Independence Days- week 14

My how time flies!!! It can't be Monday already, can it. Oh yeah, it is. I went to work today- the first of a 6 day stretch since I work on Saturday. We worked so hard this weekend, it was difficult to get up out of bed this morning and I actually overslept. I turned off the alarm with every intention of getting up (it was 5:20 am) but when I woke up next it was 6:52!!! I normally catch the 6:40 bus- so I was LATE!!!! I quick threw on some clothes, gulped some coffee and had V drive me all the way into work.

But, the house in town is essentially done. V has gone down this evening to brush on a thin coat of varnish over the dining room floor. He tried to spot finish the places where it had worn thin due to traffic and chairs moving in and out but then it obviously looked spot finished. So he will dry brush a very thin coat over the entire floor to make it all shiny. The realtors will be doing their walk through tomorrow morning at 9 and there is another showing later in the morning. That will be, as far as we know, the third showing of the house since it went on the market on Wednesday of last week. Not too bad. We haven't heard any comments from the first two walk throughs so I'm curious what people have thought. I'm a bit nervous about the realtor comment session tomorrow although I know they're doing it to be helpful.

But on to my usual Monday business: The Independence Days challenge. So, here goes:

1. Plant something- transplanted a few of my flowers from the old house to the new but that's about it.

2. Harvest something- Yup! Behold:

Peppers and the first of the tomatoes.

So far we've got tomatoes ripening on two of the heirloom varieties, Cherry Roma and Bloody Butcher. The Bloody Butchers aren't very big but they are quite tasty and very juicy. The cherry romas are just plain tasty and are a tiny grape tomato.

The last harvest of broccoli.

Who would ever have thought that I would be harvesting the last of the broccoli in August! It's official, we have had the coolest July on record. I harvested one HUGE head, two normal sized heads and one small one. And most impressive- on all of that I found only 4 worms when I soaked it in brine (and I did look carefully).

I also have harvested some more peppers, beets, some onions and a few new potatoes.

3. Preserve something- Froze 4 quart bags of broccoli and I have some beets cooling that I need to do something with this evening.

4. Reduce waste- The usual, composted LOTS of weeds from the old house. We also hauled out the brush that we trimmed from the bushes. We've got space here and it will probably go for kindling for fires later this fall. Things have been kind of crazy lately and I haven't always remembered to put my cloth bags back into the car. At the old house we would put the bags by the back door but we haven't figured out a good system yet.

5. Prep and storage- Construction continues on J15's room, V plans to start drywalling on Wednesday. Woo Hoo! For storage- I have the 4 bags of broccoli and my Mom brought us 10 packages of frozen sweet corn.

6. Build community food systems- Stopped at the farmer's market again last Wednesday. Otherwise, we've been eating from our garden or from what my Mom brought us.

7. Eat the food- no problem here. We've had sweet corn, broccoli, stuffed peppers, boiled new potatoes, green beans, beets. We also have been eating most of our meat products from the freezer. I used my new griddle that came with my stove to make whole wheat pancakes (with fresh strawberries and blueberries) on Sunday morning. Unfortunately on both Saturday and Sunday we ate out since we were in town with no food or means to cook and I wasn't organized enough to pack lunches. We ate KFC on Saturday and Subway on Sunday. Well, I guess that counts as our annual fast food stint that is usually while we're on vacation.

I'm really hoping that, now that work on our old house is done, that I can start settling into some sort of routine here. I've been feeling so disjointed lately, I don't know whether I'm coming or going. Even though I take exception to the word "normal" I would like to regain some normalcy in my life.