Into the Holiday Weekend

I've been bustling around, getting some more canning and chores out of the way before my parents' visit, and now I'll sign off for the next several days. We're going into Labor Day Weekend here in the U.S., the last holiday of the summer, with most businesses closed on Monday and a mass exodus from the cities as everyone goes camping and boating and whatever else they might want to do before school starts. To beat the rush, I'm leaving on the train tomorrow to go up into Washington state and meet my parents for a couple days of camping and hiking at Mt. St. Helens, our local volcano. We'll come back into Portland on Saturday morning as everyone else is heading out, and spend the rest of the weekend here. It looks like the weather is going to be fantastic- after being a little colder and gray for the last couple days, the forecast for Saturday and Sunday is clear and 86 degrees!

Now that we have our new bed (which is SO comfortable, we've been sleeping like babies and it makes getting up in the morning really really hard!), we've moved the futon upstairs, and I've done a bit of cleaning up there, sorted out more of a pantry/food storage area in the basement, done a bunch of laundry, run some errands, packed for the trip and gotten all the yard work done that I had been putting off. The garden is in full production mode, so I've been blanching and freezing Swiss chard (silverbeet) and broccoli, picking lots of tomatoes, and pickling some of our hot peppers. More details on those activities later, when I tune back in next week.

Have a great weekend, everyone!