This is my miracle. Rob picked up some wood from my brother-in-law, came home, split and stacked it.
He is still limping, and has a few other muscles that aren’t working quite right, so he was improved for another round of physical therapy. He started that today.
When Patsy was helping Rob pick up wood, she found a praying mantis. We also found caterpillars in the garden and brought them in with the hope of her being to observe them turning into butterflies. So far, no luck, but it’s good to try.
Our onions are dried nicely now. Rob built some wooden boxes to store them in. We have many, many more than this:). He’s sorting them, a little each day since the white ones will go bad first, then the red and yellow because of the varieties and storage capabilities they have.
He worked with Patsy in the shop while he was building them, and taught her how to safely use a tool she had not used before.
Every time Rob goes up to my sister’s farm, she send home garden goodies. We have been enjoying corn. We have dried the last of her tomatoes, as she has what she wants, and worked with apples, apples and more apples. We also dried zucchini, made Giadiniera, and apple pie filling and bread and butter pickles. I thought I was done with pickles, but found more cucumbers. Those were the absolute last, though, and I pulled the bushes up. My canning shelves are over-full, so Rob build me some wooden boxes to store empty jars in as we empty them to free up a little space on the shelves so I can safely move things around without danger of breakage and more easily see what I have as things in front are used up.
She sent kiwi and kiwi berries for us to snack on.
I spent 4-5 hours tying up my blackberries this week. The new vines grew extra long and were very tangled up with each other, grown into the garden and covered with weeds and otherwise entangled. It was not fun, but it’s done.
This was the week for people to give us food, multiple people for several reasons. What a blessing they all were! I was given a bag of popcorn, many fruits and vegetables, and a box of assorted cans of foods that Rob’s mom was given, but could not use. In that box were canned beans, a can of baby corn, some clams and oysters, and some sauces, plus more. I sorted them. The ones that were slightly over-date were set out for immediate use, the rest put on the shelves for later. I made a baked bean medley from some of them, plan to give away the oysters as we don’t eat them, have a stir-fry planned for the baby corn and will make clam chowder soon. I ate the can of very strange soup, but….hey, we don’t all have the same tastes and it’s gone now:).
I picked some lettuce, the first I’ve had for a while. Summer heat and smoke were not kind to the garden and there wasn’t any for a while. I also picked peppers, green beans, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, zucchini and beets from the garden.
I went grocery shopping last week. I used the $10/off $50 coupon at Safeway and also clipped several store coupons to my phone account. I will need very little at the store this week, between what I bought, the end of the garden, and what I was given. I like to stretch out my shopping trips if I can, to save time and to stay home, and as always, save money!
Hope the next round of therapy will have Rob back to normal. He has come such a long way.
Wow look at all the good foods. I have never seen kiwi berries before….do they taste like kiwi, only smaller?
I’m glad your pantry is stocked. I know it was a lot of work, but it will be a blessing this winter.
The kiwi berries are like miniature kiwis, without fuzz. So, you just pop them in your mouth and eat them down! I don’t know if they are really berries, or actually a small variety of kiwi, but that’s what my sister calls them, and she grew them, so…..I think they are a little sweeter than the bigger kiwis to me.
I will agree, Rob splitting and stacking wood is a miracle!
I saw where you tied up canes and there is a plowed area then there is another fence. Is this the backside of your yard? What do you plant back there or do you just mow it.
Jeannie@GetMeToTheCountry
On the right hand side of the berries that are tied up there is a space between them and the fence on the right. It is about 3-4 feet wide. During the summer, that grew over with new berry vines and weeds. The fences in back, and on the right are the edges of the city lot we live on. We put sawdust down last spring, so it wasn’t as hard to get the area cleaned out as it has been at times. On the left of the Marion berry row is the garden, and this year, it held tomatoes in the space you can see before Rob cleared it out yesterday. When we first moved here, the berries were on the fence on the right-hand side that divides us from our neighbor. At the time, the man who lived there was very anti-blackberry and let that fact be known, so we moved them over, away from the fence. Now, we have new neighbors, who are delighted with any little berry bush/berry/sprig that grows up by the fence. So, now, she talks about letting berries grow on the fence, once again…….Wow, times change!
Just wow – that workshirt that Rob has on in the photo really shows how much weight he’s lost. Way to go. Keep on the physio – I had to go 6 months when I had knee surgery years ago. Lots of hard work but it paid off with almost normal function.
Well done on all your canning. I’d love to have the pantry space you do! Perhaps in my next house/apartment.
Cheers,
I’m also glad he is starting another round of PT. They sure worked him hard yesterday at his first session back, but they also said that he had improved in the break, so that’s wonderful news.