Sunday Stroke Survival: Taking a Stroke Break

Imagine my surprise when Vergie at the top of our driveway called that she had a package for me. It was my power supply for my computer! It arrived Friday instead of Monday as promised.

This summer is proving to be more hectic with the garden and orchard than I thought it would be. A meager green peas harvest aside, the rest of the garden is proving to be kicking my hinny with its care, harvesting, preserving, and the heat.

Yes, the Georgia heat of summer is upon us finally. It only took until June 24th into break the 80s. Since then, the garden has exploded with growth both good and bad. So I'm taking a break from writing about strokes. There's no news anyhow. I'm still in a holding pattern for my new AFO and stuck changing out my current AFOs during the day to get anything accomplished. Even with that by 7PM, I'm done and all my AFOs hurt my foot.

I've harvested almost three bushels (120 lbs) of green beans already! I met my quota, and then some for a year's worth of green beans canned (104 jars), and froze a lot for later combination canning like for vegetable soups, French fried, and pot pies, etc. The rest of the green beans I'll pick is for fresh eating and seed until the first heavy frost kills the plants.

The next major harvest will be tomatoes, corn, and squashes. The tomatoes I'll wash, core, cut any bad spots, placed in 2-gallon bags, and frozen until this winter. The squashes will be washed, bagged, and frozen until we want to use them. I rarely can summer squashes because they are mostly water and become mush. I plan to can zucchini bread. It's baked in canning jars and sealed. It'll stay fresh this way on the shelf for a year or more. I've got two cases of wide mouth canning jars set aside for this purpose. They will join the two cases of jars full of banana bread I canned earlier in the spring. It's mighty handy when we want something sweet for breakfast or something sweet anytime.  All I have to do is pop a lid and serve it. I also use zucchini for my relish recipe (6 pint jars) instead of cucumbers.

I'll be canning/dry storing potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, garlic, and other items. I'll be fermenting
kimchi and sauerkraut. I'll be or am dehydrating and freezing peppers and herbs (40 lbs so far). I'll be mixing my spice blends. Picking and processing cherries, peaches, and figs for later enjoyment into jams, jellies, butters, whole fruit, and pie fillings. The list goes on and on. That's only the spring/summer harvests with the fall harvest of apples, cabbages, daikon radishes, ginger, turmeric, seed stock, dent corn to go before the frost. The kicker is that I don't have the stamina of two years ago. But slowly, I'm getting it done. One step at a time. I'm just hating the fact that I'm slowing down and only part can be blamed on my AFO woes.

I've planted another six cucumber plants this week. The previous three drowned. I need the cucumbers to pickle into dills and bread and butter pickles (12 jars of each). Of course, I'll need to pull up some garlic and onions, and let them cure for a week before I can start pickling. I'm just praying I have enough cucumbers before the first frost kills off the vines. But I'll also need grape leaves and fresh dill. So it's imperative to pick these and can my pickles before the frost.

I'll also have to wait until some of my celery to bolt so I can use the seeds and still have some to plant for next year. Home canning with your own produce is a hurry up and wait game. It all depends on Mother Nature.

The second one I completed

One good thing came about from my computer being down for almost two weeks. I built up the dexterity in my left hand some what. I downloaded an aps for a paint by numbers. I had to use the pen/stylus that came with my phone to "paint" the pictures. It's a far cry from painting or drawing free hand like I used to, but it was a way to exercise fine motor skills with my damaged left hand. Being it was on my phone I could only zoom the picture so big so some of it was pretty difficult and took a lot of focused concentration. It surprised me how much it took and it was actually challenges me enough to hold my attention. I've decided to at least one a day for the rest of the year. Who know where this will lead.

Nothing is impossible.