Doing Not Thinking

My goals are to take back my garden and to properly perserve my harvest. With that established it leads me to a question...When you dont have enough of something to perserve a batch can you throw it into the fridge until you have enough? And if you can do that, how many days in the fridge til it HAS to be done?

I think...

I think Im becoming a little depressed...Ok so I know Im a bit depressed. Today while talking with Bill before work I just kept getting increasingly overwhelmed. Things around the house were piling up, the gardens a mess and getting attacked again by the japanese beetles, I haven't canned anything and I worry that my harvest is going to the compost bin en mass, the truck is still broken down and to top it off my workplace screwed me out of over $120 of my last check to which I have no recourse. Plus work hasnt been offering overtime yet we are consistently having customers wait 30min or more to speak to someone. (I'll explain my job later) I am worried about the bills and what Bill will think and a sundry of other thing that kicked me into anxiety overdrive. Overwhelmed is an understatement. This isn't going the way I had figured it would. So finally on my way out to the car I just started crying. Bill saw that and had me come back in and I admitted that I am feeling overwhelmed and feeling like I cant handle things anymore. I got a hug and a kiss and scooted off to work. When I came home on lunch Bill had cleaned the majority of the house for me. Stuff I had planned to do tonight. So I asked him to leave me a to do list for my "weekend" Im pretty sure I can do all of it, which makes me a bit more calm. I still feel a little like crying but I'm tired of it.

I saw Two Frogs blog on Doing Not Thinking....I want to do it. I think it will save my sanity.

I spoke too soon

So Wed night we had wicked storms roll through...my corn is blown down as were most the peppers..the mush that is my garden tried to take my shoes off me....in other news my workplace decided to back date my insurance to the date of my wedding (which they didn't mention to me, just told me I had 30 days from said event to turn my paperwork in) so instead of $30 they took out 120. Im seven shades of pissed and have no recourse. We were suppose to go up to Decatur this Saturday but thats pretty much scrapped. I cried all the way home on lunch cuz I really just wanted to see my folks and show Bill and the Teen the Decatur Celebration...aka HUGE street fair. We wont have the money for gas let alone things like eating and shopping at the event.

Oh My Gods!

Ok so I went out into the garden at 6:30am today to try to get a jump on the grass problem again. I tied up the tomatoes that I staked and was pulling away when Bill got home a lil after 7am. So we did our morning garden walk looking at what was coming in, while Bill lamented the loss of the watermelon I just HAD to pick yesterday. Well lo and behold I was clearing out the grass that was swallowing the watermelon and found 2 more big ones!! I left them be. So we decided to go through everything and good thing cuz we got a huge haul.

Massive amounts of jalepenos
A dozen or so of Turnips
4 large cukes
A nice batch of pickling cukes

So here I am with this stuff with more blossoms all over and Im thinking...ok here we go sink or swim Stephanie. The tomatoes are starting to get big, as are the spaghetti squash, the green peppers are starting to get to a good size and the green beans, cantaloupe and honeydew are flowering too.

I dont have a BBB of canning hell I dont even have a jar lifter, or lids for my jars. But Rural king is having a sale Bill said and I have to read the flyer he brought home. I found a pickle recipe in my Back to Basics book that seems fairly reasonable to do. It says I have to soak the cukes overnight in brine and gave me a recipe for the brine as 1/3 c salt to 1/2 gal water....Um can I use table salt cuz it doesnt say pickling salt or anything.

Didnt get my hair cut yet..the girl who does my hair was going to do it Tues but her partner got called in (he's a RN) and she had to watch the kids. So maybe this afternoon. My sleep schedule is off.... I pretty much stayed in bed with Bill and lounged today. I did get out Tuesday morning. Picked a watermelon and found out it wasnt ripe :( Bill warned me. Oh and I have revamped the music, I hope you enjoy. I will have an abundance of jalepenos this year. Um does anyone have a pepper jelly recipie...you know the kind that later you can mix it with sour cream or cream cheese to make a yummy dip? Im really wanting to do something besides dehydrate....but I have pictures of that too. Gotta find out where Bill put my camera

Im stressed out and a feeling a more that a little out of control of my life so Im cutting my hair off tomorrow and possibly going blonde. I'll let you know how it goes.

Gardening and confession

So the weeding is coming along...slowly but surely. We had wicked T-storms and wind last night but I didnt think much about it outside of it was raining. We didnt do our normal garden walk this morning and when we did get out there we found many of our plants had been knocked around or down. One of my jalepenos that was NOT blown around looks like it is just up and dying. Not sure what is going on there..It looks like it's drying up or something. Everyone else in the row was doing good. Forgot to get a picture. I will remedy it tomorrow.

We have lots of things finally flowering and actually have the beginnings of edibles!!! The herb patch is going well. I harvested a lot of basil and some thyme and they are in the dehydrator as we speak. I have some actual watermelons thats getting bigger and round. The cantaloup and honeydew have massive flowers. The spaghetti squash is massive too. I have picked a few jalepenos...no worries about salmonella here lemme tell ya! And I found out that the cayenne peppers aren't cayenne...which sucks. The peppers seem to be coming along very nicely besides that little snafu. The corn is coming along as well as the pole beans...though I need bigger poles next year. The cukes are doing great and Bill harvested a small turnip and declared it divine. The bush green beans seem to be struggling. I think thats due to the beetle attack. The tomatoes are massive flowering but not much fruit. I am going to go through and pinch some of the flowers off so the plant can focus on bigger fruits. Only one type of lettuce came up. A few carrots have survived and sprouted. The gourd patch is growing but not flowering.

I do have a confession. We used Sevin dust this year. Im not comfortable with that at all but a decision had to be made and Bill kind of made it for me. He has promised that if I can find something else that actually works against the japanese beetles that tried to invade then we will do that next year. He felt his hands were a bit tied as well. We haven't used any pesticides on the garden til now. Haven't even used fertilizer. Quite honestly I feel like a fraud and am disappointed. People I've talked to round here don't seem to get why Im a bit upset about it. With the exception of two people, they saw it as completely normal. Those two thankfully didnt try to stone me or anything, they said that I should just focus on next year and plan, plan, plan.

Im a little wired tonight so I will probably post later but I need to get a shower. So to wrap it up I do have some questions for you guys. Dill - How do you usually harvest yours? Also, what all can you use Texas Tarragon for?