We are again in a significant drought as of September 9th. I’ve been watering the big gardens once a week but haven’t done the flowerbeds. They seem to be doing ok though.
On Friday morning the first thing I had to do, after checking on the spaghetti sauce in the roaster, was empty the dehydrator. The 3 trays my substitute helper had done on Thursday almost filled the pint jar.
The sauce had cooked down just right overnight, so I set it to keep warm until a substitute helper arrived. I spent the morning reading and trying to reach the company to find out if anyone was coming. I never did reach anyone.
Birdwatcher
Tom and my #3 intern arrived just after 9AM and my #3 intern went out and started moving and stacking wood. He got about half the pile moved before he had to go.
I went out at noon and started getting set up to finish the spaghetti sauce. It had come out much more chunky than I hoped, so I decided to run it briefly through the blender to break it down and make it more sauce-like. I had just loaded the first batch when my substitute helper from Thursday arrived.
I was glad she was able to come as she very much wanted to learn how to can. Once we’d gotten the sauce through the blender we set it on the stove to heat. I had started my biggest canner 45 minutes before so the jars would be ready.
While we waited for it to come to a boil, she cleaned up the roaster and I got a shower as I had PT mid afternoon.
When I got out of the shower, the sauce had boiled so I taught her how to safely load jars and take them in and out of the canner. Once they were all in, it would be 45 minutes before they finished processing. We got 8 quarts.
I decided to go to the attic to get my notes on the Christmas lights. I thought I needed to order more, or at least bulbs. While we were up there, she carried up all the stuff at the foot of the stairs and we got it put away.
I decided to grab the autumn wreaths and bring them down while we were up there.
Then we went up to the store room and she helped me get out the supplies for repairing the wreaths.
We made a huge mess on the 8’ table in the office, pulling out all the supplies to see what we had.
We started work on the swag first, and then moved over to the wreath.
We had just finished them when the van arrived to take me to PT. PT went well, they say I’ve made progress, even though I don’t do the exercises at home.
I was pretty tired when I got home and sat and read until supper time. I had to close the house up at 6PM as it was to drop into the mid 40’s during the night. Once the sun went down at 7PM, I pulled the shades and sat down to watch Big Bang Theory until bedtime.
On Saturday I have the mess in the kitchen to clean up, plants to water (my homeless friend has found an apartment!!), and the mess in the office to clean up. I hope to get out to the garden and get Row 7 finished in the New Herb garden. Not sure when Tom will show up to do foliar.