Whew, it's been awhile since I've written anything here - blame it on summer madness, that quickening as summer picks up steam until it's rolling downhill, out of control, into the shorter and calmer and cooler days of autumn.
Drew, Casey, and Austin were here in August, and I've included a photo. Austin's nanny is teaching him to march; I'm assuming it's so that he will keep in step with her as she pushes her own baby in the stroller going to the park. And if he's not marching somewhere, he's RUNNING. He loved our cats and remembered the sign for "cat."
The garden went berserk with tomatoes and cucumbers, and I am still canning tomato sauce and sweet pickle relish and Hungarian peppers.
The bees are swarming all over my "live forever" (sedum) and rose of sharon bush. I've also seen them, for the first time, on the joe-pye weed near Vanland and in the garden. We will probably try the new extractor this weekend and harvest one honey super or box, our total honey outcome for our first year. Should yield around 40 pounds for us, and leaves plenty for the bees (two deep boxes) to eat throughout the winter until nectar flow in the spring.
Our Pyrennes, Daffy, has blown out her left back knee...but I don't think that anyone will hire her to do a panty hose commercial on TV as Joe Namath did after the same kind of injury. We have taken her to two vets, and both tell us that the surgery is expensive and may just cause the other back knee to blow out. We decided to wait until the spring and see if the knee will develop enough scar tissue to stabilize it. She'll walk differently, but it hasn't slowed her down a bit!
My own knee replacement surgery is scheduled for October 20th. A long-time friend is coming to help out the first week, and I anticipate I'll be cripping around for two months or so. But the rapidly approaching confinement adds to the urgency of getting ready for winter...it's supposed to be a wet, cold one in the Heartland; so we have checked firewood, food, and candle supplies, just in case.
Hope you are all enjoying the cooler weather.
