Slow but not steady

 Mixes that we ordered came in yesterday!! Of course I had to make a batch of pizza sauce, the garden can wait. Since I can't use a pressure canner on my fancy stove these mixes make it possibly to safely can pizza sauce, chili starter and salsa with my water bath canner. All the ingredients are natural dehydrated, no preservatives

 Pizza sauce and bread/butter pickles were the afternoons job, along with laundry

A chief salad using Hydroponic lettuce I found at our local farmer will be on the dinner table tonight, maybe a BLT this week and taco salad, yummmm

I spent a couple of hours in the garden yesterday morning and accomplished very little :( I needed to get hubby's prescription drugs in the mail, seems MI doesn't have any CVS stores in the area he is working. Since I was cleaned up anyway I took a trip to the farmers store to pick up a few more tomatoes to add to what I had so I could can a batch of pizza sauce. That little trip took over 2 hours, the store is located less that a mile from our house but the company was so good and the local made porch swings were so inviting I sat down and visited for awhile. Farmer Danny is running for one of the city commissioner seats this fall, not sure how some people will take to his showing up to meetings in his farm attire but you can bet he has my vote along with everyone I can convince to vote for him. I was only going to pick up some tomatoes but he is carrying hydroponic lettuce that a lady in the area has started growing so I had to have some. We haven't had a salad since early June when ours petered out on us. I have a small ham and 1/2 turkey breast layed out to cook today along with some boiled eggs, tomato's and cucumbers I can have a chief salad that won't make me sick. The ham and turkey will be nice quick meals the rest of the week while I continue to tackle the overwhelming work in the garden. Son-In-Law #2 will be over later in the day to do yard work, hubby talked it over with him while at the beach, rather than give a big company $165.00 a week for lawn service Nathan will do it for $100.00. I plan on having the mowing done before he arrives so he only has trimming to do (the hard part) I have hopes that together we can figure out how to use the little tiller and get some area's ready to plant. The idea of turning the soil over with a shovel has no appeal to me!!!

After canning and laundry yesterday I headed to Wally World to pick up more canning jars, I am out of 1/2 pints, low on pints and quarts, they were sold out of everything but the 1/2 pints, grrr. I hit 3 more stores before giving up for the day, the clerk at the hardware store told me they have reorded 3 times this year and continue to sell out each time. Looks like canning veggies has gotten very popular this year. I am super motivated to get some real progress done today, we are expecting rain this week that would be good for planting and great for some sewing time!!

 I'm thinking next year the traditional garden needs to be for spring and summer planting only. I love the way things look and grow but the weeding gets the best of me. It's hard to keep it all up and still preserve food, by adding a few more raised beds for fall planting I could give the dirt and myself a rest in the fall and winter, keeping up the raised beds are a no brainer and very little work