update

Its mid-September, the garden is still producing, AND still sucking up water cause its still HOT, but the plants know the seasons.

Water barrels (3000) gallons of them, empty.  Green beans going immediately to seed, peppers ripening, tomatoes ripening.  The fall growing season cut short because of how long the hot summer season was, so have to let it grow as long as I can. Zuchinni isn’t even flowering.

Now that the humidity is over, night time temps starting to fall to the 50’s (49 this morning!), but day time back to the 90’s.  one month to first frost date, but sometimes it doesn’t happen until November or december.

So there won’t be quarts of tomatoes this year, nor quarts of green beans.

But there will be seeds . .

done

This project used up most of what was left the Berocco Remix yarn from my previous projects.  There may be enough left of two colors to do a headband, but that’s about it.

While I didn’t need the length, used the last of the grey to make this lacy edging.  Unfortunately, when it was all done, found I’d dropped SIX consecutive stitches and had to remedy that.  It broke pattern, but not too badly. 

The lace, being a tighter gauge than the stockinette is really stretched to be worn low and the sweater will be worn like this rather than the first picture.

This is not quite 2 full balls of the purple, loosely knit on 13 needles.  Negative ease . . am about a 41 bust and the actual measurement is more like 38 or 39”.

sausage

Pork loin was on sale this week, so purchased one for making sausage.  This is about a lb of trimmed lean pork loin.  Used the jerky shooter with the sausage making attachment from the grinder.  Since I’m not using casings, have found using it on the grinder unwieldy.  Can start and stop the shooter where I wish.  This also makes tasty VERY LEAN sausage, at about 56 calories/ounce and each link (7 strips cut into 3 links each) is about 3/4 of an ounce.  This sausage is so lean, it needs a little fat to brown nicely.  Doesn’t take much, just a little bacon fat does the job.

Also made a lb of Bratwurst.  Slightly bigger links, about 1-1/2 ounces per link.  Still, VERY LEAN.

finally!

the weather has started to cool off and now the plants are producing again.  The bush beans, planted months ago, grew plant wise – which has turned out to be great – and are now yielding lots of green beans.   This is this morning’s yield.  The heirloom romas, an indeterminate tomato, are giving me the biggest best they’ve ever done.  I’m a seed saver, so these are both acclimatized plants, BUT this has been a record breaking year for the heat.  We’re only just starting to cool off at night and stay below 100, sometimes even below 95.  Fortunately, we’ve got probably another 4-6 weeks at least of good growing weather. Maybe more!

Saw a recent study that was done to test the effects of Global Warming and they came to the conclusion that over 95, plants don’t do so well.  DUH!  They could have just asked any of us SW gardeners.  We’d already figured that one out!.

bee update

opened the hive this morning after a few months. Its been so hot, did not want to stress them even more. BUT was concerned as with the heat, there wasn’t much flowering, even with all the wet we’ve had.  Was pleased to see that the hive is strong and healthy and they are accumulating honey stores.  Fortunately, we have at least another month for them to build up honey, and though we often get a hard freeze in October, we then usually again have mild winter through November.  if we have a good winter, the rosemary stays in bloom through most of it, and the manzanita begins to flower February/March. So its not a long winter. 

while I opened from the back and moved forward, the pics are the opposite

the back of the 6th comb.  at this point I saw honey and brood, so didn’t go any further forward

the front of the seventh comb, some honey and a little bit of brood

back of the seventh comb, about half honey, no brood

this is the 8th comb.  front and back all open and new.  Unfortunately they had started to cross comb this on – that little tab on the right was attached to the 9th bar.  good thing I opened this now as I was able to fix that.

just cut the comb off the 9th bar and pushed the still soft comb forward so it was aligned with the 8th bar

this is how the cross comb looked.

All the active combs were attached to the sides of the hive box and had to be cut to move the comb.  That was one of the reasons I didn’t go further forward.

Left the false back at space 16.  Will move that in October.

knitting

 

finally finished this sweater!  Used the Beracco Remix yarn again. Didn’t come out exactly as planned, but definitely wearable.  This is my first  totally knitted parts sewn together; sides, top, set in sleeves. So pretty pleased.  No pattern

last year knit a friend a cowl using this yarn, and a month or so ago found a pattern for this quicky headband, so this matching headband will be her present this year.

slow around the house

Its been wicked hot, although finally getting some cooler weather, and that leads to a lot of changes in the garden.  And that’s a different post

harvested some chard for eating and freezing

got   a  “jerky cannon” and what a difference that makes!  Around here, the dog gets home dried chicken and beef jerky rather than paying for that foreign stuff.  Every week I buy large packages of chicken breast and ground sirloin. What ever is left at the end of the week goes into jerky and we get fresh.

Up until now, have been pounding out the ground beef as flat as I can and cutting into strips.  This makes a lot of difference as the strips are equal thickness and MUCH thinner than anything I was doing by hand. So it dried quicker and more evenly.  Next step is to make jerky for us!