Too Long!

Well, it's been way too long since I posted here. After the 16th of August we were pretty busy harvesting and processing from the garden. Then on the 25th dear daughter-in-law and two granddaughters came for a visit. What a treat for Grammy!

Here the girls are helping me make bread. Just in front of the breadmaker you can see the seven jars of Red Currant jelly that I made this month. Have you ever tasted Red Currant jelly? It's just the best!

Whenever the girls come we make a craft together. Last year they made the little pillows, remember? This year they made little purses. They each draw out a design of their own imagining, and then choose fabrics from my stash. I do most of the sewing, although the 10 year old does a little on her project. I think they are just darling--both the girls and their designs.

They stayed until this past Monday when we went to visit the Calgary Zoo. I was just amazed at how the zoo has changed since the 70's when we were taking our children. The morning started out very chilly, but when the sun came out the day turned lovely. The zoo was full of young families with children. Perfect weather for a last of the summer outing.

Close to 3:30 I dropped them off at the Calgary airport to catch their flight back home, and I scooted off home to get ready for a quartet rehearsal.

This year I didn't start the corn early in the greenhouse, and I'm really regretting that now. As you can see, it looks great, taller than ever and just loaded with cobs. But the sad part is that none of the cobs are even close to filling out and ripening. Our summer has just been too cold and cloudy. Seems really strange, as the rest of the country suffered an unusually hot summer. I know Toronto had lots of days way over 30º. We had only one!!! day when the temperature even reached 30º and that high was just 31º. That was it for our warm weather this year. Our usual high was in the neighborhood of 24º, or 75ºF, and often was only about 18º to 20º. Our squash is likewise not going to make it to maturity.

Remember the picture of our neighbor doing the spring planting with his nifty new tractor? Well today he started harvesting that field. These are peas grown for seed. The crop looked wonderful as we had a nice amount of rain. And, of course, peas like cool weather. This was earlier this morning, and later there were two combines working at the same time in that field. They did quit early, and about 4 p.m. we had a thunder shower.

We are all holding our breaths, hoping that we don't get a killing frost until the harvest is in. Last year we had that early, heavy frost that killed all the leaves on the trees, and took away what fall colour we look forward to. We had frost three mornings in the last week, but only just a degree or two, not enough to do a lot of damage. It's our hope and prayer that we have good fall weather to protect the crops and enable a good harvest season.