Change of Plans

Good morning, my friends! It's going to be a hot one here today. I'm celebrating by turning on all the burners on the stovetop and doing some canning. Thank goodness for A/C. And while I'm talking about heat...oh my gosh, you people in the south and southwest. I hope y'all are surviving in those sweltering temperatures. Mike and I started our married life with three years in Phoenix while he was going to school, and so I know what that kind of heat feels like. Stay safe, my friends. And thanks to all of you who have visited my giveaway and left such nice comments. You guys say the sweetest things. And if you missed the giveaway, there's still plenty of time to enter. Just click right here to be taken to the post.

After writing yesterday's post, I went downstairs to find that Smitty got too hot in the morning sunshine. Fortunately for him, it's just a short hop up to the top of the china cabinet, and he can cool his tummy furs there.

When I wrote yesterday's post, I was planning to spend the morning hoeing the garden. Mike has been working on our boat getting it ready for our camping trip. It's been more than a year since it's been in the water. We've been boatowners for more than 30 years, and that's the longest stretch we've ever gone without doing any boating. So, he's been working on the boat motor and boat trailer, making sure everything is lubricated and working properly. Our drive to eastern Washington will be more than five hours, and so we don't want to arrive with a boat we can't use.

He wanted to put the boat in the water and try motoring around a little bit just to be sure. We'd originally planned to do it this morning, but we knew the launch would be less busy on a Thursday. We decided to do it yesterday. Conditions were perfect, including almost no boaters on the water, and just our truck and trailer using the ramp. I helped him get the boat launched and then waited for him to return. The river was lovely at that time of the morning. We're very fortunate to have such a great launch just down the hill from our house.

When we got home around lunch time, we ate our lunch and then went our separate busy ways. I usually do my hoeing in the morning. The soil is still moist from the morning's watering, and more of the garden is in shade. It wasn't too terribly hot, and so I decided to go ahead. The garden is looking great with everything growing as it should. I've worked hard keeping the weeds at bay.

Those beans in the foreground have nearly climbed to the top of their pole. I'm seeing a few flowers too, and so I'm hopeful we'll have some beans soon. These will mostly be eaten fresh or canned as plain old beans. Sometimes I make dilled green beans, but I still have two jars on the shelf in my pantry.

Here's the one sore spot in the garden. Remember what I said about those gopher stakes? Yeah, well forget all that. Those things are next to useless. In the image below, you can see two gopher stakes near the top left side of the image. And yet, look at these sad beet greens. The greens are all wilting or dead.

I had two nice rows of beets, and now they've been decimated by the critters.

When I pick up the greens from the ground, they've been completely separated from the beet root. They've been equally destructive to the rows of carrots. 

Okay, so we tried poisoning the gophers, and that hasn't seemed to slow them down at all. Now we're setting traps. One way or another, we'll get those buggers.

Since I'm feeling pretty good about the items left on my to-do list, I'm going to dry my tears and head to the farmer's market with Erik and Mae tomorrow. I'll look for some beets and carrots there. I simply must have beets and carrots for pickling this year. And, sigh. A vegetable garden is a labor of love, and so it breaks my heart seeing what these a$$hole gophers have done to mine.

Back inside, I showered and then got busy with my sewing. Recently there was a sale on Chewy. I got several new scratching pads for the kitties. They like the pressed corrugated cardboard ones best, and so I got several for the house and one for each of the RV's. They come with a packet of catnip powder, which is all fine and dandy, except that it falls through the scratching pad onto the floor below and makes quite a mess. I just put theirs in the little catnip dish I keep in the sewing room. Smitty was all over that. Think of it it as kitty cocaine....especially when it comes in powdered form as this did. He can snort it if he wants to, but he's more of a wipe it around on his gums kind of guy. 

While he was getting his catnip high, I was busy finishing up Tiny House #26. I'm happy to have this one finished. The next one will be released on Monday, and I have little hope of getting it finished before falling behind when the next one is released the following week. No matter how busy I am, there are still only 24 hours in a day. 

That brought me to the end of the day. When I went back upstairs, I found Sadie had done some creative work to find a place for her afternoon sunbath. Her thoughtless humans had closed the blinds there, effectively blocking the sunshine. No worries. She knew exactly what to do.

So the flower pots will need watering today, and then the rest of the day will probably be spent in the kitchen. I want to make zucchini relish, and I'm making some dishes ahead for our camping trip. Several years back, I got smart and stopped making "half recipes" of everything. I started making the whole thing and freezing half for future camping trips. So, when we travel, I can go pick enough stuff out of our freezer to feed us for several dinners (all of our dinners for this next trip). Then I can make frozen breakfast burritos to keep us fed at breakfast. These short camping trips are the one and only time we indulge in hot dogs for lunch. I'm going to make some egg salad too. That will cover the days when we run out of hot dogs and buns. 

I'm also going to try something new for breakfast and snacking in the form of these Breakfast Apple-Cinnamon Oatmeal Cakes. They're similar to the blueberry ones I made last week. They're different in that they include 3/4 cup of applesauce, and I'm assuming that's why I don't need to soak the oatmeal ahead of time. We'll give them a try, and I will, of course, report back on whether we liked them. And all of that to say I'm cooking now so I can really relax while we're camping next week.

Probably there will be little time for sewing in the coming days, but if I find myself with nothing to do, I'm going to start sewing together the Vintage Linen quilt blocks. 

I have some ideas about how to do this. If I can make it work, it's going to be a very pretty quilt, and it will showcase my grandmother's embroidery in a way I think she would have appreciated. I'm kind of excited to get started on it. It's next on my list so it will either happen before or after our trip.

Okay, so time's a-wastin'. Have a good day everybody. Try to stay cool out there.