I'm a weed pulling maniac, people

Even though I've cut the size of the garden down by about 1/4 this summer compared to last summer, it's still honkin big.  But, unlike last year, we're actually living in our house during the first month of the garden this time, which makes it much easier to get out there and weed.  Angel #4 has a daily weeding quota she must meet each day in order to do anything else like going places with friends or using the computer.  So, between her weeding and my compulsive weeding, the garden is looking pretty good.  We're going to try using some of that plastic black mulch film on some of the rows to see if that'll keep the weeds down, which would help a lot, especially once things start producing and I've got to deal with more than daily weeding.  It's been really dry lately as well, which is slowing everything down.  Hubs ran a pvc water line to the garden with a hose attachment on the end so we don't have to lug 50 pounds of hose around whenever we want to run the sprinkler, it's pretty handy.  Now, if we only had a rototiller. 

One of the benefits of a small town is the personalized service you get.  I do a lot of shopping at our local bulk food store, we call it "The Amish Store",  for  what should be obvious reasons.  Last year they took orders for bushels of peaches and I got one and the girls and I spent a loooooong day canning pie filling, jam and just plan old peaches.  So Lyle, the guy who runs the store, gave me a call yesterday (our Amish are allowed to have telephones) saying he was going to be getting another shipment of peaches in and wanted to know if I wanted some again, which, of course, I do.  Now there's something you don't get from big chains, someone personally calling you to see if you want groceries.  He said he's also looking on getting a bulk blueberry delivery as well, I am SO on that one.  I love blueberries.  I looked into betting some blueberry bushes for the yard, but after talking to Leroy (the guy who runs what we call "The Amish Greenhouse", are you seeing a pattern here???) I decided not to bother.  Leroy said he couldn't manage to get blueberries to grow here because of our soil (blueberries need high acid, we're high base) and since Leroy can grow anything and can't grow blueberries, I figured I didn't stand a chance.

Last weekend the next town over from ours had their big town festival.  On Friday night, they had the light parade, it's kind of cool seeing a parade at night, the floats are all decorated with Christmas lights, the bands wrap those plastic neon glowy things around their instruments, that kind of thing.  Hubs belongs to the Optimist Club, who is the organizer of the parade, and volunteered our family to help sell concessions.  So there I was wandering the streets before the parade with a shopping cart loaded down with cotton candy, popcorn and pop.  We sold in teams, so I made sure that hubs, Mr. Volunteer, was the one who had to push the cart, I just passed out the cotton candy and popcorn.  We bumped into a few people we knew, not many because we just don't get out that much, but about every half hour or so, we'd see someone we knew and chat for a bit.  I saw my cousin, who I hadn't seen since last summers family reunion, which was nice.  She only lives less than 10 miles from me, but we just never seem to cross paths.  I never spent much time with her growing up, she's my youngest sister's age and when you've got as many cousins as I do, you tend to just stick with the ones in your own immediate age bracket and don't intermingle with the younger ones.  You can do that when you've got dozens of cousins and some to spare, one of the benefits of being part of a huge family.  Though, now as we're all older, the age difference isn't a thing anymore and we tend to hang with those who are most like us instead of those we share an age with.