More Veggies, Flowers, Birds, and an Off Grid Hair Washing Tip!

I have more veggies out of the garden every day! 4 quarts of sweet pickles are now fermenting on the counter, and everything else was roasted in the oven to go over tacos for dinner.

While the weather is remaining warm for now, you are starting to be able to feel fall in the air around here. Hopefully I'll have a few more weeks of being able to eat loads of fresh things before hard frosts kill all but the very hardy greens like kale, chard, and brussel sprouts.

Since how I manage hygiene in my off grid situation is a question I get a lot, here's an idea for a quick and water saving wash if you have long hair that tends to get greasy right at your scalp line but you don't want to be too hard on the rest of your hair. I'm not a hair professional, but this has been working for me for a long time.

After a brief but heavy rainfall that knocked some of my taller flowers over, I just cut them and made a pretty bouquet that I've been enjoying inside for a few days.

While I love flowers, the food is my main goal when gardening. Take a look at all the pretty kinds of summer squashes I'm getting right now!

And as always, I enjoy watching the birds and bees around my place. Above is one of the hummingbirds that grew up near my house this summer. When this baby was leaving the nest, it sat on the branch protesting it's new independence for a while. Seeming to prefer the idea of it's parents feeding it to venturing out on it's own. :) They swung by every now and then, but it seemed only to tell it to grow up. It must have finally accepted it's new role in life because it did fly off, and I would imagine is now one the the indistinguishable speedy flashes of color I see feeding from my flowers. It was pretty special to get to witness this much more stationary than normal little part of it's life!