"I love deadlines..."

...goes the Douglas Adams quote.  "I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."  Joking aside, I do work well with deadlines; self-imposed ones work all right, but external ones kick my butt in gear.

I have several major projects that I really need to work on right now, some of you will know what they are.  :)  I'm very excited about all of them, but it does mean that I need to not spend as much time on the computer.  I need to reduce my Facebook habit to visiting, say, just once a week, my blog posting to maybe once a month, and my blog reading to approximately the same frequency.  I'll really miss reading your blogs; I'm so inspired by all my creative blogging friends, but I need my 9 hours of sleep a day and I need to cut back somewhere.

Before I take a break to tackle my projects, I'll leave you with some home and garden photos.  We bought a 27 gallon pot from Lehman's last year because we were tired of using up all four burners to cook tomato sauce every time we canned.   See a normal large sized pot next to it for comparison:

For the cherry and grape tomatoes we harvest, we like to dry them in the dehydrator. We did 4 or 5 (lost count) dehydrator-full of them. I think we'll have enough sundried tomatoes to last us 5 years.
Our basil harvest this year has been less than spectacular. We had a decent first harvest (made about 8 pints of pesto), but this second harvest was pathetic.  It's been a dry, dry summer.

Our yellow raspberries have also not fared well in the dryness.  Still, we got a tasty few, some of which are here on a rice pudding I made:

The first squash plants were decimated by vine borers, but the second growing has been spectacular!

Dh weeded and mulched the blueberries and it now looks pretty good.

Glutted with cukes, as usual.  So, we made a ton of pickles.  Used the mandolin to slice them up.  That thing scares me.  Dh's cousin had to go to ER after slicing herself on it.

But don't these look yummy? ;)

So, see you in a bit my friends...I'll be baaaaack before you know it!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams