Judy’s Square Foot Garden Blog

Even when I don’t have time to post on my blog, I am constantly reading everyone else’s blog posts….   I just wanted to send out a prayer and a hug for Rhonda Jean and Hanno over at “Down to Earth” ( http://down—to—earth.blogspot.com/ ) .  They lost their dear pet “Rosie” to kidney failure just the other day.

Some upbeat news –

Patti (GardenGirl) sent out her newsletter!!  I can’t wait to visit her site — she’s installing a wind mill and solar panels!  I am so jealous LOL!   I will be checking out her site (and her new videos) tomorrow morning.  I have been interested in solar panels and solar energy for quite a while.  It is something that I believe we could do and save alot of electricity in our home here in the South.  We have plenty of sunshine, that’s for sure.  I’m going to watch Patti’s videos and pick up some pointers from her.  That is one thing that I really like is watching Patti’s videos.  She’s awesome!

AND…. over at “Little Homestead in the City” — the Dervaes have been especially busy with interviews!  I will post the links tomorrow.  There are 2 videos of Jordanne talking about how goats and chickens are the perfect animals for urban homesteads!  And there are 3 videos with Jules that are also information packed.  Anais has been keeping the blog/journal updated with really neat photos of the garden and her weekly meals.  I have definitely learned so much from reading their blog!

And…. AND…. over in Seattle, Sinfonian (who still claims to be a beginner gardener) has the prettiest garden!  Ah, his corn is gorgeous!  It’s tasseling out and has silks (some of which are PINK!)   And he’s composting like it’s nobody’s business too.  I am so amazed by him — and this being his first year square foot gardening.  Check out his blog if you get a chance — he’s even pulling carrots (he’s got a great climate for growing lots of veggies that I can only grow in the early Spring or late Fall).   Can you tell I’m envious (is that spelled right??)…..   Actually I’m very proud of him — he just jumped right in this year with his garden.  His design is so cool too.  He’s been able to supply his family (and extended family) with lots of very tasty, healthy produce this year.  So check him out at http://ft2garden.powweb.com/sinfonian/

Well, got to run — I’ve got to get in bed so I can get up in the morning!!!  LOL

It’s been a crazy week — it’s time to go back to school!!!  Yeah!!  Well, not for me, but for my daughter LOL  And I can’t wait!  Since we brought her home from Kentucky she has had the craziest schedule.  Not so much the fault of being in Kentucky (in the Eastern Time Zone and we’re in the Central Time Zone), but more from drive home and the late arrival on Sunday night… errr Monday morning at 2 AM.   So this weekend will be spent getting her back on a “school” schedule LOL

Don’t you just love all the things that are a part of “going back to school”?   There’s all the school supplies, new uniforms, new shoes, books (yes, we actually have to BUY her books!), bulk buying snacks, etc at Sams….  Well, it’s a process and a pain to say the least.  But I’m just about through it all now.  We only have to buy her workbooks on Monday during orientation.  That will be another $$$ of money….

But the part I LOVE the most about DD going back to school — we all get on a more routine schedule.  And I can get so much more accomplished around the house and in the garden too!  

Today I’ve been busy, busy, busy!  We’re cleaning out closets, doing some Spring cleaning too…. getting things ready for next week.  Less clutter will mean less work around here during the school year.  Right now I’m unsure if we’ll take things to Goodwill or just have a yard sell when the weather cools off a little.  I’m kinda leaning toward the yardsell.  Then what’s left over can go to Goodwill.  I just need to make sure that I plan a Saturday when everyone will be home to help me get setup and also work the garage sell.

I’ve been collecting more seeds from the garden.  This week I’ve collected pole beans, red okra and more speckled lima beans.  I’ve also fermented and saved more of the brown/black saladette tomato seeds (this is an unknown variety that I grew this year — it was supposed to be Black Ruffles, a large black ruffled tomato).  This evening when the sun goes down, we’ll go out and collect more of the pole bean seeds and hopefully more of the yard-long bean seeds.  I also have to pick more of the cucumbers that are now ready to bring inside to get seeds from.

Tomorrow morning it is supposed to be 68 degrees at sunrise!  So, I’m hoping that we’ll be up and out EARLY in the morning!  I have some seeds soaking overnight that I want to get planted in the garden tomorrow morning.

Oh, I’ve also been busy today baking bread (2 loaves) and dehydrating Vidalia onions :-)   We purchased a bag of these at Sam’s.  They are the best onions!  They aren’t too spicey…. actually, they are pretty sweet.  They are great to cook with and also to eat sliced and raw on salads.  But, since a whole bag was so much more than what we could ever eat before they would start to go bad, I decided that we’d slice and freeze a bunch of them.  I like to take them out of the freezer and saute them with a pat of butter and some olive oil and put them on grilled burgers.   So we  have alot of them in the freezer now.  But I still had 4 ot 5 left that we still had not eaten.  So, I broke out the dehydrator.  I just sliced the onions, separated them and dehydrated them.  After, I put t hem into a ziplock freezer bag.  I can store them like that for a long time.  They are great to cook with and, they also taste amazing on salads too!

Well, tomorrow will be our final day to prepare for next week….  I’d like to be more scheduled and on a definite routine this year, it just makes life so much easier.   So, I have alot to do tomorrow.  I’d better get in bed since it’s already midnight LOL  Goodnight!

And I bet that you wonder where I’ve been!!!????  Well, the new computer is working out extremely well (knock on wood, let me see if I can find some around here LOL).  I am still loading software, etc.  But this new one is so much faster and has so much more memory.  I guess I didn’t know what I was missing using the old computer.  It just takes so much time to get everything loaded back on.  And even then when you run a program for the 1st time you still occasionally get the “insert Install Disk #2 messages…. a pain I tell you, a real pain!  LOL

I do like that alot of programs are just loaded on the internet and we don’t need software on our computer — like the Ft2Garden website, my blog, PlanGarden, etc.  As long as I have Internet Explorer I can get to these with no problem.  I kinda wish all programs were like that LOL

I just went over to Path To Freedom’s blog — oh my goodness!  Anais uploaded some pics of the garden again.  Eggplant, basil and more eggplant!  I can’t believe how productive their eggplant is.  I also grew the long, slender purple variety (forgot the name of it) and even though it did do pretty good in my garden, it is nothing in comparison to theirs….   I commented and asked Anais how she preserves eggplant.   I sliced and blanched and froze the ones that I grew in our garden.  I’m not quite sure how I will prepare them in a meal yet.  So, I asked Anais how she preserved hers and what dishes she will use them in.  The girl is very creative in the kitchen and the pics of the dishes that she prepares look awesome!  I hope to get some ideas from her on preparing the eggplant.

Oh, and the pic of the “Basil Bed” — I couldn’t believe!  That’s alot of Basil!  I know that they also sell it to some restaurants too so that is probably why they grow so much of it.

We’ll be off again this afternoon (errr… maybe tonight) and on our way to Kentucky again.  DH is getting a nap as he’ll have the first round of driving.  I still have to get some things finished around the house in preparation for our time away from home.  I also still have to pack {{YIKES!!!}}   But we will be back home on Sunday night very late.  I wish we could have stayed up there longer but I have 2 meetings scheduled for Monday — one at noon and another at 6:30 PM.  So, we don’t have a choice — we have to come back home on Sunday.

If you have a chance — go over and check out Sinfonian’s July 29th post and see the pics of his garden!  Awesome!  Especially those potato bins!  http://ft2garden.powweb.com/sinfonian/?p=181  I cannot believe how huge his potato plants are…. I think if he could have had 6 foot tall bins for those plants.   And it looks like they have flowered, which means now, when the flowers die off that the potato plants are growing potatoes!    When the potato plants start dying and turning yellow (still some time away) then he can dig potatoes.  Here’s his page on BAYG (Build As You Grow) potato bins:  http://ft2garden.powweb.com/sinfonian/?page_id=12   You can follow him from construction all the way through the process of where he is today with his potatoes.  I cannot wait to see when it’s time for him to harvest.  I hope that he takes lots of pics!

Well, our garden has some bare squares now — we’ve pulled up the corn stalks and the tomatoes.  Both of these grew so well for us this year and I’ve been very happy with the results.  But it’s time to get started on the next crop.  I guess DH and I will work on this on our drive too and from Kentucky.  I’ll print out my garden (at PlanGarden.com) to use.  Here’s what it looks like right now:

The green squares on the outside of the fence as well as the ones at the top of the garden is for “future” beds.  Also the Compost Bins and the Rain Barrels are “future” plans.   The tomatos are all gone now — just empty squares.  Same with the corn too.  I am letting some of the okra go to seed so I will have plenty of seed for next year.  Also, the pole bean bed (the 2′x14′ in the center of the garden) is still trying to produce!   But I’m letting alot of the pods go to seed so that I will have seed for next planting and also seed to share and swap with other gardeners. 

My yellow squash has finally bit the dust — I have 1 fruit that I am letting go to seed.  It’s huge and almost looks like a gourd LOL   I’ve already saved some cucumber seeds!  I am hoping that I saved them correctly.   

The beans in the top right 4′x8′ bed are purple hull peas and speckled butter beans (limas).  Since I didn’t have many purple hull pea seeds, I am letting these go to seed and picking the pods after they have dried out on the plant.  I have a pretty good many seed now.   I’m waiting on the speckled butter beans to fill out in the pods as they are shelling beans.  I can’t wait to taste these — I haven’t had them in years!

Well, I could talk forever LOL  But I need to get packing — it’s only getting later and later.  Oh how I dread the 11 hour drive!  I’ll be on the road for at least 22 hours this weekend, UG!  I hope that you have a great weekend!

Guess what?  I have a new computer!  It’s a Dell and oh my goodness, it is so fast!  I am very happy with it so far.  The only problem is trying to get everything set back up on it — the software, email accounts that I use with MicroSoft Outlook (these are really a pain) and all my bookmarks in Internet Explorer of all the places on the web that I visit regularly.  But it’s coming along…. just slowly LOL

Today I’m supposed to spend the day with some friends…. but I’m not sure I want to because I have so many things to do around the house and in the garden…. DH said that he would take care of the garden stuff for me but still, I feel like I need to be here working instead of enjoying myself with friends.   DH has his time for his hobbies (he is an A-V-I-D hunter, and that’s putting it mildly).  He only hunts deer and just a couple of times he’s hunted turkey.  So he has his time “off” during the winter months (plus some weekends during the summer when they are planting “patches”, etc).   But I’ll make up my mind in a little while since it’s already 7:30 AM…. I will need to meet up with my friends by 9 AM. 

Some of the things we need to do in the garden today:

1. Pull up the spent corn plants
2. Pull up the spent tomato plants
3. Pull weeds around the fence row
4. I’LL ADD MORE….

Got to run….. Everyone have a great weekend!

Hi everybody!!!! I have missed my blog and the Ft2Garden message boards so much!!!

Our trip to Kentucky went very well and it was so nice driving up there and spending time.  Where we live in South Alabama is a busy, busy place….  lots of traffic and it seems that life in general is just FAST.   One of the things I most look forward to on our trips to Kentucky is that life is slowed down…. easy and simple.    I also love the drive, even though it is 11 hours or so long.  I love seeing all the farms and the cows grazing in the fields….  plenty of cotton, soybean and corn planted.  It’s just really very pretty to me.  Plus, I love seeing what I call MOUNTAINS — where we live is pretty flat…..   Something else I love is all the rocks!!  If I lived in Kentucky, I would have rocks all over the place.  I’d be building lots of raised beds with the rocks.

Anyway, back to the story LOL    We had a wonderful time in Kentucky over the 4th.  We were able to visit with alot of our family members and celebrate the holiday.   My mother-in-laws garden is really doing well  — except for the rabbits!   So we built a 3 foot fence all around her garden area to keep them out.  That meant a trip to Tractor Supply (oh my goodness, I love this place LOL)   Her fencing is so neat and pretty — DH also built a very nice gate for her to enter and garden area.   The rabbits had been munching away on all of her veggies!  One had even just about completely eaten a baseball-sized beet!   The little rabbit had dug it up and removed the dirt on top of it and then eaten down into the beet root almost all the way to the bottom.  Oh boy, was my MIL ever mad about that LOL   I joked with her that the next time we come up, she’s probably going to have rabbit on the dinner table.  The morning after we finished the fence around the garden, the rabbits were out bright and early in the morning.  But they couldn’t get into the garden — my MIL was very happy about that!

Then we had the long drive back home…. and guess what?  MY daughter (who has been begging to stay with “Mamaw” for quite a few years now) stayed in Kentucky to spend some time over the summer holiday from school.  It was different leaving her because we’ve never been that far away from her before.  Of course, she is having a blast!  She’s already made a quilt and now Mamaw is teaching her how to knit!  I think this will be a summer that she will remember for the rest of her life.

After I got back home, I cranked up the ol’ puter the next morning.   But, guess what?  Hard drive crash…. so that meant buying a new hard drive and getting all set back up again.  I finally got all of that completed and back online just before the next weekend arrived.

Then just as I got everything back up and running, I went shopping the next Saturday.  We had a little rain storm come through and the electricity went out.  This is a problem we have quite often for some reason.  Well, the surge in the power knocked something out on my computer.  Who knows what.  I’ve already tried replacing the power supply but I guess it’s just time to get a new computer.   What really surprises me is that I had my computer plugged into a power strip (with a surge surpressor) that was plugged into another power strip with a surge surpressor.  So, whatever it was actually went through 2 power strips!  But the good news — it didn’t knock out anything else so the printer and monitor was fine.  I’m on my son’s laptop right now writing this post.  He usually has his computer with him so I don’t get to use it much.    But this morning I will be doing a little online shopping to see what deals I can find on a new computer.

Now on to the garden!  After the time we were gone to Kentucky, the time I didn’t have a computer due to the hard drive crash, the time I didn’t have a computer due to the power surge and a 5 day long trip to Louisiana for business, I haven’t been online or in the garden much to say the least.   The tomatoes are just about gone — I still was able to harvest some yesterday.  Also the pole beans are still blooming (just can’t believe it!)    There are many bean pods that were not picked during the time I was away so I am just letting those go to seed.  I can use the seed to plant later.  I read that beans are pretty much self-pollinating so there will be little chance of cross-pollination.   Also the okra — oh my goodness!!  Once the pods get too large, they are not edible.  But that’s ok too because I am going to use those pods for seed too.

I harvested some of the purple hull peas (a Southern shelling pea).  I didn’t have very many of these seeds left when I last planted … so those brown, dried-out pods were definitely a welcome site for me.  I shelled them and placed them on coffee filters in front of a fan to help dry them out either further before I place them in the refrigerator (cold storage).

I was also able to harvest some of the purple hull peas (that were in purple hulls and not “dried-out”) and I mixed them with some of the pole beans that I had snapped.  I cooked those last night and we had those with our dinner.  Ah, they were SO GOOD!   There is just nothing like fresh purple hull peas!

I have alot to catch up on!  I’ve already been over to Sinfonian’s blog and have been reading it.  Oh my goodness! His square foot garden is doing so well….  it is just beautiful.   I love the pics that he’s taken and posted on his blog.  He has done an amazing job with his first square foot garden.

Well, got to run — I’m off to the Dell website…. keeping my fingers crossed that they will have an awesome deal on a box with a dual-core processor and at least 2 gigs of ram all with FREE shipping  (I’m not asking for too much am I??? LOL).   Have a great day… hopefully I will get to borrow my son’s laptop again soon and post more.  Better than that, I hope I can find me a new computer today!!

Hi everybody!  Whew — what a day!  We worked for many hours in the garden this morning.  We got the raised beds in the front yard replanted and harvested alot of veggies in the main garden.  Then we came inside and started preparing everything to put in the freezer.  So that took quite a while — snapping the beans, blanching the tomatoes, beans, squash, okra and corn…..  We prepared 4 quart bags of tomatoes, 4 quart bags of green beans, 3 quart bags of corn on the cob, 2 quart bags of squash and 1 quart bag of okra.

I also harvested a good bit of parsley, stevia and chives from my herb bed.  I rinsed it well and then put it in the dehydrator.  I have these stored in ziplock quart bags.  I think it is so cool that I have my own parsley flakes that I grew and dehydrated!  Now, I haven’t tried the stevia (stuff is 100 times sweeter than sugar) — I need to look up how to actually use this.

In addition to all the veggies we prepared for the freezer, we also will be taking 3 - 1 gallon ziplock bags of pole beans to take with us to Kentucky on our 4th of July road trip.  My mother-in-law loves pole beans so this will be a real treat for her.  We also have a good many tomatoes and cucumbers that we will be taking to her too.  Her garden is coming along pretty well.  I can’t wait to see it.  But she has 1 big problem — RABBITS!  When we talked to her on the phone this morning, she said that when she walked out to her garden, two rabbits ran out!  She said that the rabbits are eating everything.  So we will try to construct something for her when we get up there to keep the bunnies out of her garden.

Well, I’ve gone to hit the hay — it’s getting late and we will be getting up early in the morning to head out on our 11 hour road trip.  I hope that everyone has a wonderful 4th of July holiday!!

Well, I have about 30 minutes before I have to leave to go to work this morning.  I am so glad that today is Friday and that we have a weekend coming up!  I have alot of things to do in the garden this weekend as well as alot of planning for more planting…..

Our forecast for the weekend isn’t too bad…. I’ll have to get out early in the morning to work in the garden though.  It’s going to be really humid….

This weekend I’ll be “on my own” working in the garden…  DH is going to the hunting camp for a work weekend with his buddy (our neighbor).   But that’s ok because I believe I can do most everything myself.  But, since he is off from work today (and I’m not) you can bet that I’m going to leave him a couple of chores to work on while I am gone LOL

• Put up boards on potato bin — the bin that we have the sweet potatoes growing in.  This is just an experiment because we’ve never grown sweet potatoes before and we’re going to try to grow them the same way you’d grow regular potatoes in the bin….
• Take down potato bin #1 and see what we’ve got!  I’m so anxious to see if we’re going to have potatoes or not…. my bins got way to much water this spring and the Yukon Golds didn’t like it much.
• Transplant some things into the garden…. I have some basil that I rooted from cuttings, some Italian “Frying Peppers” and some “Grand Bell Peppers” that I have in peat pellets inside that need to go out.
• Do some planning work and decide which tomatoes I will be growing this fall and get those seeds started inside.  I want to have them ready to plant outside the first part of August.
• Also do some planning work and figure out what I’m going to plant in the squares where the corn  and the bush beans were growing in the main garden.  I need to pull both of these spent plants up and get some fresh compost added to the soil so I’ll be ready to re-plant these squares.
• Check the Peaches ‘N Cream corn and see if it is ready to harvest — if so, harvest and blanch, then freeze
• Harvest other items in the garden such as okra, tomatoes, cucumbers, beans and cantaloupe (I think I should have two more cantaloupe ready)
• Blanch and freeze more tomatoes

I’ll add more items as I think of them.  Got to run — time for work!

Man, another month almost over with!  It’s hard to believe that we’re already 1/2 through the year.   This week I’ve been busy with work (end of the month) so I haven’t had much time to post on my blog.   But I have been in the garden harvesting veggies… tomatoes, okra, cucumbers and even more cucumbers LOL!  Yes, it is true, I am drowning in cucumbers.  But believe it or not, it’s time to get new plants started already!  My cucumbers will be playing out before long.

Yesterday I got seeds started inside for my 2 neighbor beds (2 - 2′x8′ raised beds) in the front yard.  I soaked the seeds overnight on Tuesday night so hopefully get them to germinate faster.  I planted cucumbers, okra, beans, cantaloupe, and corn.

Did you know that it’s time for me to get tomato seedlings started inside?  I know!!  Kinda hard to believe, isn’t it?  But if I start them now, they will be ready to transplant in the garden during the first 1/2 of August….  that will give me tomatoes ready beginning in the October/November timeframe.   I am probably not going to grow as many varieties as I did this Spring.  I have found a few that I really like and that produce very well and those will be the ones that I replant.  So far, my pick for tomatoes are Heatwave and Campari.   The Heatwave tomatoes were just outstanding this year.  Even though they are determinates, they still grew about 4.5′ tall and are still producing blooms (and hopefully tomatoes).  Plus, an added benefit of the Heatwave variety is that it will set fruit even in temps up to 96 degrees.  My second pick for tomato variety is the Campari — I choose the plant that produced the best from the F2 seed that I planted.  I had several plants that produced so many tomatoes!   So I saved seeds from the fruit of these plants — they are F3.  I am hoping that when I grow the F3 seed out for Fall tomatoes, that I will get some stabilized plants that continue to produce true.

Well, got to run.  I have to take my sister to the doctor today for a followup visit.  She broke her foot a couple of weeks ago…..  I’m hoping she’ll get some good news that everything is mending….

Have a great day…. tomorrow is Friday!

Ah, it’s Sunday night…. almost time to call it quits for the weekend.  But I still have about 2 loads of laundry to finish up first.  Plus, I want to read the message board and post there as well as read some of my favorite gardening blogs.

I had a great time with my friends yesterday.  I saw some that I haven’t seen in several months and that was a real treat.  I’ve never been one to have alot of friends — I just usually have a couple of close friends and that is it.  But this group of friends has been together for quite a while now — 9 of us out of the group got together yesterday.  A couple more of them had other committments and couldn’t join us.   I would say that we’ve been together for about 3 1/2 years now!   I think that I am so very lucky to have found these ladies — they are all awesome ladies and some of the best friends I could ever have. 

Well, bright and early this morning (but not too early LOL) DH and I headed out to the main garden.  We knew we had some “picking” to do…. our last harvest was on Friday morning.  We’re finding that about every other day is working out really well to take our harvest basket out to the garden.  First we picked the tomatoes, then the okra, then the cucumbers and squash.   Oh, we harvested some more jalapeno peppers too.   Then it was on to the pole beans… that completely filled what room was left in the harvest basket.  I also picked a cantaloupe and we had it for dessert tonight.  It was one of the Minnesota Midgets and I have to say that the taste is outstanding!  It’s a great variety of cantaloupe to grow in a square foot garden — it doesn’t take up too much room (vines are about 3′ to 4′ long and will grow on a trellis).  Also, the melons are the perfect size for 2 people!  DH  had to go inside and empty the harvest basket and return back to the garden for our CORN HARVESTING!  Yep, we had no choice but to harvest the Sunshine Hybrid and the Sugar Dots.  I had a 3′x4′ of each variety planted (a total of 24 squares).  The dreaded CORN WORM had just begun to nibble on the very top part of the corn ears (where the silks are).   So I just cut the very top portion off of each ear so we didn’t loose hardly any of the eatable corn — Yeah!!

This is the Sunshine Hybrid corn!  It’s a solid yellow color.  We harvested 13 ears of this variety.  I have to admit that I did eat one ear raw — it was so sweet!  This is a pretty good variety of sweet corn.  All of the rows filled out quite well (thanks to hand pollinating just to be sure). 

This is what the kernels of this variety look like up close.

This is the ears of Sugar Dots that we harvested!   I think there were about 14 or 15 of these.  On this variety of corn, the kernels seemed to be much larger.  You can tell in the pic that this is a bi-color corn — both yellow and white kernels.   This variety needed just about 3 or 4 more days to completely fill out (darn corn worms!).  But still, sampling one of the ears raw, the taste is unbelievably sweet!  I am very happy with this variety (as far as taste goes). 

This is a closeup of the Sugar Dots.  Isn’t this beautiful corn!  The yellow kernels are even different shades of yellow — some are darker and some are lighter.   Of course, mixed in with the white kernels, it makes the corn look really cool.  I think we will definitely grow this variety again!

I blanched the corn and put 3 ears in each Ziplock freezer bag (quart size).  We ended up with 9 bags of corn in the freezer.  So that’s 9 meals that we’ll get to enjoy fresh, garden grown corn.  You know, of all the items that I’ve put up in the freezer this year (tomatoes, okra, jalapeno peppers, turnips, yellow squash, eggplant, pole beans and corn) I think that the corn was what I am most proud of. 

We have 1 more variety of corn left growing in the garden — Peaches ‘N Cream.  The tassels are just beginning to die back.  I checked them and didn’t see any corn worms (keeping my fingers crossed — I think the corn worms wanted the other two varieties of corn that were ready to harvest).  So DH went to Lowes today and bought some Sevin dust and I will be dusting the Peaches ‘N Cream tomorrow morning. 

Oh — something important — corn worms BITE and it HURTS!  DH or I neither were bitten — we were very careful.  But I just wanted to warn anyone that is growing corn to be careful — they are not cute worms that you can touch.   You know, it seems like the tomato hornworm would be the one that you wouldn’t want to touch, but they are harmless, unless you are a tomato plant LOL

Speaking of tomatoes, I blanched more tomatoes and put them in Ziplock freezer bags too.  AND all of the pole beans we picked this morning also were blanched and put into the freezer.  My freezer (side by side refrigerator/freezer) is out of room, so luckily my sister’s stand alone freezer has plenty of room.  I’ve been taking my veggies over there and putting them in her freezer.   We are thinking about buying a stand alone freezer again.  Our last one bit the dust when Katrina hit.  We were without power for about 2 weeks and we would plug the freezer into the generator to keep everything frozen.  Well, the freezer didn’t like that too much and decided to quit.  I think this time I would like to get a smaller chest type freezer.

It’s getting late and morning will be getting here all too soon.  Good night!

The summer solstice

Our planet is tilted 23.5 degrees on its spin axis. On June 20 this year (some years it’s June 21), the North Pole is pointing toward the sun as much as is possible.

The setup at June solstice puts the sun as high in our sky as it can go, yielding the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.  Scientists put the exact moment of the solstice at 8:00 p.m. ET