The Promise of Clear Skies...

.

...was kept only briefly. We did our usual morning stuff of study and a sugary breakfast, using up some blackberries that were picked a little early..





While I did some clean up, Michael picked as much as he could get to again. A little squash.





Overdue okra. It's OK. We don't want to eat it anyway. And YES! You see grapes! They escaped the evil black rot. I'm not sure which of the 30 varieties these are, but they are french wine grapes. Yummy!





More peppers and cucumbers.





Then, he marked out the melons in our patch... 65 markers, but they only mark groupings, not individual melons. You KNOW what is going to happen, don't you... They will all ripen at the same time.





I put off doing the pickle relish, because it was time to get out and try to catch up on yard work before rain arrived yet again. We have counted 3.5 inches this week.

This is what we needed to tackle first. The tall, seedy grass nearest the herb and flower beds.





We mowed low and raked, then dumped the grass into the sink holes down by the cherry bushes.





Then Michael picked some of the blackberries.





This is looking pretty bad. I could not mow here nor in the vineyard until the berries were all picked and the canes tied up again. This took many hours that we did not expect to spend here.





Meanwhile, the marigolds that I never did transplant into the veggie garden are looking spunky.





And the sunflowers and cosmos look great as well. Too bad I've been too busy to actually go get bouquets.





I think this is poke weed. Natives to this area say you make "poke salad" with it, which is not really a salad at all, but cooked greens. It is also poisonous in a certain form, so I've not pursued this yet. It grows ALL over and gets quite large if you don't pull them up. I mean like small TREE large, and fast!





But moving on to the rest, I had to raise the mower up all the way. We will have to mow again tomorrow, lower, if it doesn't rain again. The mower kept cutting out from all the wet grass.





So here are the blackberries we got today; about 4 gallons.





I used up about 1 gallon making hot blackberry jam with our jalapenos.

Just used a simple sugar recipe. I discovered that the spoon test is to be done with a cool spoon, away from the pot... That would have been nice to know on my first go around.





Kind of a seedy place, here.





I finished the pickle relish and it turned out very well.









And then, while the last of the stew was reheating, I quickly tossed a few peppers into the dehydrator.

Jalapenos and sweet banana.





Habanero and um.... I've forgotten. Not very professional, is it. EDIT - Czech Black.





So we missed our home group tonight, getting caught in the blackberry patch, and I'm ready for bed.

Tomorrow I'd like to catch up before the rain, but I'm not counting on it!

~Faith

.