Unloading

Little Wonder and I were up before 7 doing our morning thing.  It was downright cold in the kitchen.

In the meantime, Daniela was getting ready to start her new job today at Northwestern.  On Friday she finished at Wisconin, moved and had her whole apartment set up over the weekend.  She took me on a tour and it's perfect for her.

I checked the caps on the dill pickles and all were sealed, so I put them away to age for awhile.

This is what I made with the leftover cucumbers... my own brine....sweeter.

Grabbed a shower and was down at the chiropractor's office by 10.

Big Bertha adds such peace to the space.

On the way home I stopped to buy some new pot holders as we really finished ours off yesterday.  Could not find any and ended up with two nice mitts. Had the rest of the pickled beets for lunch and decided to take advantage of the leftover juice and am making some pickled onions.

Gary went down to Jenny's to finish painting her kitchen and I started dumping more papers from my file cabinets.  Took forever.

And look what I found from the dark ages.  I'm always the short one.  I still have those long white kid gloves.  This was in the early 60s.

How about this one?  We used to have an Old English Sheepdog named Spanky.  Steph and Jenny spent a lot of time with their friends....Adam, Emily and Annie.

And finally this one...We were at an event with Hillary and had a chance to talk to her for awhile.  The colors in this photo are pretty strange....we look so burned.

Gary did not get home until after 5:30 and we ended up having meatloaf sandwiches and leftover Mac salad.

Night all.

 

Ironic

7am...and the light was beautiful.

Gary went down to Jenny's to help paint her kitchen.  Little Wonder and I went out to the Studio for awhile.

What's so ironic about today?  Last year on August 23rd we were making dill pickles.  Today we did it again.  I started off sterilizing all the jars.

Aside from checking on my computer, was pretty busy much of the day.

I washed two pecks of cucumbers and 

Gary peeled the garlic when he got home.  Also picked some fresh dill.

Jenny was coming to help late afternoon and by then we were in pretty good shape,

First, we put some dill, 4 cloves of garlic and peppercorns in 24 jars.

Then we cut and packed the cucumbers.  This year I made a few jars of slices instead of all spears.

It took a LOT of brine to fill these jars.

Gary has a two burner propane stove that we put out on the kitchen porch and that is where the processing is done so the house does not get hot.  Unlike last year, the temperature really dropped and it started to rain.

It took awhile since we only did 6 quarts at a time.

We were finished a little after six and sat down to a green salad, which we topped with

macaroni salad.  So good.

We are all going to sleep well.

Night all.

PS

I love this photo Jenny just shared with me.  When she went to Germany to visit Sabine she took along Brockport t-shirts for her, her daughters and Mom.  What a beautiful family.

 

250 Years

Up and at 'um.

Good light at 7am.

Jenny came up a little before 10 to pick up Gary, as they were going shopping for some paint and supplies for her kitchen.

As soon as they left, I started working on changing the rugs in the kitchen and library.  Gary was not too excited about it, so I waited until he was gone.  We have had these art deco tiles since 1981 and underneath that 13x15 rug (that I moved to the library after we cleaned it) was a mess. Dragged it out to the driveway to get swept on both sides, then washed the floor with pinesol and a lot of water.  Did it again with bleach and hot water....turned out great.  When it was dry, I moved in the rug from the living room, which will go well with our old chairs and new couches.  So much nicer.

By the time Jenny and Gary got back to the farm I was ready to vacuum the big rug and get it into the library.  They did all the heavy lifting and it was all set up in about 15 minutes.

She also cleaned off our driveway and picked up a piece of junk (plastic kids cart) that had been sitting on the edge of the road (across the street) for months.  Whenever the town mows they can never do that area.  Our view of that property has been pretty dismal.  Anyway, she put it in her car and will have Scott dispose of it.

Little Wonder was not too excited about all the changes taking place.

From 4 to dusk, the Village was celebrating its 250th anniversary....so Gary and I went down to check things out.  They worked with the Town to make this a special day.

We arrived around 5:30 

and went over to the Welcome Center to see what was going on.

My friend Rhonda was a volunteer there.  Always full of spirit.

Mo was there too.

We got a cheeseburger at the Lions Club tent.

They called for volunteers and had a pie eating contest.

This was the winner!

On the way home we stopped at Wegmans to get supplies for pickle making tomorrow.

I'm loving this rug in the library.

Night all.