Another nice sunny day but will be too hot to work outside this afternoon,  In the shade on the front porch it is 78 degrees now at 10 a.m. so by afternoon it will be well into the 80’s and very little breeze.  In Nashville and other low lying areas it will hit 90 today.  I did some more sewing while Norman was out for his walk, he does that every day for his heart.  Then right after breakfast I pulled all of the rest of the beets, Norman washed them in the set tub out by the garden and I picked out the poor leaves, cut off the beets and gave the leave a last wash.  Norman got to work right away blanching the greens and chilling them while I dried them a little and packaged them and put them in the big freezer.  We got three quarts chucked full for the freezer and one steamer full for dinner.  One steamer full will make one quart when it is cooked, one quart goes two meals for us as we have so many other vegetables and I am not much for greens –  greens are Norman’s favorite vegetable so we have one kind or another every day we can.  Then I washed up the beets I cut off the greens and the biggest ones I put them on a towel on a cookie sheet and put those in the freezer.   The smaller ones I will scape and put on the cookie sheet with cut up sweet potatoes and a couple small white potatoes put olive oil and herbs on and bake for dinner.  Then with the left overs from yesterday dinner will be ready at noon.    This afternoon I need to finish pulling the peas, sorting and cleaning those and freeze a package of peas.  Then one day this week Norman will hand cultivate the kitchen garden and plant bush beans.   Last year they went well in this garden and nothing ate them so hopefully  they will do as well this year.  It is so nice getting in two crops each year.

As I sit here in the living room writing this I am watching the humming birds at the feeds next to the porch and I looked just across the driveway to the woods on the other side and watched a snake wind his way up the banking.  I don’t know what kind it was but it was black and not too big.  There are rattlers here as we have had a couple but they stay out of your way and if you bother them they give a rattle to let you know- then you just stop and they go on their way.  They are very good to keep the mice and mole population down and very good at giving people a wide berth.

I just went out onto the porch to show you what I was looking at.  There is a bench on the porch and I sat there to take the picture of the feeder, I took several but could not get a humming bird at the feeder.  When I click a picture with this laptop it gives a three second countdown- as soon as the bird hears the first ding he take off and is gone before the picture clicks but any  ways you can see how close the feeder is to the house and the driveway right up next to the steps and the banking on the other side where I watched the snake.  Good I like snakes!!  Time now to cook dinner.  Have a great day.