Wednesday, September 09, 2015

peaches, socks, and school Oh my!

I felt like maybe I should title this post "what I did over my summer vacation" because I think that would make me feel more accomplished than a list of things I put off that I need to accomplish in September or even this week.

The kids went back to school and OH the list of things I put off while they were home is long.

Last year I did this whole write an entry every day as I slogged through my canning of both peaches and tomatoes. This year, I finished tomatoes so early. They were abundant this year instead of moldy. And then, peaches started coming in.

So here are the peach statistics so I don't forget. I made two batches of jam, one regular and one peach vanilla. I didn't really have enough fruit for the regular and so it is a little grainy, but the vanilla is OH MY. Then I managed to buy a half bushel of peaches from my regular orchard, even though they technically weren't selling them, And then a few days later I bought another (and they were selling them). So it worked out well and I ended up canning 24 pints of peaches. I didn't do any honey spice because it turns out that I'm the only one who likes them. I actually have enough peaches left on my counter to do another pint, but I think I'm going to smoothie them up instead. Maybe freeze them too.

I have been slowly slowly working on socks. at least the plain socks. until I ran into this

Yarn barf

A photo posted by Jodie (@ja_gardner) on


And so now I am busy untangling yarn so I can knit. It should have pushed me to work on the complicated socks, but I am having complicated feelings about them. I'm sure that once the newness of school wears down, and my kids get healthy again (yes, school started yesterday and my kids have head colds), I will not feel like such a zombie all the time and will actually (gasp) maybe even have time to knit during the day every once in a while!

And yes, Halloween is on the horizon. I think I have a plan. One girl picked something I can easily scrounge around at second hand shops and find (she wants to be "Sadness" from Inside Out), and while the other one was more complicated (she wanted to be a three headed... something), she has decided instead upon being a pink sparkly princess. The pattern I bought is a generic Glenda, but we are going to "un-Glenda" it by maybe choosing some fushia and gold or silver. Stay tuned on that one.

And in case you were curious--all the caterpillars are now cocoons! It was a fun process, and now one of my many September jobs is to get them set for the winter, safe so animals don't eat them, and exposed to weather. Then we wait.

Last of the birch eating #cercopia #caterpillars has pupated

A photo posted by Jodie (@ja_gardner) on


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