The Dog Days of Summer

It’s the Dog Days of Summer . . . lots of heat and humidity, not much rain, and hard to get motivated.  I’ve even slacked off a bit on the blog, but it’s time to get back to making regularly blog posts.

The garden is doing great; the tomatoes are really ripening up, in all colors, red, orange, and yellow.  The pole beans are in high gear, producing more beans than I can eat.  I’ve started drying some in my dehydrator, and have been saving them in a quart canning jar to keep them dry.  I’m thinking they might come in handy to mix with rice, or when making some soup this fall and winter.  I’ve been snacking on some baby carrots, & harvesting some baseball-sized sweet onions.  I’ve been using up my Zucchini’s by trying to perfect my Italian Zucchini Casserole recipe.

My Sandhill Crane family still visits my yard several times a day to snack on the dried whole kernel corn I’ve been putting out for them.  Sometimes they look a little put out when I’m late putting corn out in the morning.  When I go out into the backyard they will walk over to the other side of the yard and wait until I go back inside the house.  The two youngsters, who were little fuzz balls back in early May, are nearly the size of their parents now.  They all like to hang out in my backyard and sit down in the grass, with at least one adult standing and on patrol for danger.

I’ve been cutting down some overgrown lilac bushes and wild grapevines growing alongside my house, as well as some seedling trees encroaching into my lawn.  I pile up the brush on a plastic tarp, and then I can easily drag the tarp across the lawn into the tree line where I pile the brush out of view.  The really fun part won’t start until I begin digging up the roots.

It’s kind of hard to believe that August is halfway over; where did the Summer go?  On the other hand, I am really looking forward to the Fall.  Fall is absolutely my favorite time of the year.

Labels: Home and Garden