Independence Days- Solstice edition

Ok, so I'm a day behind on wishing everyone a happy Summer Solstice. But I can wish you all a happy Summer! I just hope the weather stops being weird for everyone- myself included! We only got a half an inch of rain today! But it made up for the "lack" of rain with the heat. It was near 90 with high humidity. Yuck! This heat isn't doing anything for my peas- I think I'm going to have to pull them. They didn't do very well this year anyway- it just got too hot too soon. sigh. But, here is my IDC update for the past week.

1. Plant something- planted a new rosebush in the flower bed, that's about it. It's been too wet to do much else! I did manage to pull a few weeds without sinking but over half the garden is too wet to even step into. I hope it stops raining soon for long enough that I can find my tiny beans that are up. And my little basil plants.

Tonight's harvest.

2. Harvest something- Hmm, LOTS of broccoli- probably close to 20 lbs of it! Including 10 lbs this evening, that's another thing that the hot weather hasn't been kind to. Also some cauliflower, peas (shell and sugar snap), carrots, onions, a beet, chinese cabbage, strawberries, raspberries and red currants. Oh, and a few fresh herbs.

3. Preserve something- froze 14 quart bags of broccoli and have some sugar snap peas that I need to blanch and freeze as well. Made some red currant syrup (Ok, it was supposed to be jelly but didn't set right- but it's GOOD!) Drying some catnip for the kitties for this coming winter. I want to dry some oregano and summer savory since they are doing really well in the garden.

4. Waste not- Um, not much that unusual. In fact, I probably used more water this weekend than typical. I ended up doing LOTS of laundry- more than usual- since we got water in the basement Saturday morning and lots of J16's piles of dirty laundry that she hadn't washed yet got wet. Ugh. I'm not sure how long she had let her laundry go but I'm STILL working on it. At least I got the wet stuff washed. I've done the typical using cloth bags at the store, recycling and composting

5. Want not- Not much prep work or stocking up going on- it's been too wet. I didn't even have time to do my usual shopping this weekend. We had hoped to get to drywalling J16's ceiling but we ended up mopping water instead. It appears that 6 inches of rain in less than a week is our "pain threshold" for having water in the basement. I'm just glad it trickles in rather than pooling. In other "big project" house prep stuff. We're supposedly the next job on our contractor's list for the septic installation- IF it ever stops raining. The ground is too wet for them to bring in heavy earthmoving equipment. They would sink up to their axles!

6. Build community- I was really disappointed that we didn't make it to the Cultivating Community potluck on Saturday evening. We had been so busy cleaning up water and the wet mess in the basement that I lost track of time and at 4:55, finally looked at the time it was to start to find that it was from 5 to 7 and I hadn't made what I was going to take. sigh... there is next month- they want to have one every month.

7. Eat the food- I think our ultimate for the week was our fresh harvest stir fry! Broccoli, sugar snap peas, carrots and onion fresh from the garden. Mmmmmm. I made blueberry pancakes on Saturday morning and they were really good with red currant syrup. I've got some shelled peas in the fridge that we'll have tomorrow night. Things are picking up. Soon I'm going to be up to my ears in red cabbage!

Have a great week everyone!