“Whatever has happened before will happen ⌊again⌋. Whatever has been done before will be done ⌊again⌋. There is nothing new under the sun.”
‭‭Ecclesiastes‬ ‭1:9‬ ‭GW‬‬

After church and our weekly breakfast out yesterday, we headed to Rural King to look for some more zucchini and yellow squash seeds. For some reason, ours did not germinate. We looked all over that store and couldn’t find any seeds. It was impossible for their vast selection to have been sold so we asked the manager. Turns out, they keep their seed displays only to a certain date, then they donate them to FFA (Future Farmers of America), FHA (Future Homemakers of America), and 4H. I think that’s wonderful, but it left me without zucchini and squash. I have these really great pickles I make with them. You know when you let zucchini and squash get ahead of you and you end up with some really BIG squash that could be mistaken for the Goodyear Blimp? Those squash. You cut them in half, scoop out the pithy, seedy part, and cut the rest into half-inch cubes. Cut onions the same way. Using any typical recipe for bread and butter pickles, mix the green zucchini, yellow squash, and onions with the pickling mixture and process them the same way. OMGosh! I could eat a whole jar of those with a fork!

As we left Rural King, Mr. FixIt noticed the bedding plants were on sale. We bought some zucchini and straightneck squash plants…score! Now we will have our pickles.

The tomatoes are doing really well in the garden, but only half of the beans germinated. It makes me wonder if there is something in the soil that is doing that. I’ll have to investigate that further. Every week we are having to tie up more of the tomato vines and we are getting a good crop of tomatoes setting on with lots of blooms.

Our big mystery yesterday was trying to figure out the size difference in rain gauges. The one out at the farm measures five inches of rain. It is slightly smaller that the one on the right in this picture. We bought one for The Ponderosa a couple of weeks ago that is more like the one on the left, except…the one we bought only measures 1.5” while this one measures 5”…the same as the big one. We puzzled over this for quite some time when Mr. FixIt’s son came over to visit his dad for Father’s Day. Turns out, the measurement corresponds to the size of the funnel at the top. The one on the right is probably around 5” while the one on the left has none. The one at the house is only 3”. I have no idea the formula that is used to determine exactly how much rain is in the gauge. I could Google it. And, maybe I will…one of these days when it’s winter and I have nothing more pressing to do.

As I was writing this, I could hear the red fox out in the far field at the edge of the woods. Maybe he will have rabbit for dinner. Country living is not for the faint of heart. I love seeing the bunnies but they eat my garden and I hate the idea of the fox getting them. But this is nature here. ❤️