Shifting Gears

Huff puff !! I'm finally getting there! To the end of the garden and the August canning rush, that is. I prophesied things would gum up during the last two weeks of August and that's what happened. Things have been a little crazy around here lately but the dust began to settle today.

My canning repertoire for last week included corn, tomatoes, apples, and pickles. This week it was same song, second verse with tomatoes taking center stage on Monday and apples on Tuesday. My tally so far this week is 16 qt. spaghetti sauce, 36 pt. pizza sauce, 29 qt. applesauce, 2 qt. dried corn, and 5 pt. sweet pickles. Another kind of pickles is curing and can be processed tomorrow. I have just come in from picking the last two dozen ears of corn in the garden and a nice mess of green beans. They are still blooming and will probably continue to give us something fresh to eat for a couple more weeks. Other than the beans, the only thing still left in the garden are tomatoes. I probably could have picked another bucketful but chose to ignore them--at least for today.

Since our Family Day concluded with a cookout here on Saturday, I decided to skip cleaning last week knowing the place would need cleaning more after than before 27 people circled my table. Another prophesy came true. After the last ones left around 9:30 p.m. I was too tired to sweep the floor and I did not have time on Monday or Tuesday to do anything about it either. By last evening the floor was so sticky I could not tolerate walking on it in bare feet. My choices were either to wear socks or carry a putty knife to pry my feet loose after each step. (I chose the former.) Wednesday is not normally a kitchen-cleaning day but today was an exception.

My hoard of provisions for the winter are safely stored on the shelves in the basement, the kitchen is clean, and the garden is nearly empty. I will still can small amounts of a few things but the August rush is over. I'm happy to be shifting gears and moving into fall mode.