You Say Tomato

Good morning, my friends. By the time you read this, it'll be way past morning. I wrote my post and then never published it. Sorry for the late posting. That's what happens when I get too busy. It's Day 2 of my busy week. Yesterday gave me a taste. Today will be even busier. We must do some grocery shopping, unfortunately. We'll get an early start and try to be home early because there's much to do at home as well.

Before I even did my slow-stitching yesterday, I hoed the garden. It was a happy thing seeing this first zinnia nearly open. First, I thought it was yellow. Then, I thought it was red. Now, I'm thinking it's both yellow and red. 

There’s less to hoe in the garden each time I’m out there. I use a hula hoe and chop the weeds off at ground level. There are some weeds that have roots seemingly to China. Those are harder to eradicate. As for the others…hoe them off enough times and deprive them of sunshine, and eventually, they don’t come back.  

Checking the greenhouse, I’m thrilled to see about half a dozen ripening tomatoes. 

Here are some more over here. (Sorry for the blur in the image below.) I’m thinking that red one is just about ready for harvesting. The yellow residue you see on some of them is sulfur dust. It keeps the spider mites away.

When I’d finished my outdoor chores, I went to work canning four 12-oz. Jars of Spicy Dilled Carrot Spears. My recipe is for four jars. I had more carrots than listed in the recipe, but my yield was still just four jars. It’s enough to get us through the season, and I still have two jars from last year.

All the while I was working on the carrots, I was roasting beets in the oven. Those were roasted and skinned, and I’ll be pickling them this afternoon. The most time-consuming part of that process is done, and so it shouldn’t take too much of my time this afternoon. 

When all of that was done I turned my attention to Tiny Treasure #65. This one has stem stitch, satin stitch, and lazy daisy.

And then Sadie joined me in the sewing room to work on the Blueberries block.

I could eyeball the applique for this upper section where the blueberries are in the basket.

For the lower portion, I decided to do it on my pressing sheet first. I was glad I did because the pieces for the bear were a little tricky, and I ended up repositioning one of them.

When I had it that far, I fused it to the background.

From there I just needed to add three clusters of blueberries in the lower portion where the greenery is, and the applique was finished.

It occurs to me that I can clean things up now and get my binding sewn on before I do the top-stitching, and so that’s what I’m hoping for today. There should be enough time later this afternoon for the binding. If there’s still time left over, I’ll start top-stitching the Glacier block and then the Blueberries block.

Also on today’s agenda…grocery shopping and pickling some beets, as I’ve mentioned. For our camping trip, I committed to baking some blueberry hand pies and some cookies. So I want to make the crust for the hand pies today. The cookie dough is rolled into logs and chilled. From that point, it can wait three days before it’s baked off. So I’ll make the pie dough and the cookie dough today with a plan to bake both tomorrow. 

Of course, the flowers need watering. I’m still doing daily check-ins with the green beans to make sure they’re climbing their poles. That about covers it. Just writing about it makes me tired. Today and tomorrow are going to be busy but then we’ll have three days of forced relaxation on our camping trip. All the stuff I’m doing now will be worth it when we get to the relaxation part.

Okay, so I must get on with things. I have miles to go before I sleep.