The Year We Grew A Beet

This is the year of the beet.  Literally.  I grew a single beet.

I had planted two packages of seeds, but none of them grew - except for one mammoth beet.  The thing is, we are not especially big beet lovers.  We like a few pickled beets each summer, and that's about all. I'm never quite sure why I plant as many beets as I do, but perhaps this summer I got it right.  We had just enough beet to make this big bowl of pickled beets.  Yes, you got it right... that one beet made this big bowl of pickled beets.

One beet.

It was a weekend of dramatic skies.  All bluster, no muster. 

 All bark, no bite.  Clouds came and went.  Storms passed us by. 

 (Actually a tenth of an inch fell sometime Saturday night... enough to wet the grass, but not the ground.) We are parched.

What a wouldn't give for a good, ole-fashioned afternoon thunderstorm.  I remember them well, as a kid.  I'd be at the local swim club and the sky would grow dark.  Thunder rumbled, and the whistles blew.  "Everyone out of the pool!"  We'd huddle together under the bathhouse overhand, waiting for the storm to pass.  It would thunder and lightening and buckets of rain would fall.... all in the span of a half hour.  The earth would be drenched, before the sun would come back out again.  And when it did... we all jumped back in the pool.  

This happened every year... and several times each summer. 

 This summer?  Nada.  Sure, we had plenty of rain during the spring months and everything grew like crazy.  But, now - during these hot, dog days of summer we are dry as a bone.  It seems as though the  storm clouds part and go around our obvious no-fly zone - depositing their liquid gold on other lands, but not ours.

I think the humidity is the only thing saving our grass.  We awaken to heavy dew and moisture hanging heaving in the air.  As soon as the suns rays hit the land, however, it is dry once more.

We had a visit from my son and his kids... The Littles.  

We spent a little time playing at the barn... picking garden goodies.  How they love to harvest produce.  Some we bring home.

Some are eaten on the spot.

Yet others are taken up to the chickens as a treat.

The rest of our weekend was a quiet one... a little garden work - pulling the last of Spring's sugar peas and saving the seeds to plant another crop of them,

 trimming sheep hoofs (an easier task when they are napping in the heat),

and the usual farm chores... picking up hitchhikers 

and navigating traffic jams.

Oh... and dealing with a tomato explosion!

Good news:  Gus has finally decided that he can live outside of the hayloft and now comes down to greet me each morning.  He has even followed me into the garden.  He is one big, fat, sweetheart of a cat.  Seriously, he has a giant Buddha belly. 

 I can barely pick him up to hold him.  Gus is not one of the little black feral kittens that came to live with us a few years back.  Gus appeared here on the farm this past winter... and decided to stay.  It doesn't look as though we will ever have a shortage of barn kitties!