Barely Time for Quilting

I must keep up my quilting -- our house payment depends on it! But right now I have been totally distracted by gardening! I love to garden and that passion has spilled over into creating a community garden on our church property. First it just started out as an idea, next thing you know, I'm in charge of a team of 12, and spending a ton of time working on plans for the garden. It's fun, but really cutting into my quilting time. The amount of time it has taken to get things up and running has been just hours and hours. Today I went to look at another church's community garden. It was beautiful. The thought of helping someone else garden and have a place to garden brings a great deal of joy. I'll just have to stay up later and get up earlier to get my quilting time in!

Carrots

The last of my garden produce is in. It was the carrots. I planted three short rows of carrots and then let some tomato plants grow up around them. The tomatoes looked like they had smothered the carrots. When the tomatoes were pulled out last weekend I could see lots of carrot tops. So today I got them all out of the garden. It was a pleasant surprise to see how well they had grown. Of course, there's always the mutant carrots. Those that seem to take on some alien shape or often remind me of some body part! I washed them all up, dried them on the counter and then put them in plastic bags in the garage refrigerator. They should last for months in the cool temperature. Some will probably be canned next week. I love to can just about anything so I can't resist canning a few of them. If nothing else the beauty of orange carrots in jars adds to the colors already on my pantry shelves.

I have enjoyed gardening more this year than any year. Hours were spent planning, cultivating, pulling weeds and harvesting more than ever before. The best part was that almost nothing went to waste. I canned over 200 different jars of produce. Come winter there will be much satisfaction from opening what has been home grown.