Happy 4th of July

We went to a cookout at Gus' and Ann's today.  Gus and my late father-in-law are first cousins.  Gus invites all his cousins, and all their young'uns, to a family dinner twice a year:  4th of July, and Thanksgiving.  On the 4th, he serves us barbequed pork shoulder, cooked low and slow, the way any self-respecting Southerner would do it. At Thanksgiving, he gives us Turkey.  The cousins and their young'uns bring the side dishes.  Five generations showed up today.  It's good to visit with the extended family.

Uncle Jack was there, and he said that he'd just picked a 5-gallon bucket of ripe tomatoes this morning.  He's picking green beans and cucumbers.  Made me green with envy.  He invited me over to help him cut cabbage for sauerkraut.  I might take him up on that, if he'll do it when I'm not at work.

I came home and went down to inspect my own pitiful garden.  One of the tomato plants has been stung pretty hard with blight; some of the rest are threatened with it.  This weekend, I will need to rig up the sprayer with fungicide to see if I can thwart it a little.

Night before last, I found a bug on one of the squash plants and had to powder them with Sevin dust.  Together, Nanny and I have picked about 4 gallons of squash this week, two of which are sitting on my kitchen table, needing to be processed.  I intend to make some of that good squash relish that I made last year, but first I'll need to make a run to the grocery store for vinegar and stuff.

The green beans are beginning to make.  The Grandson's tiger eye beans are loaded, but I'm going to let them dry on the vine so he can see how the dried bean thing is done.  Come winter, we'll soak his beans, and cook them, and talk about how we planed them w-a-y back in the spring....

My yard is phloxing. 

Night before last, as The Husband was walking down Nanny's driveway to join me in the garden, he spotted a fawn under the pine trees.  He whistled, and when I looked up from my squash-picking, he motioned for me and showed me the baby.  It was tiny!  We didn't see its mama anywhere.  "Keep a watch out for mama," I said before trotting back to our house for the camera.  The fawn was still there when I got back, and lay there and looked pretty while we took its picture.  After I finished picking the squash, we came back to our house and watched the field beside the driveway.  Sure enough, before long, the doe emerged from the tree line and eased across the field.  She was still 100 feet away from the baby when all of a sudden it bolted from beneath the pine trees and joined her in the field.  She led it back to the woods.  Sweet.  :)

As we walked up the sidewalk to our house, a rabbit ran out of the flower bed.  I took its picture, too.