Canning (no painting)

Not much new to report on the house this month. July and August in Florida are like January and February in upstate New York; you could go outside, but why would you? Although, to be fair sometimes you physically can't go outside in an upstate January.

The phone line was fixed at the pole by AT&T (the new Bell monopoly). The house system needs to be rewired too but the crawlspace is still drying out from all the summer rain. There is a temporary line from the wall box to the phone inside.

The paint bucket says not to paint above 90 degrees, which it is, so I've been inside canning things. What I really want is cheesecake in a jar with raspberries on top, but I've read you shouldn't can dairy. What I've done this summer is tomato wedges and sauce, baked beans, sweet banana peppers, ketchup, and grape and pomegranate jellies. The tomatoes were $11 for 30lbs from the farmer's market and the peppers were from the backyard.

Peppers, along with broccoli and butternut squash, seem to be the only capable crops in our yard. I've never had more than a few smallish tomatoes from a plant, the corn reached a whopping 12 inches high this year and legumes have leaf miners from the moment they sprout. The watermelon never flowered, and the tortured zucchini were stunted and died of a horrible overnight fungus as did the okra. It seems stuff planted in the traditional spring planting season doesn't grow fast enough to produce food before the onset of summer heat, our equivalent of first frost. Mom and I looked at the neighborhood garden last week and saw lots of tall okra and pole beans, high-heat crops, I guess.