Three on Thursday

Joining Carole and friends for Three on Thursday. Today marks my sixth anniversary of blogging, so I've got three things about Highly Reasonable to share with you. 

1.  I started blogging shortly before Ryan moved to Colorado in 2013. It honestly felt a bit like a death in the family (not to be overly dramatic!) so I thought that writing might help me better deal with the feelings of loss. The name came from a comment Ryan made when describing his high school trig. teacher as "highly reasonable". For some reason, I thought this was one of the highest compliments I had ever heard and wished that people might one day describe me as highly reasonable.

2.  I've published 970 posts, and you've been kind enough to comment an estimated 14,708 times. I'm proud of some of my posts, there are some I should probably have never hit "publish", but I can definitely say that this blog has provided me with so much more than I could ever have imagined.

3.  I've gained friendship, support, inspiration, ideas, book recommendations, and much more from all of you (my "imaginary friends" according to John). I've only met a few of you in person, but you're not imaginary at all to me. I write for myself, but always welcome the connections with each and every one of you. Thank you for taking your valuable time to read, comment, and be here!

Head on over to Carole's for more Three on Thursday thoughts.

Unraveled Wednesday

Joining Kat and friends for Unraveled Wednesday, with a Hitchhiker that's done except for the bind off. That will happen just as soon as I'm done mowing, working in the garden, and working in the kitchen on the garden produce. Then it's due for a good blocking which will probably happen next weekend in NJ as that's where all my blocking supplies are. I'm anxious to see how it looks in all its final glory!

Next up is a cast on of this lovely blank.

I haven't finished any books this week, but I can tell you that The Long Call is very good. All I'd really like to do is sit and finish it, but see above for the various interruptions keeping me from doing that. I forgot that summer isn't just a series of long, lazy days for reading and knitting, but rather a profusion of lawn, weeds, and garden plants that grow like a veritable jungle and have to be dealt with before they completely take over.

What are you making and reading this week?

Family Matters

We drove up to Mansfield Pennsylvania to spend a long weekend with John's older sister, her husband, their kids (my niece and nephew), and their kids. It was wonderful.

We ate lots of good food,

drank plenty of cocktails. (My SiL makes the best vodka & tonics.),

ate watermelon,

admired flowers growing in my SiL's garden,

picked blueberries at a place with far-ranging views,

built a dam,

and played in the creek.

It was a low-key weekend, but filled with fun, visiting, good talks, and the love of family. I hope your weekend was just as glorious!

Happy Fourth of July!

Joining Carole and friends for Three on Thursday, today with two fireworks photos and a video from last night. Our little town in NJ always does fireworks on July 3rd because it's cheaper than on the 4th! These photos are nothing great since I sat in my backyard and took them with my cell phone, but I still wish you a Happy Fourth of July, or Happy Thursday (if you're in Argentina like Justin happens to be). My real hope is that we can make a real change for the better in our country, with the administration, immigration, equal rights, and all the other constitutional rights that have been ignored and trampled upon over the last three years.

Head on over to Carole's for more Three on Thursday thoughts.

Unraveled Wednesday

Joining Kat and friends for Unraveled Wednesday. The Hitchhiker looks pretty much the same as it did last week so I won't subject you to yet another picture of it, but I do have a rapidly shrinking blank to show that I am still making slow but steady progress. 

I will be done some day, and to be honest, I enjoy the process of unraveling and re-knitting. I have another sock blank that I got during the same Loopy Ewe trip, so I'm thinking that I might just start on that one next. 

Reading has been satisfying this week. I finished After the End, which was good, but emotional. The real star for me was Olive, Again. Olive Kitteridge has aged, but she's also gained empathy and compassion in the 11 years since Elizabeth Strout first wrote about her. I found lots of honesty in this collection of interconnected stories, and I think it may well be one of my favorites this year. I also started listening to Why We Sleep (nonfiction that is exactly what the title states) and The Long Call, the first entry in a new mystery series from Ann Cleeves. I'm reveling in all the great books I've been reading recently (and up next, Middlemarch)!

What are you making and reading this week?

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I'll be away for the Fourth of July, visiting my SiL, along with my niece, nephew, and a two year old great-nephew from New Mexico that I haven't yet met, but am very much looking forward to. I hope you all have a wonderful long weekend, and I'll see you back here on Monday or Tuesday.

What's Blooming?

I'm in my second heavenly week here in NJ, which means I've got time to take leisurely walks around the yard and see what's blooming. I'm usually only here for a day and a half on weekends, with no extra time to appreciate what's growing and blooming here (and not much time for weeding, either!) Here's what's blooming in the beginning of July:

A rainy spring has been good for the hydrangeas. Some are in their full bluetiful bloom,

and others are just beginning to show their beauty.

When we had a fenced-in vegetable garden here in NJ, I had two sections planted with columbines, poppies, purple cone flowers, and black-eyed-susans. The garden is now in MD, and the fence is down in NJ, but that means the flowers can spread and grow unfettered. They're starting to look a bit wild, but I'm happy to let them grow, at least until we get a couple dump truck loads of topsoil and fill in the old garden.

The poppies have frilly pink flowers and interesting seed heads. I'm trying to dry them for some poppy seeds, but it's been a wet summer and this week looks like more of the same.

There are a few roses left after the initial June profusion, but many of them are being chewed to bits by Japanese beetles. Here's the one that I found that hadn't been attacked ... yet.

And then there are the day lilies. I'll admit that I usually take these for granted, but when I took the photo I admired them in all their stages (bud, bloom, and withering) along with the grasses that are growing rampant in the bed.

Thanks for coming along with me on my walkabout!

A Profusion of Produce

John came home to NJ from MD on Friday, and he brought some gifts from the garden - five gallons of string beans and 2.5 gallons of snow peas. The garden has produced so much more than we ever got in NJ, probably because we don't have persistent fungus, juglones from our neighbor's huge oak tree, and vegetable-munching critters in MD. This is mainly a good thing, but I do have to preserve this produce as it's much more than we can eat now.

So I spent an hour or two trimming the ends of the beans and peas, and then got ready to blanch it all in preparation for freezing. Boil water in the blancher, place vegetables in boiling water for four-five minutes, then stop the process in ice water, drain the vegetables, pack into freezer bags, and put in the freezer, repeat for three hours until all the beans and peas are done.

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble

Green beans chilling out in the sink

Funny bean/snow pea hybrid

Beans in bags

Yellow beans  (with a few errant green ones) relaxing in ice water

Yellow beans piled high in the colander

I'm glad to be done with this chore as it was long, hot, and tedious. I accidentally mislabeled most of the bags with 6/20, but I'm fairly sure we'll have all these eaten before 2020 and next year's garden rolls around, so I'm not correcting the date.

I had my knitting on the kitchen table so I could attempt a few stitches during the four minute boiling period, and I was struck by how well it matched the profusion of produce I was dealing with. (It's the little things!)