our never-ending bounty

from about july through september, it would be absolutely impossible to go hungry around here. from squash, to zucchini, to corn, to a variety of different peppers, to watermelons, to okra... okay, you get the point, we grow a lot of stuff. in addition to a garden large enough to feed three families for a year, we also have bees. a few weeks ago chris and i spent about seven hours stealing honey from the bees, straining it to remove little pieces of the comb, and then pouring it in jars. in the end, we'd taken off about 130 pounds of honey which translates to several boxes of honey in two closets. and you wanna know a secret? i don't even like honey! it's still neat to know that the honey in our cabinet isn't from the grocery store!

last night chris and i took a walk to the garden to get some green bell peppers to use with dinner and also came home with a lot of tomatoes and a few ears of sweet corn. luckily, i do like what we pick from the garden, so i don't mind smelling like an armpit for that work. most all of the tomatoes are regular and round, but occasionally one will be kind of wonky, or even heart-shaped like this one!

although my summer has been fun, it's also been work. but at least it's yielded some pretty good rewards (with the exception of honey, of course). gardening aside, i've spent my morning sewing, and i'll spend my evening talking about mudbound! that's right, it's book club night again! i was a little nervous about mudbound as it's hillary jordan's first novel, and sometimes firsts aren't the best, but this book was great. i'll say though, if you're considering it, the accuracy with which she portrays racism in 1940's mississippi is kind of disturbaing and upsetting, but it's a part of history, and she does an amazing job of story-telling. have you read any good books lately?