Proof that the end of summer is quickly approaching

August 8, 2015 - Saturday morning

62 degrees/mist - clouds/calm winds

Pentoga Road

There's not a whole lot to write about this morning. Though we only received .35 of an inch of precipitation in the past twenty-four hours, everything has remained wet and gloomy. It's just not very nice out there.

I began Friday by picking any and all cucumbers that might qualify to make pickles.

This is the best cucumber year we've had since the summer of 2012 and the quality is outstanding. I need to look in my notebook and see what variety was planted. They are fairly thin, very long, sweet, and have few seeds.

While shopping several years ago at Insurance Liquidators, Sargie talked me into buying a SLICE-O-MATIC! "... AS SEEN ON TV!! "

Though it cost only a few dollars, it was plastic, didn't seem very well made, and I hesitated to waste my money. Thankfully, Sargie saw the big picture. The Slice-o-matic has cut the time to make pickles well over half. One just inserts the cucumber on end and works the lever up and down. The slices drop into a bin underneath.

It wasn't long before there were three large bowls of cucumber slices ready to stuff into jars.

My least favorite part of canning and pickling is preparing the jars. All have to be washed and sterilized with new lids and used rings found and washed.

Everything came together in the end. All the secret herbs and spices, sugar, and vinegar boiled and mixed in one big pot, then poured over each jar's contents. Fourteen quarts of pickles were carried down the basement to age by day's end.

Since it was wet outside with no worries of causing a forest fire, I burned the thirty-six concrete bags that were emptied over the past two days. I had one close to my chest when I felt something move. Now THAT got my attention. I gave out a yell and dropped the armload of bags onto the grass.

Though harmless, this big ol' hoppy toad sure spooked me for a few seconds. He'd happily made a new home inside one of the bags that was in the barn.

Both my old "tough" pocket cameras are having problems, mostly due to extreme use and abuse. The blue camera, one I used almost exclusively while in Sitka, had stopped working two years ago. I resurrected it a few days ago, but it's still iffy at best. Yesterday, the automatic lens cover stuck halfway down rendering it useless.

There was nothing to do but sit down at my work bench, don my magnifiers, and see what the problem was.

Dirt was the culprit. Lots and lots of grit, sand, dirt, and grime. I took the thing apart, blew it out with the air hose, then used a Qtip with alcohol to thoroughly clean it. 

Hmm, some of the parts were glued on with a supple, waterproof, silicone. What to use... what to use.

Nothing like a drop of Shoe Goo on the end of a tooth pick to do open-camera stitching. In the end, the camera was put back together and so far, works like charm.... at least for today.

Sargie was home late and we spent a short, quiet, evening together in front of the television.

She's back to work today. I hope to finish cutting the pavers for the trim on the patio. After, I need to find several five-gallon buckets of sand to complete the task.

I didn't check on the pumpkin yesterday, but I'm assuming that like the rest of the garden, it thrived and prospered in the all-day rain.

I was reading last night about how these pumpkins are prone to rot in their later stages and it's not unusual to attempt to move one and have it fall into a pile of sticky, gooey, pieces. We're not even going to think about that right now. All this work for a pile of goo? As one of the books in my possession states, "Growing giant pumpkins is not for the faint of heart." I can only hope and pray that I'm man enough.

With that bit of mature wisdom said, it's time to move on and begin the day.

After all, a man's work is never done.

So are the tales from Pentoga Road...

Ugly and held together with Shoe Goo, it's back in business