Trying out a photo post.

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I had done one the other day, but the tinypic.com widget cut off the photos too much, so that one is only a draft now.

I'm going to see if these pics of our blueberry picking day will come out all right.

Saturday, Michael and I met with several friends at a local blueberry farm.








Much cheaper than the other places, one of them 18 dollars a gallon, we got these luscious berries for 5 dollars a gallon.









We left early so we could get in a lot of picking before the group tired out. In years past, most folks peter out after about an hour. So we arrived at 8 and picked for 1/2 hour before a few showed up, and the rest came at 9 am.

Some came bearing doughnuts. I got the low down later that Michael managed to finagle the ONLY Bavarian cream in the lot!







We found a sweet spot against the hill with shade, a light breeze, and big juicy berries,









and we proceeded to be silly and enjoy ourselves until 11 am.











































We picked about 4 gallons for ourselves, in about 3 hours. The law of diminishing returns applies here, we discovered. Leah needed help finishing her last 3/4 gallon, so we all jumped in and got it done in about 5 or 10 minutes.








And here are most of the wonderful faces from that morning.








We spent a wonderful couple of hours with some of the gang, eating fresh blueberry muffins (Thank you, Miss Angie) before heading out to stop by my parent's house and give them some of the berries. We were repaid with a nice time of visiting, AND BBQ burgers. Not a bad deal!

It's good to be out with dear friends and family, and it's good to be home, sweet home!

~Faith

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A favor please?

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Could someone please comment on this post, even if it's just a single word. I am trying to figure out locating comments. I've lost a couple just now and don't know where to look.

Thank you!

~Faith

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Still Here!

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Yes, having computer issues. I am working on getting more RAM so I can get back to sharing things around here.

I know what to do now, just need to find a good deal and buy it. :)

I'll hit some highlights...

Our competition pumpkin is a good foot across and still growing. I wonder how big it could have gotten if we'd given it any special care? As it is, we only plucked off competing blossoms so that only one would get all the nutrients.

The garden is high and thick! One ripe tomato so far. There should be a lot, but they are not quite ready - yet.

We have harvested all our broccoli, cauliflower, piricicaba, and kohlrabi. Still waiting for the brussel sprouts.

Eggplants are succeeding! After much battling with the flea beatles, we've managed to sneak a few past them. Yay! We have some peppers, too.

Oh, and it finally occurred to us to put a few chickens into the garden. They stayed in there for a few days and cut way down on the bug population. Need to do that more often. ;)

We got 2.5 inches of rain in one day a couple of weeks ago. It washed away a lot of our little seedling herbs.

We have been getting steady rainfall all summer, so the grass is thick and lush. For the most part the weather has been pretty mild. The last few days have been right about 80 degrees. Amazing weather. I'm spoiled!

I find it very boring to post without pictures; the big reason I have not been posting much. So I hope to have this rectified soon! Don't leave me now. ;)

Faith

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Ah, the Ups and Downs.

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Browsers down again.

Well, honestly? We have not been doing much for the last few days. I'm getting a little nervous about going down to the garden area for fear of what I might find.... ;-)

Thursday, Friday and Saturday we spent doing outdoor things that spruced the place up visually. You can't have a bang-up Fourth if your place looks a mess. Then we did lots of housework and cooking.

The Fourth was terrific! Great friends, who are really more like family. Lots of fun and games, chatting and eating, swimming and the like.

Sunday I had a surprise day with my oldest sister. She was in town when I was not expecting her until the last minute, so we didn't go to church but spent time visiting, and she helped us clean the dental office. Hooray! Can't beat that, now can you!

I happily took leftover food to town with us so we could 'host' a BBQ lunch for her birthday, and that helped empty the fridge somewhat, and we've been eating way too much.

Today has been rough. Only got 3 hours of sleep last night. Tossing and turning. My only daughter will not have much to do with me. She was at the party, but her rejection is always painful. It's hard to keep up a smiling face when all you want to do is know why things are the way they are and you know you will not be told.

So..... more lemons... I can get good at this!

OK, we had some wonderful homemade lemonade on the Fourth, brought by Leah. It was very tart, made you pucker. And so delicious! Not that overly sweet kind, but the kind that wakes you up and says, "Here I am! A LEMON! Now what are you going to do with me!"

I'm going to drink deeply and enjoy the sugar and friendship that make it all worthwhile. :)

I finally got up and got busy, but I'm really feeling yucky today. Several calls with my lawyer, and a meeting tomorrow.


But on to more farm-like news!

We got our studio cleaned out and organized again. YAY! That's usually a yearly thing, and with only us here, we don't make too much of a mess. The worst things were the ladybugs that had all died from a bug bomb we'd put in there last fall.

Probably a half gallon of carcasses were swept out. Glad they are gone. We should have used a bomb in there years ago, it really cut down on those malevolent ladybug impostors.

Michael is proving to be mechanically inclined. We attempted to repair our air compressor and I was about to give up a couple of times and throw it out, but he would take the tools and - Presto - accomplish what I could not. The young man is a gift to me. LOL

We just now took the motor to town, hoping they could tell us what part we could buy and replace, but the motor is frozen, so sadly, looks like it's junk. Will have to see if anyone has a use for a tank.

Sorry no pics. Would have liked to show how to take apart that compressor motor so someone else can just do it, rather than flail away at it needlessly. ;-)

Heading out to cut sunflowers for a bouquet again!

~Faith

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I Am Up and Running!

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Last night while many of us were prepping food in the kitchen, one young man was kindly sitting here at my computer desk making some sense of this mess.

Yes, my suspicions were correct, my PC is full. As Walter said, it had just run out of the fumes it was running on. LOL

111,065 images are currently taking up 66.8 GB; approximately 1/2 of my memory. I knew my pics used a lot of room, this camera records a lot of info. Another 57.6 GB are taken up by music. I had no idea music took up so much space! I had put most of my CDs on here so I could quickly play music whenever I liked. I may have to go back to using the CD player, except for those of which I no longer have the discs.

I am going to have to make executive decisions on what to delete.

But I want to quickly share with you a great program Walter downloaded for me that showed this information. VERY helpful!

www.WinDirStat.info

It visually shows your computers files. I wish I knew how to take a screenshot of my WinDirStat window. But it shows every single file, labeled, in boxes according to size, so you can have a perfect visual of what is in your computer, sorted and organized.


This is not mine, but an example of how it looks.

OK, so I'm temporarily back in business, but have to eliminate a lot of files before having some security.

Thank you, Walter!

~Faith

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Computer Issues and Happy Independence Day!

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I've decided that all the trouble I am having with other browsers is because my computer is likely getting ready to bite the dust. It's memory is about 98% full and is about 7 years old. A child, really, but these children have early aging disease and rarely live beyond the age of 10.

I do not know if this is fixable and I do not have the ability to get a new computer. I will have to find some time to try to figure out what to do about it.

A generous gift from a friend allowed Michael and I to purchase a 7 quart canner that seems to be built for glass stoves. Leah came by again, bless her helpful, generous, and fun heart, and we have been tackling learning to can together.

We made dill pickles and bread and butter pickles, and took care of the large mound of cucumbers that had been tormenting me. I hope they are tasty, if a bit limp.

So I better get down to the garden. I spent most of the day cooking and housecleaning yesterday, but I'm sure veggies are taking over again, and I have baked summer squash cassarole on the menu for today's bash.

Happy Independence Day.

Remember what this country was founded on. Get out the consitution and read it. Make is a family event and tradition.

Go here to download FREE audio recordings, by Max McLean, of several important historical documents. Let is play as you sit together and drink lemonade on yoru porches and BBQ.

This day is not about fireworks. It's about our country. Let's refocus and teach our children and our grandchildren. Before we lose what we were given as a gift.

God bless you all.

~Faith

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Double Trouble

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( EDIT - Having issues with my two main browsers, so had to go through IE to post pics on last entry. Whew! Took me 1/2 hour. )

I had just decided to put my pictures on manually since the browser coding issue had not been resolved yet, but discovered that I cannot even do it manually.

Here, in my editor, all the html icon links above are working.... except the "Add Image" icon. Is anyone else having this problem?

So I don't know what's up, but I hope the issue is resolved soon. Without pictures my posts are way too wordy.

Yesterday we weeded and tended the herb, strawberry, and flower beds. I ended up with two large bouquets of sunflowers. The June bearing strawberries are laden with green fruits, that the birds are even eating now. We harvested another large basket of basil.

We began gathering branches to make bean teepees, as the corn did not come up sufficiently to do so. We will do more this morning.

Last night, until about 10 pm, we cleaned out the tool shed. It's done but we need to find a place to store all our sports equipment. The year before DH left us, was the year Michael and I focused on his sports. We spent several hours each day doing a variety of sports as part of his school. We had the back of the minivan packed with equipment and just carried it around with us.

However, we've not had time for sports at all any longer, and are hauling all kinds of farm stuff around in the van, since our truck doesn't work. LOL So the sports equipment has been in the tool shed, taking up a good deal of room. We've got to find a place for it all.

I am selling a tennis ball throwing machine that I had found thrown away and had wanted to repair.

Still have a box of cukes, a large basket of summer squash, and the basil from yesterday to process today. And go up on the hill to cut and strip red cedar saplings for bean poles. Perhaps we can get to cleaning out the studio today as well.

I haven't even got to the pool yet.

And this is too wordy. ;)

~Faith

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