Short Vacation

I am embarrassed that it has been 2 week since I last posted.  I try to post at least once a week, but I have excuses for this lapse!  I babysat my granddaughters for 3 days after my last post because they were out of school, but their mama wasn't.  Then, I had to pack for a trip to San Antonio to see our oldest son over the Memorial Day weekend.  I came back with a cold that has dragged on for over a week.  I finally went to the doctor yesterday.  After a shot and a prescription for antibiotics, I am supposed to be as good as new in a couple of days.  We'll see.

Anyway, enough of that!  The chickens did just fine while we were gone.  Our neighbor (bless his heart) came over and let them out of their coop every morning and made sure they had enough water and food.  Then, he came over again every night to put them to bed.  I'd say we owe him a few dozen eggs once they start laying!  We had an OSU Vet student that stayed at the house at night and took care of the dogs.  We also had a couple of FFA students come over to pick some of our produce and take it to the Farmers' Market while we were gone.  (Traveling gets complicated when you have a garden and animals at home to worry about in your absense.)

We were only gone 5 days, but things really grew a lot while we were gone.  Here is a picture of my basil the week before we left.

And here it is now. 

Please note that I clipped quite a bit of it for the market on Saturday.  So, it was bigger than this. 

I have herbs in some of these raised beds, but as you can probably tell, I have other things planted in them as well.  On the far side (past the white hoops) I planted some Trail of Tears beans.  They are starting to grow up the "teepees" that you see in the background.  These are green beans that were supposed to have been brought to Oklahoma in 1839 by the Cherokee Indians on the Trail of Tears when they were forced off their native lands to the east of the Mississippi River and marched on foot to Oklahoma.  Many of them died during this journey and, thus, it became known as the "Trail of Tears".  I find this very sad indeed and like to think that I am helping to remember these people in some small way by planting these beans.

The tomato plants also flourished while we were gone and are covered with hundreds of green tomatoes now.  Here are some that I have planted in a bed just to the right of the basil.

When I look at these and then realize that Tom has over a hundred just like these out in the field, I feel a little overwhelmed.  We may need help picking them!