Bounty from the garden

 Bounty from the garden tonight.  Esme helped with some of it.  Sunflowers, tomatoes, cucumbers (including the lemon ones), beans, cowpeas, zucchini and a single banana pepper.  Esme helped sort, wash and cut some of it up for a soup as well.  She is learning how to do some more 'grown-up' things with using a knife (under supervision), peeling cowpeas and using a vegetable brush scrubber.

Our tomato bounty waiting for another round of saucing!

Tomato Saucing

 Esme and Mark sorting, washing and saucing the tomato harvest.  Mark boiled some down and poured into jars the other day - another few jars today... and we hope to do a real canning run with it on another day.

 Washing and taking off the top green stems

dropping in the processor

We had a day out, today, as well.  I took her to the park and we kicked the soccer ball around - and then to teh restaurant where I let her run for another hour and a half while she ate some french fries and etc...  I'm still working through the congestion in my nose/chest.. it's not bad, just enough to make me tired and this weekend has been busy.. so tired has been lasting.  The dogs are a little upset and sour with us that we gave away all of the puppies.  They they think they have not done a good job keeping track of them and now they are missing again... Even though they are very smart dogs, it is hard to explain to them why we didn't want them running them off in the woods and then take them away and don't come back with them ourselves...

I am really glad with several of the matches we made on the pupies.  Several of them just seemed made by Fate... from the moment the person saw the puppy they said - even when they said they didn't want one - that oh well, that one is coming with me, okay please?  One boy in particular was getting back in his truck when he heard we only had a girl left.. and then I held her up in my lap and he stopped in his tracks, said wait.. err.. oh . she is PRETTY.....OK I'm taking her.

Sewing for School Clothes

These are the sleeveless dress tops I've made for Esme's first grade school year.  There are a few more things on my list to make.  I've completed two out of the four pairs of pants. 

 

 Esme says this is 'Horse City' - and she enlisted my help in making it a bit more than she had started out with - it now has a public library, grocery store, 'clock' tower with a pointy top, and her potions store, and my cloth store.  She put a big roll of purple cloth on top of the cloth store, and a 'bottle' on top of the potions store.  She insisted on there being a playroom and bathroom in the library.

 

The rail system and house she built entirely by herself.  Mark and I were both impressed by her use of powered rail and lever switches.  She had a disagreement with me about the pronunciation of the word 'lever'... and didn't know why we laughed when she said we had said it wrong.  

Goodbye Tink and thoughts

We had to say goodbye to little Tink today, the little black kitten that wasn't even quite six months old.  We really don't know what happened to him - but suspect he ate something bad, or something that had eaten something bad (like a mouse or bird)... he was fine at nine o'clock last night, and dead before seven o'clock this morning... with no apparent injuries other than throwing up on the floor.  So very sad.. Esme had to see him as well before we took him out to bury him.  She was shocked, but maybe felt better for knowing... his eyes were still open - and that bothered her a lot.

Sorry to be so frank on all that.. it bothered me quite a bit, as well.

I had just woken up from a jumbled type of dream before I went down to find him - sort of lost in time in my own mind not sure if my mom would walk down the hallway in her cotton nightgown or not - realizing that hallway was far away, in time and space, but really just around the corner in my head - sorting out that I was no longer a child, .. that my mom had died, and would not be walking in at all - that I was asleep and dreaming, that I was the mother, and Esme was downstairs in her room in symbolic contrast to what my sleeping self had remembered at the beginning of the dream.. that if she did walk in it would be as a ghost - and wondering why my brain was even in 'that place' right now.  I backtracked to my dream self was thinking about she should be writing to my mom about Esme's school supplies and the end of summer/beginning of school -- it would be what I would do, as the 'change of season', to keep her updated, and send pictures etc.. an echo of things that I know would be happening, if things were different than they were right now.  My dream self didn't want to write that letter, or make that call.. the procrastination of the past six months or so with Mom that I had such a hard time communicating with her I would put it off until I had the mental energy..... I didn't even remember at first with that that the real reason to not write was that she was gone - and then feeling that I could still tell her in the dream - that she was nearby, but I would have to locate her - but not wanting to go and 'find' her... and ending up in the time jumble of she is nearby, just down the hallway, in her room, any moment she will come down the hall and check on me... and forcing myself to right my thinking and wake up...  I was about to pour a cup of coffee and come upstairs to write in my own dream journal about that dream.... when I saw the poor kitten laying oddly and not moving on the floor by the bathroom door.

Esme wrote a note and drew a picture of him in her Kindergarten notebook.. which she dug in her room and found after Mark took him away - saying she had to get her dream journal and write in it.

So oddly circular... strange day.
Tomorrow we give away the last of the puppies, we hope... and I have the weekend off.  Trying to fight a cold, myself.. tea and ginger.

Garden

 Taylor Dwarf Horticultural beans, I put these in a bag to dry and put the beans from 

another handful of greener pods in a soup

 Black Krim tomatoes

Zinnias from the butterfly garden planting I made for my mother, who died this February

List for sewing school clothes

I have some of these done - but no pictures yet.  So, for now - I am just posting the list.
School starts in about three weeks -- I have to get cracking.

2 Sleeveless dress tops with zipper backs - because August is still HOT here. (pics soon)
1 Long sleeved 'fancy' dress - I'm thinking a repeat of her purple flower ruffled one from last year.
A short sleeved dress top with zipper back
A long sleeved or 'kimono sleeve' over jacket with buttons
4 pairs of new pants with pockets.  (1 pair is done)

Then to buy:
1 pair of storebought jeans or legging jeans
A package of socks
A new pair of shoes
3 plain t shirts or 2 tshirts and another shirt she chooses
maybe a pair of leggings to try for wearing under a skirt

// I am using a lot of the fabric I received from the lady at work a few months ago, and need to replenish a little bit of thread in order to get the rest of these done.  Her pants are so long now it is hard to find a piece of fabric that will cut all of the pieces out... that is the hardest.  The dresses are a bit easier as I can split the pieces up and find ways to make them work out of two fabrics.