Overwhelmed

I wish I could say that we had been away on a lovely three week holiday, doing nothing more energetic than sitting in the shade, sipping a cold drink and reading a book.  Truth be told, I'd go stir crazy doing three weeks of that, but the thought of it seems nice.  No such luck.

Around this time of the year, I just start to feel overwhelmed.  Mentally more than physically I think.  Too much too do, and not the energy to do it.  Having a hard time getting going on things some times, at a time when there is sooo much that needs getting going at.  It's a busy time of year. 

 The farmers markets have been busier for me the past few weeks, which means I have to make more jam.  There is more fruit to deal with.  I still have 40 lbs or so of crabapples sitting in the fridge, waiting to be cooked up....but......I'm pretty well out of freezer space. I've already done 50 lbs or more.  It seems as soon as I take a bag or three out of the freezer to make into jam, there are three or more ready to go in. The pears are ripening like mad, falling off the tree.  Larry has been picking them up, and picking some off, and they are lined up in boxes in the garage, and I'm going through them daily and picking out the ripe ones to peel and jam or peel and freeze for jam.  It's a slow process, there are a lot of small pears.  I could just buy some big ones, but ours are free, and organic, and taste so much better than ones I have bought.   I bought nectarines, and the same is happening with them.  As they ripen they are jammed or frozen.  The fruit flies are thick, I'm vacuuming them up daily.  Maybe I should try some traps, but wonder if there is much point when there is so much ripe fruit hanging around.

The vegetable garden is doing well, after I finally rescued it from the weeds.  A certain type of grass in the garden has just gone mad this year.  The vegetable garden looked like a hayfield at one point.  This is the first year I have not had a good basil crop, in nearly 20 years.  The weeds got away on me, and when I finally rescued the basil, the plants were pretty scrawny, and not many of them.  They look much better now, and I took a chance and seeded some more, which are up and doing well, but it is really too late in the season, and they won't come to much.

I've taken photos and written blog posts in my head, but seemed to find it impossible to actually type them out and post them.

Larry continues to have trouble with his eyes after the cataract surgeries.  The Fuch's Dystrophy has worsened his vision.  He is still not driving, which, well, just sucks.  Some days he thinks he would be 'okay' to drive.....but he hasn't, so far. He has an appointment with the Opthalmologist on Sept 10.  The increased eye drops and overnight cream prescribed since his last visit don't seem to have made much difference.  He may be looking at a cell transplant.

We made it to Oliver at the end of August for three nights.  The lawn there was struggling, still some green clumps of grass, but lots of tall weeds, all going to seed.  Instead of mowing them off, which would have just spread the seeds around, we decided to pull them out.  Only one variety did not have a tap root, the tap roots explaining why the weeds are doing so well and the grass was not.  Most of them came out fairly easily, especially after we watered the lawn, but it was still a lot of work, hard work.  At lunchtime of the second day, I commented 'when is the holiday part of this going to start'.  Well that afternoon we did take the dogs to the lake for a swim, and I had one too.  Then after that I rode my bike to the thrift store and they were having a bag sale, so for $5 I managed to fill a paper shopping bag with assorted things I probably didn't really need.  Okay, Meredith really did need that mixer I got for her:), but did I really need another iron....well it's always good to have one on standby just in case the second hand one you already have decides to stop working, or you knock it off the ironing board and it hits the tile floor and breaks....yes that did happen to me once. 

So there you have it folks.  We are still here, plodding along.  We picked our 40 buckets of blackberries a few weeks ago, thank goodness.  We still are eating corn on the cob, done so easily in the microwave.  We are still going to the farmers markets, rushing around like mad on a Sunday morning to get everything picked and loaded and getting there just in time to be set up by 9 am.  And then we get an email from the market manager this week asking us to get there by 7:30 (to help reduce the congestion).......did that rub me the wrong way or what...... I guess I'll send her an email explaining that since Larry can't see well enough to drive, he is unable to leave home before me to set up earlier like he did last year, while I stay at home longer to finish the picking.  I do quite a bit of picking the evening before, but since it gets dark so much earlier in the evening, and light so much later in the morning, we run out of time.  We have an extra fridge, but the space in that is mostly taken up by eggs and fruit, so I can't pick the veggies too much ahead of time.  Okay, now I'm really rambling on.....but at least you know I am still here.