Recombobulated

Steve finally has the evidence he needs to prove that I may be certifiably crazy.

I had a really busy, long work week last week that included a 17 hour day in LA where I saw 4 different clients from Newport Beach to Pasadena all in the same day.  I was pretty exhausted when I arrived home late Friday afternoon.

I slowly dragged myself out of bed around 7:30 on Saturday morning and made a very simple breakfast (mostly dictated by the limitations of our supplies).  I was seriously looking forward to a luxurious day with absolutely nothing planned.  I decided to go out and check the chickens.  They’re getting so big!

Aside from filling up their food and some light conversation, they didn’t need a lot of attention.  So, I wandered over to the garden to check on my pumpkins.  I had no idea how shy and clever pumpkins are.  Most of my pumpkins have escaped the garden and are growing outside the fence hidden in some way or another.

We have about a dozen pumpkins out there creating an idyllic fall scene that is seriously interrupted by my dying sunflowers. It didn’t seem like a very big deal to cut down the sunflowers and gather up the heads to dry out so that I can harvest the seeds at my leisure.  Since I was harvesting things, I decided to go collect this week’s peppers, too.  I harvested about 50 bird’s eye chilis, 3 jalepenos, and about a dozen Mad Hatter peppers, which are adorable little bell peppers.  The bird’s eye chilis are right next to the carrots.  My carrots grew sooooo slowly that I’ve kind of given up on them.  But, I checked on them just out of curiosity and was completely shocked to see that they had gotten huge and probably should be harvested immediately.  So, I dug up all the carrots, too.

Okay, for someone who was going to do nothing all day, I felt that I could really go inside with a clear conscience, and get started on a full day of relaxing.  But, I should wash the carrots first.  After that was all done, I took my gloves and baskets back out to the shed and I remembered that my rain gutters on the chicken coop needed to be moved so that my rain barrel would work right.  It didn’t seem like a very big deal, so I spent the next hour moving the rain gutters and repositioning the rain barrel.  Okay, I put everything away and went back inside… where I encountered a basket full of sunflower heads on my kitchen table.  I sat down to investigate, wondering exactly how much work it might be to harvest the sunflower seeds out of the dried out heads.  About 90 minutes later, I had harvest about 2,500 seeds from a couple dozen heads.

Then Nathan and Hannah showed up with the baby.  I really wish I knew they were coming.  I would have had Nathan help me move the rain gutters and I would have had Hannah help me harvest the sunflower seeds.  Oh well, now we could just hang out and have a fun day without chores.  We made a lazy lunch and played with the baby.

Then we remembered that it was the first day of the Fall Festival at our local farm and decided to go over to Eugester’s to wander around and check things out.  My apple trees didn’t produce one apple this year.   I guess they were too young.  So, we went out seeking homemade apple cider and apple turnovers.  We got apple cider and apple cider donuts, but they didn’t have any apple turnovers.  They did, however, have a sweet deal that you got free admission to the farm and all the fun, including the corn maze, wagon rides, and the pumpkin patch if you bought a bag to pick your own apples.  That sounded like so much fun!  Thank god there were only three of us (Harrison was free), so we only bought three half bushel bags to go pick our own apples.  Haha.  Harrison had a blast picking apples.  We all did.  But, I think we over did it.  Steve couldn’t believe that I brought home somewhere close to 2 full bushels of apples when I still have just barely recovered from having tomatoes, zucchini, and cucumbers coming out of my ears and when I still have cucumbers and peppers to deal with. 

Nathan, Hannah, and Justin got busy in the kitchen helping me make the lusted after apple turnovers.  We made as much pie crust as we could with the butter I had on hand (I never did get to the grocery store) and made as much apple pie filling as we could fit in there.  They were beautiful, if not perfect.

And, we used about 10 apples.  Uh oh!  I’m going to have to buy a LOT more butter!

I’m heading to the store now.  I’m buying butter and MORE canning jars.  I will be making apple butter and apple pie filling for the freezer.  If I get really ambitious (haha), I will make some more apple turnovers and maybe, even, some apple fritters.  Steve might forgive me for being absolutely insane if I make him some apple fritters.