COUNTING MY BLESSINGS, HOLY MOLY, IT'S ALREADY PAST MID OCTOBER.

 Thanksgiving came and went and I'm very thankful for all my blessings. On Sunday I cooked a small turkey and mashed potatoes, squash, broccoli, and gravy, pickles of course, and made two lemon pies. I usually prepare everything early in advance but somehow, I didn't this time. I had to split the turkey in half and all the food in two to be shared with my grandaughter's family of 5 and I delivered it to them. Unbeknown to me, my granddaughter wasn't feeling well enough to prepare her turkey dinner and she was pleased to receive the dinner already cooked. I didn't make the dressing but gave her a box of StoveTop as I had forgotten to buy celery to make the dressing. My son Vaughan joined George and me and we had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner without the dressing, (my favorite part)lol... Of course, I got too busy enjoying dinner to take any pictures.

We've had lovely weather and I took advantage to clean a large overgrown weedy daylily flower bed. It took me over three afternoons to get it cleaned. The sun was low so the photo is of poor quality.

On October 3rd.  We had our first frost. You can see where the sun hit, it melted the frost. 

 Luckily, I cut a large bouquet from my two Hydrangea bushes that grow on the front lawn before the frost hit. Now,  I can enjoy them all winter when the snow flies. Sorry, I forgot to take a photo of the bouquet but it's huge and I put it in front of the fireplace.

On Tuesday the 4th, I went apple picking with a friend at Everett Apple Orchard in Islandview,  the same place I went last fall, and picked 40 pounds of apples to be divided between my granddaughter, my son, and us. Two days later, I got a call from my friend to tell me that she had tested positive for Covid. It will be two weeks on Tuesday since I was exposed to her but I'm still symptom-free and tested negative. Hopefully, I'll stay symptom-free.  

My daughter Jackie teaches weaving in the textile department at the New Brunswick College of Crafts and Designs, and since we had an abundance of squash, she took a trunkful of squash to share with students. Here is the student's thank you card. Getting a thank you card was extra special.

A few of my followers were interested in seeing the bottles of jam, pickles, vegetables, and meat that I preserved. This is what I have left after selling 5 cases of pickles and one case plus 3 bottles of jam at the Farmer's Market and giving some to family members and friends and we ate some of course. I don't know exactly how many bottles I made in all but it was around, or over 300 bottles. 

Carrots and pork and some jam.

Carrots and pork ( same as previous picture)

Here I have Lady Ashburnham, beans, preserved beets, beet pickles, green beans.

Lots of large jars of Dill pickles, bread and Butter pickles

Corn kernels from my garden and Million Dollar relish. I would have preserved more corn but the electric fence switch was left open during the night and the raccoons devastated my second harvest. Hopefully, it will not happen next year. 

This is a poor picture from the end of one shelf. It wasn't easy to take good pictures of all the bottles on the shelves but at least, you get an idea as the shelf is full on both sides.   I also filled a brand new 7-square-foot freezer full to the brim with veggies the rest in my other freezers. There is an overabundance of potatoes, squash, and twice the amount of sweet potatoes that I harvested last year. No pictures.

Then I bought more bottles while they were on special for next year as they are very expensive.  They will come in handy if we are still alive next summer. I still have a lot of small and large jars not shown.

This is my Sundrop and red daylily bed after I removed the tall debris. I still need to sweep the brick border. The small green plants are next year's Sundrops.  I'm still in the process of putting my gardens to bed for the winter. I'm slow at getting them cleaned as I have so many of them all over the yard and only work when it's warm in the afternoon. 

I cleaned this bed yesterday and weeded around one of my Hydrangea between raindrops... I now have 8  and 1/2 flowerbeds cleaned with more to do and also my vegetable garden. I'll spare you any more garden pictures.

George and my son Vaughan put a new metal roof over my sunroom so no more leaks in my ceiling. Yay!  Now if I can get my ceiling fixed.

I'm booked for a Rug hook-in in St Andrews New Brunswick in November. There is only room for 35 rug hookers. I'm looking forward to it. It should be fun.

Thanks for visiting my blog. It always feels good when you leave a kind comment. 

HOLY COW, WHO IS MESSING WITH THE TIME CLOCK?

September came and went and we are at Thanksgiving today already.

September has been a blur for me this year so Blogger wasn't much part of it.  A good thing I took photos to remind me of what I did otherwise I would have forgotten half of it.

It started with  negotiating for a house for our granddaughter and her hubby and all the paper work and the financing and the never ending signing of papers and visits to lawyers  and waiting for closure and getting things in order for my trip to Ottawa for a week in the midst of being so busy and the big move.

This is a cropped up image of the back of house to protect the privacy of the previous owner.

This photo shows the weeding in between the rows as we picked. My mini van and George look pretty small at the  top of the photo.

There were lots and lots of cucumbers and tomatoes and squash  to pick and pickling and some more weeding cucumbers and picking and picking. (No photo of the big field of squash and pumpkins or the rows of potatoes). We had three long rows of cucumbers. We grow cucumbers and squash for the church supper and pickle making each year. This is a great source of revenue for the church.

A small sample of my wool dying, taped to the fridge for photo taking.

Fun visit by Cypress in between all the coming and going. Just look at that happy face.

My visit to Ottawa, where I babysat Daniel on a Friday, saturday and part of Sunday.  Look at that happy face too. We had loads of fun and a little adventure I'll tell later as this post is already too long and growing...

Me and the boxed in kids. One is missing his legs and the other is missing his body. Two very busy little boys.

James was at a conference for amputee children from Friday to Sunday  and stayed in a nice down town Hotel with his dad and when asked what he enjoyed the most, his response was, the hotel room...  
and being in the pool of course. James is a cool dude in the pool.

Back home from my trip, and babysitting Cypress as the parents are moving into the new home. All this moving was very confusing to Cypress. He would look at the empty apartment and cry the poor little guy. I took tons of photos that day as he love being photographed and hams it up for the camera.

I'll post some of those photos at a later date when I have nothing to blog about.

I trimmed some branches of the maple in the back and saved the branches and chopped them all for kindling. I hate to waste useful things like wood.

A before  picture

and after

Another before picture

and after but still some lingering new chickweeds lingering.

two more flowerbeds cleaned up

and another cleaned up bed and many more to go unfortunately...

What's left of the Thanksgiving Pumpkin pie. It was served with fresh real whipping cream.

There you have it, over a month worth of blogging in a single post. 

Until next time, Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian friends and Happy Blogging to the rest of my followers wherever you are...   

Thanks for all the email and comments while you waited patiently to see if I was still alive. JB