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!