What a glorious morning to wake up to! Gentle breeze, clear blue skies. Almost feels like fall, especially with the wind blowing the leaves off the weeping cherry trees in our yard. But, surely it cannot be that close to fall. Right?

TJ and I went out to the back garden earlier and did some weeding. We also picked a basket of green beans, some cucumbers, some red onions and a ton of basil. Getting ready to go in the kitchen and freeze that basil for the winter months.

Off for our annual camping trip with all our friends. Heading to Cataloochee campground. Certainly ready for some non-technology, out in the woods fun, friends and family time. We’ve been doing this for about 20 years now and it’s always a great time. Playing in the creek, sitting around the campfire, eating s’mores, looking at the stars. Quiet in the woods. Oh, yeah!

Well, it’s pickling time around here. Over the past 2 1/2 days, we’ve put up 14 quarts of bread and butter pickles and 10 quarts of dill pickles. That used up one case of cucumbers. Still have one more case to go, so we’ll double our pickle stash. Tomorrow afternoon the kids and I will work on crockpot peach butter with the beautiful free-stone SC peaches we bought over the weekend. Ooooh, yummy. Our grapes are looking very promising on the vines so that will keep us busy in August, as will all our tomatoes, beans and squash. Of course, September is apple picking time! I just love the satisfying sound of that ‘pop’ as the jars seal on our freshly canned goodies.

It’s such a great feeling to know where are canned goods came from, how they were prepared, how few preservatives they contain. And the jars are so pretty lining the shelves in our pantry and our cabinets! Yeah, this is life as I dreamed it.

Happy 47th birthday to my wonderful husband, Joe! We all love you.

Joe asked for respect and admiration for his big day from the kids. Well, they did their best. As good as they could do! We all went to church this morning, then came home. The kids and I made some bread and butter pickles, then we made burritos (Joe’s request) for dinner. Afterward we shared a yummy ice cream cake with “470″ as the candles. No mercy around here.