Labor Day Weekend

Once again, I'm sitting here at my kitchen table, blogging while the canner is boiling - 4 quarts of tomatoes, and a batch of pepper jelly fixings waiting their turn.

I actually started this process about 7 hours ago.  By noon, I'd picked, peeled, and chopped the tomatoes and had them heating on the stove.  Just about the time they started to boil, we had a storm that knocked the power out for nearly 5 hours.

That little storm brought us a good rain, just in time.  The peas, butterbeans, and beets that I planted a week ago have sprouted and are growing like crazy.  When I was in the garden this morning, I made plans to go back and turn on the sprinkler this evening.  Thank you, Mother Nature, for saving me the trouble! 

Funny, when I planted peas and beans late this spring using this season's seeds, they came up "skippy," and I had to do some replanting in almost all the rows.  This latest batch of seeds are seeds I bought on sale last year at the end of the season and had put in the freezer, and it looks like every seed sprouted and is thriving.  My fingers are crossed that we'll have a late frost so that they'll have time to make beans.  It sure would be a lot nicer to pick beans in the cool autumn than in the boiling hot summer.