Carrot Bounty

The Bag Lady must be slowing down in her old age. She and the Rancher dug carrots and beets yesterday, and she decided she needed to scrub the carrots before she stored them (she knows that isn't exactly the proper procedure, but it has worked for her in the past.) It took her the entire afternoon to clean and bag the carrots! She didn't even get around to doing anything with the beets. Sigh.
She did manage to turn her hands orange (apparently you don't have to actually ingest the carrots, Sagan, to turn body parts orange!) from handling so many carrots. She had a bumper crop this year. In spite of the fact that she had already used quite a lot of the row, and had given away a lot, and had made several jars of dilled carrots .... oops, she promised someone she wouldn't mention that.... sorry, Sparrow! -- she still had a very large pile of carrots to deal with. (Approximately 30 lbs, she estimates.)


She has them all stowed away in the extra fridge, and will be sharing them with friends and family (and perhaps even strangers...) and eating carrots, raw and cooked, or carrot cake, carrot pudding, carrot.... whatever, for some time to come!

Taking It to the Next Level?

The Bag Lady stopped at the General Store on her way home from work yesterday and had a chat with the new owner. He and his young staffer are really starting to play out - the store is open long hours, and he has, unexpectedly, found himself with just the two of them trying to run it. He had a couple of others working for him, but one of them moved away because her husband was transferred and the other left to start her own business!

Of course, the Bag Lady has a very soft head heart, so when she saw how tired he looked, she said that she could probably find a few spare hours to help out. She needs these next couple of days to try to get her garden harvested and the bounty of said garden dealt with, and then she will put in a couple of hours at the store most days in order to take some of the pressure off him and the young woman working for him.

Consequently, she didn't get home until after 5 pm. Imagine her surprise when she carried her load of groceries in the door and saw the table set (for three) and potatoes baking in the oven, corn husked and ready for the pot and hamburgers ready for the pan! The Rancher helped bring in the rest of her purchases, and she asked if the Princess now warranted her own place at the table.

The Rancher had invited his mom up for supper (the Bag Lady had guessed that already) and she and the Bag Lady were perfectly content to sit and watch while he prepared the entire meal. She hopes you all understand how rare an event this was - the Rancher has worked such long hours over the years the Bag Lady has been with him that he has seldom had the opportunity to cook. Fortunately, he hasn't really forgotten how even though he sometimes pretended that he had!!

So the Bag Lady, already very much a slacker in the blogging department, will probably be even worse about getting to visit everyone's blog and make her customary brilliant and witty inane comments, but she will do her best to keep up with everyone and, although she may end up having to read more than one post when she gets there, she will be around to read about what's happening with everyone.

Ramblin'

The Bag Lady had big plans for an interesting post for you for today, but somewhere along the way, she forgot what she wanted to say.

She still feels like she's scrambling to try to get everything done that she wants to do, and finds that time seems to slip away much too fast for her to finish anything! There are still, apparently, 8,760 hours in a year, which sounds like a lot, but there never seems to be enough hours in the day. Not sure how that works.

She got a call from the new owner of the newly renovated old store in her community, asking her if she was interested in coming to work there! She wasn't sure what to say. After all, her present job is only part-time.... She could probably work a day or two here and there for him!

In the meantime, she has to work today, then has a couple days off in which she hopes to finish harvesting her garden - as long as the weather co-operates. She still has potatoes, beets, onions, carrots, turnips and corn to bring in. The tomatoes need to be picked, and there are peppers in pots on the deck that are ready. The weather has turned decidedly autumn-like, and there have been several nights when the temperature dipped below the freezing mark. She has been covering her tomatoes at night, trying to give them a little more time to mature, but that is getting old. It wasn't a good year for tomatoes, and they aren't very big. (Of course, if she had started them a little sooner than she did back in the spring, they'd be further along, wouldn't they?)

This is a bit of a rambly, disjointed post, and she apologizes. She hopes that some day she'll remember what it was she wanted to tell you.

Workin' It

The Bag Lady is off to work again this morning, but she thought she'd share a little peek into her work world with you!

In an effort to encourage the female lifeguards to keep their locker room from... well... smelling like a locker room, the manager had a decorator (who donated her time and expertise) make it a little more pleasant in appearance.

Here are a couple pictures of how it looks:


And here are a few of the towels the Bag Lady makes sure are always on hand:


Of course, on those hectic days when there are lots of swimming lessons, and lots of lifeguards on duty, the place doesn't exactly look this neat and tidy, in spite of the Bag Lady's best efforts! In fact, last night it looked like a tsunami went through - water everywhere and towels piled on every surface!

It didn't take long to put it back in order though, and the Bag Lady is off to do it all again today!

Home-Grown Goodness

As most of you know, the Bag Lady lives on a ranch, raises cattle and has a wee garden. She delights in eating well (as evidenced by her ever-expanding arse) and nothing thrills her more than being able to say that everything on her plate was home-grown.

Well, she discovered there actually IS something that pleases her more than saying that everything on her plate was home-grown. Even better is when she can say that everything on her plate was home-grown, and the Rancher cooked it for her!!


He decided last night that he should barbecue some steaks for supper. Then he went out into the garden and brought in some corn (perhaps he heard the whispering, too!) and some potatoes.

Here is what he put on the Bag Lady's plate:



It was delicious, and the Bag Lady was really, really full after eating most of it! (She couldn't quite finish it all, but the Princess was more than willing to take up the slack!)

After the dishes were done, the Rancher, the Bag Lady and the Princess took advantage of the fabulous weather and went for a walk out in the pasture. The leaves are starting to turn, but the temperature was still in the high 20's (Celsius) (around 80F) at 7 pm.


And the Bag Lady's flower pots are still blooming nicely, too:

The Bag Lady has had a couple days off work, but returns tonight on evening shift. She didn't get as much done as she would have liked, but everyone needs to goof off a little once in awhile and enjoy the warm weather while it lasts, right?

Whispers of Autumn

The Bag Lady was working in her garden the other day, and the corn was whispering to her.

The wind rustling through the dry stalks of corn was saying "autumn is coming, autumn is coming"....

Hard to tell yesterday, though. It was 30C (85F)! And today is supposed to be just as hot. That is a little unusual for this time of year is this neck of the woods.

The Bag Lady is not complaining, though. The weather will be cold soon enough. She has been hard at work on several little projects - she has today off work, and wants to finish up a few things around the house. She also needs to finish harvesting her garden, but the weather is supposed to hold for a few more days, so she'll leave the garden for awhile yet. And do her best to ignore the corn whispers.

Happy Birthday, Little Sister!

The Bag Lady's "little" sister, Reb, who blogs over at Sibu Pegasus Power, is celebrating her birthday today. Scoot on over there and wish her all the best, won't you?


(she's the little cutie on the right!)

Hope you have a great day, sis!