A Whizz of A Week

What a busy week we've had. While visiting my sister and her husband, picked and prepared, and canned vegetables for about 135 jars to bring home with us. We bought two bushels of already shelled butter beans since their crop didn't produce a lot this year, and we bought a twenty-five pounds of tomatoes so I could make soup. Everything else came from their garden. My brother-in-law had a dozen pints of green beans on the counter cooling form me when we arrived on Thursday night and he had a dozen pints ready for me to bring back to my daughter. DH shelled almost two bushels of crowder peas by himself (oh, what sore fingers he had), while I went to the garden and cut okra and picked butter beans and green beans to make vegetable soup. We washed and sliced okra, shelled butter beans, strung and broke green beans, took the skins off tomatoes and chopped them and I cut off about five dozen ears of corn, thought I'd never get to that last ear. We canned peas, butter beans, more green beans, made and canned the vegetable soup, made and canned bread and butter pickles from cucumbers and made and canned squash pickles from yellow crook neck squash. We froze corn, okra, and some more peas, all this to come back to Virginia with me.

If this wasn't enough work for the four of us, my brother-in-law decided that we had to take off Sunday morning for a half-day of fishing. We had an early, quick breakfast and took off to the creek. He put the boat in and we all jumped in along with enough mosquitoes to start a low-country-stew. Once out on the water the mosquitoes wasn't too bad, only when we pulled in to anchor the boat and fish for a spell. We sped down the creek to the rice canals and up the canals to their favorite fishing spots. In a couple of hours we had enough red fish and cat fish in the cooler for dinner and headed back to Yemassee. The fish were cleaned, cut into filletes, then fried outside for dinner. Another day we had wild turkey deep fried for lunch and left-overs made into a wonderful turkey salad for dinner that evening. My brother-in-law is a real outdoors person who loves to hunt and fish. If he catches fish, shrimp, crabs, whatever, or hunts and kills venison, turkey, wild boar, whatever, it is cleaned and frozen and will be a meal. They (my sister and her husband) live close to the earth and have a wonderful, simple life now that they have retired and turned the plant nursery over to their son and his family. They hold family gatherings often and there is always a big turnout when something is scheduled for their home. All the nieces and nephews love to visit them because life in the low country is always an adventure.

When we returned home on Tuesday, I had a package waiting for me from Margie, my No Sheep For You exchange partner. She sent goodies along with two skeins of beautiful yarn, one a Debbie Bliss alpaca silk blend and one a stretched hand-dyed and spun merino wool from Plum Crazy Ranch and Fiber Arts. Thank you once more Margie for such a pleasing package.

I also got my downstream partners package mailed and she should be receiving it tomorrow, or at the latest, Monday. I hope she will be please with the yarn I sent her, also two skeins, and a pattern to knit one of the yarns with. Hope the other gifts will make her happy also.

I think it is nap time. I've not been sleeping well with my arms and legs going numb on me. The Dr. ordered another MRI but thinks it possibly may be coming from the chemo medicines I had to take.