Routines

70 this morning after a wet, stormy day and night. The humidity is around 90%, and sadly the tomatoes are blighting so we will have a very poor crop indeed this year. My vegetable garden is very weedy now, since I have not been able to get out there much since surgery, and then so much rain. Still, I am satisfied overall with what we have harvested so far, and therebis still plenty coming on. Just not tomatoes, unfortunately. 

Do you have a morning routine? I seem to be a creature of habit, with an almost uncaring routine every morning. I get up, take my (fortunately) few meds, do morning ablution, make the bed, get dressed, empty the dryer and sort and put away the clothes, then load the washer. Next, into the kitchen to make tea and coffee, turning on lights as I go. I use the leftover tea from the day before to make sweet tea, put that in the fridge, and sometimes make iced coffee for the fridge with the leftover coffee. Then it's porch time with my tea and my daily online puzzles. 

By this point, I feel like I have made a good start on the day, and can relax a bit, pet the dogs, talk with Larry, and survey the gardens from my rocker while discussing the day's plans. While I am doing my things, Larry is feeding the pets and caring for the rabbits and chickens, then he settles into his rocker for coffee. Eventually one of us will make breakfast; we both prefer to eat later rather than earlier. Do you have a similar routine?

Yesterday, of course, was different. We were up at 3am (I said a silent good morning to you, AC) to take our son to the airport in Columbus,  Ohio for his 7am flight. We dawdle on the way home, stopping for breakfast and doing some shopping. When we got home, we discovered this in tbe front yard:

Yes, that would be a tree down. How and why, I have no idea. This one broke off about 10 feet from the ground. A rare tornado touched down Friday evening about 20 miles north of us, but Sunday evening we had no rain. The rain yesterday started while we were on our way home from Columbus, so was there a freak wind? Seems unlikely, as there were no other signs of damage. Whatever happened, this will be Larry's work today. Life in these hills is full of surprises. 

Two other things on the way home, in the way of wild things: first, this little spotted fawn on the side of the road just above our driveway.  He ran to his mama just as I snapped a pic. He is a bit hard to see. Now, I do not like deer, because we are very over- populated with them and they do great damage to gardens and shrubs, but whose heart doesn't melt a the sight of a spotted fawn?

The other wild thing was spotting a Chicken of the Woods mushroom growing up against a tree. Can you say yum? I forgot to take a photo, but here you can see and read about one we found last year. I fried some of this one, and made wraps for dinner with lettuce, tomato, COW, bacon and ranch dressing. Delicious. The rest will go into Alfredo sauce over pasta tonight.

Time to get back to work. Yesterday I made these dill pickles when we got home. 

Today salsa is on the agenda. 

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