I See the Future

This is what 25 pounds of tomatoes look like.  These are Super Marzanos, which are supposed to be especially good for sauce.  I got these from the farmer down the hill.  This is what the ones I'm growing look like:

They're lighter in color than they have been, but still green as can be.  We've had beautiful Indian summer weather here, although rain is in the forecast.  If the rain will come and go they might still have a chance.  If it comes to stay, they'll rot on the vine.  One can never tell in this part of the world.  When we lived in Phoenix many years ago, we used to bet on when the first 100° day would be.  Now we bet on when the rain will come to stay.

Green tomatoes or no, I have my red ones from the farmer, which means my future holds cooking and canning pasta sauce!  I have the best recipe.  I'll share it with you when things get under way.  You can see that some of the tomatoes are still a little green, and so I have them spread out in my laundry room to give them a few more days to ripen.  I need to pick up a few things at the grocery store too.  Starting this weekend though, it'll be me slaving over a hot stove . . . which I don't mind one little bit.  The pasta sauce is so worth it.

After we picked up the tomatoes from the farmer, we all walked down to see the wildflowers.  There is so much color now that it is obvious to see from the driveway, some 200 yards away. 

The zinnias are filling in the green spaces

and the cosmos, which have been slowest to bloom, are finally doing their thing too.

George kept an eye on things from the sidelines.

Gracie never walks with us.  It means walking past the wind turbine, and she isn't sure that thing won't swoop down like a hawk and gobble her up. 

When we had thoroughly eyed the flowers, we checked on the vegetables.  Isn't George an excellent zucchini farmer?

And I am thrilled to say that we picked the entire crop of Italian prune plums!

Actually, there was one more, but I ate it practically while it was still hanging on the tree.  This may not look like much of a harvest to you, but it's the first harvest from this tree that was planted seven years ago.  I am so hopeful that we will get many more next year.  I'm still bucking to make some plum chutney if I can ever harvest enough plums.

So that's about it from the garden.  I'm sewing too, but I'm making my "pay it forward" gifts, so I can't share them until they've been distributed to their recipients.  However, I will tell you that they involve beading.  That's all I'm going to say.  I haven't really done much beading except to sew on an occasional bead here and there.  I haven't really known how to do it the right way, and so I checked YouTube and found the most helpful video posted courtesy of ozgirl57.  If you're interested, I'm sharing it here.  It is so much easier to do than I thought.

I should have watched this video long ago.  Now that I know how to do it, I'm imagining there might be more bead work in my future.

How's your week going?