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| Pickles |
My garden has kept me busy during this past month. I made dill pickles and also refrigerator pickles. I pickled the remainder of the beets. I made cucumber/carrot relish, tarragon vinegar, and frozen cubes of chopped basil.
I froze 6 bags of carrots and 3 bags of green beans. The bean plants are still producing well, and I'm still giving away carrots.
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| elderberries |
I went to the country and picked elderberries and made some jelly.
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| My cherry tomatoes are plentiful, so I'm drying them in the dehydrator. |
My big tomato plants have not been healthy all summer--too much growth and too much humidity have produced leaf mold. I've been doing severe pruning and spraying, so it's possible we may get a couple dozen tomatoes before the growing season is over.
I've done my best to stretch out my birthday celebration as long as possible. On the evening of my actual birthday, Rusty took me to Dish for dinner.
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| We were joined by good friends T.C. and Sissy |
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| My first course was a salad with tomatoes, watermelon, basil and sorbet |
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| The salmon dinner was both tasty and beautiful! |
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| Chocolate and salted caramel for dessert! |
The next morning my biking friends got up at o'dark-thirty to help me begin my birthday ride--70 miles.
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| Clouds and a threat of rain made the start a little darker than hoped for, |
Afterwards friends came for cake and ice cream, and to help me celebrate.
I officially became a member of the septuagenarian riders. (The only female so far.)
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| Don Herz and I become official members. |
Rusty has played concerts in the park with the Lincoln Municipal Band throughout the summer.
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| Linda, Greg and I enjoyed listening to good music on Sunday evenings. |
Last June when Rusty and I canoed the Niobrara, Rusty's wood-and-canvas canoe took a hit from a big rock, crushing some of the wood. I'm amazed at how creative he can be when something needs to be fixed.
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| Canoe repair. |
Our own canoe had two major installations this past week. Outwales were added to both the port and starboard side. This is a gluing and clamping process to get a long piece of wood attached to the outermost part of the canoe. It took us about two hours per side.
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| In this picture you can see the outwales and the inwales (both light colored) attached to the canoe itself (the dark thin strip) with the walnut deck in the center. |
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| It's looking a lot like a canoe, don't you think? |
Now there is a lot of detail work (mostly Rusty's job) to be done before varnishing begins.
I invited my Loveknotters group to come and see my garden. The rainy day allowed for a brief tour of the garden, but our wine and snacks had to be moved indoors.
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| Lorraine and Linda |
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| Jan and Chris |
My cousins, Terry and Jim, invited us to spend an afternoon sailing with them.
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| Jim, Rusty, Terry |
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| Di & Rusty |
To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves. ~Mahatma Gandhi
