Grandparents' Day

 I can't remember if this was taken when Addie was in kindergarten or first grade. Most of you will remember it. I thought I had lost it but was looking through old Facebook pictures and found it.

It was grandparents' Day at Addie's school and she drew us a picture. Nicole's parents were there, Vince and I had driven in from Texas. The teacher kinda sighed as she handed us the picture. We all laughed . . and Vince said "Is that me on the end?" Yes!  I'm "Grene" (Granny), Nicole's mom is Nana, Addie is in the middle. Papa is Nicole's dad and she didn't put a name for Vince. She probably asked the teacher how to spell Grumps, which is what she calls Vince, and the teacher didn't want her to write that. 

All except Vince have their arms open for her and a smile. Poor Vince! Look at that frown on his face!  :)

July 21, 2026

It's been a slow day around here. No canning. Very little work in the garden. I watered but that's it. Leftovers for lunch. 

I stitched a bit on Come to the Garden by Teresa Kogut.

After working on that one a while, I decided to pull out the project that's probably closest to being finished, which, without doing much searching, I decided is This is the Day by Plum Street.

There isn't much left to do. The checkerboard-ish border at the bottom has a bit of work left, and a bit more left at the top . I need to fill in some flowers/leaves on the left side of the house, on the right side, I'm going to put two stalks of flowers instead of the sheep and one flower. I will probably stitch the butterfly above the flowers. There's a bit of fill in on a few flowers near the bottom but that's it.

And I need to add the smoke coming out of the left chimney.

I probably won't work on this one tomorrow with Debbie but if I get some good stitching time tonight and some on Thursday, I could have this finished maybe by Thursday night or for sure by Friday. 

There are eggplants still to be canned and more salsa to be made so . . we'll see what I end up doing but a potential finish is pretty exciting!

July 20, 2026 - A Visit to An Unfriendly Post Office

 The first thing this morning, I managed to start my day off in a frustrating way. I checked my informed delivery and had a package to be delivered. I knew what it was - it's a chart by The Scarlett House that has been hard to find but Tanya (Scarlett House designer) told me a shop that might have it. I called, they did and I ordered it. So, checking the delivery schedule, I saw that it got to our post office, and then was sent to another local post office instead of being "out for delivery". I called our post office and the guy there who always answers the phone (probably because they have caller ID and no one else will talk to me!) is very nice. He checked the the tracking. Yes, accidentally got sent to another post office. I asked what happens next. Heavy sigh. Likely it will get sent back to Kansas City and there are two or three stops there, then to Springfield, then back here. I said "And I may get it in 7 or 8 days, right? He kinda chuckled. I said "Is there any way I can go to the "wrong post office" and get it?" Maybe. Call and see if they can find it (encouraging!) and tell them you want to come get it. He gave me their number. Wrong number! I found the right number. Called and a nice lady said she would go see but sometimes they get a huge box from our post office and if that's the case, she probably can't go through it all to find my package but she would try. She came back and said my package was right on top and she would hold it for me.

I went upstairs and told Vince I had to run to the next town. I'm not saying where because someone will probably know this person and tell them I was complaining. Nope. He had PT at 11 and after that, WE could go together. That's one thing I sometimes like and sometimes don't. I can drive there by myself, retrieve my package and get home before he ever went to PT. No, he couldn't go before PT (at 11 and it wasn't even 9 yet), but WE could go when he got back. OK!

We got there and a very grumpy woman was at the front - only one there. She finished with the person ahead of me and I told her my name, handed her my driver's license (which I was told to bring). She kinda snatched it out of my hand as I was telling her the package story. She said "Who did you talk to?" I told her the name I thought the lady said. Oh . . it must have been "a totally different name". She went back, was gone longer than I thought it would take, came back and said "No, you didn't talk to her." It was like she didn't believe I had a lost package nor did she believe I had called. She just stands there looking at me like . . we're done here . . go away.

I said "I called, the lady I talked to told me to come get the package before 4:30 and bring my driver's license." She said "Maybe you talked to "another name" and she's at lunch. She'll be back in an hour or so. I said "Can you just call her and ask where my package is?" NO!! NOT WHILE SHE'S AT LUNCH!! Oh, my goodness. I was still standing there and she said "Do you want to talk to a supervisor?" I said "Sure". She goes and gets someone who gives me that same "I don't believe anything you're saying look". I told her my story. She turned, walked off, was gone for maybe 10 minutes - never came back. The first woman came back up front and said "It doesn't seem to be here!" She was about to walk away and I noticed a box behind the counter that had 20 or so certified mail letters that looked like they were waiting to be picked up. There was also a priority mail envelope and a small white cardboard envelope - just the size I suspected my chart would be in. This was within reaching distance of where both of these ladies had been standing. Was this their first day on the job? Surely they knew that was where things to be picked up were placed.

I said to grumpy lady - can you check that box right there and see if maybe that white envelope is mine? She huffed, turned, without even needing to take a step, picked it up and literally shoved it across the counter at me. Didn't say a word and walked off.

Good grief!

It was so hard for me to keep my mouth shut. It was so hard for me not to call the postmaster (who was the one who had been at lunch and apparently could not be disturbed even though we had driven at least 15 miles each way for the package the USPS screwed up on! Vince said "You should call them!" I said NO. I'm not wasting any more time. They don't care. I know they aren't "government employees" but for all intents and purposes, they are and short of criminal behavior, nothing is ever going to happen to them so why waste another minute of my time. Oh, wait . . I just wasted half an hour writing this post!  :)

All's well that ends well I suppose but now I don't ever even want to go to that town again and, unfortunately, we do go there fairly often. It's sad that one grumpy woman changed my opinion of the entire town.

On a positive note, I cut about half of the basil today, changed the oil in the freeze dryer and got it loaded, probably too much, with basil.

I cut 8 more eggplant. Tomorrow I'll probably go ahead and make the eggplant salsa and get it canned. I've put it off long enough.

No stitching yet today. Could happen but may not. It's already almost 9 p.m.

 Are you tired of hearing about canning yet? I never get tired of canning but I do get tired of cleaning up the messes I make while canning. 

The chicken "frames" went into the roasters last night and cooked all night so this morning, as soon as we finished breakfast, I got busy canning. I ended up with 21 quarts of broth - which was two canners FULL. The big canner holds 14 quarts and smaller canner holds 7 quarts. Once I got the canner going, I started picking meat off the bones and ended up with 7 pints of meat. As soon as the quarts of broth were finished in the canners, I added cold water to the small canner to cool it down so I could take it outside and wash it, then get the 7 pints of meat in the small canner. 

While the canners were going with the broth, I began working on dinner. I plan very easy meals for busy days. Today's plan was baked fish (all I had to do was season it, and bake it), a jar of butternut squash and a jar of Anasazi beans - both were ready to heat and eat. I cut us each a bowl of a variety of sprouts, added some cucumber and cherry tomatoes, a bit of olive oil and balsamic and that was our "salad".

While the meat was canning, I went out and watered the garden, picked a few more squash. Right now it's the Honeynut Butternut squash that's kinda going wild.

There's a lot of time during the canning process when I'm sitting, listening to the canner jiggling. I don't want to get far enough away that I can't hear that but I can leave the door from the basement garage (where I can) to the house and I can hear the canner while sitting and stitching so I got a bit of stitching done today.

I've filled in some of the flowers in the border of GH 1857 but I'm going to put this one aside and get back to Come to the Garden.

This one is Come to the Garden by Teresa Kogut. I think I'll work on this one through the end of July and see how much I can get stitched.

No canning tomorrow. The meals are easy - Breakfast is going to be overnight oats with blueberries and yogurt. I'll fry up some sausage; for dinner Vince is going to grill, I'll bake sweet potatoes, steam broccoli and dinner won't take much effort so I'm hoping to get lots of stitching done tomorrow.

July 18, 2026 - Another Day in the Kitchen

 That's what happens this time of year - too much time in the kitchen but so worth it to have all the goodies on the shelf for winter. 

If you've ever grown a garden, you know it can be feast or famine. Some years, I get very few tomatoes. Some years, I get so many I can barely get them all canned. Last year I had six eggplant plants and canned about 50 pints of the eggplant salsa that we love. We don't eat it so much as salsa but I like to cut up chicken, sear it, then pour the salsa over it, add a bit of white wine and serve it over rice or pasta. I knew that 50 pints would be enough for two years so this year I only planted three eggplant plants - just enough for us to have eggplant during the summer. NO! Those things have gone crazy. We've been eating them as fast as we can. We had an eggplant and ham casserole earlier this week and today we had Cheesy Eggplant Casserole with pasta. I picked 12 eggplants this morning so tomorrow or Monday, I'll make more eggplant salsa to can. I will also make the Cheesy Eggplant Casserole again while we still have plenty of eggplants and put it into smaller dishes and freeze it.

But, for today's canning . . 

I've now pulled all the Candy Roaster squash off the vines so I needed to get those canned. The biggest one I had today was 9 pounds, 12 oz. but one I pulled last week was right at 15 pounds and I had another that was 13 pounds. Today I processed the 9 pounds, 12 oz. one and one that was probably about 5 pounds and got 13 pints of cubed squash.

I will probably can the rest of it on Monday and should get at least 15 more pints because there are two fairly large and one small squash left to be canned. I've kept a few that I will store in the basement and we can use those over the next couple of months before we start using the jars.

The Candy Roaster squash is so good because it can be used different ways. I will drain the cubes, kinda dry them on a paper towel, spritz with olive oil then sprinkle savory spices (any variety!) over them and air fry them til crispy on the outside but still very tender . . almost like mashed potato consistency on the inside. Or, I can add a little brown sugar, cream and pumpkin pie type spices and make it like a sweet potato casserole. They also work great as pumpkin pie filling!

Just as an experiment, here it is a bit past mid-July and I planted a few more candy roaster seeds just to see what happens. I planted the seeds the second week in May and it took two months for them to grow and mature so there's a chance I could get more of these. We'll see. Hopefully the vine borers have all done what they have to do for this year and I won't have to deal with those this time of year but we'll see.

Today I also got started on the first batch of chicken broth. I'm using my two big roasters so I've had three packages of the "bones" defrosting the fridge since Wednesday evening. Today was the first day I could separate them so I seasoned them, roasted them and  they're in the roaster. Tomorrow I'll strain off the broth, can it; then pick the meat off the bones and can it.

Look at how much meat is on those bones! There are six "frames" in the roaster. Each package contained four frames so that's 1-1/2 packages. I think I have three or four packages left, plus some chicken feet to get processed. I'm probably going to take this same amount of the freezer Wednesday and let it defrost again until Saturday and do that same thing until all the chicken bones are gone.

It's 7:20 p.m. so hopefully I can get a bit of stitching done tonight.

July 17, 2026 - Mostly a Day in the Kitchen

 Today was the day I had planned to make salsa. But a bigger priority was making Ezekiel bread and rye bread for Vince. I feel like I have a mental block or something against those breads. I know I say this every time but I really dislike making both of them. I don't like the way the taste. I don't like the way they smell. I don't like the stickiness of the dough! I sound like a complainer, don't I? But really, I have to just stop and do it because my preference is to keep putting it off so before I started the salsas, I got the Ezekiel bread made.

When I remembered to take a picture, the bread was already cool and bagged to go into the freezer. So mature of me to make the bread before he runs out!

Next I made the rye bread. I only have three cast iron pans (I know I say that every time too) so once they cooled, I got the rye dough in the pans to rise.

With the bread made, I could turn my attention to the salsa.

There were enough tomatoes to make a triple recipe, which gave me 10 pints and 1 half pint of salsa. I had everything from the garden except cilantro. It bolted months ago. Vince was going to town and I asked him to get cilantro. 

I doubt I get enough tomatoes to make another triple batch but, based  on what I picked this evening and how many are getting ripe, I should be able to make a double batch and get at least 5 more pints. That will give us enough salsa for the year - until tomatoes are ripe again.

No cross stitching today. I'm going to sit and read for a while and probably go to bed early.

Tomorrow my main project will be getting some of the chicken broth finished and canned. I need to can the candy roaster squash. I've probably picked all there's going to be for this year, but that's a pressure canning project, as is the chicken broth and unless I want two canners going upstairs and two canners going downstairs, that's too much to try to do in one day so . . chicken broth tomorrow and maybe the squash on Sunday.

July 16, 2026 - Overall, A Good Day

 We had an Azure Standard pickup this morning and we needed to be there by 7:30 a.m. and it's about 40 minutes from here so I was up very early to get the dogs walked, the garden watered, the hair combed . . 

Even though I said I was NOT buying more jars, I got to the town a bit early and stopped by the Walmart there, grabbed 5 cases of quart jar (more chicken bone broth). I still got to the drop location on time but the truck was early. It had already been unloaded and some people were leaving. 

I was pretty excited to be getting 24 pounds of fresh Bing cherries. My plan was to spend today pitting and canning cherries. I even washed all the jars before I left home. BUT . . almost every one of the cherries was moldy and gross. Thank goodness there was a cooler in the car or I would have had a real mess on my hands. I contacted Azure and they gave me a refund. I knew they would. The trash man had not come by yet so after getting photos in case Azure needed to see them, all the cherries went in the trash. 

Sad about the cherries but . . I had more time for cross stitching than I had expected. And . . Hobby Lobby had called yesterday and told me that two frames I had ordered were in so I had time to go by there and get them. And, Hobby Lobby always had a little area near the framing desk where they had custom frames that for one reason or another were for sale. People didn't like them or never picked them up. The last few times I'd been in Hobby Lobby, something else was in that area. Debbie mentioned to me that they had moved those frames clear across the store so when I first got to Hobby Lobby, I headed over in that direction. I grabbed 6 or 7 frames and most of them were $8. They're fairly small - several are about 9 x 10; one is 10.5 x 15. I already have one project started that I think will fit in one of the frames.

Our Hobby Lobby doesn't have a lot of frames and there are several that I already have and two that I got today that are repeats for me.

Look at this -- I paid almost $48 for this one.

This one below is a bit smaller but it's the one I almost picked instead of the one above and this one was only $8.50.

The one below is one I already have. I had ordered it for a piece but haven't framed it yet.

I think for the next frames I need, I'm going to order from Art to Frames. They seem to have more choices, the shipping is free (I think) and they may be a bit less expensive.

On the cross stitching front, I have almost finished stitching the "frame" of the top border and right side border and I'm pretty sure the linen is going to be big enough. If you see any mistakes, please tell me. Fingers crossed there are none but nothing would surprise me.

The last of today's good news is that my finger is almost back to normal. I had a little help (a LOT of help!) from a friend in Florida who intervened. I'm still not exactly sure how all the "advice" I got came together to fix this finger but there's very little I do now that hurts. The redness and swelling is almost all gone. There's still a bit of a knot (arthritis bump type thing) on the side but the finger is so, so much better and I am so grateful for the help that got this finger on the road to recovery. Next week it will have been two months of dealing with it.

I'm sure y'all are happy too so you can stop hearing about it.

I feel like there was something else good that happened today but it's late and I can't remember.