No More Canning!

Finally, we have canned sufficient tomatoes: 51 pints of Italian sauce, 50 pints of tomatoes.  I have hot sauce and simple sauce in plenty already. We’ve frozen 29 lbs. of beans, which should be enough also, but I’m sure totally sure we’re done with that.  Now I start drying some tomatoes.  I like to get three honey jars full each year.  One jar I give to Dale and Stephen and the other two I use through the year.  I like to add a few slices to tomato sauces, as for pasta, that enriches the sauce.  I think I’ve probably frozen enough pestos.

 This year is so weird I forgot to order garlic until two days ago.  By then, most of what I usually order as sold out.  I ordered what I hoped would be similar, but we’ll find out next July when we harvest it.  We had a terrific garlic harvest this year and the year before. We didn’t run out till it was almost time to harvest.  A few cucumbers are still coming. I think woody harvested the last of the zucchini and patty pan this week.  The peppers are beginning to ripen. We’re still getting eggplants, especially the skinny Orientals.

 My poetry group met on ZOOM this week.  Since people travel over an hour to get to meetings when they’re in my livingroom, I wonder if we will ever meet in person again.  This week I saw Gigi on Wednesday afternoon on the sunporch, which is always delightful.  We were trying to figure out how long we’ve known each other. It’s at least 30 years we’ve been friends.  Friday night we went over to a house in town with Dale and Stephen to have dinner with Tash and Stephanie, Tash’s mother.  We’ve had Tash here to dinner with the guys.  We’re all super careful. She teaches molecular biology at Dartmouth via remote, of course, at least so far.  We ate outside on their deck  Tosh is a fabulous cook and we met their two cats and their dog. I had never had Korean barbeque and it was delicious. . I am worrying about how we’ll see anybody when the weather cools too much to use the sunporch. I got a bit depressed during March and April when we saw no one else. I especially missed women friends.

 I wrote two poems this week and finally finished [Thursday] a poem I had been working over.  I feel satisfied now, at last.  Dale and I have been sending out a bunch of poems every Monday for the last two weeks and will do more the day after Labor Day. I wonder what Labor Day will be like this year. I suspect many will come but I also wonder how many will actually leave.  Normally a lot of summer people leave as well as tourists.  This year, I’m not so sure.  So many are working for home now and lots are still unemployed.  It’s much safer here, in spite of the young people partying. Our cases remain low. 

 Thursday, it actually rained for two hours and everything perked up.  We can lay off watering for a day or two.  We’re hoping for some rain and not too much wind from Hurricane Laura that should be arriving tonight.

 I’ve reading SPRING by Ali Smith. I had ready read FALL and WINTER.  When I finish each book in that series, I mail it to my chosen daughter Melenie.  Right now, the fox book I bought is with Gigi and Ralph. When they finish with it, I’ll elnd it to Stephanie and Tash, as they too are fascinated by foxes.  ThenI’ll send that too to Melenie.  These are all friends who share my delight with foxes.  I miss the resident red fox we had until mange killed it last year. I love watching them, their catlike leaps and their dances, their making eye contact with me, their playfulness.  Of course, I also appreciate their keeping the rodent population in check. Aftger our resident fox died, we had that hoard of rabbits eating EVERYTHING.