The tomatoes are all harvested, either eaten or in various stages in the freezer or dried, I canned most of the pears with lemon, cardamom and cinnamon, the not so good ones I slow cooked into a thick pear sauce for winter porridge.
Every morning R measures the sugar content of the grapes while the wasps are having a feast. When the time is right, he will make wine.
And the plumeria is going full blast.
In the greenhouse, we are harvesting black, red and green peppers. I forgot to take pictures. I have started to roast them, hoping that I can digest them. I made apple sauce this morning from the windfall apples down by the fence and we ate some of it with Greek yoghurt for dessert. It is currently making its presence felt in a not so pleasant way as it passes through the dark tunnels of my digestive system.
So yes. Food wise, I am in the trial and error phase, some days are great, others not so good but miles better than what life has been pre surgery. I am working my way slowly back to the ususal life with all that chronic illness stuff. It looks like it will take a while, I couldn't say I am on top of it.
At this time of the year, our gardens and parks are taken over by harvest mites (Neotrombicula autumnalis), tiny red bastards, some call them chiggers, that make it their live's work to jump onto a human body and sit there until you are in your nice comfy bed asleep and then they bite and give you itchy hives. Hours later, mind you, not while you are in the garden so that at first you think it must be bed bugs and you frantically change all the sheets and power clean the bed inside out.
But, the trick is to have a hot soapy shower every time you come in from the garden and change all your clothes and obviously never scratch any of the bites but of course you must because instinct and out comes the antihistamine gel and this goes on until the weather changes and the nights become cool enough to kill these bastards off once and for all.
For years I suffered stoically and then suddenly, they stopped bothering me completely and whenever neighbours complained I offered a mild smile with a slightly condescending shrug. Also, R has never ever had a single bite. Apparently, babies are immune as well. But he is not a baby, just a hairy monster.
Anyway, this year, I am back among the victims and I feel very sorry for myself and currently I am in this in-between stage where part of me wants to completely avoid going into the garden and another part of me say, feck this, it's only an itch and off I wander with my first cup in the mornings inspecting the beauty, watching the green parakeets feasting in the sunflowers and the big hornbeam.
On Sunday, we sat and listened to a debate between the various local candidates in the upcoming state election where the audience was asked to select the topics for discussion beforehand. This was done via a snazzy device and shown in real time on a screen. Top issues were housing, school buildings, roads, taxes and culture. Climate change was a no show. The guy from the neo fascist crowd tried several times to raise something about parallel societies, the latest terminology for people not white or German, but got nowhere - at least that.