A Productive Week

64°f/about 18°C, beautifully clear and much less humid.

It's a gorgeous morning here, and I am having my tea (Barry's Irish, with milk and sugar) on the porch, just enjoying the lack of heat and humidity. The dogs, of course, are out here too, Buddy doing his guard duty from his self-assigned position.

We have had a lot of garden produce to deal with this week, which has kept us in the kitchen. Larry has been helping with some of it because my left shoulder continues to be a problem, old Arthur Itis rearing his ugly head again. But us old folks manage anyway, don't we? It's just one more challenge to aging.

This was yesterday, snapping beans on the porch while Pip had a nice snooze.

I tried a recipe new to me, pickled 3-bean salad. I have made it uears ago, but this was a recipe for canning it. The salad is marinating in this photo.

. It is really very good, not as crisp of course as if made fresh, but very tasty. I have been hunting for new ways to preserve green beans, as we have plenty already in the cellar. I have made dilly beans before, and they don't seem to be popular with my guys. I think this marinated salad will be a hit. I also canned 7 quarts of beans in the traditional way, but next I want to try a recipe for German green bean soup that I can put up for winter. It sounds promising! Beans, onions, potatoes, and bacon are the main ingredients.

Here is what we have put up this week: from left, broth from the rabbit I cooked up and picked the meat from the bones, made into a stew, and then canned a couple quarts of the stew as well: then dill pickles, zucchini pickles, the canned three-bean salad, and in the back black cherry jam.

Ohand the 7 quarts of beans.

Oh, and more dehydrated onions.

Now I have caught up with the garden, at last! But there is a table full of tomatoes waiting for me, so that will be next. Maybe Saturday. 

Today we have a special treat coming up. For our birthdays, our oldest son gave us tickets to a Vince Gill concert, and also reserved a room for us at a hotel and provided $$$ for dinner out! He is such a thoughtful guy. We had picked out a restaurant we wanted to try, but after all the terrible flooding and damage on Tuesday, we decided we will send that money to someone impacted by the storms. Honestly, we would just feel guilty eating an expensive meal while so many are hurting. And here we are with so much food just sitting here waiting to be eaten. So we will have new potatoes, corn on the cob, yellow squash, tomatoes and cucumbers for our "fancy" dinner--a true feast.

One last photo for today, one that makes me smile:

See that very tall corn in the center? I did not plant that random patch. A few years ago, we grew some Hickory King corn, intending to make hominy. The corn got put up in the cellar top, and we just forgot about it. When I was cleaning up that building this Spring, I found it and figured it wasn't any good. Larry gave it to the chickens but they wouldn't eat it. I guess it was just too hard. So when he cleaned out their coop, he scattered the bedding and the corn on the garden, figuring it would rot away.  One cob of corn decided it wanted to grow, and now i have this strange patch in my garden! To the left of it, you can also see a bit of the rainbow corn--used to be called Indian corn--that I actually did plant. It is pretty tall too, but nothing luke the Hickory King, which got about 10 feet tall last time we grew it. Maybe I will be making a little hkminy after all!

All Good Here

You might gave seen on the news that West Virginia got hit with some bad storms and even a couple tornadoes yesterday. And just across the river, Marietta and areas to its north and west also had a tornado and some bad flooding. The auction house we frequently buy from is right in the worst hit area over there, but i have been unable to find out if they are okay. 

Somehow the storms missed us, going north and south of our county. This was a cell phone tower near St. Mary's,  WV, a small town we have visited several times, which was hit by a tornado:

At Philippi, WV, there was great concern about the historic two-lane covered bridge,  but it seems to have survived, so far.

This map shows how many roads were closed this morning suevto flooding, downed trees, downed power lines,  and even buildings, homes, and other debris washed into the roadways.

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For a while I was worried about my granddaughter Haley and her house, and my son Aaron's family, who all live around Fairmont, WV. I got text alerts that a tornado was heading their way, but fortunately the tornado apparently fizzled out in the hills so it didn't reach them. Whew.

While we are safe and fine, having only got 3" of hard rain, many areas in our state experienced flooding, and there was more than one tornado. It is so sad to see the devastation.  This isn't a wealthy state, and many people already living on the edge are now dealing with huge losses. The randomness of such storms is just hard to cope with. One man was trapped in his car with his year-old child, by a huge tree that fell on his car, but miraculously they were unharmed. I have not heard of any fatalities, yet, which is wonderful. Stuff can be replaced, people can't. 

I know it seems odd, but I feel so personally connected to so much of this state, because I traveled so much of it during the 25 years I was a storyteller.  I got to know the people,  researched their town's histories, and often found stories that I added to my repertoire. Each one feels more like my hometown than the place I grew up. 

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Meanwhile in West Virginia

65°f/18.3°C, clear until mid-day when the smoky haze returned.

This happened in Southern West Virginia, and was posted on Facebook.  I can only imagine how the driver felt! No one was hurt, but they did not have the owner's permission to drive the truck, so I expect their wallet is going to hurt pretty badly.

As you can imagine, the comments on this were hilarious.

That tree saved their lives.

Up in Parkersburg, this portly porker has been roaming freely for a couple days, and apparently no one knows where he belongs. 

Perhaps it escaped from the same place as this goat? Although probably about 20 miles apart, so not likely.

And on the eastern side of the state, this happened today.

Is it the weather making people and animals get a little strange? I don't know. But at least in my family, everyone is still safe and relatively sane. Here's news from my oldest son:

He's retiring, sort of, from his position as President of Grant County Bank in Petersburg, WV.  He will continue working part-time for a while to ensure a smooth transition, and will remain on the board, but it is nice to see him beginning this process at age 57.

Of course our #3 son Derek beat him to it by 10 years, retiring at 47 for the second time! He is 3rd from the left (and the handsomest in my prejudiced opinion), very busy doing what he loves best--golfing, and being a grandpa. He's 54 now.

As for me, I had a wee scare last week with dizzy spells, shortness of breath and a tight feeling in my chest, all potential signs of heart trouble. So I went to Urgent Care (after getting the laundry started, bed made, breakfast cleaned up, etc, because that's how women are). They sent me to the emergency room, and after some tests and stuff, they determined that I had a UTI! I would never in a million years have associated those symptoms with that! Came home with meds; went back to my doctor today for my routine semi-annual checkup, and retested for the infection. It's still lingering, so more meds and that should fix it. (AC, see what I did there in the beginning of this paragraph?)

That explains why I have been feeling so tired lately. I thought it was just summer-weariness!

A couple good things coming up this week: the next open mic, featuring a guy from the next county over,

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and then Thursday, our oldest son gave us the nicest birthdays/anniversary gift: tickets to see Vince Gill in concert, a room reservation at the Marriott, and dinner! This will be a wonderful break, and we are so looking forward to it.

Ending with this, from Facebook. Canadian friends, rest assured that most of us in the US understand how nature works. Lord knows you endure enough aggravation from us! Just a few idiots spouting stupidity,  as usual.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.