The okra needs to be cut right now, I’m not going to do it.  To tell you the truth, okra is too high maintenance.  It requires your attention at least twice a day.  If you don’t give it what it wants, it will get you back by growing a foot and a half long by morning.  Now, you don’t want to let this happen, the reason being your plant will think it’s going to seed and stop producing.  So if you like high maintenance things, okra might be a crop you want to try out some summer.  I’m tired of cutting it.  I’m also tired of cutting the grass.  The amount of rain this area has received this year is annoying.  We haven’t watered the garden in over a month and things are green and lush.  The radio personality of the local public radio station mentioned it this one day and said “I’ll take it!”  Let her have it, I’ll take hot, HOT July and August. July was a complete waste.  August, you’re on the axe list for me too.  All my vegetables are suffering, but my grass, my grass is amazingly lush, long and moist.  I can’t keep up and I don’t even want too.  We need a ruminant to mow that lawn for us.  What a grand, green option.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090805/hl_time/08599191445000

Today, Wednesday, it was 95 degrees in the shade.  It was a hot one.  I was singing the praises of the heat, because it has been extremely mild in this part of the world for July, and everyone was talking about it.  The radio said there was a 20% chance of thunderstorms.  Well, BINGO!  I was in the garage on the ole’ interwebs when I heard a thump and bump, a loud bump and thump.  It was so loud that I thought it was a tree limb or something.  I look out the door and I see MASSIVE HAIL dropping out of the sky.  I yell out to Paul, he already had his video camera.  It was very scary.  Scary because I’ve never seen anything like this before…I seem to say that a lot about freak Arkansas weather phenomena.  Scary because you see these giant chunks jettisoning from the heavens, slamming into the roof, slamming into the ground.  The horses across the way were jetting around trying to find shelter.  People, something like what I saw could kill you.  If you figure a GIANT chunk of ice falling from, I don’t know, 10,000 feet?  20,000?  It was no joke.   All we could do was stare up at the sky.  It was dumping rain.  The rain gauge reads 2.5″, but Paul thinks there might have been rain left over in it from the last time it rained, I have my doubts.  It went on for about an hour, afterwards the lightning continued and I was worried that it was tornado weather.  Here are some pictures.

There is a white speck out on the edge of the lawn.  From my front door to the little white speck is about 200 ft.  That piece of hail weighed 1/3 lb.

This is poor little Peter, who took shelter under a tree.  I worry about him now because the creek is up.

Here is another giant chunk in the yard.

Peter, soaking wet.

So, I’m standing in my driveway and start taking pictures in a 360 degree radius.  This is looking west.

Wider shot.

SW.

S.

SE.

E.

NE.

Say what you will, but I do believe this is the largest hail I’ve ever seen.

What I find so interesting about hail, is that the two time I’ve experienced hail larger than a pea, it has been 95+ degree weather.  Along comes a thunder storm, the temperature drops 20 degrees and the ooblick starts to rain from the sky.  It doesn’t make sense.  I mean, I’m sure it does, but I felt like the kids in the movie Jurassic park and the look on their faces when they see the T-Rex.  It’s otherworldly.

Yes, that’s an apple.  I have a wide angle lens on my camera so it throws off perception of scale sometimes, I’m telling you, this hail was otherworldly!  I have already mentioned, but I’ll say it again.  This particular chunk weighed 1/3 lb!

How’s that to wind up Wednesday!

There are times of plenty and there are times of want.  So, in those times of plenty, you must do what you can to preserve the harvest.  That’s just what I did again today.  15 quarts of tomatoes were canned today.  Oh yeah!

It was about 40 pounds of tomatoes.  Mortgage lifters, Roma’s and Arkansas Travelers.

Crazy, I have a headache just trying to figure out what I’m looking at here.

View of the take.

Whilst sitting in the front yard on Saturday, during our weekly farm stand, Paul and I heard a “rooster” sound coming from the creek.  We both mentioned how odd that bird sounded, like a rooster, but it couldn’t be…could it?  The next day, I was mowing the lawn and Paul says “Amanda!  There is a rooster crawling up on the hill.”  I couldn’t believe it.  Where did it come from?  None of our neighbors have any chickens to our knowledge, except for one man who lives two miles down the road and he raises bantams (mini chickens).  Oliver was quick to name him.  “Let’s call him Peter!”  Peter was locked into a call and response with our chickens.  He had to find them and he succeeded.  Stewart, however wasn’t so entranced by Peter.  He made sure he stayed away.  Donna, the polish crested hen, was in love!  She was so interested in him, maybe because he was the new guy.  Every day since, Peter has returned.  It’s nice to see him walking across the front yard, like a lawn ornament, or through the brush across the creek, he’s a wild critter.

Here he’s trying to figure out how to get in to see the babes.

The first pie pumpkin of the season was plucked off of my back fence.  The rest of the plant died due to infestation.  So, I handed it to the little darlings and said SMILE!

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111429489

Meet your food Guru.

My life is not bombarded with advertisements.  I manage to ignore banner ads on the internet and those pesky ones on the side that tell you one of your old classmates is looking for you.  Sometimes, at night, I enjoy a little entertainment by watching movies or shows on the internet.  Usually shows are interrupted, which is fine, because it gives me a chance to walk away for a minute.  I didn’t walk away last night as the commercial started.  It was Elmo from “Sesame Street” and the first lady, Michelle Obama.  She told him that she was going to take a walk around Sesame Street and wanted to know if he wanted to go with her.  Of course Elmo goes into a seizure he’s so happy at the suggestion, the web site flashes and it’s over.  It reminded me of another commercial, similar, from the American Ad Council, called “Be a player”, with Dreamworks characters.  Go outside and play at least an hour a day, was its claim.  Hmmm.  Cartoon characters telling me to go play.  But set a timer and come right back in to catch your show right?  So I decided to go to the Sesame Street website and find out what more they wanted me to know.  There was nothing that just reached out and said LOOK RIGHT HERE!  I had to dig deep into the parent’s page, because why does a kid care about his health.  There I found a series of videos under the “Healthy Eating Tips” heading.  I watched part of one called “A cookie is a sometimes food” starring none other than the beloved Cookie Monster.  In it, he sees a wall full of fruit.  He passes it until he sees a cookie buried in the mix.  He’s delighted, then Hoots the owl starts singing to him about how he should have an apple or some grapes, because they’re an anytime food.  To learn more it gave this link: http://www.smallstep.gov/  I checked it out to, it’s informative, if you are completely clueless about what you eat.

It’s a sad state of affairs.  The book I just read gave a statistic that as of 2000, 1 in 3 children will develop diabetes.  Diabetes…..diabetes….yeah, I think I’ve heard of that.  But that’s just fat people right?  Aren’t they the ones who develop diabetes?  No.  Skinny people can develop it to.

Diabetes is a group of diseases marked by high levels of glucose, also called blood sugar, resulting in defects of insulin production, insulin action, or both.  23.6 million people, or 8%, have diabetes.  The total annual economic cost of diabetes in 2007 was $174 billion.  That’s right, that’s billion with a “B”.

I’m no doctor, I don’t even know much about diabetes itself, but i do know that it is an epidemic, more dangerous than we think and it’s going to be really, really expensive for the United States.  So I ask you to do what you can.  A good first step is to examine what you eat.  If it has more than five ingredients in it, it probably isn’t a food, but a food product, so nix it from your diet.  But Amanda, that’s like EVERYTHING in my pantry!  Yeah I know, it stinks, but in the long run, you’ll be doing yourself a huge favor.  Also, don’t forget to exercise.  Because, those ads that I found disgusting are right.  Make your kids (and yourself) get up off the couch and go play.

Here are a few more links that you will just have to cut and paste into your browser:

American Diabetes Association, tips for prevention:

http://www.diabetes.org/food-nutrition-lifestyle/lifestyle-prevention/live-your-life.jsp

National Diabetes Fact Sheet

Click to access ndfs_2007.pdf

This link is funny, because it’s a book for people who don’t like to do exercise.  When people make remarks about my weight, I tell them I mow my lawn, and that’s just what I did today.  You want to get the sweat pouring, mow your lawn.

http://store.diabetes.org/products/product_details.jsp?StoreJSESSIONID=K2aCKdZxyLUCXdZiqrHiq8kRusBD87rqBLAgCmSIR2sqjj2vapGr!-1010429238!-1407451110!7005!8005&PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=845524441763895&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=2534374302023960&bmUID=12492