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This was a week of returns and money back. I disputed a purchase on Paypal. In early May, I had ordered some double pink hollyhock seeds from a tiny company (it looked to be owned by an individual). My account was charged right away but I never received an order confirmation nor a shipping notice….

I read a lot of e-books from the library this past week. I forgot to put the ones I read the week before in the previous post, so here are the books I read over the last two weeks: The Actor and The Housewife. I absolutely loved this book. I laughed a lot. I gave…

I started a new schedule this past week to allow me to work in the garden during the coolest part of the day. I get up at 4 :10 a.m. to do laundry and work on the blog, and then go outside at first light around 5 a.m. I work outside until sometime between 6:00…

I made a pair of shorts for my son from the bottom of a pair of worn-out trousers that used to belong to my husband. The fabric in the legs was fine, but the fabric at the top had worn through in a couple of places and was past mending. I used elastic that I…

I harvested apricots, figs, two zucchini, two raspberries(!), blackberries, tomatoes, parsley, and oregano from the garden. I made apricot jam. I dried the parsley, oregano, and lemon verbena to use later. Last year I had to buy parsley and oregano for the first time in years as I didn’t have enough from the garden; now…

I harvested apricots, Swiss chard, blackberries, lettuce, parsley, and tomatoes from the garden. I rarely have lettuce and tomatoes ripe at the same time, but my some of my lettuce that I planted late in March had not bolted yet. My husband and I continued to work on the pergola. It takes two of us…

I picked blackberries from the garden. This is earlier than I usually harvest blackberries, and the berries are much larger than usual. I planted a new kind of blackberries (Prime Ark Freedom) in my garden a couple of years ago, but this is the first time they have made fruit. The earlier bearing means that…

  We harvested artichokes, parsley, green onions, Swiss chard, lettuce, tomatoes, and lemons from the garden. Our elderly neighbors had their first garage sale in preparation for an upcoming move. We helped them with it, bringing over our tables and my parents’ tables, setting it up, making and putting out signs, and listing it in…

I harvested lettuce, Swiss chard, a lemon, parsley, chives, and a couple of cherry tomatoes from the garden. I made pancakes twice–once with blackberries from our garden (from the freezer) and chocolate chips, and once with bananas (which I blended and used in place of part of the milk in the recipe). I used some…

I harvested Swiss chard, cilantro (coriander), lettuce, a handful of cherry tomatoes, and snow peas from the garden. One of my self-seeded heads of lettuce was so large that I shared some of it with 4 families (each receiving a normal grocery-store-sized amount of a head of lettuce) with enough leftover for one to two…

In between the windy days, the garden was an absolutely beautiful place to be. I harvested lettuce, Swiss chard, Meyer lemons, chives, snow peas, and cilantro from the garden. I carefully thinned and transplanted my thinned roselle hibiscus seedlings to places where seeds didn’t germinate. I gave haircuts to two daughters. I mended my husband’s…