Weather, weather, weather!! Sooo many difficulties brought on by weather! And yet - we're nowhere near the slaves to weather that those who came before us were. We've just become so accustomed to air conditioning both in our houses and vehicles. Running hot and cold water everywhere. Light at the flick of a switch. The ability to cook at a moment's notice.

I managed to come by a bushel of green beans -for which I was very thankful as we have no garden this year. Beth and I planned to spend Saturday in the pool breaking beans on that oh-so-conveniently-placed concrete surround. We were interrupted 3 times by thunder and rain . . . retired to the porch each time till the sun was shining strongly again.....we finally finished on the porch! Our power was out for over an hour at one point. After power returned I decided to work on a couple of powepoint slideshows for church Sunday morning - one with songs so we could stand and sing with the use of the songbook purely optional and one with welcome and announcements and suchlike to just loop around continuously as folks were coming in. Sounded good except for the power outages that managed to come every time just as I'd added something really good and had truly had no chance to SAVE!!! This went on for a while but I got something usable and decided to quit! and then power was once again gone for good. Or at least for a while. I managed to shower and wash my hair and even shave my legs almost completely blind. Since I'm mostly blind in the shower anyway, I actually managed to get through this without doing myself mortal harm with the razor! There was no unending stream of blood going down the drain or anything dreadful like that.

By the time the power came back it was after 8:30 - toooooo late for me to contemplate starting the canning process.

So canning had to wait until after church Sunday. Even with a few rough spots along the way, I managed to get 19 quarts canned using the pressure canning method, not the water bath. (We only do tomatoes with the water bath method.) And green beans are the only motivation for me to do the whole pressure canning thing. I cooked at least 4 quarts to divide with Beth and Joshua before starting the canning. Finished around 8:30-9:00 last night. pooooooped! On the right is Evan's mother's old canning book put out by the Kerr company. The price was $1.00.

It is well-worn, used and loved. Lots of handwritten notes, extra recipes from family friends, etc.

Mrs. Grace Buntley was a neighbor down the road...we knew her and her daughter who was close in age to Evan's parents and her granddaughter (and husband and family) is a good friend of ours (and a contemporary - she's in that magic period after 50)

Didn't get laundry done, didn't get dusting or vacuuming done....didn't get anything done but beans. Oh - and haven't mentioned the additional 4 dozen ears of corn we froze on top of the 3 dozen I froze last week after eating over 2 dozen!!! - but we're taking the lazy route recommended to us by some folks who can be trusted of freezing it in the husk (yes, you heard right - no blanching, etc.) and then just taking out what is wanted and shucking and cooking just before eating.

Next year we WILL have a garden again somehow!!!

While I was timing the cooking of beans and the pressure canner and such I managed to get the most recent round of postcards fused to the stiff backing but did not have time for the quilting because I had to wet them and let them dry to make sure none of the blue marker lines remained. I did get pieces for the back cut out, though.

Inch by inch, as Pete Seeger used to sing.

Have a great week!
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