More Pickin' - July 19, 2020

I mostly took the day off from gardening today.  Spent most of the morning doing genealogy research.  Had a tomato and mayonnaise sandwich for lunch, with a side of the hot sweet pickles I made last week.

After lunch, I snapped a big pan of green beans and put them on to cook for supper.  There were far more than we needed for supper and for left-overs tomorrow night, so when they finished cooking I put more than half of them in the freezer in their cooking juice.

For a couple of hours, I sat on the back porch and picked on my mandolin.  I am trying to understand how this thing works.  Even printed myself some cheat sheets (though I've about got the chords down).  They're taped to the cabinet on the back porch. 

It is a cheap mandolin, one we picked up in Mountain View for under $100 (new).  I do fairly well at picking out simple melodies, but my chords don't sound so great.  I'm blaming part of it on the cheap mandolin.  The Husband asked me if I wanted a better one for my birthday, and I told him no, I'd like to wait until I can try some out in a store without embarrassing myself.  Who knows if that will ever happen?  But at least I'm starting to see some of the relationships on the fret board.

After supper, I went to the garden to pick squash to give to a co-worker.  A half-hearted inspection of the cucumber vines yielded a few cucumbers to slice and put in vinegar.  She won't appreciate what I had to go through to get them.

I picked the tomatoes that were turning.  Hated to do it, but the sun is scalding their faces; they already feel a little petrified on top.  I've put them on the back porch where they can ripen a little more gently.

The new crop of purple hull peas is coming up thick as cat hair.  The old crop is still cranking out peas.  They'll need picking tomorrow.