The start to the school year has been a bit rocky…stress levels are up. I’m hoping everything is settling down now. My most recent posts seem to have been mostly about gardening. This one will touch on that as well.

Additionally, I have taken a little time to be creative. Some cards and a few journal pages.

I can safely say that my gardening days this season are numbered. I pulled up the shed garden and amended the soil with the compost from the bin. Yay, free! I’ve also started emptying pots and composting the spent plants for future compost.

I pulled up half of my carrots. They are small but mighty good. I’m just impressed that I successfully grew carrots…they were not looking good all summer.

Marvin is in the display case at school for our “pet show”. I wish I had taken a wide shot…there are over half a dozen photos of named chickens as well…makes me smile and giggle a bit.

Blogging seems to be getting harder for me even though I REALLY love it. The problem seems to be that I am not scheduling time for it. I sit down and before I realize it,  I have squandered hours of time on idle pursuits…down the proverbial rabbit hole on Pinterest or YouTube. Or bingeing a series on Netflix. I know I am not the only person who struggles with this…those platforms would not be as successful as they are without the continual audience. 

I know some of my struggle is learning what my new normal feels like. What I have time for, what I should be doing vs what I want to do vs what actually needs to be done. Look at me, verbally processing with you…. 

I literally have pages of notes and ideas of content for the blog. Some are just rough ideas.  Others are plans for projects not yet started or works in progress.  Additional ideas for reworking of old content…so many things. I feel as if I have analysis paralysis. I can’t decide what to do, so I do nothing.

Does that ever happen to you?

Today was my first day back to work but I’m not here to talk about that…I’m talkin’ tomatoes. I have an abundance between the CSA box and my own plants.

This was one morning’s harvest. Crazy right!?! Especially since I really don’t have that big of space.

I saw a recipe from our CSA farm that was called September soup which as a roasted tomato soup. I decided to do my own take on the soup with the fresh produce I had on hand.

I used several kinds of tomatoes including cherry size, sweet peppers, garlic, onion and one very hot jalapeno. I seasoned with oil, salt and pepper. I roasted the tray for about an hour I think. I actually had to stop and start partway through for some reason I can’t even remember now…

I dumped the tray of veggies into a stock pot and covered with water. I cooked it down for another 45 mins or so. Then I took my immersion blender and pureed the whole works.

I ended up with a quart and a half of some really rich tomato soup. Its a little on the spicy side so I’ll likely mix some milk or cream into it when I heat it for soup. I’m just going to freeze the soup.

Or maybe I’ll sample it as Bloody Mary mix…

That was a yummy taste test this weekend! It needed to be thinned out some but good flavor. Here in the Midwest (at least in Minnesota and Wisconsin) a “snit” or beer chaser is always served with a Bloody Mary. Is that a thing where you live?

Here we are in late August…things changing as they always do this time of year.

The garden and CSA box are providing beautiful produce to eat fresh and preserve for winter. I like to freeze bags of chopped onions, peppers and celery as a start to a few different recipes. Its a quick grab and get cooking after work. And aren’t these so pretty!!

The garden is beginning to look a bit tired…August marks the beginning of the end for the garden. Soon I’ll be pulling up the plants, covering the garden in compost and start the composting process all over again with those spent plants.

This was the beginning of the pile for Mini-me. We moved her to college on Friday. No tears. Lots of sweat… It was over 90°F, nearly 100% humidity (it was thunderstorming on and off), 3rd floor, no elevator and no A/C. We got it done though. She’s been busy with welcome week activities and starts classes tomorrow.

The pile for J starts today…he moves to campus this weekend for his senior year.

Marvin seems a bit confused, a bit needy.

Check out the cool art deco bowl I picked up at an occasional shop on Saturday.

I absolutely love it…the colors and design.  I picked up a few other things but this is my favorite.

It’s raining here this morning which is very welcome. The thunder is rumbling as I write my list for the day. I do love a good thunderstorm as long as its not damaging.

The clock is ticking on the kids leaving for college. Mini-me goes in a week and a half, J is the week after. The piles of supplies are beginning. Last minute orders and trips to the stores, doctor appts, new glasses just to name a few items on the list. But slowly, we are making progress.

To add to the busy time…the garden is also producing like crazy.

That means that I need to preserve the harvest.

I’ve canned 7 pints of spicy beans and 3 pints diced tomatoes.

Air drying herbs as well as trying to dehydrate some.

Mini-me seemed to have an allergic reaction to the herbs in the dehydrator so after we finally figured out why her nose was running like a faucet, I shut it down and got it out of the house. Poor kid.

I was attempting to dry some of this mint as well. Its really growing like crazy. Since the dehydrator seems out of the question, at least until she leaves the nest for college, I tried making some tea with fresh mint and nasturtium blossoms.

It was ok. Not bad but not very flavorful…which is not surprising. I know herb flavors concentrate after drying.

I may try to dry some but I am not holding out a lot of hope that I will enjoy the end product so therefore I am not super committed to the process.

One day last week, Mini-me and I took a quick drive over to IKEA and the Mall of America. We were able to get a few items on her list for college ay IKEA. Obviously a lot of other people had the same idea before us since several of the things on her want list were sold out. We decided to go into MOA since it is literally across the street from IKEA.

I quickly snapped this photo of a few of the truly massive Lego creations that sit atop the Legoland.

And Nickelodeon Universe. The mall was really not busy at all which was very refreshing. I don’t think we would have stayed if it had been busy.

I’m posting this on Monday evening because I have an eye appt in the morning. I know she will dilate my eyes so I won’t be able to see much of anything for several hours. I’m not a fan of it but I know its to check eye health so I will do it begrudgingly.

Last week we were dealing with air quality issues with the smoke from the Canadian wildfires. Thursday looked like this. It was really unhealthy air. We kept inside as much as possible.

Since the forecast was supposed to clear up as far as the smoke went, Mini-me and I went with my neighbor on a daytrip to Alexandria MN. aka Lake country…cabin country. I love it up there. We had a cabin there when I was a teen and my cousins still have one in lake country. It’s my happy place. Well, maybe tied with Duluth.

We went out to eat and had probably the best food I’ve have ever had at a bar/restaurant. It was so good I didn’t even remember to take a photo until it was nearly gone. We sat on the patio that overlooked the lake. It was awesome.

Next we went to a winery that had also just added a brewery. We had a flight of Minnesota wines…not a fan. But the beer was really good. I ended up buying two Growlers to bring home to share.

The flight of wine came with a complementary glass to take home. My neighbor gave me hers as well so now I have a pair.

We also stopped at a quilt shop and picked up some goodies. I bought some science themed fabric as I was planning to make some more masks for J and myself. Mini-me picked out the cat fabric. Luckily I did pick up more fabric because we just learned that the University system in MN is requiring masks for everyone.

I also grabbed the two small scrap packs I found in the clearance area. I honestly was hoping for more scraps.

Boy, I had so many drink references in this post that I could have split it into three. :)

I wasn’t sure I’d make it here for T stands for Tuesday with Elizabeth and the gang…I was feeling down right rotten for the past 36 hrs or so. But my stomach no longer feels like its trying to eat itself from the inside out so I think we’re good now. Likely TMI…but I’ve been known to overshare before.

As par for the course, I didn’t have a solid plan of what I was going to share anyway. I did realize that I had created a few journal pages and never got around to posting them.  So here they are in no particular order.

My typical indoor photo spot wasn’t working for me today…So I had to improvise on the patio table. A little bit of dappled sunlight just for fun.

This page started with gelatos over gesso. I’m not a fan of this gesso as its so grainy. I ended up with these loose, whimsical flowers somehow. Cultivate Kindness just seemed to fit.

I love this color combo. And circles. This has to be my favorite page as of late.

This was a page from my wonky junky journal. I remember it coming together so quickly that I was almost a bit sad it was over. I believe that was when I put gesso down for the first page in this post. Gosh I hate wait for paint and glue to dry. I need a much bigger area so I can have several things going at once. LOL

A week or so ago a neighbor shared a new Surly beer with a few of us. Typically I’m not a fan of Surly brews…usually too bitter. But this, my friends, was awesome. It was very difficult to find but I am oh so glad I did.