morphine without all the side effects. Problem is, noone sells it, and it only grows out west, and well I am as far from "out west" as one can get and still live in USA. I am working on getting some though to try. I finally figured-out the best way to ingest another herb I have to try, only to learn the FDA or DEA or someone is trying to make it a schedule class something drug.....Yikes!! Who knew??

Fall is coming...I can smell it! The evenings are crisper, and a bit cooler, and while it's almost as hot as the surface of the sun here, the humidity is lowering, making the heat more tolerable....the leaves haven't changed yet, but that's coming. My fall garden is getting planted (a bit late, but what else is new?) and the summer garden is coming to a close (even if my silly peppers and eggplants don't know this yet). Overall, this year's summer garden went better than last year. My tomatoes were jamming at first, then suddenly all the plants died....I am thinking too much rain caused a blight. I finally had corn to grow, and then suddenly it all molded, again too much rain at one time. Being raised in Indiana, it's almost a sin to not be able to grow corn, but here I am, without those yummy nibblets of golden goodness, again. The zucchini died too. The lady at the farm market told me it was probably too much rain for that as well. Oh well, such is life. I think I planted my green beans too late, since they barely produced any beans, but they are replanted in the fall garden. Next year I will plant them as soon as the frost is past, instead of waiting until I plant everything

else....live and learn. The groundhog ate my okra and sunflowers, and possibly the potatoes and sweet potatoes too. I planted over 9 lbs of seed potatoes and harvested maybe 10 potatoes. Three of them truly usable. I had plants, so I should have had taters, but nope, no taters...silly groundhog. Doesn't he realize that I am willing to eat him to get the vitamins from my veggies? Okay not really, I am not THAT hungry, but I am willing to fence him out of the garden, or worse, relocate him.I don't want to relocate him, since I named him Bucky, but I want my garden more than I want Bucky around. In all I made many jars of pickles, relishes, tomatoes, pear butter and now apple pie filling, I froze gallon bags of jalapenos, habenaros, zucchini (which I bought at the farm market) and my new favorite to can...pepper relish. That stuff is AMAZING on a bratwurst!!

I don't have any wisdom for today other than to reiterate....Focus your life on God. It helps us to not focus so much on ourselves, and Go OUTSIDE AND DO SOMETHING PHYSICAL TODAY!! Tomorrow will be too late!!
Peace!