The Mountain Thymes

We've had a sweet preview of fall with two mornings in the high 50's.  Now that Barb is retired in Georgia,  she and I text each other from our porches in the morning comparing temperatures and hummingbird activities.  According to the Farmers Almanac, for every fog in August there will be a snowfall. She and Mike have had more foggy mornings than we've had on the mountain.  Since pickling the okra together, we've both been trying new recipes and pickling up a storm.  Barb's bread and butter pickles and her yellow beans. Today I pickled cauliflower and carrots and made Italian pasta sauce with fresh picked basil.  The basil grew wonderfully this year.  No mold, no rot.  So much basil I froze some in olive oil cubes and just plain froze some single leaves that can be thrown in soups and sauces during the winter. My green and yellow bush beans are about done producing.  I assumed the leaves were being consumed by insects until I...

As part of my lazy hazy days of summer reading, I finished another David Baldacci novel but found I needed a rest from being chased, shot at, and escaping from within-an-inch of my life.  I needed a breather.  On the back of my running grocery list is a list of possible next reads.  Goodreads is a my go-to online site.  I research authors who write like.........., or authors who write about SC or NC, or lighthouse mysteries, or whatever I'm in the mood to read.  With list in hand, I returned the David Baldacci novel to the library, and began my quest for the next read, when I was diverted by a different author and title.  What We Keep by Elizabeth Berg caught my eye.  She wasn't on my author list but I was intrigued by her book covers.  This happens often to me.  I'll look up a word in the dictionary and get sidetracked by other interesting words or head down the grocery aisle looking for pasta and find myself reading labels on sardine cans....

This summer's been drier than normal.  On a positive note the tomatoes grew quite large without splitting from too much rain.  Our green and yellow beans continue to produce.  If I skip one morning's picking, the bushes are heavy with beans the next morning.  I've given some away to friends and neighbors, blanched and frozen ten quart bags, steamed them for our evening meals until Cliff says, "oh, beans again!"  I didn't know the yellow and green were going to be so bountiful.  Next year I'll pickle the green. Last Saturday Barb and I bought two pounds of okra and this morning we pickled in her kitchen. With fresh cut dill from the garden, garlic, mustard seeds, and hot apple cider vinegar, we tightly packed six jars with okra, poured the hot pickling brine into the jars and sealed them. We did this, had fun, all without popping the Cabernet cork. A couple of weeks ago when Barb and Mike were coming to dinner on the porch, I tried a n...

Yellow jackets are nesting in the ground and hovering around the sugar water in the hummingbird feeders.  They're annoying, not the hummingbirds, and irritating.  A yellow jacket ground nest was disrupted one night a few weeks ago, probably by a bear, on a path that I walk to the garden.  It's the time of year for the yellow jackets to prepare for the winter months.  As you know, I'm a DIY person, always researching a way to replicate a formula or find an alternate solution to a problem.  I do this  because there are so many natural non-toxic ways to solve problems that cost less.  My old stand-by is a shallow dish with the sugar/water solution and a drop of detergent to break the water surface so when the yellow jackets approach the sweet nectar they slip and fall into the dish and are unable to escape.  Annoying yellow jacket sipping sugar water from the side of the hummingbird feeder. BLAH!!!  Some days we find a hundred dead in the ...

I feel like a traitor.  We skipped our Murphy farmers market and drove to Blairsville to the Union County farmers market which offers much more than ours.  I don't know the reason behind the mayor not supporting our local market but each year fewer and fewer vendors set up at the L & N Depot.  Seven-and-a-half years ago vendor tents surrounded the depot building and filled the paved parking area.  There were at least a half-dozen different tents with farm produce, an area set aside for small livestock and poultry sales, pottery, and many other crafts.  Now on a good Saturday, there's less than half of what there used to be.  The Union County market has three open buildings with ninety sites where vendors back their vehicles up to their covered site and sell tailgate style or set up at tables.  I found "Bring Home the Bakin' " which is all gluten free baked goods.  I bought two scones and lemon square.  Mmmmmmm!   We met Barb and...

Sometime around the third week of July we notice that the hummingbirds' behavior deteriorates.  They become more territorial and combative.  When I sit out with my coffee, the morning usually begins with one very bold hummingbird fluttering in my face before going to the feeder.  Afternoons are entertaining as the four or five expend their energy darting and chasing each other away from the multiple feeders.  We watch as one hummingbird perches its teeny feet on a bare thin branch with its head bobbing frantically in all directions daring the others to land on his feeder.  They chitter and flutter their feathers generating the noises we hear.  The other day I happened to be at the kitchen window when two were in a heavy chase and the male embedded his beak into the screen mesh.  He struggled for about 15 seconds while the other bird hovered in mid-air watching before the male freed his beak.  We were concerned that he would damage his beak...