So what, I hear y’all ask, has been going on at Lenzer-Hammond & Co. that has kept UADN so quiet this last couple of weeks.

Well, I’ll tell you.

Andrew has been working on the FP winter (to be sent out in time for Christmas) catalogue.

That’s it.

Now he’s been working 6 1/2 days a week and often until 11-1130 or so, but up until about the last week that’s ALL Andrew has been doing since about the middle of July.
The catalogue goes to the printer in a couple of weeks at which point Andrew will be working 6-6 1/2 days per week putting the electronics and wireless systems in to Fungi Perfecti’s new office space which has to be up and functional with all the bugs ironed out WELL before Thanksgiving and the official start of the (shudder) holiday shopping season.
It’s been really interesting trying to have a conversation with him that doesn’t revolve around mushrooms or computers. Do any of you out there with computer nerd cred want a job doing computer support for an up and coming locally owned organic mushroom farm? Andrew would love to have his job cut back to JUST being the graphics guy.

And me?

I have been (very deep breath) picking peas and raspberries and loganberries and rhubarb and freezing all of them for later attention (eventually the loganberries and rhubarb are going to be sauce and preserves, but it’s too damn hot to do that in the middle of August). I’ve been picking and freezing beans and pulling onions and making dried onions and pickled onions and pickled cucumbers and baby blankets.
Not pickled baby blankets, just the regular kind.

And picking cucumbers and tomatoes and drying tomatoes and making raisins. And drying herbs and pulling carrots and beets and parsnips.
Yeah, parsnips. I must be a grown-up or something because I discovered that I rather like parsnips roasted with potatoes and beets and carrots and onions. On the other hand if my father, who is about the most grown-up grown-up I know, who eats every vegetable known to man except for okra (and let’s face it, okra isn’t really a vegetable it’s a bad joke by someone who has it in for caterpillars) ummm…..
Let’s see, where was I?
Oh yeah, Dad and parsnips.
Anyway, if my thoroughly grown-up dad won’t eat parsnips and I will then I must not be a grown-up because….
because….
Ah feckit. I like parsnips when they’re roasted in a little olive oil with beets, and carrots, and potatoes, and onions. A little rosemary, a little sea salt…. Yummy.

Oh, and blueberries, and blackberries. We’re purchasing our blueberries from the Larson Lake Blueberry Farm in Bellevue because the soil in our garden is thoroughly unsuited for blueberries and there’s never such a thing as too many blueberries, but the blackberries are we-pick. Half of them came from Shawn & Annie’s place, the other half from the blackberry patch that is rapidly taking over the vacant lot behind the dentist’s office across the street from us. I’m of the opinion that blackberry picking is a full contact sport and since I just finished picking blackberries yesterday I’m currently looking like I ran into a sack of rabid weasels. Or, if you’d rather, like I fell into a particularly luxurious blackberry patch.

And I’ve been putting in the fall garden — fall peas, carrots, bok choi (I made kim chee with the first batch!), and cabbages.
I’ve still got an unholy load of potatoes to dig if the moles haven’t eaten them all. And if it’s the last thing I do I WILL slaughter the rat that I’ve been seeing skulking around the bird feeder. I will NOT have a rat in my garden.
I’ll take bunnies though. With the final abandonment of the house just to the west of us (the owner’s son had been living in a rec V in the driveway for some months once the power and water were shut off, but the city of Normandy Park eventually got wind of it and chased him off) the bunnies have been more numerous around my garden. I think there’s a bunny den in the back yard next door, but since there’s also a bit of a problem with the septic tank next door, I’m not going to go exploring back there.

And I’ve been working. Holy Zarquon have I been working. Summer is the busy season and our summer has been going gangbusters.
It’s a good thing that I consider all of my garden stuff to be particularly wonderful R & R or it’d never get done.