Tomatoes and a Bit of Summer

The tomatoes have finally arrived! At the beginning of the summer it was so cold that the tomato plants refused to grow. But thanks to lots of warmth and sunshine they have exploded! We eventually had to put some rope around them to keep the tomato cages from falling into the aisles. We tied from one picket fence post to another and I later went out and pruned them a bit to keep the indeterminate plants from getting out of control. You can see that they are as tall as I am now and are happily turning out tomatoes. This bowl was our first harvest and we tried out my brand new tomato press, which removes the skins and seeds and leaves you with tomato paste. We boiled it down and tried our hand at making spaghetti sauce...which was....okay. We have a second whole bowl of tomatoes in the refrigerator and we are going to try just stewing and canning the tomatoes for adding to sauces for some extra chunky tomato-ness. The rest of the garden is doing well. We have four pumpkins growing, some squash and a few cantaloupes coming along. The potatoes will need to be harvested soon too as fall is starting to make it's presence known. A couple of nights it has gotten down to the low 40's and there has been dew covering the windshields of the cars in the morning. A few more weeks and that'll be frost.



The third week of September we went to Cannon Beach. I have to admit I am very proud that I used only cash for the hotel and all the stuff I bought while I was there. No credit what-so-ever. Trying to break that habit and get myself back to a sustainable lifestyle. The weather was fantastic the first half of the trip with sunshine and clear skies. The day we arrived it was so warm that Mom and I walked in the water the whole way down and back on the beach. It rained, of course, the last couple of days we were there, but it is the Oregon Coast. The puppies had a great time as always, getting undivided attention without any cats around! I picked up yarn for 3 sweaters while I was there! One was just a few extra balls of yarn for a summer cardigan which was a challenge to get. I had bought the yarn for another project in March and found out I hadn't calculated correctly for the amount I'd need. I bought different yarn for that project and emailed the wonderful lady who runs Coastal Yarns in Cannon Beach to see if they could hold 4 more balls for me for when I came down. It turns out they didn't have anymore and that the beautiful rain blue color had been discontinued. She put out a message in a forum for small yarn store owners and a lady in Indiana or Illinois had four balls of that color in the exact lot! That means I could finish my sweater without any color variations!! It was like the stars aligning in the knitting world. I also purchased enough balls of Dream in Color Classy in the colorway Beach Fog to make this wonderful sweater. Later when Mom and I headed home we went to Yamhill, OR and visited Woodland Woolworks. They had some lovely periwinkle sale yarn that I bought to make this sweater and I got online and picked up a dark blue and a tan to make the fair-isle pattern around the neck after I got home. I am pretty much set for winter! More to come on what we are doing to our craft room to organize our stash of yarn and fabric!

Some peppers and Lady Gaga...

Our garden has still been doing well although I manage to thoroughly ignore it for weeks. I am seriously looking forward to winter when all those summer activities will be done and I can sit and knit when I come home, rather than run from here to there constantly. I will miss the fresh produce though. The peppers decided to grow and grow and grow and finally last week I noticed that they were getting pretty big. I harvested a huge bowl full that when diced filled 4 1/2 sandwich bags to freeze for yummy things like spaghetti sauce this winter. There really is nothing like the smell of a pepper you grew yourself. The store simulations are sad once you've smelled a real pepper. Also a zucchini decided to hide under the foliage and grow to about the size of my forearm. Oops! Can't let those things get that big cause if your a good friend you never pawn off arm sized zucchini on others (or so I am told). We were going to harvest them when they were about 6 inches, but this one looks destined to be a couple of loaves of zucchini bread with some leftover zucchini to batter and deep fry...yum.

In other news Mom and I went to the Lady Gaga concert at the Tacoma Dome in late August. It was freaking amazing!! We stood for most of it, but when Mom's foot got to hurting too badly she found a nice spot that she could see the big screen from and didn't miss anything. The costumes were spectacular and I never took a picture of the one I thought was completely gorgeous...sniff. I recorded a video of Bad Romance and I want to put it up, but I think it will be too large for the blog. The dome was packed and they said there was something like 20,000 people there. There were a whole bunch of people that had dressed up like Lady Gaga in crazy outfits which made people watching an entertaining activity before the concert began. She is such a good singer that all of the songs sounded like what you always hear. At one point she sat in front down at a piano and just sang and played while the piano burned...seriously...look at the picture. All in all it was an awesome concert.

We also buried my aunt at the end of August. She passed away in January but was cremated and we could pick a time that was easy for everyone to get together. We even closed the grave, which was new for us, but I think very healing for her son David. Afterwards we all went down to Spring Canyon and had a picnic and a little get together. Glenda and Earl Bloom who are cousins were there in Wilbur and came to the burial and get-together. It was great to see them again. David and his family and Mom and I stayed overnight at the campground and it was bloody cold of course. I keep forgetting how much I dislike camping but am reminded every time by Mother Nature that I am a house/hotel/motel kinda girl.