Mmmm...chili sauce - July 18, 2020

By 7 o'clock this morning, I was washing cucumbers, getting them ready for their 3-hour ice-water soak.  They were in jars, pickled and processed, by 11, then I finished the chili sauce.  It took more than 2 hours to cook that stuff down and can it.  Man, it is delicious, but I'm not sure the 4 pints it yielded were worth the effort.

I spent the hot part of the afternoon on the back porch, practicing on my mandolin.  Here's the truth:  I can't strum worth a damn.  The pick spins around between between my fingers, and slips out altogether, sometimes. 

At 7 p.m., we went to the garden to pick peas and green beans.  I was not expecting to get many peas, but wound up with the biggest picking yet.  While I picked the peas, The Husband picked the green beans.  We didn't get all that many beans this time, but the rain and the watering set everything to blooming again.  I'm not real sure I'm happy about that.

The four short rows of purple hull peas that I planted only a few days ago are coming up!  It looks like there will be a good stand this time, not skippy like the last planting.  I squeezed those 4 rows into a spot that probably should have held just 3 rows, or maybe just 2, but I had a lot of left-over seeds. 

Now, I'm starting to think about a fall garden.  I don't really know what to put in it.