Where Has the Week Gone Randomness....

My itsy-bitsy shadow says slow down!

It's been blurry this week. The long three day weekend was wonderful, but I've had trouble keeping the days straight every since!

This weekend is the Celtic Festival (already!) so I've been scrambling to get ready for that. (Because I put everything off to the last minute as usual). I'm going to try and take three sheep---if they cooperate. I've separated Rosemary (Fawn), her ewe lamb from this year, Rosetta (also fawn) and Jackdaw (Black/White Flecket ram lamb) into their own pen. I'm hoping this makes it easier for them to 'go on a day trip', since they won't have been with the flock for a week. That's the theory anyway....we will see how the practical application goes. Friday afternoon I will load the truck up and hopefully have everything ready to go--just add sheep---on Saturday morning.

Butterfly says..."don't even tell me about your busy life".....

The kittens are growing like bad weeds, and now are starting to eat solid foods. They are quite aggressive about it, and end up with more food on them than in them at times. Butterfly gets her canned food rations on the upper shelf, so she can eat in relative peace. The little furballs are learning to come to 'kitty, kitty' already. Butterfly is getting quite crotchety about the whole motherhood thing, so I think it won't be long until she weans them.

The evenings are just gone the minute I get home it seems. Of course it is getting darker earlier, which doesn't help. The routine goes like this: get home, change cloths, feed inside/outside cats their evening treat, feed dogs treat, go let Butterfly out to roam around, count kitten noses, turn sheep on upper pasture, fix/eat supper, water sheep & chickens, let kittens out and watch them for twenty or so minutes, load kittens and Butterfly up for their commute to the breezeway, unload, feed, and settle them in for the night, pen up chickens, collect eggs, pen up sheep for the night, do any other random outside chores needed, maybe squeeze in a walk for the dogs, blink...it's dark. There is plenty to do inside, but I always get a bit resentful this time of year as the days shorten and there is less time to accomplish outside things.

My tomatoes are finally starting to produce. I've even gotten a few, many of them slightly gnawed by some of the bazillion garden pests that have descended this year. I actually have gotten some Arkansas Traveler varieties to go with the Cherokee Purples. The third variety, which was suppose to be Lemon Oxheart, is pretty obviously a Roma instead. I had several pounds of mixed tomatoes that needed to be dealt with, so I decided to make spaghetti sauce. The store bought sauce is chock full of sodium, and I wanted to try a homemade version.

From this........

...to this

It actually turned out pretty good, but due to the small amount of tomatoes (3 lbs do not make allot of sauce) there was only enough for one dinner--and even that was pushing it after I cooked too much spaghetti. I hope that I get more tomatoes as I'd like to try and freeze some. I also won't put any green peppers in it the next time as they took over the taste, and added a little more zing than I wanted! I've got lots of nice peppers coming on in the garden too. So, I had all three varieties to add to the sauce---the Travelers, Cherokees and Romas, however most of them were Romas. I also added mushrooms, and assorted spices. The cookdown process took very little time, but de-seeding the tomatoes did. Even at that, the sauce was still pretty 'seedy'.

Sandwiched in with all the last minute flurry, has been trips to the dentist to try and fix another abscessed tooth. I'm getting pretty frustrated with it all, but am still hopeful this tooth can be saved.

We have a winner (actually several) on the contest, and I'll try and get that posted sometime over the weekend. Thanks for playing the game. :-) I'll try and take lots of pictures of the men in skirts, and uh, other events too. Hope you all have a great weekend.

And now I need to head off to bed! It's calling my name.

Sage, guarding his second choice chair (mine, mine, mine!) ..yes, I got to sit in my new chair! However the harassment by a certain cat eventually drove me out. Sage says..."this here is the line...don't you be crossing it!"

Meshach shows off his hard drinking skills....actually its just water and he loves to drink out of a bottle, so he has his own. He takes his pill much more readily when he gets a sip of water afterward. Meshach says...'ah....the paws that refreshes'