We haven't gotten much rain to speak of, although it is raining as I type this. We have had to water the garden more often than usual. With the weather being cooler, it has stunted a lot of the growth in the garden. We have gotten one ripe tomato, a few zucchini and cucumbers, but things haven't really taken off yet. We didn't get very many beans because the critters got in the garden and ate them. Every other year, our neighbors have planted soybeans, so the critters have left our measly beans alone, but this year he planted corn. We have gotten quite a few of the dragon beans this year. They must not like those! We went to our local farm market and bought a bushel of green beans to freeze for the year. Nothing like fresh green beans!
This is a tree that we have in our yard that I frequently take pictures of. It has never had flowers before in the three plus years that I have owned my house. After some research, it was discovered that it is a basswood tree and produces the best honey. It was literally buzzing with bees. You could hear it all over the yard! It now has "fruit" on it that they said the birds like. It was very fragrant with all the flowers on it. We kind of stayed away from it for awhile because I counted four different types of bees and it was hard for me to take a picture without a bee in it.
Since we were surrounded by corn fields this year, I took some photos of my nieces and nephews "Children of the Corn" style. They were asking me about the movies and I told them that we would have to rent them sometime. I gave them some garden tools and told them that they couldn't smile. That was really hard for them!! When I finally told them to smile at the end, it was less than enthusiastic. It was fun for them though and I got some great pics!I've been trying to do more natural cooking. I started things slowing because it takes awhile for mom to adjust to things. We used to make homemade soup and use everything canned, but I've slowly changed it and now we use everything fresh (or frozen if we cannot get it fresh). Even cutting out the canned tomatoes and dicing them ourselves. It tastes so much better this way! This week I am going to try to make chili from scratch. I have some beans that I am going to cook and cut up some tomatoes and stuff. Hopefully it will work out well. If it does, then we are going to make some for winter and can it. Nothing like canned homemade vegetable beef soup and homemade chili when it is cold out!
I am excited to do some canning this year. I want to can some tomatoes definitely, but also some apples. I am looking for a recipe to try tomato sauce. I really like it when I can then because we use 1/2 the amount of salt, so it is a bit healthier. Plus, it just gives you satisfaction knowing that you did it yourself!
I did my first IV chemo at work this week. It went pretty well. We have been floating to Cardiac Telemetry a lot lately and it has been crazy busy there. The last time I floated, I only had 5 patients (as opposed to the 7 the time before) and we were doing trivia. It ended with me trying to think of a question, but I couldn't come up with one. Did you know chickens have ears? I didn't. I also learned this week at work that battery acid does not eat through scotch tape. Okay, I don't really believe that, but for some reason, we have to tape batteries before we dispose of them. I don't know...I just smile and nod.
