Weekday Chores

Our first plum harvest - so yummy!

Over the weekend, I made a mental promise to myself to be more productive on the weekday nights. I refuse to just vegitate in front of the boob-tube (there's a reason they call it that, you know!!) like a zombie!

Last night was a good night. I stopped at the store on the way home to buy a candy thermometer and some cheese cloth (of course, I grabbed a container of dark chocolate covered almonds, too!). When I got home, I suggested that H milk Sass while I finished preparing dinner. When he came back, I strained the milk and sterilized the equipment while he changed out the chickie's water. Then we enjoyed a nice dinner together. I really need to get the dining room table cleared off so that we don't have to keep eating on the coffee table, though!

After dinner, we headed outside. Our plan was initially to spend some time with Sassafras. We think she enjoys it when there are people (and dogs) about. Turns out, she loves the husks from the corn on the cob! Anyway, H grabbed a bowl and went after the ripe blackberries, I grabbed the watering cans and set to work on the garden. I did some needed weeding, watering and a little bit of harvesting (baby lettuce & turnip greens). H came back with about a quart of blackberries! I also filled a huge box of used hay from Sass's lean-to and used that to mulch the sweet potatoes, watermelons and tomatoes. We also watered the 'baby' cherry trees (we think they were only planted last year) and mulched around them as well. They seem to be suffering with so little rain. I don't know if it is normal for summer around here or not, but it has not rained in about 5 weeks now. We have twice ran our shallow well dry, trying to water. AND, I'm pretty sure that many of our veggies aren't doing as well as they should due to lack of water. I've decided that going forward, I'm going to make more liberal use of mulch and I'm going to hand water almost daily (unless it rains, of course). I can water the entire 'field of boxes' with just three full watering cans. Watering the corn and potatoes takes another two or so...and our orchard needs water as well. The problem there is that the sprinkler heads in that zone are messed up and we haven't had time to fix them yet. I think we'll be setting up a manual sprinker out there for a little while this evening.

Speaking of the orchard, we harvested some plums on Sunday. We have a tree that has probably 5 or 6 dozen on it. We picked the first dozen or so that seemed the ripest. They are absolutely delicious!! One of the other varieties lost a huge limb last week, but the plums on the good part of the tree are just starting to move away from being totally green. There are hundreds and hundreds of plums on that tree - can't wait to see what variety!