Pickles, and Other Stuff

I tried my hand, for the first time, at canning something I grew. Cucumbers are coming in faster than I know what to do with, so I thought I'd try to make pickles. I used a recipe that called for 6 pounds of cucumbers and 3 pounds of onions plus all the usual pickling ingredients like vinegar, etc. I chased the kids out of the house, first with the onion fumes (sliced thin; I cried a lot); then with the boiling vinegar fumes. Whew! that's smelly stuff! Anyway, I wound up with 7 jars. Of course, I had to make a label. If this stuff's any good, I think I'll give them out for Christmas presents. I also have enough cucumbers to make another batch, and enough on the vines for several more. What was I thinking when i planted all those stupid cucumbers? Here's a picture of the garden where they came from. It looks like a jungle, and it looks small because it's in a narrow space, but it is very long. Besides cucumbers, we are growing watermelon, cantaloupe, pumpkins (boy are we ever growin' pumpkins!), tomatoes, zucchini, squash, broccoli (all :o( gone), carrots, radishes (again :o( all gone), lettuce, green peppers, cauliflower (which didn't taste right for some reason), and right now, we are growing lots and lots of weeds that I just haven't had time to get rid of.

Today, the kids were getting a little bored. They decided they wanted to go bowling, so they set up this bowling alley on our deck. They're using bowling pins that various kids have received over the years from birthday/bowling parties. The ball is my MIL's. It's been in our attic for years. The kids found it recently and have been looking for a reason to roll it somewhere. This looks like it was a pretty good shot. Way to go Tay!

The chickens had a record day over the weekend: 14 eggs in one day. They only produced 8 yesterday, but were back up to 11 today, with one smooshed one. We have twenty hens, and we're still waiting for some of them to start laying. The really hot weather isn't helping. Over 90, and they start getting lazy, and it's been well over 90 for several days, now. It's supposed to cool off tomorrow, and that's good, because we are selling eggs faster than we can collect them. We actually had a backorder over the weekend. Kenzie sold 3 dozen to one neighbor on Saturday; another showed up on Sunday, asking for 2 dozen more. We only had 8 decent-sized eggs, so he paid for 2 dozen, took the 8, and Kenzie delivered the rest on Monday afternoon. The neighbor who bought 3 dozen said she'd take as many more as we can spare, up to 6 dozen a week! And this doesn't include some other people at our church who have expressed interest in buying homegrown eggs. We're going to need more hens. Kenzie already said she wants to try hatching some more over the winter. We now have two roosters, so we should be able to get plenty of fertilized eggs.

Finally, for today, it is summer. And that means my kids turn into fish in the backyard pool, so here are some fish pictures. For some reason, I just got the girls this time, so maybe I should say here are some pictures of my mermaids: