The Good Wins

Hello, friends.  I hope you've been doing well.  My freezer was at it's limit for bags of veggie scraps.  I was thankful the weather turned to cooler, rainy days for a bit.  The first day, I canned veggie broth.  I'd used the last of our lentils, so canned some of these the second day.  It's so convenient having beans/legumes ready to heat and eat.   I dehydrated the leaves and inner bits of celery, which I grind into a powder, and add to the chicken mash, and also dehydrated bread ends for bread crumbs.  Figs were preserved by dehydrating and canning.  In the garden, I harvested cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, carrots and eggplant.  Elderberries were harvested and dried.

cranefly orchid

As is often the case in life, there has been good and bad recently.  I'll get the bad out of the way first: 

- the kale patch I had made from volunteer plants was mowed.  In fairness, the stretch of mid-90's didn't do them any favors, and they were quite spindly at the time.

-despite planting 40 tomato plants, and replacing several of them early on as needed, there doesn't appear to be enough to can this year.  Plenty of rain has caused some rot and wilt, the leaf-footed bugs pierce them for their juice, which makes a soft spot, then rot.  I'm still finding worms and worm holes... mostly army worms, but the occasional small hornworm too.  

- the deer chomped the top out of my lone surviving roselle hibiscus.

- it's been the most meager harvest I can remember for August.  Some days, there is nothing to harvest.

-out of the five lettuce varieties I started, only one variety germinated, and no parsley did.

Now for the good: 

-we've picked up locally grown peaches, which were wonderful.

- it's been a great fig year.

- I've been able to freeze strips of sweet peppers, which was a goal this year.

- now that J is semi-retired, he's helping some with household tasks, such as laundry and food preserving, which is a blessing.

- J had placed some potatoes in the truck tool box planter in the spring, as back up plants, and harvested those this weekend.  We enjoyed them, along with tromboncino squash, and sweet peppers, which he grilled.

-chanterelle mushrooms have continued to show up.

-it appears we'll have a good winter squash harvest.

- I saved a monarch butterfly from a spider's web.  Looking out the window, I saw it struggling.  I don't usually interfere with nature, but it had only been caught on the tip of one wing.  I knew it would get further entangled, as it struggled to fly.  I figured monarchs could use some help these days.  It made me smile to see it fly up and over the house.  

- while filling the bird feeder, I noticed a new to me flowering plant close by, and found out it's a cranefly orchid.  It's not as showy as many orchids, but I love seeing another native plant on this land, and only yards from the house. 

- I've enjoyed watching the pollinators flock to the Joe Pye weed, golden alexander, and winged sumac.

anole lizard on Joe Pye weed

So, definitely more good than bad.  It was helpful to think about the good and bad, and realize the many things to be grateful for.  This is the first time we've canned whole figs.  I'm not sure how we'll use them, other than to try them in the fig bread I make.  I counted 22 jars of various homemade jams on the shelf, and was determined to get that number down, before canning any more.  If you can whole figs, I'd love to know how you use them.  We expect they'd be good on oatmeal, but that's the main way we plan to use the dehydrated ones, cooked with oatmeal, and we'll try them on salads.  I hope your "good" column outweighs the bad this week.