Weekly Update: 8.2.25

We got to open our windows this week. It’s a simple thing, but oh — what a difference it makes in our overall sense of well-being. Late Wednesday night, the temperature dropped to the mid-70s — cooler than some parts of the house, even with air conditioners running. So, we turned off our units and turned on our whole house exhaust fan, pulling cooling air through all of our wide open windows. Thursday night was even better. The mornings have been sublime.

For most of our week, the heat drove our activities. Like last week, we raced to care for our garden as soon as the sun was up. One of our main focuses this week was spraying for fungus. I did some research, and we decided to try an anti-fungal hydrogen peroxide series, as recommended by The Rusted Garden. We have completed two of the recommended four treatments. I can’t say the melons have improved much yet, but the tomatoes look better already.

Ironically, as our cucumbers are waning, our late-season dill is about ready to start harvesting. Or, it was — before some black swallowtail caterpillars started to fight us for it. We have been picking them off daily, though it makes us a little sad as the caterpillars are quite pretty.

Another garden focus this week was staking the tomatoes (again). We haven’t been able to get over how huge our plants are this year. Keeping them properly staked has been almost impossible. When several plants started to fall over early this week, we decided to mill some leftover one-by-four boards into tomato stakes. We have mainly been using bamboo, but our plants needed something more sturdy. We finished by dipping the stakes in Eco Wood Treatment, as we hope they will last a few seasons. Bonnie-Jean has been pruning the tomatoes and installing the new stakes all week.

Garden problems aside, we are in love with our pumpkin patch. It was such a last-minute project, but it is absolutely thriving.

After we took care of the garden each day, we continued working on our new interior doors — staining and sealing — before it got too hot for the products to work correctly.

On Friday, Grace found time to start staining our exterior trim. We are using a one-coat solid red stain, which is turning out beautifully.

Once it got too hot to work outside most days, we worked indoors. We are still bringing in buckets of produce from the garden each day, which has left us with plenty to preserve. Grace and I froze a bunch of chopped bell peppers. Bonnie-Jean made some more refrigerator pickled peppers. Grace grated a bunch of oversized zucchini to freeze for breads and other recipes. Our mom found a bunch of recipes to try for our copious amount of pattypan squash.

We have also been slowly moving into the bunkhouse. This week, we sisters moved our clothes in from the tent. When our cooler weather arrived on Thursday, we made a trip to storage to pick up we sisters’ keepsakes.

Being inside so much has been hard on the dogs, especially the German Shepherds. Between tasks and in her free time, Bonnie-Jean has been taking them for lots of walks to the spring.

On Friday, we made a visit to our beehives. We needed to trim the weeds and make sure the bees were handling the heat we’ve had this summer. The bees seem healthy enough, though I noticed our largest hive seemed much less active. The swarm we caught was so huge, I had wondered if it would split sometime this summer. We checked on the swarm trap we had hung up late in the season, not really expecting to see any bees. Surprisingly, a new swarm has moved in. We are wondering if we caught the swarm of our own hive.

In many ways, this week was a repeat of last week — but in small ways, we moved forward. We finished another door. We improved our garden. The tent is a bit more organized. It appears we are finally over our sickness — only Grace managed to remain healthy all month. Along the way, we managed to make time for some soul-care. We woke early enough most mornings to spend some time in prayer or spiritual reading. We read aloud together a couple of days. A few of us managed some walks to the spring. We watched a little TV together. Grace and I made it to the library to renew our library cards. Each moment was a small simple pleasure, but they added up to a feeling of blessing this week. The last seven days had their rough moments for sure, but looking back, I’m thankful for the good. And I’m ready, with open arms, for the good God has for us tomorrow and in the coming weeks.