Another Year Ending

Some of the garden maters!

The farmer and his dogs!

A few evening hours pushing in Oct to get the crops in!

Sunrise

Roasting tomatoes

 Where on earth does time go!?? Am I that bad at time management!? My goodness! I need to get better at this, and I know I keep saying this!

It was a super busy fall, Harvest is always long, but no major breakdowns, which is always a plus!  I kept busy running meals to the fields, and giving rides as the guys needed, as well as putting the gardens to sleep and preserving what I grew!

In spite of the crazy weather, we had my gardens all did wonderful! I managed to do a lot of canning! Tomatoes totally blew up for me, so it became a lot of sauces! as well as roasted tomatoes!  Out of 20 Potatoe plants I harvested close to 90 #....

The holidays have come and gone except for New Years!  We do not do much for New year, when we were younger, we would go out and celebrate at whatever local bar was serving good food and music! Of course, would always sit and watch the ball drop and go home... Fast forward now 40 years later we tend to stay in and the ball drops if we are awake or not! I usually do enjoy party finger foods and do a meat and cheese tray as well as BBQ wieners, and a veggie tray, so rather than a large meal we graze all day!

I have my two books from the library to begin my new year's reading for the book club.... always fun to do!

I have embarked a new journey, well sort of) As most grandkids do, they tell stories and conversations from their perspectives, and one in particular from my oldest grandson who is soon to be8 but 4 at this time was trying to explain to me the life cycle of sunflowers! He was assisting me in dandelion picking for oil! So I decided to make that a kid's story and hired an illustrator to do the .... I am working now publisher, and it was my hopes to have it published by Christmas but didn't make those deadlines, and I have had to make few revisions as I go along, It has definitely been a steep learning curve!

Other than harvest and work and the book writing, not much has happened on our end which at this age I consider a blessing in life!

Wishing you all a very wonderful safe New Years!

Summers End

 So hard to believe that summer is just ticking away!

Gardening came in with full vengeance with so much rain. I still cannot keep ahead of the weeds. They have overtaken my plot, but I am harvesting what I can as I go.

Right now, the house has a wonderful smell of tomatoes, roasting in the oven, covered with olive oil, garlic salt and pepper and rosemary. The dehydrator is full of zucchini and the process of making chips. I only planted one cucumber plant this year and it is bearing more than I can eat, so I have been donating to clients and to a local small restaurant . 

The house is still underway. Still not finished, but we have made progress. The patio is built. The only thing left on there to do is the epoxy on the cement. We just finished the garage Floor yesterday it has a second coating on it and was also epoxied so we have to wait and let that dry. The laundry room will be the next one to get the epoxy. Then once we trim out and put the door frames in those rooms will be done.!I never knew that building a home would take this long. I feel like we have been living in this mess forever. I just want to get things in place and get rid of the dust and the boxes.

The grandkids are getting ready to go back to school. The oldest boy will be in second grade and his little brother starts preschool this year exciting times for their household daughter her oldest little girls gonna be in first grade and then they have a six month old baby girl as well who is in daycare, so fun to watch the grandkids grow and talk to them about their days

This past weekend we had our county fair one of the better ones around the region. I asked my grandson what the highlight of the fair was for him and he said he got to eat a snowcone. lol  I asked what flavor and he said cherry!  :)  I guess it just goes to show. It is always the simple things that mean the most.!

I did get in a quick trip a few weeks ago with a girlfriend we loaded up and took off for Medora North Dakota went to the musicalAnd to the pitchfork steak, fondue supper, we stopped in Dickinson on the way back at one other city campgrounds enjoy the day just sitting near the water, watching nature we both packed some art stuff to work on some water color and just relaxed!It is always nice to get away, but it is also nice to come home!

Camp cooking in Dickinson ND

Medora ND muscial

Petrified Forest in Lemon SD

Below is an image I am working on for a small children's

 book

Spring Catch Up

Crazy how time flies!   Is this how it going to be as I age lol!?   

We are working endlessly it seems to get the house and yard and she shed all at least done enough to take a breath!

We had done some landscaping in the back by the patio and with all the rain we have had it just washed the grass away! Soooo we replanted and  drowned out a second time so now we will wait on that until a different gutter system is in!

The vegetable garden is in and quite muddy and soon the weeds will be out of control! 

The photo of the small bush above is one we put out in front of our house. I love how the leaves are variegated !

My flowers are doing really good! Planted a few new ones in front of my craft shop! Hope by end of summer I can have some photos of that progress! It is getting there, just a slow process and I never knew how much stuff I had errr have !

May need to do some serious cleaning out again!