Busy Saturday

It's amazing how much more energy you have when you get to sleep normal human being hours.  I woke up raring to go this morning, just not to the farmer's market.  I don't know why I always feel obligated to go up there every Saturday.  Maybe I'd go more if they stayed open longer.  Maybe not.

First thing I did was to go piddle in my garden a bit.  Well, the first thing I did was to make some coffee, but that goes without saying.  After that, I went and piddled in the garden.  That's just about the only thing I miss about working second shift -- being able to work in the yard in the cool of the morning.  By the way, it was 63 when I got up today, but it warmed up pretty quickly.  Still, it made the coffee taste extra good, being that chilly.  

The plan was to cut and dry some more lemon balm and tarragon, but I had to grind and bottle what I'd already cut first.  When all the dust had settled, I ended up with two jars of lemon balm and nearly a full bottle of tarragon. 

I also bottled up what spearmint I had dried, which will be all for this year because I let it go to flower, then weedeated it all down anyway.  Eh, it'll be back in spring, and for what it's worth, spearmint is my least favorite of the mints.  

I used my fancy new herb jars, but I'm not too happy with the pre-printed labels they came with.  I didn't really expect one for lemon balm, but I was kind of surprised that tarragon wasn't included. I thought it was a pretty popular herb.  I mean, they had labels for stuff I've never even heard of.  What the heck is achiote?  Anyway, they did include some blank labels, but most of the pre-printed ones will likely get tossed.   I'll probably just design my own and print them myself.  

Oh, and there was a label for cayenne, which is a good thing because I cut and strung some more this morning.  

I checked the ones I already had drying and they seem to be doing much better.  No mold as far as I can see.  

For those of you interested, I also recorded a new garden journal, which you can watch on my YouTube channel here:  Garden Vlog.

I also spent a little time cleaning out my shed before it got too hot.  I tossed a bit of stuff into the pile to be hauled off, then I brought a storage container into the house to sort through it.  As I figured, the majority of what was in it went either into the garbage or into the donation box.  There were even a few books that I'm going to take down to the Little Free Library on the square.  

This book is not one of them.  

I'd bought it for Cody when he was little, but when I asked, he didn't even remember the book.  I'd first put it into the donation stack, but then pulled it back out and put it onto my book shelf.  It's got some really cool stuff in it, and if you have a little boy in your life, I highly recommend that you get him one of these.  

I never even put this book into the donation stack.  

It was mine when I was little, but I highly doubt it would fly in today's climate.  Oh, it's not a bad book.  It talks all about how the Native Americans knew how to live off the land, make birchbark canoes, and hunt for their food.  Stuff like that.  But it says Indians and that's verboten these days.  

Other than a few old photos, the last thing I kept from that box was my 50 state quarter collection.

I knew I had one somewhere.  They were a thing, back in the day.