Blessed Cool Down and getting Stateside!

The horrid heatwave has broken (at least for now!).  The temps have been 90 or lower , with lows in the 60's and even upper 50's.  I've noticed Dolly is starting to get her winter hair (coat) growing, early this year.  The younger bovines have been ornery with the cooler weather as well.

The garden is still going strong.  We've gotten lots more food canned, days off from work translates into getting more work done here!

We've canned so much from our plentiful bounty that we are raiding the garage for canning jars stored in boxes.  But we are discovering we are low on pints, and we have lots of the big Blue jars that take the old zinc lids. 
A good surprise is I ran across a bunch of my half-gallon jars (been wondering where they 'went') that I use for milk.  I acquired these when we lived in Texas; a lady at a local fleamarket found them for me-they were like new. 

Most of my jars have been given to me over the years, I always ask "Are you sure?" hoping they'll use them for themselves.  Many people don't can anymore, they say it is too much work.  :(  That's OK, they know how to do it (skills!!) if the need arises! :)

Jared is slowly working his way home!  I'm not sure exactly when he'll be Stateside, but at least he's kind of-sort of working on it along with all the fellows in his Platoon.  We are excited that he is in less danger now and hopefully in a week or so will be able to get to see him. Woo-hooo!! :-)   

Kyle is still working alot, he gets to help move his girlfriend into college later this week.

This is some of the peaches we canned from our tree--the branches were hanging so low I had to move my electric fence out further.  It's a July Elberta (I had to look on the tag!) and they are very sweet and tasty!  They have a white flesh; all of our other peaches are more of a traditional peach color.

Our young pear tree has 10 pears on it this year, it's first year for producing fruit.  Next year it will be interesting to see how many we get!  Our apple trees didn't produce this year (all younger trees) but we are hoping next year we'll get some fruit.  Our newest Apple tree additions are doing great.....with some TLC! ;-)

Patrick and I have been canning, watering, mowing and keeping up with day-to-day 'stuff'.  We have plenty of projects to keep us busy....One of these days we'll (finally) get to work on the garage roof.  It's a long overdue project!