Decided to bring my blog back to where I started, name-wise anyway. A sort of rediscovering my roots and starting over with added knowledge and perhaps trying an alternate path to the one I found myself on.

Pixie is back to school on Tuesday, I’m done for my semester on Thursday and have a week and a half off to do nothing but job hunt. This has been the worst summer for finding work, I’m hoping the autumn brings me better luck because getting hosed in child support has made our situation go from really bad to worse. All I want is to be able to get by and complete my last 11 months of school, work study through school has been a joke…3 months and still nothing.

The garden harvest has been odd. This summer brought weather not conducive to tomatoes and cucumbers, all of our cucumbers failed miserably and the tomatoes are all still green. Squash on the other hand is overly abundant, we’ll have winter squash to last us years were it to last, dozens of acorn, baby blue hubbard and one other kind (I forget what I planted) in addition to lots of pumpkins, most are small and not fit for anything more than decoration but I’ve two Rouge Vif D’Etampes that have done well. The small ones are beautifully shaped and would make ideal jack o’lanterns were they larger, instead I’ll use some of the baby blue hubbards to make some “neep heads” for October decorating. Should the lovely pumpkins grow a bit more I could use them in cooking, not holding my breath though.

Corn is coming along, the stalks are 8 or 9 feet tall thanks to chicken manure and the abundant rains of the season. Pixie and I harvested the last of the potatoes yesterday, we planted fingerling-French and Red Finn Apple. The Red Finns are a weird looking tuber, bumpy and lumpy in a sort of weird, diseased looking way that is unappetizing to me so we’ll not grow them again next year. The French Fingerlings, as always, are beautiful and did very well.

The chickens are doing well, haven’t started molting yet though. Pixie has taken over feeding and letting them out each morning. Once sunset gets earlier she’ll be closing them up as well. My brother suggested paying her an allowance to motivate her but mean old mama opted for pure and simple blackmail-they are her chickens and if she wants to keep them then she has to tend them. Working so far.

August has flown by so quickly…it’s one of my least favorite months so I’m glad in a way…Hoping September (historically a crappy month for me despite it being my birthmonth) is the best so far, ready for good luck to come set up shop with us.