Midwest Farm Report

Okay, I admit, that heading up there is a little grandiose.  It should probably say "Midwest Garden Report" or "Midwest Yard Report" but I'm feeling a bit grandiose today so I'm leaving it.

When we got home on Saturday it was too dark to check the garden to see if anything survived the week of neglect and probably no rain so Sunday morning I went out and was happy to see round red things on nearly every tomato plant.  I'll admit that a few of the cherry tomatoes and at least one regular tomato were past their "eat by" date but the rest are just waiting to be picked or finish ripening.  The gourd-let has grown into full gourd-hood.  Look how perfectly it's shaped.  There's another one growing behind the fence that isn't quite as big, so I'll get at least one birdhouse sized one.  Yay!  The spaghetti squash is doing well too.  The big one is, well, bigger and there are two smaller ones growing too.  The stem of one of them has a twist to it that I think is particularly nice to look at.  I like those curly tendrils and twisty stems, so much more interesting than straight things.











 
I was surprised to see that no squirrel had found the corn feeder where I'd moved it before we left so if they tore down the fence while we were gone (they didn't) they wouldn't tear down all my feeders too.  But just as I sat down to blog Durwood called out that a squirrel had found the corn so I scurried out there and snapped photographic proof.





Just a couple more trip notes:  I got to help DD & SIL1 shop for wedding centerpiece ideas one evening after supper.  We hit Dollar Tree, Goodwill, and Michaels, and came away with clear glass vases and candleholders, votive & floating candles, black rocks, black sand, clear glass pebbles, blue glass marbles, dried moss, silver scrapbook paper, and a bag of plastic dinosaurs.  Then we adjourned to their kitchen table where we brainstormed ideas, took pictures, and SIL1 emailed them to the bride.  She didn't like the black rocks or sand but liked everything else including the plastic dinosaurs that SIL1 planned to spray paint silver and put in the water between glass pebbles and floating candles.  The wedding was yesterday; I can't wait to hear how they looked.

It's probably a good thing that my mother-in-law has long gone to Heaven.  See, before our honeymoon (almost 39 years ago [that long??? good god]) she handed me a travel diary and told me to write in it every day so we'd have a record of our travels, and I faithfully have--until last week.  I took it along, even had it on the nightstand right by my bed, but I didn't write one word.  I felt so guilty when I pulled it out of the suitcase yesterday morning that I sat down in the evening and wrote the whole week's worth using the blog as crib notes.  Thank god for the blog or I'd have been sunk.  I will never do that again, MIL, cross my heart.

September 7--Brainworks, Athletics.  Kendall stepped on a tennis ball and nearly fell.  "Dammit, Jasper," she said as she limped to a chair.  She should have turned on a light but she didn't want Wally next door asking why she was up in the middle of the night.  Wally didn't miss a thing, day or night.  Her red-brown Lab-ish mutt, Jasper shambled into the kitchen, his tags jingling, and laid his head on her thigh.  She went from rubbing her ankle to rubbing his ears.  "Good boy," she said, "but you need to learn to put your toys away.  I almost broke an ankle stepping on your..."  She caught herself just in time.  Saying the b-word would make the silly dog think it was time to play when it really was time to worry about her job.  What if Apex Plastics folded the way Plastron had?  Apex had hired a few Plastron people and she knew that the Project Manager they'd hired to work along with her had years more experience, and she wasn't at all sure that there were enough projects needing managing to keep both of them on and busy.  If only Owen Masters weren't so nice and so handsome...

Today the laundry gets it and I have to make lunch food.  SIL1 is on an olive kick, I love olives too so I'm going to make some green olive hummus.  Olives are really too salty but if I only put in 8 or 10 of them and don't add any more salt, it isn't too bad.  Besides, I ration it out so I'm not glomming all of the salt at once.  Then I'm going to make a cauldron of my Chicken Soup with Greens.  Having that puck of greens on my Shrimp & Grits last week made me hungry for the soup because it has a pound of greens and a pound of spinach whirred in the broth.  This is the soup I make in mid-winter when I feel like the sun will never shine again and it perks me up.  Coming back to reality, housework, and work work makes me feel like I need a bit of perking up.  Got my list--on my phone (I'm so tech savvy.  Thanks, DD!).  Now all I need to do is get dressed and hit the store.  I think I'll use the reusable bags I have from Lexington grocery stores so I can pretend I'm still on vacation for one more hour.  Sayonara.
--Barbara