October Happenings

It seems like the sweet potatoes want to harvest themselves. The last few days that I've been out to the garden I've found one or two sticking their faces out of the ground, begging to be harvested. I pulled this one yesterday. Although it came from the same bed as the first one with all of the little beasties inside of it, this one seems to be unoccupied, and a good thing that is because I can't wait to try it.
The tomatoes are cracking on the vine and just not turning red. I don't think it's warm enough. I've brought them inside, but they're mottling instead of turning color nice and uniformly. I'll give them a bit before I write them off completely, but it doesn't look promising as of now.

The garlic has arrived. Sadly, a lot of my garlic rotted away after the first month or so once harvested. I had them in a dry place, but it just wasn't to be. There's such a vast difference in the taste of the garlic from the garden and the store garlic that it's worth it to try over and over again, even if it doesn't store as I would like. This year I may try to dehydrate some of it so it can store longer. I've been enjoying the dehydrated tomatoes so much in soups, eggs etc. It's amazing that they maintain their tart flavor.

This weekend we had two heartwrenching emergencies. We went down to my mother's house Saturday - about 45 minutes south - and had just pulled off the highway on our way home when the girl screamed out she forgot her teddy there. We go nowhere without teddy. Nowhere. And now we were four miles from home. She did a good job of calming down when Mom texted back a picture of Teddy having a 'sleep over' with some of her other toys there and the boy gave her a teddy of his to substitute and told her of the times he left things at Omi's. She calmed down nicely then. She did. The boy snuck up to me later and said he wanted to cry as well because he was having a "dramatic flashback." I asked if this flashback was 'replete with onomatopoeia" (something he's said before). It wasn't, according to him, so I maintained it couldn't be that bad then, and they both went to sleep. Today we'll likely meet up for lunch and exchange the goods being that we have no school and the children don't have the sense God gave them to sleep beyond 5:30 AM, even on a federal holiday. UnAmerican, I tell you.

Then, I had an emergency of my own. I just finished reading The Winter Sea on my Kindle yesterday - good read, by the way. Very good read. The next book I wanted to read was on my Nook....

and BOTH of them needed charging. BOTH of them. Thank goodness after a 15 minute boost, the small one was ready to read on while the other contined charging. *phew* crisis averted here as well. There's got to be an e-reader's anonymous to join. There really has to be, but if forgotten teddys and uncharged e-readers are the biggest worries I have, my life is pretty good I must say.

The custom ordered scotty dog ribbon came in this week and I was able to finish the lanyard order from last week. I don't know about where you guys are, but it seems like everyone around here is lanyard crazy. I got so many requests for Keychains for a Cause to start making them, that I started a while ago and the orders keep coming, which makes me very happy!

This weekend I also shifted hats from fundraising for Relay for Life to attending a local 5K and selling keychains to help raise money for a local child's medical bills. I was only there for four hours, but it was nice to be able to hand the father all of the proceeds from sales right then and there. Here's two that were special ordered at that event that I'll ship out tomorrow.

Next week is our first two day festival in Auburn, GA. I'm optimistically hopeful that we'll do well.

The morning comes early - even on a federal holiday. Sweet gardening dreams.