I'm Back

Break's over. 

I can't say that I have enjoyed not blogging.  Quite the opposite, me thinks.  I do like blogging and always seem to think of things to write about... until I sit down to do it, of course!!  ;-)

Honestly, I considered quitting and deleting my blog (again).  Why?  Life is hard.  It's difficult for me to put my thoughts and feelings down when my life is in turmoil and everything around me is, well... hard.  But the Lord calls me to carry on.  I don't know why.  So, for what it's worth, I'm back.

One of the things that's been really hard for me is to watch my beloved garden plants fry in the practically continuous triple digit temps.  We are in a severe drought area here in Missouri.  I try to conserve water as best as I can while trying my best to keep the useful plants alive.  I spot water as opposed to using sprinklers.  It's been a lot of work trying to keep up.  The lettuce, broccoli and cauliflower bit the dust long ago.  I was able to harvest a few of the broccoli plants but the cauliflower plants never even bore since it got too hot too soon.  We've lost the bush green beans and quite a few of our cucumber plants.  My pole beans got a mosaic virus and they are history too.  I will try to plant new bush beans and lettuce in mid August and hopefully they will do well.

I still have not recovered from the loss of my chickens.

On the bright side, I have tomatoes galore.  I've already canned 15 quarts and 8 pints of diced tomatoes while we have eaten them freely and shared with family and friends.  And there are still many more yet to harvest.  So I am happy about that for sure!!  :-)  The cucumbers were doing really well for quite some time and I made several gallons of pickles and 25 jars of sweet cucumber relish.

This is a sample of about how much I harvest of tomatoes,

cucumbers and peppers that I havest about every other day.

And that's with this killer heat and no rain!

Notice the dead, dry, brown grass.  :-(

We are in an area where the farmer's corn and soybean crops have dried and shrivelled in the sun, heat and lack of rain.  Even though I am very sure that it's probably all GMO stuff it still is hard for me to see all those dying plants.

Across the highway from us.

This would look normal in September--NOT July.

Can you see the dead tree to the right?  :-(

I'm worried about the effects that this drought is going to have on food supply and cost.  We are already having trouble making ends meet without higher food prices!!  And although I'm not a die-hard survivalist/prepper I wonder what we would do if our only food supply was what we could grow and forage for ourselves.  I suspect we would be mighty hungry!!  Not a pleasant thought.
 
On a lighter note, I saw this the other day while out watering the garden...

 At first I laughed and wondered what that crazy squirrel was doing.

After watching him for about 15 minutes I got rather concerned

that he wasn't moving and assumed that he must've been dead. 

The "bigger picture".

I was going to have DH help me get him down so that he wasn't just hanging there but when I came back he was gone.  I wondered if he might have fallen while doing his high-wire gymnastics and got the wind knocked out of him. 

Poof!  He's gone.  :-)

I'm sure glad he wasn't dead!!

Ah, it feels good to be back.  :-)