baby butternut squash
I didn’t make it to the Fair last week, sorry to say. There’s just too much to do at the squadron these days as we prepare for our upcoming inspections, getting all the aircraft maintenance programs fixed that have never been set up quite right since they transitioned to the C-40A five years ago. I’m spending long, long hours there, heading in around 6 am and usually not leaving until 7 pm. Grueling schedule, for sure, but temporary.
This manic pace started about a month ago, as we got to the point of self-assessment where we realized just how many critical processes were off-track, and how many different things needed to be re-done, re-written, and re-trained on. The list of projects that I own, as a program manager, have stacked up like dirty plates towering above my head waiting to be washed; an afternoon of oogling farm animals and admiring craft displays just couldn’t be justified.
Ah, well. There will be other years and other county fairs to go see.
On the home front, I’m obviously not getting much done in the few short hours I’m actually here, which is driving me a little crazy. There’s only just enough time for making dinner and tending the garden at the end of the day, so weekends, once devoted to landscaping projects, are filled with all the household maintenance that I used to be able to chip away at throughout the week: clutter, dirty laundry, mail and junk stacked on the dining room table, grimy bathrooms, gritty floors. It is what it is. You can only let that stuff go so long before it sucks your will to live, so I’m just holding ground, keeping my nostrils above the lapping waves.
It hasn’t been easy, but I’ve resigned myself to the situation and am consoled by the fact that once the big August inspection is over, my work schedule and my life will (hopefully) return to normal.
On a very different and bright note, the new garden bed planted back at the beginning of May is now filled with happy, vigorous plants, and has started feeding us some of the tastiest, freshest vegetables money can’t buy.
We’ve already eaten the first sweet, tender beets; kale and beet greens, turnips, zuchinni and green beans – all delicious – and there’s lots more food to come out of this 25-foot deep-dug bed. Two kinds of winter squash (acorn and butternut, thanks Jo!) and potatoes, onions, and carrots will be awhile in the making, but they’re worth the work, and they’ll be worth the wait. Homegrown, organic food is definitely worth waiting for.
Thistledog's Farm 
your garden looks so great! I have some of those blossoms too, Lord knows what they’ll be when they grow up! If I were you I’d totally be skipping the dinner making, pouring some cereal and headed outside to much on outdoor veggies for dessert.
I skipped the dinnermaking tonight for sure, watched the twilight take over the sky and munched on a fresh-picked zuchinni. What more could I want?
Boy! Those veggies look luscious! I just got back from Floyd, where I arrived at the conclusion that a garden is not very likely for me – my property is way too densely forested. Tree-hugger that I am, I don’t want to clear an acre of forest just to have a garden – I’ll go the CSA route, I think. But I am thinking that I should investigate the permaculture concept of forest gardening. That might work….
Jeff that is what I would call a stellar idea, and there’s nothing wrong with supporting a CSA, either. Growing your own forages doesn’t have to mean rows of beans and corn and giant tomato plants in the sun. There’s a lot of food we displaced Europeans aren’t familiar with that could grow right under our noses with little assistance. Why work any harder than that?