Last of the summer days.......

Yesterday was a busy day but a really beautiful one too. My friend called and asked if I wanted to go mushrooming but she had such a busy day planned, I said to her, how will you squeeze this in too? Why don't we do it another day? I had already planned on doing some canning so I couldn't leave till it was done anyway. And so if the weather holds, we will go mushrooming on Friday. She said there's Oyster mushrooms out now. I also saw on a local mycological  site that Chantrelles are starting to come out too.  We started doing this last year together after a friend of hers taught her what to look for. I love hiking in her woods anyway and often take my camera with me so this should be fun.
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 A friend gave me these tomatoes the other day. She doesn't eat many of them and I use a lot for sauce. So I skinned them and cooked them down to can the next day. And so yesterday I finished the laundry, cleaned up the kitchen and made my list of bills to pay once the man got paid. I canned 8 qts and one pt. of plain tomato sauce to use for cooking from that pile of tomatoes I got from my friend. She goes to the local grocery outlet to get things they cannot sell anymore, to feed her chickens. But we found that we can often get food that still really good to use for ourselves. Since she doesn't eat tomatoes and her chickens don't like them much, she gave them to me. There were many prepacked bags and in each maybe one tomato was going bad. So I sorted it out and I think I may have gotten 15 lbs or so of really beautiful ones. And it was free !

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As I was canning I thought to myself that wow its getting hot in the house. I just thought it was the steam from the canner. That usually happens. The last few days have been cool and windy and very fall like with fog in the mornings too. I had that one gorgeous beach day and thought that was summers last fling. But I was wrong. I went to open up my doors to let some cool air in , and there wasn't any. It was still, and very warm outside. And so I changed into shorts cuz I was dying and opened every door and window in the house, hoping for some relief. It didn't help at all. But it was a beautiful clear day outside, summer wasn't over just yet.
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I didn't know what to make for dinner. I was out of everything here and the man got paid. So I had to wait till he got home to go to the store. I decided to make Chinese Chicken Salad and the man wasn't too sure he would like that. Hes eaten it many times but I haven't made it in a very long time. I often made dinner salads when we lived in Ca. because it was so hot. Ive forgotten about it living here where its cool and rainy most of the time. And so I went shopping for the ingredients, a few other things we needed and as a treat, some ice cream! It turned out to be the perfect meal for a warm nite like this was.
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I got a surprise from my daughter too for my birthday. She told me something was coming this week but it would be late. The dog went nuts barking today and I shushed her. Then I remembered what my daughter said and went out to the porch. Good thing I did as it was a very warm day and these would have melted. Had one after my lunch already , YUM!
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After having a very nice dinner...I sat down to watch TV . We eat rather late cuz the man gets home, showers (does construction) and has some coffee and relaxes. And I wandered thru the channels to see what was on....and there wasn't much. I barely watch it anymore. X Factor was on and I swore I wouldn't watch that show after last yrs mess. But nothing else was on and I caught one of the singers in the middle of a song, she was really good. And so I watched till the end. Perhaps this yr. will be better. I heard Simon was changing some things to improve it. I hope so.

But the last singer got on stage. She could relate to one of the judges who apparently made a song about being bullied. They had a lot in common and the girl sang her song.....she was really good and put so much heart and feeling in the song that it brought everyone to tears. The audience was on their feet and crying.....and even old hard nosed Simon was choked up. You never see him like that. But  I sat there watching and cried too. It was an awesome moment and I realized that this is the sort of GOOD things I like to see on TV. So Ill see how the season goes , I may continue to watch.
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As I sat there in the dark watching tv....I heard soft summer sounds from my open windows.........and I could smell Mother Earth even. It was so strong it pulled me from the tv to look outside. I realized it was 9pm and I still had all my doors and windows open. For those of you who live where you get hot summers, its probably nothing new to you. I grew up in NJ and lived in CA. too so I remember nites like that. But now I live in the PNW and around dinner time along the coast here, the clouds move in and in an instant you can feel the temperature change. Usually at that time I start to shut the windows because it gets too cold then. But it wasn't till after 9 last nite that I had to do that. In fact it wasn't even very cold but I knew the night air gets damp and sets off my allergies.

And so I shut them all ........except the sliding door in my bedroom. It gets hot in there cuz we close the bedroom door to keep the dog in. As I lay in bed last nite......listening to the night sounds, I looked up at the sky light over my bed and saw stars above me. This was one of those rare beautiful summer nights. Tomorrow is supposed to be hot too and then the rain and such will be back. I intend to pay close attention to this last day, this last gasp of summer. Once the rains starts.......there's very few sunny days again .....till it starts a new yr.