Tonight I soak my pickling cukes. Tomorrow I make Limed Pickles :) and yes...recipes will follow.

The garden got away from me. I spent 9 hours Saturday wrangling it back. I mowed quite a bit down. I still have more grass to pull mainly from the beans and the spaghetti and yellow squashes. The area I had set for the herb patch was a bust. We have reclaimed it as a bonfire/campfire/hangout area. My garden is doing very poorly except for onions and radishes that are in the raised beds. I looked at the pictures from this time last year and it is markedly different.

To be honest with you all I am in a depressive funk. I will get over it I know I will. I don't want to do anything hardly anymore and I feel like crying at the drop of a hat. I am tired all the time. There is always some sort of stress here whether its dealing with my stepdaughter drama, Bill can't find a job drama, people at work driving me nuts drama, etc. We still haven't found a roommate. I'm tired about worrying about bills. I'm tired of feeling like a homesteading failure. To top it off I feel unappreciated. So yeah there is me in a nutshell, sorry its a bummer at the moment.

Well I have switched to a new schedule this week at work. I will now have Friday and Saturdays off. YAY!! This means that I will be able to go do more things like visit family and friends and I will also be able to go to my beloved farmers' market which is on Saturday mornings. Things here are slowly shaping up. I putter around the house until about 7pm when it is cool enough for me to go out in the garden (sorry I am a wuss) and then pull grass and weeds until I can't see anymore. Roughly it's about 2 hours of work an evening. The grass is slowly being defeated. I did have to spray for squash bugs...they are attacking my zuchinni and the japanese beetles were destroying my pole and turtle beans I lost one of my zuchinni to squash bug larvae in the vines :(

I did get to do some harvesting today!! I got 1 medium and 1 large zuchinni, 1 massive head on the broccoli that will be enough for me and Bill to steam up for dinner some time and about 20 or so radishes. My bibb lettuce is going to seed and Im letting it. Then I will gather the seed and try again. I did manage somehow to save 2 of my heirloom tomatoes that we all thought were dead...well the rest are. The corn is still struggling despite the rains yesterday and the day before. The 2 cabbages seem to be going well as the late broccoli I planted. The roma and cherry tomatoes are small but I cleared the grass around them and some of the peppers and I hope they recover. Spaghetti squash, cantaloupe and yellow squash seem to be holding their own. Onions are still doing great and the carport of loofahs and birdhouse gourds is completely green. My herb patch was a total failure and the garlic is scrawny. It will be the next thing I hit tomorrow after I finish clearing the rest of the grass from the peppers.

Jodie has moved out for the most part, she has some stuff still here that she has to get but she's got the majority of it out. We are still looking for another roommate but have stopped short of placing an add in the paper. We've mainly searched through friends and family. Trying to find someone who isn't a nutcase AND has a stable income. We will be ok with just us but I would like to have more people in the house and every little bit helps.

So we got back from the best vacation to find that A- My post for Homemakers Who Work went poof. and B half my garden is dead or dying. My heirloom tomatoes had completely dried up as well as one side of my pole beans and my black beans were covered in Japanese beetles and my corn is not happy either. My friend who watched the house and animals said she watered and pulled some weeds.......umm yeah....moving on. However, my cats and the dog are great and the house was a little cleaner than when we left. Im not giving her any crap as her parents barn burnt down while we were gone and it had all her house stuff stored in it.