spacealien_vamp | Feeling the crush

It's amazing how things get backlogged when one takes a nearly three-week vacation.

First of all, I had a lovely time visiting my family in Michigan. I had a chance to see all of my brothers and their children. We also did lots of activities, including a trip to Frankenmouth (where I spent a chunk of money on yarn and knitting supplies), a campfire with roasted marshmallows (for the non-vegetarians), a piñata filled with little presents for everyone, a trip to the movies, and several board games.

After the family visit, my parents and I drove down to Indianapolis for Gen Con, the world's largest board gaming convention. (Essen may vie for top attendance, but technically it's a trade show and not a convention.) I also visited a couple more yarn shops along the way and spent gobs more money. (But, see, yarn is squishable and can fit in my luggage. Board games, sadly, are not.) I got to see some friends at the convention, and I played a bunch of games. I participated in the math trade, where I traded out a bunch of items from my collection that I never use in order to get some new (to me) games to try.

By the time I got home on August 6th, the garden had entered prime harvest season. First up were the grapes. I have an Early Concord vine that was super productive this year. I spent hours across two weekends harvesting, cleaning, and juicing the grape harvest. I gave a couple quarts away to neighbors, took some in to work to share, kept a quart in the refrigerator for myself, and canned the rest. This was all from one vine. I have two more rooted cuttings that were too young to produce this year, but they will probably start next year.

It has been suggested that I should start turning some of the grape juice into wine...

Then the beans were ready. They didn't fare as well as I had hoped--a combination of being invaded by a beagle during the growing season and not getting watered while I was gone--but there was still a fair amount of work involved in harvesting, shelling, and sorting them all. Once that was done, the weather had warmed up enough to get the figs going. Even with the predations of wild animals, I am still getting a bowl full of figs every day, and those need to be sliced and dehydrated for storage (or given away to neighbors and coworkers).

Last weekend I got my first good crabapple crop. I processed them into a delightful pink sauce. The regular apples are just starting to blush red. They should be ready to pick over the next couple weeks.

All of these harvesting activities have to be squeezed into my free time, which I have less of than usual, because we are approaching the end of the fiscal year. The people at work who normally take all the overtime jobs are now reaching the cap, which means they are no longer allowed to have overtime assignments. Someone still has to do the work, so they draft people for the jobs. I generally don't work much overtime during the rest of the year, so I'm near the top of the list for getting drafted. In particular, I get drafted to process the late-night flights at the Oakland airport. It's not what one might call HARD work, but it does involve driving across the Bay in the dark and not getting home until past midnight, sometimes as late as 2am. This will continue until either A) I earn enough money not to be on the top of the list anymore, or B) everyone resets on October 1.

In the meantime, I try to work on the yard in spurts, between catching up on sleep and starting some knitting projects with all the new yarn I bought.