Peaches

Hello...
Hi...
It's me.
Do you remember me?
I used to write on this blog, and then I stopped, and then I started writing posts about promises to write more posts. But never writing them.
Remember?
Summer is over, and I am depressed. Everyone is going back to school and the pool is going to close.
My garden is kicking my butt currently.
Yeah, yeah, I know. I promised to write about my garden. But I still haven't loaded the pictures... so you just have to read.

So Everette and I started EVERYTHING from seeds this year...
broccoli, lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, chinese cabbage,a kajillion herbs etc.
We started them in our basement, in peat pots, with grow lights. Everything started off great. We had sprouts growing out of almost every pot. We were happy. we watered and watched. We were proud. We were self-sufficient, we were earthy, we were saving money!
And then..
BAM!
Out of nowhere, for no reason, things started dying. Just fallng over, and those that didn't die, they just stopped growing. Our dwarfy cucumber sprouts had blossoms. Our tomatoes stalled out. They didn't die, but they refused to grow. Blight. pestilence. plague.
We were sad, we were depressed, we were down. But we were NOT OUT! We were out a bunch of money, however.
So spring came and Bennetts and they had plants.. and we had a gift card!
We bought tomato plants, pepper plants, watermelon plants, and katatoes (Jonathan speak for potatoes).
We planted salvaged broccoli, and reseeded some lettuce, and more herbs and we watered. and we waited, and we weeded, and we watched, and we weeded some more.
And they grew! and they grew!!! and grew!
We planted 9 tomato plants, and  a bunch of cucumbers. Green beans, sugar snap peas, lettuce and swiss chard and spinach, the afore mentioned broccoli, onion, strawberries, peppers:sweet and hot, zucchini (died), watermelon, and a large variety of herbs.
We are also experimenting with a small patch of potatoes and carrots at my grandmothers house. Since those crops tend to be lower maintenance.
and so far things have been pretty good.
I have done some canning (can we talk about stressful-too many irons in the fire): tomatoes, apple jelly, and today... peaches!!
There is a local place Annie's Orchard that grows u-pick strawberries, blueberries, peaches, and grapes (and maybe even more). I haven't made it this year until the peaches.
I went today and picked two varieties of peaches. I picked over 60 lbs of peaches. alone. in less than 30 minutes. I also drug 60 lbs of peaches to the cashier and to my car... alone.  Then I spent the next several hours blanching and cutting, and packing, and canning large quantities of peaches. And I still have two more boxes!
I am tired.
Tomorrow I am helping my sister work on her new totally awesome house. Then Tuesday I am headed to IKEA in Chicago.
Then I am guessing I will be dealing with peaches again after that. Hopefully going to get another trip into the swimming pool.