Why I haven't posted much lately

I've been a bit busy lately. Too busy to post. Busy with this...

... and this ...

... and this. I call this "Tomato Potential Energy". I have about 20 plants and they are loaded like this one. They are still slowly ripening. They will probably all ripen when I'm trying to start school.

On the left is a Roma and the right is a yellow Heirloom tomato called Golden Mama.

By the way, our Araucana eggs got a B ribbon at the fair. And my relish got a second place in the relish category.

We were right about the Ruby Queen corn getting redder. This corn was picked about a week later than the first picture.

And this one was a week later that the picture above.

Knitting and more knitting

All summer long, a group of women have been meeting in our church basement to learn knitting for our resident expert Nita. She's taught all of us quite a bit this summer.

The young girls have also enjoyed learning. They are working on a variety of washclothes, doll scarves, or scarves for themselves (depending on attention span).

I finished placemat number 4. I think it may be the last one for a while. I have a few other things that I want to try out.

This summer Nita taught me how to knit in the round and how to felt. This is a purse before felting. Felting is running it through the washer with hot water. The purse shrinks and also gets fuzzy.

Here's the finished purse drying. See how much it shrunk? Pretty cool.

Some Clouds for Brother Mike

While we were at the ballgame, a storm blew through and we had not only a rainbow but also some great clouds. So Mike, these are for you.

I didn't notice until I downloaded this picture that I had captured a whole flock of birds crossing the clouds.

My "cruise ship" cloud.

Nathan is 12!

Nathan turned 12 on Thursday. We started the day with the traditional birthday pancakes.

Nathan wanted to go to a ballgame for his birthday. We took the whole family plus Grandma and Grandpa to the game. He got a bonus game in. The game the night before had been postponed due to rain. So we got to see the end of that game and then a half hour later, we saw the game scheduled for the night.

We got popcorn halfway through the game and also saw Nathan's name up on the scoreboard.

The next day, we had the cake and presents. This cake symbolizes Nathan's diving catches during his baseball season.

And I think this was his favorite present - the soundtrack to Narnia. At least his smile is pretty big!

Fair Produce

We submitted our entries to the county fair today after church. What is missing is the Ruby Queen Corn (Deb's special crop this year). We picked it just before we left for church.

We ate some yesterday and were a little disappointed that it wasn't more red. We're going to leave some on the stalks to ripen fully and see if it turns more red. It definitely doesn't look like the picture in the seed catalog.

Here we are at the judging station. We did something different this year and entered the children in the youth catagory. Last year, we missed out on a deadline and everything was entered under my name in the open adult catagory.

They give a ribbon to every child's entry. We got Class A on all of the vegetables except the tomatoes. I didn't pick 5 that were consistently the same size. The judge asked the children what type of vegetable they were showing and how they liked to eat it. The older children got additional questions on how they grew the vegetable.

The children by their exhibits. They are all on the striped rug in front by the chain.

Interestingly, I asked the children on the way home which way they liked the judging - everyone getting either a Class A or B or C ribbon in the youth contest or getting a 1st, 2nd, 3rd or nothing in the adult open catagory. They all said that they liked the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd judging. I guess when you give a ribbon to everyone, it doesn't mean as much and the children certainly seemed to sense this.

Bountiful: adj. plentiful; abundant

I haven't been blogging lately because I've been processing food. Last week and this week are some of the big weeks in the garden. The green beans are still being picked every other day and we have a ton of squash and corn. The tomatoes are just starting to ripen too.

We've had some great corn this year. Just look at those ears. Full to the end and absolutely wonderful!

I canned some beets this year in hopes that they will make good beet salads in the winter.

My triple threat. At least I hope so. I'm submitting these jars in the county fair next week. The jar on the left has blackberry jelly, the middle jar is relish, and the jar on the right is blueberry jam.

And last but certainly not least is the 100th zucchini I've picked from our three plants.