A hot day today.  September 1st, blue sky, temperature in the mid 20's.  As it is Sunday I decided to do the old fashioned thing and not work at all.  Of course, dogs need to be fed and exercised, but that is not exactly work.  I have taken the day off from canning, basically.  I have made zucchini relish, mustard pickles,

pickled beets, and canned peaches,

nectarines

 and tomatoes.  I have made nectarine jam, strawberry jam, raspberry jam, gooseberry jam and saskatoon jam.  I have made batches of borscht for the freezer.

A large garden is a lot of work, both in preparing the soil, planting and weeding, then processing the produce.  I give away a lot to friends and family who have no gardens.

We are dog sitting a couple of extra dogs for the weekend.  Lily, our neighbour's jack russell terrier is here until Monday evening and Bella, my son's akita, is here until Tuesday.  Bella tends to be somewhat aggressive towards Rhaq and sometimes Finn, so we usually exercise her separately.  Today we walked Bella, Finn and Niko up to the pond on the back of the farm.  As long as they have enough room around them and there are no toys to fight over, they do well.  Bella behaved well and had a good run.  It's hot, as I said, so the dogs all had a soak in the pond to cool down.  They are all napping quietly now.  You wouldn't know there were 6 dogs in the house.

On August 22 we celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary.  Dennis planned the day which included a hike to Norse Creek falls.

It was a short hike through a very steep canyon.  At one point, Niko decided to look over the edge and went too far.  Luckily there was a large ledge that allowed him to regain his footing and work his way back to the trail.  We had a picnic lunch at the lower falls then turned back. We then went huckleberry picking.  What back breaking work!  With two of us the task was pleasant.  Niko kept eating the berries though, so when we came back the next day we just took Finn.  He was happy to explore for a while then lie down in the shade.  I made some muffins from some of the berries:

As you can see, not much exciting happening around here.  Just canning, canning and more canning.  We froze the saskatoons we picked from the yard to make wine later on.  I showed pictures of the Saskatoon bushes in bloom, so here they are with the berries on them.  We had a bumper crop.

 I guess that's it for now.  Tomorrow will be the day I get to work harvesting the rest of the garden.  We'll leave the potatoes, carrots, parsnips and turnips until just before frost, or just after.  The crinkle cabbages need picking because they are going to split, so they will be picked before frost.  The rest of the beets need picking and processing.  The zucchini plants need their final picking, then the plants will be removed.  I'll leave the tomatoes until just before we go on our week's holiday so they can ripen on the vine as  much as possible.  The cucumbers and peppers will also be picked just before we go.

 Here are some cheery sunflowers, one of my favourite plants!

Do double click on the pictures to see them better.  Bye for now.