Nearly noon and I've been kinda busy today. I have carrots, corn, peas, beans and apple slices in the dehydrator. These will be going with my Boy Scouts this weekend on a backpacking trip. They plan on catching their own dinner while they are out, and I'm sure they will.... but just in case, I want them to have some extra food along. I'll be sending the ingredients (dried) for vegetable soup.

Saturday, my husband and I power washed one of the decks in the back yard. Looks a whole lot cleaner now. I guess we are going to have to stain it before we seal it, aged treated lumber is not my favorite look. I loved the pale brown it was when it was first put in, but we didn't get it sealed in a timely fashion and it has faded, a lot. We also started painting the metal deck furniture. Bill didn't like the cream color it was when we bought it. We are painting it Hammered Copper (yay, Rustoleum). We worked on the table Saturday, were going to do the chairs yesterday, but I got sick (boo, hiss), so I'm working on it today.

I picked up more plants to put in my garden on Saturday, even got some planted before I got called away to work on the deck. I have all the vegetables that I wanted/needed put into the garden, but I still have some room left for more. I have more tomatoes to go in, maybe today.
All I can find left at the store is tomatoes, peppers and eggplant. I can't eat peppers and Bill won't eat eggplant, so it made the decision on what to buy really easy.

I did take my husband out to dinner yesterday to celebrate Father's Day. I'd had a sinus headache most of the day, but I really got sick during dinner. I had spent most of the morning running errands and the afternoon puttering around Took Neal to work at 2. Bill decided that he wanted to go to dinner at around 4. We went to Rico's, a pizza place/restaurant real close to home, one of his favorite places. Anyhow, most of my dinner came home with us. We got home from dinner about 5 and I crashed on the couch. Concerned husband went straight to the bedroom (where his computer is) and disappeared into his favorite game. I slept. Neal got let off work about an hour early (10 as opposed to 11) and, fortunately, I was feeling well enough to go get him. Neal finished off my dinner, said it was pretty good.

7:30 in the morning and I've already been out playing in the garden. It's nice and quiet, since the husband and the son are still in bed. So far today, I've cut rhubarb and got it cleaned and into the freezer. My big old rhubarb plant is getting old and not producing the way it used to, so I'm glad I've got 4 new ones planted in a raised bed now. Of course, part of the problem could be that this is the first year I've used raised beds instead of tilling up a whole garden (the old rhubarb is on the back edge of the garden) so weeds and grasses are trying to choke it out. Also, without the clue of the garden, my husband mowed a bit too close to it earlier this spring. I've also picked my salad for tonight's dinner. I have mesclun mix planted in an old wooden half barrel near my decks. It's doing quite well, well enough that I think I'll have to pick some of it daily. No worries there, if we don't eat it all each day, it can go into my dehydrator and become veggie powder to be added to meatloaf and/or soups and such. I also got my first picking of oregano today. It's been wash, bound together with a rubber band and hung to air dry in my garage. I have way more oregano than I'll probably ever use coming on. I'll probably make a paste with some (olive oil, salt and oregano). It's great on steaks, but who can afford steak these days. Some of the oregano will be frozen, some will be dried (even though I haven't finished LAST years dried oregano) and some will be turned into fine smelling tinder for fires. Yes, I do have that much of it.

Garden - The weather has been a bit cooler in June than it was in May, thank goodness. The zucchini that I had to replant is coming along fine. I've also planted Butternut squash and Acorn squash. Still have a variety of Pattypan squash to put out, but since I want to use that mostly as young small bite-size squash, it's ok that it's going in soooo late. My peas and beans are up. My container tomatoes (heirloom varieties) that I keep up near the house are all looking good, at least one of them is starting to set fruit. I still have some plants to set out. I'm also working on weeding and cleaning up the flower beds out front. I've got tons of irises to move. My older beds of daffodils and tulips didn't produce anything this year, I think they got crowded out by the weeds. (My energy levels are still not what I'd like them to be...... and I'm afraid that I'd rather put my limited energy to working with edible plants than with ones that are just pretty.) I have some strawberries to harvest (first year plants and I picked off most of the blossoms, but some escaped me), rhubarb that needs to be cut, currants and blueberries are starting to come on too.

Crafts - Lately I've been working on a crocheted afghan most of the time. It's single crochet, using two strands of yarn, one white, the other, whatever comes to hand in my bag of small balls of scrap yarn (left from other projects). I hate to waste anything and there isn't enough left in these small balls for even the smallest of projects. Other than that, I've got a couple of cross-stitch projects going that I work on when the spirit moves me. The other thing I'm doing, craftwise, is deconstructing old blue jeans. I plan on using the material to make ground pad/covers to be put in the troop trailer for my Boy Scouts to use (when/if they fail at the "Be Prepared" part of scouting). I'm lucky. I now have an 'in' with one of the local thrift stores and can buy the jeans that are not in good enough condition to sell to the public for a quarter a pair.