How did I get here?

I was looking back at what I had written at the first of the year and realized that I have been busier and busier, but I have not become more organized as I hoped to be. The kitchen is still torn up after the tomato canning events and the living/dining room is full of sewing/quilting/knitting and other clutter. I would post a picture, but then you would all know what a real mess I have become.
Instead, I have decided to take a room at a time and clean it up..... then post a picture. Maybe I can actually get the kitchen, living/dining room, sewing room (yikes!) and bedroom straight by the middle of August. Goal for this week is the kitchen.
Oh yeah, check out the logo for the Improv(e) your Butt Challenge. Details over at Tallgrass Prarie Studio. That is another area that needs improvement!

World's Most Expensive Tomato Sauce

In the last post I showed the wonderful garden my sweetie made for me. I didn't tell you how expensive it was. First, there was the frame. Lumber from Lowe's. $$ Then there was a dumptruck load of topsoil. $$$ Plants. $

Since Buster likes to excavate, there was fencing.$

We have had a bumper crop of tomatoes, so I decided to make tomato sauce and can it. Thrifty, huh? We grew onions and garlic, too.

I bought canning jars.$

We want to be safe so I bought a pressure canner.$$

I spent hours washing jars, peeling tomatoes and chopping ingredients to make two huge pots of sauce.

My favorite part is my compost collection bin. We bought this little jewel $ on a vacation. They had nice little ceramic ones for less, but I figured I would probably drop it and that would be the end, so we sprung for the stainless one. It has a top with a charcoal filter to keep the smell of the garbage out of the kitchen. Now when I peel an onion or eat an orange, I just put the remains in this little bucket until I can go out to the compost bin. No more guilt over throwing out that natural fertilizer.

After chopping and stirring for hours, I finally put the jars in the canner to process.


Then, a mere 6 hours and $$$$$$$ later I have these jars of beautiful sauce. I wonder how much that is per jar?

Yes, indeed, I now have six, count 'em, six jars of sauce. Move over Ragu!

The Surprise Garden

I asked my sweetie to dig a garden for me this year since I had not turned over the soil in several years. Instead, he put in two raised beds, 4' x 16'. He even had topsoil delivered. It turned out to be about as much work as digging up the garden, but much better looking.

I put in lots of tomatoes, onions, zucchini, eggplant and peppers. Lots.

We usual don't see our first ripe tomato until July 4th or so, but we have one already.

OK, so it is the size of a ping pong ball and squishy on the back side, but it is RED. There are hundreds more that are larger. I can just se myself elbow deep canning in a few weeks.

I missed a zucchini yesterday when I picked the others.............



This one is about the size of my forearm.

The onions are ready to pull up and dry and the japanese eggplant is producing.


We planted the fig trees about 5 years ago. Can't wait to make jam again this year.
Buster and Rupert (my granddog) helped me yesterday. We had fun in the garden. Buster was exhausted today.

It is hard to get a picture of a moving target.

Buster's First Camping Trip

Soon after Daisy died, we went to the SPCA to get another dog. Our Vet (and I) agree in following the "overlapping dog theory". That is to get a new dog soon after the old one dies, but before the last one goes. We know we had to hurry in getting the next dog because Rhoda already had cancer.



Buster is exactly what his name implies. He is just bursting with life, enthusiasm and the urge to chew anything anyone cares about. Sort of like a cross between a toddler and a shark. He is actually quite affectionate when he is tired!



Now that Buster is getting a little older, we thought we could take him on a camping trip. Here he is in front of our camper.

He is just a little guy. Cute, huh?

Anyway, this was more of an adventure than we expected. Since we only had the weekend to spend, we went to a campground about an hour from home. It has a lovely pool and water park for the kids, piers out on the river, mini-golf, camp store and just about every amenity you could hope for. For the hard core campers out there, yes, I have done "real" camping and had the 42 spider bites to prove it. We now camp with our own hotel suite on wheels and love every minute of it. But I digress.

If you have ever been to this part of the country, you have met the crowd that slips the term "our place on the rivah" into every conversation. Wow! you think, a house on the water! Well that is not exactly what they mean, thought I never knew until this weekend.

This is what we found.

This campground had 600 "weekend" spaces and 400 "seasonal" spaces. The seasonal spaces are campers that are permanently parked with room additions, decks and screen porches. They are about two feet apart and sport all the gift shop decorations they can hold. Each owner has a golf cart. Here is the good part. They spend all of their waking hours on the decks and porches drinking beer and hollering at passers-by. When they tire of that they hop in the golf carts and cruise up and down the paths between the campers drinking beer, smoking cigarettes and hollering at the folks sitting on their porches. Yee-Haw!

We couldn't get the hang of things, so we went for a ride to another campground nearby. They were having a lawn tractor race. I wish I had taken my camera. A bunch of teenage boys tearing up a lovely grass field doing donuts on their lawn tractors. No kidding.

So if you ever run into a good ol' boy or gal and they start in about their "place on the rivah" just smile. Lindy already told you all about it .

We did get some practical information during this. All you need to make a lovely fire pit in your yard is a couple of old car wheels. Honest!

My Sweet Little Girl

It has been several days now since we lost Rhoda AKA The Boo-Boo. I still expect to hear her bark as I climb the steps to the front door. I miss her following me from room to room as I work around the house. She never met a person she didn't like nor a dog that she did.
Just before Christmas, the vet found a tumor behind her bladder which was unoperable and malignant. The vet told us to take her home and love her, which we did. She didn't seem to know that she was even sick until about three weeks ago when she lost her appetite. By then, the tumor was about the size of an orange in her little belly. We took her to the emergency vet on Sunday to have her put down. We just couldn't let her suffer any longer. As the vet prepared the injection, she slumped in my arms. I miss you, Boo-Boo.

The Road to Nowhere

Living in suburbia has become a little more crowded and uncomfortable than I ever expected it to be. I have always lived in a suburban neighborhood, always on a lot of 1/2 acre or less. I never minded living so close to the neighbors until I moved into this house almost 13 years ago. My next door neighbor is a plumber and his wife is a hermit (except for her forays to Wal-Mart). They have a huge assortment of lighthouses in the front flowerbed. The back yard is full to overflowing with pipe, boats, sheds and whatever else Mr. Plumber can't bear to part with. He began to renovate the outside of his house about 5 years ago. The siding is not finished...still. Even after calls to the city codes compliance office, there has been little progress.
On the other side there used to be a nice older woman who kept her home in good repair and the yard tidy. She moved a few years ago and sold the house to a couple with 3 HUGE unruly dogs. They leave the dogs in a pen outside so they can bark all night. The once lovely pool is now a green pit that breeds mosquitoes. The fence is falling down and they accumulate huge heaps of garbage at the side of the house. Most of the other neighbors keep their houses fairly well. This is one of the NICER parts of our city.
So.......I have begun the search for a little piece of property on which my sweetie and I can build a new home. With space for a nice garden, chickens and (his dream, not mine) alpacas. Mostly I want to get away from the neighbors.
Yesterday after searching the local listings, I set off to find Eden. Oops, I forgot the directions. How hard could it be to find this place? After about an hour on the road, mostly backtracking, I gave up. Who knew that those back roads would look so much alike? On Sunday, armed with the GPS, my sweetie and I WILL find this little piece of heaven. The price is reasonable. Cross your fingers that it isn't under water or the Beverly Hillbillies don't live next door!
Maybe I will even have pictures next time!

A finished product

I have been so busy lately that sometimes I feel like there should be two of me, though one of me is probably enough! I have been working more in the neurofeedback office and trying to get more done at home. The crochet lessons are coming along pretty well. I hope to have something to show soon.
After two feeble attempts, I finally settled on the right fabric for a quilt to send to my niece for her baby shower this weekend. Ta-Dah!