A Long Hot Week

This week has been a bit slow for news on the home front, as you may have gathered. Temps have been in the mid-30's all week so things are growing again after the good rain last weekend.

The garlic and onions are dried and drying respectively, tomatoes keep us in eating but there is a mass of blooms this week again so we may have some to preserve.

Cucs are slow but will pick up again with the moisture and heat. We have about six 3-liter jars of pickles. Lena's recipe so I am looking forward to that. First time I saw Horseradish leaves go into dill pickle jars.

The root cellar is full of jam, apricot, strawberry and raspberry. Runing the apricots and strawberries through the meat grinder on coarse makes a better jam than whole fruit. The fridge is full of raspberry jam. I call it freezer jam. Tanya disagrees. It is refrigerator jam. We froze about 15 packages of beets on Thursday. All the preserving heated the house to unbelievable temps. Next year Tanya says we are going to set up our summer kitchen in the outbuilding. We have electricity and gas, just need to clean and paint and put in a couple windows and some lights. (I remember we used to do a lot of our canning and freezing outside using the side burner on the gas BBQ).

Today Tanya and Masha brought Masha's big paddling pool which we set up. The neighbour kids came over too. Maxim and Ivan along with Maxim's cousin Vovo who is 2 1/2. Maxim's mom, Tanya, came to look after Vovo (yes, we had three Tanya's here).

Lena and Roman invited us to supper at their place which suited my Tanya as she didn't have to cook. Lena is a tremendous cook which doesn't help Roman with his diabetic diet problems but sure makes their home a great place to visit.

It is the same temp in my office as outside (30) so I can open the windows to get a breeze, finally. Sure glad we have AC in our bedroom. We can sleep cool, if you call 24 cool.