How Did It Get To Be The Middle Of August?

Do you ever wonder how time passes so quickly? How did it get to be August? I mean it was just May! Autumn is looming ever closer. Not that I mind that. It is just distressing at how fast time goes by. Like the amount of time since my last post. I really have meant to do better, but for some reason lately I just haven't been much in the mood. I hope that hasn't caused anyone any sadness.

A quick update on the garden:

Things are changing in the garden. Last Saturday we harvested the last of the corn and I cut down the stalks. That was kind of sad. It really changed the look of the garden. I will need to get them up sometime this week.

The green peas are long gone and I am afraid that the summer squash is finished too. Still it has been a very blessed year.

Our corn harvest blew away my wildest imagination. We got over 33 dozen ears of Silver Queen corn. Some of the ears were a foot long. Just beautiful. After the first picking we canned 78 pints of corn. We also froze between 2 and 3 dozen ears. I am honestly not sure how many pints we canned/froze on the second picking. And I am also not sure how many ears of Ruby Queen corn we got. One thing that is for sure is that the harvest was bountiful.

I am picking okra regularly now. I get about a gallon (picked into a strawberry basket) of okra every other day. I am freezing most of it, but have toyed with the idea of making some pickled okra too.

We got about 14 quarts of canned summer squash. It looks like they have succumbed to some disease or bug, and I am pretty sure that is the end of that. You wouldn't believe how much squash it takes to can a quart.

We are getting cantaloupe too. They are very sweet - quite delicious. I lost a few because of the big rain we got a couple weeks ago and because I didn't know how quickly they would ripen once they started to turn.

The tomatoes are doing well too. I picked one a couple days ago that was bigger than a softball. We have canned about eight quarts of tomatoes too. My statement about squash holds true for tomatoes as well. It takes an unbelievable amount of tomatoes to make one quart.

I'm starting to get Fordhook Lima Beans too. Last week I picked a half a bushel and we got about 10 pints out of that. They are still doing very well and I hope that they will continue to produce until the frost. They are my favorite thing out of the garden.

The Purplehull Peas are also doing well. They seem to be the most prolific things in the garden. I could probably pick them every day. Even if I pick them very close, there are generally more ready within 2 days.

It is time to plant the fall crops if I am going to do it. That means getting up the corn stalks and tilling up the ground where the spent crops are. I don't know what I will plant. I am thinking about rutabagas, onions, and various greens. I'd like to do pumpkins too, but I don't know if I have the time. I'd also like to do broccoli if possible. I'll just have to see what happens.

Garden work is good exercise. I have certainly found that out! I'm far from in shape, but I handle the work a whole lot better than I did back in May when I was getting started. It has been good.

I don't feel like coming up with a clever way to conclude this post. I'm in a bit of a mood tonight and I have some other things that I want to write about so I'll just bring this to a close. Thanks for reading!