We had a nice break from the hot weather today with our high temps being about fifteen degrees cooler than yesterday.  The skies were cloudy when we took our walk this morning, and the cooler temps kept the deer flies away.  It looked like we might get some rain today, but the clouds moved out and clear skies returned--still no moisture.

First thing this morning John cut the grass.  Actually he mowed more weeds than grass.  With the lack of rain, our grass hasn't grown, but the weeds still keep coming whether there's moisture or not.  With the warm weather, our cucumbers have come on strong, so John picked a bucketful when he was done with the lawn.  While John was busy outside, I spent the morning working on finances and doing a few other household chores.

I had a doctor's appointment for my annual physical, so after lunch John and I headed off to Bemidji and the clinic.  I barely had a chance to sit down in the waiting area when my named was called and back I went to see the doctor.  We were back out the door in under an hour and, since we didn't need to pick up anything else, hit the road home. 

We still had an hour or so before supper and decided we had enough time to make this summer's first batch of dill pickles.  I got the jars and brine ready while John sliced the cucumbers.  We packed them in the jars, added the brine, and put them in the water bath.  There were just enough cucumbers for seven quarts of pickles.  I checked back on the blog to see when we started doing pickles last summer and found that we did our first batch on August 26th.  We are way ahead of last year which is probably due to the heat this summer.

 

Cucumbers on the vine this morning

   

Pickles in the jars by the afternoon