July
Birthday
As you may know July is my birthday month. This year was my 70th. Carolyn pitched in and helped me buy a brand new dump trailer. This will make unloading wood chips, gravel, sand, topsoil, etc. much easier than by hand. I also put new tires on my little garden trailer.
An unexpected birthday present came in the mail - a gift certificate to my favorite store, Harbor Freight Tools. Thank you Sara Smith! 🙂
Strange "Crops"
Many mushrooms pop up and flourish during the month of July. Our favorite is the Black Trumpet. They taste delicious. The only drawback is that they turn whatever they're cooked with a dark color. Also this month I noticed we had some paw paws on our scrawny little paw paw tree. Unfortunately the deer or something else got every one of them before they had a chance to ripen. Last but not least was broccoli! We've never been able to grow broccoli before but for some reason this year we succeeded.
Visitors
This month we had visitors! Sara came down with her girls for a few days. M_ie and the gang had great fun cooking and making tie-dyed t-shirts etc. A good time was had by all :-) We wish they would come more often.
August
Dumping Ground
I got wooden sides built for my dump trailer so it could hold a good load of wood chips and I made my first delivery to the garden. That was an easy chore to empty all those chips -- just push a button!
Travel
Carolyn's family from Italy came to visit so she rented a large house in Virginia where the whole bunch gathered for a family reunion including Carolyn's 101-year-old mother. Of course, despite having been vaccinated against it, we took the COVID test to make sure we weren't packing the virus along.
First Big Harvest
When we got back from Virginia the garden had been busy at work the whole time. We gathered up our first big harvest and then the canning began. 🙂
Art Studio
Carolyn hired Nathan and his crew to convert the screen porch into an art studio. This is a project that was started months earlier but had to wait for the windows to be custom manufactured. At the same time we had Nathan put a little shed roof over the front porch. It really improves the look of the house and protects the front door.
September
Not much exciting happened this month. The biggest thing for me was getting tracker back after a very long wait to get his brakes and clutch adjusted. The mechanic is very good and thus very busy.
That's not to say we weren't busy harvesting more fruits of our labors and canning and preserving them for future use. Check out my bite-size watermelon 🙂
