The Red-Tailed Hawk

We walked out one evening to see this beautiful creature on the house roof.  Unfortunately he was watching the chicken coop.  We know this red tail hawk lives in the neighborhood and have seen if fly overhead multiple times but it has never before landed anywhere in the yard.  Not only did it land on the roof, it perched itself in several spots and stayed around for 36 hours. 
At one time we saw it in the grass eating a snake.  It then moved to the top of the chicken coop while I mowed the grass. It was totally unafraid of me. It watched as I mowed and even let me take some pictures.  After I finished mowing and had parked the tractor by the back deck it moved to the rollbar of the tractor and stayed there for an hour or so while we all sat on the deck and took pictures and it posed.  Sharee has amazing pictures of it.  At one point it even hopped up on the deck railing, coming within about 5 feet from us.  It was a sight to behold.  Needless to say we never let the chickens out.  I guess it figured out that they were going to be safe and finally departed.  We left the chickens in for another few days just to be sure. What an amazing 36 hours it was.  It was huge and an absolutely stunning creature.  What a blessed day we had examining it up close. 

Mom and Dad S Come to Help

Dad learns how to can spaghetti sauce

 

And he spent some time in Patrick's shop constructing some pinterest items for me.

There is no way to describe the help that my Mom and Dad were for 3 1/2  weeks post-op. No pictures are available of mom's projects but they were many and varied. Mom daily spent about 4 hours in the yard and garden.  She alone took care of tomatoes, bell peppers, weeding, trimming, watering, deadheading flowers, chicken feeding and the list goes on.  The yard would look like a jungle if her work had gone undone. And she was in her glory.  In addition to yard work she painted the handrail that goes to the attic.  I had sorta prepped it this winter but never got around to actually painting it.  Mom came to the rescue. She also stained/sealed the back outdoor sink surround as it was in dire need.  It now looks beautiful and repels water nicely.  She was the laundry queen and on top of all that she was able to find some time to quilt each day when it got too hot outside.

 

Dad took care of food mostly.  As you can see he was able to can the spaghetti sauce when I was sick,  hurting and out of commission.  He prepped dinner each night, went to the grocery store, kept Patrick company and then spent time doing some projects for me that I had seen on pinterest.  I had wanted this cool drying rack for the laundry room to go above the wall where we earlier had installed the tongue 'n groove boards.  Other than some of the hardware and the dowels, it is all scraps.  The green board is leftover from house construction as there is a section of our kitchen cabinets that have this board behind the shelves.  He used some scrap wood Pat had down in the shop to make the frame. It turned out just as I envisioned. So now the laundry room wall is decorated. Yeah.

 

He also made a quilting ruler holder for my sewing room.  He actually made two as Mom got one also.  I had seen this on pinterest also and it is a great way to organize my quilting rulers.  I have extra slots for future rulers.  Again this was scrap wood- only this time from "Uncle Tim's home depot".

 

Mom and Dad also got to spend some time with Carrie, Sean and the kids and Sharee had a bunch of produce to process from the farmer's market so she spent several days using the kitchen and teaching Mom all sorts of ways to preserve the harvest. 

 

Oh, and they helped Patrick out also.....the reason they came in the first place. 

Patrick and the Surgeon

On July 24th Patrick had his Achilles tendon reconstructed. Patrick had some extra bone on the back of his heel that the doctor literally chiseled off.  Dr. Walker (isn't that an appropriate name for an orthopedic doc that specializes in feet) then cleaned up a frayed Achilles tendon and reattached it to the back of his heel.   Oh what a journey it has been.  Here are the lovely "at the hospital" pictures. 

Love the size of that foot. Thankfully at this point it was still numb.

He recovered fine at home. Ryan was there the first two nights to help out.  Not sure how I could have done it without his help.  Patrick was instructed to use only one leg and take Percocet every 4 hours round the clock.  Recipe for an accident in my book.  Needless to say we kept him propped in a chair for a while.

After a few days he was antsy and needed to get up and do something so I put him to work in the kitchen.  His cool little "knee walker" helped with his mobility. 

 

We had lots of visitors.  His sister Terri and niece Mikayla came for 4 days so I could return to work.  Then my parents came for 3 weeks. Again, we are not sure what we would have done without their help.  They had been there 1 week when I came down with a terrible virus that attacked the lining of all my joints.  I was down and out for 10 days and felt and walked like a crippled old woman.  Thankfully Mom and Dad were there to keep the home front up and running. 

 

 

We sat on the porch.   Patrick got a new "walking boot" at 3 weeks.  Seeing as it is as stiff as a cast, is about an inch and a half taller than his other foot and has him wedged up on his toes like he is walking in heels, we use the term walking boot liberally. But it does give him a bit more mobility.  He still uses the combination of crutches, walking boot and knee walker. (I would appreciate it if you cropped me out of this picture.  No I was not sloshed.)

Kids came to visit and cook us meals.

Grandkids came to visit to keep him company and of course try out the knee walker

After 5 weeks we are now back to flying solo as all the help has gone.  Patrick has returned to work with a lot of paraphernalia. Around the house he is figuring out what he is capable of and what he is still limited to.  In a week he starts PT and rehab.  He is half way there. It was and is an exciting time.

Let the Harvesting Begin

Things are really starting to come in.  Some things like our pole beans are already finished. I was able to put up 13 quarts for the winter in addition to eating multiple meals with fresh cooked green beans.

Garlic was harvested, dried and has already been used in a multitude of dishes. 

Onions were successful this year but as usual, not expected to be all that we will need.  These will go in salsa, spaghetti sauce, soups and in a variety of other dishes.  Guaranteed we will run out but oh well we get what we can out of the garden.

Brussels sprouts.  The experiment this year has been successful as far as production but we decided we probably won't grow these again.  We fought with cabbage worms and harlequin beetles the entire time they were in the garden.  We are eating them in a variety of dishes and blanched and froze some for future use.

Butternut squash was the bumper crop this year.  We decided to trellis them this time as they can take up acreage on the ground if you let them.  They also need to watched carefully if they are on the ground so that bugs don't bore into them and ruin them.  I will always grow these on a trellis in the future.  We got 18 squash out of  5 plants and 18 butternut is a whole lotta butternut. I will can some cubes because they make great "pumpkin" pie and soufflés.  I will use some in ravioli and some will just be cooked and roasted as a side veggie.

Potatoes were good as usual this year. We changed their location in the yard this year and did not have any issue with potato bugs which made them very hands off this year.  This was good because they were planted deep as a method to not have to hill them up and therefore they were more difficult to harvest as we had to go so deep for them and the soil was rather hard to dig thru.  In the end we decided it was worth it though as we virtually never touched them after we planted them and got a large yield for our efforts. We have 4 varieties that we harvested:  Kennebec's which are a good white storage potato, some small red fingerlings which we probably won't plant again as the yield is not much for the space they took up, red new potatoes which are a staple for most people and some blue potatoes that are very nice and will most likely be planted again.  

Ginger was given to us this year by a co-worker.  It is happily growing under the deck in a hanging basket. It is pretty and might be pretty much ornamental as we don't use a lot of ginger.

Cucumber were easy as usual this year.  We have about 18 quarts of pickles put up which is a lot of pickles for us. We tend to give some of these away to a friend who loves them so they will all be consumed.   They are also slowing down in production but we are still getting plenty for cucumber tomato salads. We also experimented with some squash pickles which are really good. 

Tomatoes are just now starting to come in in abundance.  My counters will be red from here on out for the remainder of the summer.  Sharee has already canned some tomato sauce with us and pulled her canner out of storage.  She has a little bit bigger canner than I have and it has the capabilities of canning 18 pints at a time which will be handy this year. I canned some salsa last night and will have something tomato going pretty much from here on out.

Peaches have been frozen for smoothies and we have eaten them daily now for almost a month.  We will be sad when these are gone for the season. 

Boy don't we love summertime fresh.

Blueberries- No Trespassing

Last week we came home after work ready to pick blueberries.  We knew we had not picked in 3 days and estimated that there would be 2-3 gallons to pick.  To our amazement there was not even a remotely blue berry on any of the 12 bushes. We both realized simultaneously that someone had beat us to it.  We were amazed that while we were at work someone had come and cleaned the bushes of all berries. Now if someone had come and helped themselves to a quart or two I would have never known and quite frankly I would not have minded. If one of the neighbors had come and asked us if they could pick some I would most likely have said yes.  But someone came and were greedy and picked between 2 and 3 gallons of blueberries and left us nothing.  It took 6 days for them to recover and for us to get any sizable pick.

 

  So in the meantime we put up a few signs.  The bottom note is Sharee's contribution.

And we put up the game camera so we can see who it might be if they have the guts to return. 

We are going to put up some signs around the garden also.  If they will come take all our berries, what would stop them from taking all our tomatoes and peppers or our ladder and shovel?  And let me tell you...while I was at the farmers market on Saturday morning I was eyeing the new vendor that had berries.  I talked briefly with her and she said she had berries in her back yard.  Me?  I was wondering if her back yard was my front yard. 

Ryan and Sharee canning and wasps

Since Sharee is working at the farmers market she has access to LOTS of produce at free and reduced prices.  So this weekend they got to do their first canning......and more. She had a half bushel of too ripe peaches that they trimmed up and turned into 13 jars of peach preserves.  The remainder they put into a peach cobbler that went into the freezer for future consumption. 

They also came over with all these cucumbers.  Some are from the farmers market and some are from her sisters garden.  Several were huge and went to the chickens.  Some were perfect size for whole pickles and some were a bit too big so they got sliced up and turned into sliced pickles. 

They both worked hard for 4 1/2 hours processing all the cukes.  The kitchen was a flurry of activity all day.

In the end they have 14 quarts of dill, 7 quarts of bread and butter and 7 quarts of spicy garlic dill. 

I think they had a lot of fun except for the wasps.  At one point Ryan went out the back door to take some stuff to the compost bin.  I heard him scream as soon as the door slammed.  I thought he had slammed his fingers in the door because the door slammed but bounced back open.  Sharee, who had been in the other room when he went outside, heard him scream and assumed he had been burned by boiling water.  We both came running.  I went outside to see what happened and discovered he had been attacked by wasps and because I was now standing there I started to get attacked also.  I ran back inside and grabbed the wasp spray that Patrick had just purchased that morning and went outside ready to get my own revenge.  In the mean time the door had been left open so one was in the house and it was angry.  Ryan is still jumping around the yard trying to get the wasps off of him. Finally we both are free from wasps and are able to get back in the house.  Things settled down after a bit of Benadryl kicked in. As for the wasp in the house; it went up into a light fixture that was on and got overheated and burned up. Too bad, so sad. After dark Patrick went out there with the wasp spray can and nailed the rest of them.  I guess they will always remember their first canning experience.

Sewing Room Cutting Table

Over our July 4th stay-cation Patrick and I completed the new cutting/storage table for my sewing room. I had previously used a table in there but found that it did not provide any storage room and it actually was not long enough for cutting larger pieces of fabric.  I saw on a blog that I follow an interesting sewing table.  I used that as my inspiration and customized it to meet my needs and space.  The first thing he built was this small bank of shelves to store all the odds and ends that cluttered up my sewing table in the closet.  It is easily accessible from my chair when I am at the machine and it frees up so much space in there.  It is amazing what a few shelves can do. 

He then added this platform which would be the bottom shelf of the cutting table.

He added legs and the second shelf...............

Put a top on it................

Added a drop leaf.............

And voila.  A new cutting and storage cabinet.  I love that when collapsed, the drop leaf hides all the oddball stuff on the top shelf and keeps things looking neat.

We are both very pleased with the result.  Overall it was fairly easy but it took some time as we designed as we went.  He used cabinet grade plywood so it is really smooth. We needed 2 sheets of this plywood at $45 a sheet so we were very careful and measured twice and cut once.!!! Attaching the top was probably the hardest part as you could only reach it by laying on your back but then it was exactly the length of your arm so it was difficult to put the screws in.  Several choice words were spoken over attaching the top.  He ordered the drop leaf hardware online from a cabinet supply company. Since it was constructed in parts I was able to pre-paint everything in the garage before installation. All I need to do now is organize it all and I am ready for my next sewing project.  It was a great birthday gift from my hubby.