Toad in the Garden

Good morning. I was going to start with a couple of emails that Paul sent but they were rather lengthy and I decided to post them separately in my other blog. I’ll email links to them when I do for this.

Not meaning to gross you out.
Really.
These are some of the slugs that were eating the sunflowers on Daniel's grave.
Their relatives finished the job.

Aren't they unlovely?

Yesterday the Jetta got new tires on the front in the morning and after the missionaries left, Paul and Adam took it to where it’s getting aligned so by sometime today, the Jetta should be a happy little car ready to drive. While waiting for the tires, I managed to knit about half an inch on the socks I’m working on and read a few pages in one of the books I’m reading. It’s the one with stories of natural childbirth. I almost finished the introduction. After that, I dropped off the very overdue book at the library and went to Winchendon to get grain for the goats. Since I was there, I also inquired about rubber bands and the tool to apply them in order to castrate George and Fred. Also, since I was there, I looked for buckets because the one I currently use for grain while milking is rather large for the purpose and they had a good selection. I got one. Back to rubber bands. They had some of them but they did not have the tool. Their store in Keene does and it should be arriving in Winchendon at about 10:00 so I’ll go get that today. Sometime after that, George and Fred are going to be a little uncomfortable.

I went out to the garden to take a look at everything and discovered a hole in the grass clippings and dirt at the base of one bunch of sunflowers. I thought, “Oh, no! A rodent living in the roots of the sunflowers.” I looked, and I could see a little face. It didn’t look quite like a chipmunk and didn’t go anywhere so I looked closer. It was a TOAD! I told it I was sorry for thinking it was a nasty rodent and to please feel free to take up permanent residence and eat all the bugs it could find.

Can you see his (or her) cute little face in there?

The toad is living at the front (toward the camera) of the sunflowers at the right in this picture.

Cedric helped pick tomatoes and cucumbers. I need to get my canning pot back so I can make pickles. We have many more cucumbers than we can eat at the moment and I want to get something done to them before they go bad. The plums were too old to make jam with so they are now goat fodder. There were lots of tomatoes as well and a rather largish zucchini. We ate most of the lemon cucumbers for supper and ate all the tomatoes that were picked two days earlier.

You can see the zucchini. Lots of tomatoes. There's a lemon cucumuber (one of serval) peeking out down there.

Also for supper, we had stuffed peppers. I was planning on doing them with pork which means Mexican-style with black beans, rice and salsa (and, of course, onions, peppers, cheese and seasoning). I chopped up a jalapeño pepper with the peppers to see if anyone would notice and no one did—it imparted absolutely NO heat. As I was cutting the tops off the peppers and deseeding them and dicing the tops, I got a phone call from Elder Ludlow, one of our missionaries. He asked if they could come a bit early as they were headed back from a conference in Connecticut. I said, sure, no problem. Then he said that he had a different companion as they were doing splits and his new companion can’t eat protein. Would that be a problem? I thought fast, a problem? For me? Heck, no. I’d made some chocolate zucchini bread with a zucchini I shredded. There was some left so I thought that would make good stuffing for peppers. To that I added chopped peppers and onions, seasoning and salsa. It looked pretty good and smelled good and was more than enough to fill one pepper but not enough for two so I added the extra to the stuffing for the rest. Since I was already planning on sliced tomatoes and cucumbers to go along, I went ahead and did that. The bread was no good but we did have apples, bananas and blueberries he could have for dessert so I figured we were set. We were. He was happy with everything and chose an apple and banana for dessert.

Sometime in the wee smas this morning, it began raining. I saw some lightning and heard some thunder and heard the rain and was happy that it had come. It rained for three or four hours at least and was still raining when I took the dogs out. Trista went out to do her thing but Scooter refused. She didn’t make any messes inside, though, so it was all good. It was still raining when I went out to milk so I borrowed Seth’s hat to keep the rain off my glasses. The rain was nice as it kept the little tiny really annoying bugs at bay. It did nothing to keep the mosquitoes away but just having them and not the tiny ones was okay (even though I did get bit three or four times). We got about 7/8 of a gallon this morning which is quite good.

Today, other than getting the tool for the rubber bands, I am planning on making more chocolate zucchini bread and some regular bread. I need to grind some flour first and I might take my shower and go get the tool first. I also need to call the West’s to see about getting my canner back. But before I do anything, I am going to have something for breakfast.

Have a wonderful day!