Hi Ho Cherry-O!

Last week was a busy one! On top of our regularly scheduled craziness, we went cherry picking at a friend's house on Wednesday. It was a lot of fun, and J especially, was a big help. These are what we picked. The bucket on the bottom right is sour pie cherries.



Mom helped me can them. We ended up with 14 quarts of sweet cherries, and 4 pints of sour ones!

Friday, we went out to our favorite U-Pick Farm, Simmons, and picked strawberries with some friends. I came home with 27 pounds of sweet and juicy berries! (You can see my jars of cherries to the right!)



These got made into 5 recipes of freezer jam, and 10 pints of frozen berries, along with 3 shortcakes (so far).

We got over 2 inches of rain this weekend, which limited pretty severely the work that I could get done outside. (It also caused the power to be out most of the day yesterday again.) The overflow from our rain water cistern ended up washing out part of the bottom of the garden. To correct the problem, this morning I dug a ditch from the overflow to a drainage ditch, which is also supposed to carry the grey water down the hill to the woods. The grey water drainage was just running out all over the place and making the whole hillside mushy, so I dug a ditch from that pipe down to the drainage ditch as well. I still have some piles of dirt to move somewhere...


Since J is officially done with her curriculum for the year (but not the school year), I had the blissful opportunity to work outside all morning in the peace. The sun was out, but the air was cool, so I got the garden weeded after all the ditch digging. It made me quite relaxed, which seems counterintuitive, but being outside, and slowly working towards a goal of beautification, is very therapeutic for me!

Yesterday afternoon, after digging and hauling more rocks, I finished the dry stacked shade bed by the house. I'm quite happy with it, though I might add a few rocks here and there...I dug up a bunch more today!



I'll leave you with these pictures of the girls revelling in their own early summer activity: the pursuit of butterflies!