Joe's stuff.

The summer has really flown by. Amazing how fast time can pass when you are just living life. So there are several things that are worth mentioning.

1. I had a birthday. Jen invited me to a new decade by hiring a cake to be made that featured one of my favorite styles of neckwear.



BLUEBERRIES!!!









2. August came and we managed to keep up the tradition of going to pick blueberries. We happened to go a little later in the season where there were a couple of rows where we could get the late berries which are a bit smaller and sweeter.







Ian had a quart bucket to fill, and he chose the largest of the berries (easy picking!) Blake had a left and right cheek to fill, so he parked himself under the low-hanging fruit and plucked and stuffed and plucked and stuffed and plucked....etc.








Blake would occasionally crawl around the bushes to find me or look for some more easy pickings. Jen was keen on getting the smallest berries that were ripe, since she knew they would make the best jams and syrups and cooking. The big payoff was the pancakes that Jen made with the blueberries embedded whole. I should just refer to them as cakes, because they were thick and delicious. Add to that some of the blueberry jam that I made, and it was heaven.

3. I planted a garden this year and was relatively disappointed when the zucchini and cucumbers and pumpkins didn't seem to pollinate very well. I would routinely have a few female flowers and would hope that the male flowers would make themselves available to the bees. (I didn't see any birds.) However, the zucchini would just shrivel after a few days because apparently it needed a bit of help with the old pollination routine. I guess I'm not too worried about it, because most of the starts came up in the compost pile from the seeds from last year's CSA vegetables. Today, as I was out cleaning up some of the cherry tomatos that had blown off the plants due to tropical storm winds over the weekend, I thought I'd have a look for ANY fruits on the squashes. I found these two guys hanging out under some tall grass. I call them my squashcumbers. Perhaps they are overripe? Or improperly cross-pollinated?

Not long ago, Ian asked me to make his buddies, Chester & Pokewig (a dog and a baby triceratops), a quilt. Chester and Pokewig are the best of friends--Ian even calls them "Thing 1" and "Thing 2" sometimes. But recognizing the chance to practice making a dresden plate, I used the opportunity to...well....make a lot of mistakes along the way. (For instance, I miscalculated the angle of the blades and came out with ten-to-a-plate instead of twenty. Saved me a bundle of time, though). =) I have a long way to go on my binding skills, but I'm feeling excited about making a dresden quilt, eventually.

Ian, for one, just likes having them under a quilt. He's also good for the self- esteem.

He's a good egg, that Ian.

It's no secret that we have bugs in our house. It's sort of par for the course when you live in place that has warm, humid summers. Ants, spiders...you name it, we have it.

As a result, I learned long ago that I needed to pay a lot of attention to the food in my kitchen...which also means that I have to have a very regimented cupboard-clean-out routine. (Yeah, it's about as exciting as it sounds.)

This year, though, has been buggier than most. So I had to take my kitchen maintenance schedule to new levels. (Yipee.) Everything (and I mean everything) went into mason jars, unless otherwise in a screw-on container. And after a few months of trying to figure out the visual difference between millet and amaranth and (if operating on a quick, cursory glance) oat groats and barley and arborio rice, I needed a new solution. But after picking up some chalkboard paint, problem solved!

Bonus: filling my cupboards with mason jars is uber pretty and Sticks It To The Product Packaging Man. Win-Win.