Gardening

I had some sweet corn ready, so I decided to take care of that this morning.

 

These are the corn plants that produced so much corn.  

Unfortunately, the temperature was high and I got a little sick from the heat .  Cliff had to come inside too, shortly after I did.  The older we get, the less heat we can stand.  After I'd cooled off a little, I went ahead and boiled the corn, cut off the kernels, and froze two quarts of it, saving plenty out for tomorrow's dinner.  I had the water heating up for the corn when our daughter came over with some of her family, which included three children; they kept busy playing with toys in the living room with us.

Amara played with some of the few Little People things I kept around:  A house for Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, and Pluto

Great-grandson Ivan played with everything, including the water in the dog dish and the television controls.  He is one year old and starting to walk, but still crawls a lot because that's faster for him; he is into everything, and has a happy disposition and a ready smile.  He's a big chunk of a baby, and I'm surprised his legs can support him enough to walk!

Even Cliff got down in the floor to play with Amara

I took care of the corn while everybody was here.  I only planted small plots of corn, but now I'm dreading the next round, which will probably be ready in the next ten days and is over twice as much as my first two plantings.  That's a lot more corn to pick, boil, and freeze.

I surely hope it's a cool day when I do those three full rows.

You can hardly see the strawberry plants, but they are there!

I also ordered 25 strawberry plants from Maine, and just got them a couple of days ago.  Both of my knees were aching by the time I got done bending over to put them in the ground, and are still hurting.  I'm keeping them watered with a soaker hose, and they are green and already growing.

When the weeds overtook the flower bed in front of our house we destroyed the bed and planted grass there.  However, I dug up some of the things to put in back.  I was very happy to see this Hibiscus made it after the move.  My cousin Betty gave me the seed that resulted in this plant a few years ago; it was, and is, a favorite.  She called it red, although to me it looks more like a deep, dark pinkish-red color.  Either way, it's beautiful.

I'll plant turnips tomorrow:  

"The 25th of July, plant your turnips, wet or dry; 

Harvest the 25th of October, drunk or sober."

I googled this little pitiful verse just now and found out President Truman tried to establish July 25 as Missouri Turnip Day.  It's an interesting little story you can read HERE.