Quickly....

Where do the days go?

The weather is just starting to cool off, just a teeny tiny bit. It's enough to rouse us from our Summer Hibernation it seems, and we've been busy as could be the last few weeks. Projects here, there and everywhere.

A quick (or as quick as I can be in my rambling way) wrap-up of the summer projects we did have, as we begin the transition into fall...

The garden. Oy. Well, its a disaster. Even the hydroponic garden was no match for our record heat this summer, and pretty much everything was a loss. The eggplants are still alive, but the veggies burn on the vine. The watermelon is, surprisingly, thriving... but not producing any actual watermelons. I have a lot of vine, but no flowers or fruit. Bummer. And, the cotton is still flowering and producing bolls - the upland (white) is working on its very first boll and the Mississippi (brown) has produced several already. The bolls are on the small side, and I am attributing that to the fact that they are "bucket grown". I think if I planted in the ground, we would get much larger yields.

The kitchen experiments. These were much more successful! I have not yet done the cheesemaking (soon!) but everything else got tried/done. Pickles = awesome. Canning = awesome. Jam = still working on perfecting it, but so far pretty cool. Applesauce = awesome.

Getting rid of stuff. This is going pretty good. We did a pretty massive clean-out over the last couple of weekends, and completely cleaned out two whole rooms. Like, went through every. single. item. in those rooms and made a decision about it. Many things are gone now. The rooms look SO much nicer. We have more to do, but the progress so far is good!

The house. Looking pretty good! We got a new roof, tons of repairs to the A/C unit and the entire exterior was repainted. We have an awesome new garden shed on the way, and I'm so excited to have that. The carport got cleaned out and looks great. The A/C's drip line is still a problem, but I'm hoping that will be cleared up in the next couple of weeks.

So, whats on the table (so far) for fall/winter? Oy. I'd like to have the back and front yards completely redone - ultimately, with the idea that we could install some sod in the spring. Re-do the gardens. Get my Scout II running better, and start working on some of the rust issues it has. Clean out the garage. Bake more. Maybe, if there's money for it, have some more updates/repairs made to to the house. And, we'll be doing a little bit of travel too.

Hooray for cooler weather and lots of plans!