The Dackel Princess

Since we have not had anything resembling summer this year, it is quite simple as to how I will spend my birthday in November.

I am going to go to the tropics for one week. I will slather on sunscreen and sit in the sun, romp on the beach, and play in the ocean. I may even wear a two piece bathing suit, as I hear that the laws against indecent exposure are less strict there, than they are here in the states.

I will dance under the moon light and have breakfast overlooking the sea.

Yes, we had rain again today.

I cannot believe the amount of rain that has fallen this summer, nor can I believe the hail storms we have had either. Until this summer I had seen a few hail storms in my life. This year, I have lost count on how many of them we have had.

Forget the gentle breezes, or the long lazy days of sunshine and heat, it has been one wet mess after another.

I want the sunshine. I want the heat that we only get for two maybe three months before it starts to get cold again! I want to be able to justify why I am wearing shorts when I go to Weight Watchers each week when the temperatures are in the 60’s, other than they weigh less than pants and I am trying to lose those last nine pounds any way I can!

Oh the sun actually did come out for a bit today. Just to tease us, I think. For just when I thought perhaps we might not have another day of rain, the clouds came back and the rain began to fall in sheets!

So, it’s simple. I’ll just make sure that for my birthday I have sunshine, warm temperatures and gentle tropical breezes.

Ah, excuse me while I go lie down and dream.

A few days ago friends of ours invited us to come and help ourselves to their blueberries. They have at least half a dozen bushes of blueberries and they were loaded! Hubby and I each brought a large basket and we began to pick. We picked and picked filling up our baskets in less than an hour! When I stood and looked at the area that we had been picking in I was shocked to see that you couldn’t even tell that we had picked any at all! And we had picked 18 pounds of blueberries!!!

We came home and looked at our bounty. What to do, what to do. We decided to make Blueberry Jam. We got out our canning books and found two recipes. The first one we made was a low sugar recipe and since Hubby has type 2 diabetes and I am a Weight Watcher, we thought this would be a good one to try.

So we measured everything out and got to work. Because I preserve things all the time, we have a good stock of glass jars, lids and rings to store our jams in. Hubby got all of those out and into their sterilizing pot, while I cooked the jam.

The first batch jelled so nicely and since we had all those berries we made a quick second batch. For the third batch we decided to try a regular jam recipe (more sugar) and that came out well too.

Soon we will have the plums and peaches to can and we will be very busy. The fruit on our trees, although not good eating fruit because of the hail damage, will make great jams and jellies. The apples I will make sauce with both for eating and for cooking with. Thank goodness for canning jars and for freezers.

The storms on Thursday were even worse than Hubby and I could have imagined. When we woke this morning, we heard on the news that our area had been devastated by the torrential rain. We’d gotten 4.2 inches of rain in 35 minutes, so you can imagine the chaos this caused. Maybe you can’t. I certainly had never seen anything quite like this. I hope you will take a moment and watch this video of what the storms did to our community.

As we walked along the broken roads, with our neighbors and fellow towns-people, the smell of tar was everywhere. I could never in my wildest dreams have imagined this. Paved roads, twisted and broken like peanut brittle! There were trees standing there, but their roots were completely exposed and will need to be removed. Many homes will need to be gutted and repaired. I can’t even count the driveways that will need to be rebuilt, and how did we make out?

As you saw in Fridays post we had lost many pieces of fruit. However, when Hubby and I went out and started to carefully examine our crop we found that the 3 hail storms that went through had decimated the fruit that was still on the trees.

Oh, we’ll be able to make apple sauce, and we can make peach and plum jams, but there will be no premium fruit from out trees this year, and that has saddened us.

That’s okay. There is always next year.

You would not believe the storms that went through here on Thursday afternoon and evening. The wind blew with gusts up to 50 miles an hour and 4.2 inches of rain fell in a very short period of time. Our power went out sometime during the first of three hail storms, and has been out ever since.

The really amazing part is. We never lose our electricity. In fact a few years ago when Hubby insisted we purchase a generator, I scoffed at the idea. We have, however used the generator a few times and had lights when no one else has.

Like right now.

We watched with horror as the hail fell and the peach tree that is full of beautiful blushing peaches seemed to bend with the elements. We still don’t know the full extent of the damage and probably won’t until tomorrow.

Honestly this has been one of the wettest, stormiest summers I can recall since I was a teenage on Cape Cod and it rained literally every day, thus killing the tourist business for the entire summer.

Lest you think I am making too much of this I need to tell you that many roads here have been washed away, and I think it will take a lot of time, work and money to get the roads back into passable shape.

So what is forecast for the next week? If you guessed thunderstorms, lightening and lots of rain, then you would be correct.

I was out in my garden today before the storms started and noted that my summer squash and zucchini plants all have root rot from the rain. I may get a few more vegetables off of the vines before they completely die, but it will not be long. I fear the cucumbers are a loss.

Ah, Mother Nature is a fierce woman to deal with! After all, “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”!

**Update**

Here are a few pictures just taken outside in our orchard.

This is our MacIntosh tree. It probably sustained the greatest loss of fruit.

See all the little apples on the ground?

And below is our beautiful peach tree. I couldn’t see any breaks, as we have it heavily supported, and the loss of fruit is low. I just hope that once the fruit ripens and we can take the weight off the branches that it will spring back to life.