We Have Cucumbers!

Four of my five biggest cucumbers, as of this morning!

I'm trying really hard to not bore everyone with my garden. Believe me, I want to post a photo of every new vegetable and every little harvest, but I've been reining in my enthusiasm. However, it's been more than three weeks since my last garden post, and I'm just too excited to not share that we have cucumbers at last!

There's my fifth large cucumber, and a newly formed baby one above it.

I knew they wouldn't start to appear until late August or early September. While most all of our other crops in past years ripened during August, we never plucked a cucumber from the vine until September. I was more concerned that my rabbit-assaulted vines would be too damaged to bear fruit. They really do not look healthy and are even a bit stunted despite my Herculean efforts to save them from the beasts. And, due to being stunted, they haven't been climbing the trellis like they should be. Even so, they have been blooming wildly and there are many cucumbers developing, including five that will be ready for harvest in no time.

September 3rd: Tomatoes galore!

It cracks me up to remember that a month ago I was worried that all my green tomatoes would never ripen, due to my ongoing battle against the blight, which has cleared up since the daily heavy rains finally eased up a week or so ago. Now they are ripening at a rate of one or two per day, which is far more tomatoes than Mark and I can keep up with eating. I've been offering them to my kids (except Dylan, whose list of edible vegetables is short: french fries, mashed potatoes, and pizza sauce). Luckily, Chris, Sarah, and Jake like them.

Today, five days later, the basket is full again!

And today there are still five more ready to harvest, plus one almost there.

I've been using them in every way I can think of, and so far none have gone to waste. They are so much more delicious in different salads and on sandwiches and burgers than the store-bought variety. It will be hard to go back to the relatively flavorless tomatoes from the produce section when the fresh ones are used up over the next couple of months.

A favorite from my childhood: tomato and mayonnaise sandwiches.

Besides, our growing season will be cut short due to leaving for our vacation on Sept. 29. We usually start getting freezes in early- to mid-October, and everything must be harvested then, ready or not. But we'll be losing a week or two this year. Two days before we leave, I'll pull every green tomato off the bush and put them in brown paper bags (single layers). There, they will ripen nicely at varying rates, keeping us in garden tomatoes for a month or more. And we'll take the almost-ripe tomatoes on the road with us!

The green beans and tomatoes harvested two days ago, September 6th.

The green beans are still producing at an unbelievable rate. I can pull a full quart bag's worth of beans off the vine every three to four days. Thankfully, unlike tomatoes, the beans can be frozen whole to be cooked months later, still firm and plump and delicious.

I have five quarts of beans in the freezer now (Sept. 3rd bag not pictured).

We've already cooked and eaten three quarts from earlier in August.

The trickiest thing about plucking green beans is that they're so dang hard to see! If only they weren't the exact same color as the leaves and vines. For instance, I'll see a group ready to harvest on the other side where I can't reach, but when I move around to grab them, I often can't find them again! Or I'll just miss them one day, and by the time I see them a day or two later, they've grown too big. That's the thing about green beans. You can't just ignore them and leave them on the vine until you're ready. If they get too large, they're pretty much inedible. Tough and woody and yucky.

The pepper plant at center back has gone barren, although it's still alive.

The plant at left has only the one bell pepper on it.

I've given up hope for a large crop of bell peppers. The damage done by whatever insect was attacking them was too much for one of the plants, which never put out a single pepper. It has a few healthy leaves left, but everything else was snipped off. The plant that produced the sole bell pepper I've harvested thus far has again grown one single pepper, which is almost ready to be picked. There are a couple of blossoms left on the plant, but they don't appear to be in a hurry to transform themselves in peppers.

This is the only pepper plant doing well, with five healthy bell peppers.

The third plant, though, is hanging in there. In fact, it has five decent bell peppers growing on it right now, with a few others just starting to form. I'm going to call this effort a success...just not a HUGE success. Like the cucumbers, these plants seem slightly less than healthy, likely due to the early damage from dastardly intruders. Next year, I'll do better at protecting them in their early stages.

The strawberry plants have grown huge, and two are making berries again.

As for my strawberries, the new little plants from the runners have pretty much taken over that garden plot. (I also need to do some weeding.) Again, next year I'll be wiser, having learned that you need to limit each plant to three runners in order to keep them producing berries. Meanwhile, I have a bunch of young strawberry plants that I'm willing to share with anyone local who'd like to come get them! I hear they transplant well. Really. Not kidding.

Today's harvest. I've had seven or eight ripe berries so far this week.

Meanwhile, two of my strawberry plants have started putting out berries again, and the critters seem to be ignoring them this time. (Hear me knocking wood?) I'm glad I got to enjoy a few final, late-season strawberries. They are almost excruciatingly delicious! And I've learned this, as well: pick strawberries in the morning while they're still cool, and don't wash them until just before you eat them. That keeps them fresh about a day longer.

August 29, 2017: Gardening is glamorous...not!

The photo above isn't exactly flattering, but it's a great example of the toll taken on gardeners by the hardships of growing green things. It was supposed to be sunny all day on that Tuesday in late August, so I went out to water the garden toward evening. I was halfway done when I heard thunder rolling in the distance, dark clouds came scudding in, and I was trapped in a torrential rainstorm. Fighting insects and critters and weather and blight; having dirt under your nails and bugs crawling up your legs and mud splatters on your clothes...it isn't always pretty. The question is, is it worth it? Hmmm...

Party On!

Finally, my birthday party, combined with a Labor Day barbecue!

Sunday, September 3, 2017

Although my birthday was on Friday and although we'd already celebrated somewhat with a dinner at El Rancho, my actual birthday party with the entire family had to wait until our usual Sunday dinner. Work schedules always make gatherings a bit more complicated than they were when the kids were little.

Sunday started off rather differently. Our church ward got a brand new Relief Society presidency, and I was sustained and set apart as the new Relief Society secretary. For those unfamiliar with our faith, Relief Society is a women's organization dedicated to serving the physical and spiritual needs of the women and families of our ward (and often the men, too). I'm excited to work with the new president and her counselors, all of whom are warm and wonderful ladies. The new president is, in fact, my friend Karen, whom you may have read about in my last post, along with Megan, Karen's new second counselor. Rounding out the team as first counselor is my friend, Liz, another recently-retired teacher (except she got to retire one year before I did). This calling will likely be a roller coaster ride of challenges and blessings, but I can't think of any other group of ladies with whom I'd rather share the experience.

I got an unexpected blessing when church ended and we all met at the office of Bishop Berges to be officially "set apart" for our new callings. For a moment it really hit me that I was alone. The other women had their husbands there to participate with them, and Megan's two daughters also joined in (the rest of us have empty nests). In the past, I'd always had the support of my children and usually a husband, but now it came as a little shock that there was no one there for me. (Just a note: Mark works on Sundays or he'd have been glad to be there, even though we're not married anymore.)

I shrugged off the jolt of that realization and settled into a chair in the bishop's office, ready to await my turn. Then, just before they closed the door, I looked up and saw my daughter Sarah in the doorway, holding a little boy by the hand. My heart was so happy to see her there! She asked me, "Did you say something to me?" I didn't know what she was talking about, because I hadn't even known she was nearby. 

Sarah had actually attended my ward that morning so she could be with me when I was sustained in sacrament meeting. However, when my church was over she had to go on to her own ward (which meets in the same building as mine), where she serves in the nursery, caring for the little ones while their parents go to their Sunday school, priesthood, and relief society classes. She told me later that she'd taken the young boy to the restroom, and when they'd come back out she saw me at the other end of the hall, waiting for my bishop. She was sure I'd looked right at her and said something she couldn't hear, so she'd walked down to see if I needed anything. As soon as Bishop Berges saw her there, he invited her into his office to join us. Suddenly it wasn't just me anymore.

I know this was more than mere coincidence. It was a tender mercy of the Lord, sending my daughter to me so I wouldn't feel abandoned. Because I truly never even saw her in the hall. And that little boy was angelic, sitting on Sarah's lap, perfectly quiet through the time it took to accomplish four setting-aparts! It may not have been an earth-shattering moment to the world, but for me it was a welcome little miracle.

Dinner featured homemade potato salad and grilled London broil steaks.

Our family party was that same evening. In honor of Labor Day being the following day, we had our Labor Day barbecue along with my birthday celebration. As soon as the kids arrived around 5:00, they helped me finish cutting up the vegetables for the potato salad while Mark grilled the steaks. Then we all sat down to enjoy a typically rowdy meal together.

I wasn't actually born on Labor Day, of course. In 1954, September 1st fell on a Wednesday, so Labor Day was still five days away. Still, I've always felt it was appropriate that my birthday falls on or near Labor Day weekend most years. It always reminds me that my sixteen-year-old mother endured seventy-two hours of difficult labor to bring her firstborn--me--into the world.

My long-awaited gift from Dylan and Jake.

I'd made my birthday cheesecake on Saturday night (always tastier if it sits and "ripens" for twenty-four hours or so before serving), but we still had the homemade ice cream to tackle. So I got that going as soon as we were done with dinner. Then Mark took over the ice-and-rock-salt duty, and we cleared the table for the opening of the gifts while the ice cream freezer droned on in the background.

I read my cards aloud, with feeling. This one was from Sarah and Chris.

Each gift this year was exceptionally thoughtful, and I loved them all. Dylan and Jake gave me a frame-mounted canvas print of a photo Dylan took about two years ago. With his then-new camera, he captured an amazing view of the Milky Way that I instantly fell in love with. I've been bugging him ever since to make a poster of the photo for me, and he finally delivered!

From Mark, I ended up with two new nightgowns.

Mark gave me a cute pair of pajamas with a tiny blue-floral print. However, since I don't sleep in pajamas (the pants always seem to get twisted around my legs), he went with me two days later to exchange the pajamas for a nightgown. I'm not really a person of expensive tastes, so I was able to buy two nightgowns for the price he'd paid for the pajamas. Thus, it was a great gift!

Lord of the Rings prints from Sarah and Chris. I love them!

My children know better than anyone how much I love science fiction and fantasy, and that I have a particular affinity for the Elves of Tolkien's universe. I've been dropping hints for gift ideas on Facebook for months, and Sarah and Chris took me up on one of them.

And Sarah chose my favorite of all the possibilities: a set of five canvas prints depicting the village of Imladris (usually better known as Rivendell) from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Rivendell is governed by the Elf lord Elrond, whose daughter Arwen marries Aragorn. It's also the setting of the Council of the Ring, where Frodo agrees to bear the One Ring back to Mount Doom in Mordor.

This is the entire painting from which the five prints are derived.

To make these prints, the painting above was broken up into five parts, with the center piece being quite tall, the two on either side of it being somewhat smaller, and the final two outer prints being smaller yet. It's very effective how all five prints flow into one another, presenting the entire image. Now I just have to find an inexpensive way to stretch the canvases onto wood frames...and then find a place in my small house to hang them!

Here's a better view of the center panel, printed on canvas.

The Rivendell canvas prints came all the way from China!

Jacob tells me he has a birthday present for me, too, but he will bring it with him to our family vacation in Northern California in a few weeks. We'll be meeting up at my cousin Craig's home in Woodland, CA, on the afternoon of October 1st, just twenty-five days from now! I guess I can wait that much longer...

All of my beautiful birthday cards for 2017!

For dessert, homemade sugar-free chocolate-chip cheesecake.

We ended the evening with my favorite desserts: cheesecake and homemade ice cream (both sugar-free). They were delicious, if I do say so myself! I savored every bit, because we don't make homemade ice cream very often, usually only two or three times each summer. That means we are facing a long, homemade-ice-cream-free fall, winter, and spring!

It's been a wonderful birthday adventure this year, and I thank each family member and friend for making me feel loved and special throughout it all! You're all amazing!

Also for dessert: homemade sugar-free strawberry ice cream.

Sixty-three

Here's my annual birthday selfie. I turned 63 yesterday!

Where did all those years go?

I started off my birthday yesterday by sleeping late. I was able to do that because, finally, I didn't have to get up and go to school! Retirement is awesome that way! However, I almost missed a call from my friend Karen, because I slept through the Walking Dead ringtone on my cell phone, thinking I was dreaming about the Walking Dead, and only realized at the end that someone was calling me!

September 1, 2017: Lunch at China Wok with my friends Megan and Karen.

When I called Karen back, she said she wanted to celebrate with me by going out to lunch, along with another friend, Megan. I was up for that! I decided to skip the healthy diet for the day--it was my birthday, after all--and we went out to my favorite Chinese restaurant, China Wok. It's not a place I can go when I'm dieting because there's very little there that's low-carb. Even relatively healthy dishes like chicken and broccoli tend to have starchy thickeners. So it was fun to splurge and eat there for the first time in months.

It was so much fun, in fact, being with friends and sharing stories and laughing uproariously, that a little lady who'd been eating at a nearby table came over to us as she was leaving and said, "I wanted you ladies to know how much I enjoyed your lunch!" And she meant it!

A sweet gift from Karen.

Although the gift of their time and friendship was more than enough for me, Karen brought in a big red bag and presented it to me during lunch. It was a massaging bath pillow, which she said was to help me unwind and be inspired as I continue working on my novel. How sweet is that?

Thoughtful gifts from another good friend, Wyndie.

Later that afternoon, back at home, my friend Wyndie dropped by with a dozen pink roses and some sugar-free candy. She knows I'm always trying to drop some poundage! We visited for more than an hour and made a lunch "date" for Wednesday. There's always so much to talk about! For instance, three weeks ago Wyndie became a first-time grandma to a beautiful new granddaughter, Jemma Lynn.

Next splurge: a shredded beef chimichanga at El Rancho.

Come evening, it was time to head to El Rancho for the Carter family birthday tradition. We've been doing this for decades. When you eat at this restaurant on your birthday, the staff comes out and puts a sombrero on your head, then sings happy birthday as they serve you a free bowl of deep-fried ice cream in a cinnamon-sprinkled tortilla bowl.. And they take your picture to post on their Facebook page.

The traditional birthday-sombrero and deep-fried ice cream photo.

No one ever eats their whole birthday ball of encrusted ice cream, of course. It comes with multiple spoons, and the bowl is passed around until everyone gets a taste and the bowl is empty. This time, we ate our dessert with dinner rather than after, because our server brought it out to us with unusual speed. We had to eat it before we finished dinner so it wouldn't melt!

As always, my family and my friends made me feel special on my big day (as well as before; thank you, Debbie!). It almost makes it worth being a whole year older! And it isn't over yet. We still have my birthday party with my children at Sunday dinner to look forward to. But that will be a story for another day...

Mark, Mary, Chris, and Sarah celebrate together at El Rancho.

Sadly, Dylan and Jake weren't able to join us this year. But next year...!