Garden Bounty

This is a snapshot of a days harvest. May not look like much but it's great for two people. The tomatoes are ripening daily so Cathy is canning again. She does tomato sauce, marinara and salsa. Boy does it taste good in the winter. I just checked the garden and we're starting to get our first okra. Took long enough. The beets are the small variety so we need to pay more attention to the variety we plant in the future. I prefer the larger size. Gonna try to pickle some beets this year. I didn't thin the carrots too well so they're a little small but still sweet.

New Toy

In June we bought a 1993 Playbouy pontoon. We had been looking for 3 years to find what we really wanted. Knew for sure that we didn't want a new one (takson okanee- too much money) so Chuck searched the Local Shopping Network. We actually found this one at a local marine repair shop. The original owner had to return to Minnesota and sold it to the shop owner. Keith, the shop owner had serviced this pontoon for the past 5 years and knew its condition. The pontoon is 24' long and powered by an Evinrude (etec) 90 hp outboard motor. It is fully equipped and has a pop up dressing room in the rear, Bimini top and fish finder. We truck along at 3,000 rpm (10-12mph) for 3 hours and use only about 2.5 gal of gas. We can really kick it to about 24 mph with this motor, enough to pull the grand kids on a tube. With off road gas at 3.36 per gal we economize at a slower speeds. The pontoon came with 6 months slip fee already paid, which means we don't have to tow it back and forth. Even if it's only about 16 miles to the marina it's a hassle. Most of the local marinas have a fairly long waiting list for 24' slips so we actually lucked out. We don't do a lot of running around so this will be our main entertainment (cruising, fishing etc). It'll take us a long time to get to know Dale Hollow Lake. It has over 600 miles of shore line and average depth of 90' (up to 150' in the main channel). We already got lost once but managed to find our way back. Got a detailed map now and intend to purchase a GPS in the future. There are soooooo many inlets and creeks that feed this lake that it isn't hard to get lost. Our friends put their boat in the water at a ramp that's about 15 miles down river from where we have our slip and there's a great restaurant on the water about 9 miles southeast of us. We're looking forward to lots of floating time.

Summer fun

We planted our garden in late May and this is what it looked like in mid-June. We have onions, squash, cucumber, radish, carrots, lettuce, okra, a variety of tomatoes, beets, herbs and some asparagus. The okra is super slow growing because we planted from seed. Last year by this time we were up to our ears in okra but none so far (we'll use starter plants next year). The asparagus takes two seasons before it's ready - so maybe next year.