The vegetable garden is sort of on auto-pilot for a few days (except that we did pick squash and cut okra), and so we worked in the yards - ours and Nanny's - for most of the day.
While The Husband mowed the back yard with the push mower, I weeded a flower bed and hacked the compost tumbler out of the ivy so that I can use it. It had a fairly thick layer of compost in the bottom that has probably been in there since the fall. It was nice and black, but very damp. I tumbled it out onto a piece of screen wire, dumped it into a wheel barrow, and set it in the sun to dry. (Tomorrow I shall take it down to the vegetable garden and spread it around a few of the tomato plants to see if it gives them a boost.)
There was a giant patty of leaves in the side yard that The Husband had raked up early in the season. Last week when I mowed the yard, I ran over it with the riding mower to chop up the leaves, intending to compost them. But it had a ton of sweet gum balls in it, and I didn't know how well they would compost, or if they would sprout sweet gum trees (which we definitely do not need more of). Internet articles said that they do well as mulch, and apparently they've already shed their seeds, so I scooped up some of the leaf and sweet gum ball mixture and put it in the compost tumbler. But there was a WHOLE LOT more - three big yard wagons full - and I scooped it up and piled it up thick around the tumbler, hoping it'll keep down the weeds and the ivy around the tumbler.
While researching the sweet gum balls, I learned something interesting. The Native Americans made tea out of sweet gum balls for the treatment of flu symptoms, and an acid from sweet gum balls is used in Tamiflu. And the sweet gum balls help keep away slugs and animals. It's not fun to crawl/walk on them. Having spent most of my outdoor hours barefoot for most of my life, I can testify to the truth in that statement.
After lunch, we went to mow Nanny's yard. The lawnmower was almost out of gas, and the gas cans were empty. While The Husband went to the store to fill up the gas cans, I mowed the tricky spots and then started on the back yard, and when I looked up, The Brother-in-Law was zooming around the front yard on his big zero-turn mower. We finished the yard in nothing flat. I sent him home with a bag of squash as a participation prize. ;-)
Afterward, I took a stroll around the garden. The butterbeans and butter peas are doing well. I believe every seed sprouted, and they all have their first real set of leaves. The sweet peas are beginning to pop through the soil, but only a few here and there. I threatened to water the garden this afternoon to help them along, but it was really hot, and we'd been out in the heat most of the day, and watering is such a pain in the @ss. So I let it slide one more day.
We brought the okra home to cook for supper. Until today, I had not cooked any of the okra we've grown this year, mostly because I've been too busy gardening or canning to do much cooking. But The Husband had a hankerin' for some, and so I fried what we cut today. Boy, it was good. I'd seen a video about frying okra that recommended coating it with a little buttermilk, salt, and pepper, then tossing it in a mixture of flour and corn meal. I didn't have any buttermilk (it makes the coating stick to the okra), but I did have some home-made kefir, which is not far from buttermilk, if you ask me, and so I used it to make the coating stick. Worked like a charm. There was only about a cup full of vegetable oil in the bottle, but I mixed it with the last of the coconut oil I found in the pantry and a hefty glug or two of olive oil and managed to come up with enough oil to fry the okra in a cast iron skillet. It came out golden brown and crispy, just like we like it.
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