A Finished Fair Apron

First of all, if you don’t have any elderberry syrup in your medicine cabinet, I strongly suggest you get some. After dosing myself regularly throughout the day on Thursday, I can report that the cold has not gone any further and has mostly retreated. I am back to feeling about 95% of normal. This is consistent with the experiences I’ve had in the past. If I take it as soon as I feel like I am coming down with a cold, often I can head it off at the pass. If I miss that window but take it anyway, it shortens the duration of whatever was going on. Good stuff.

I was feeling well enough by Thursday evening to finish the fair apron while listening to the Cleveland Browns Radio Network (on my phone) broadcast the Browns vs. Redskins game. Oh, my. Do we have a season ahead of us! And I listened knowing that my friends Joyce and Dodie were also enjoying the game (in person!), because Joyce posted a picture of them on Facebook holding the pillowcases I made them:

I love football. I love Browns football.

I am happy with the way the apron turned out. It’s ready to drop off at the fairgrounds, although I will give it one final pressing before I go:

I’m tracing more apron patterns:

I’m on this apron kick and I really should think about making myself a new bag to use this fall. Bags just aren’t on my radar at the moment. I need some inspiration in that department.

I collected the zucchini in the garden yesterday morning and made 12 more loaves of zucchini bread with some shredded zucchini left over for fritters. I also shared zucchini with several of our neighbors.

We’ll have a few watermelons, at least:

The cucumber crop is going to be a bust, I fear, even though it is a variety—Muncher—that we’ve grown successfully for several years. I’m not quite sure what happened other than it was a cooler summer than it’s been in recent memory. Odd, though, that we would get watermelon and not cukes.

Peaches are on the schedule for today.

Elysian is going to bring the kids over one afternoon next week so we can dig up a row of potatoes. Some of these kids have never seen a garden before, let alone what food looks like when it’s growing. Digging potatoes is like an Easter Egg hunt. The kids have the added benefit of being closer to the ground than I am.

Thanks to the wonders of YouTube, I found this clip from Sesame Street:

If you can’t tell from the low-resolution film and fashionable clothing, this is from way back when I was in elementary school. For some reason, this has stayed with me for almost 50 years. I don’t know why—we spent a lot of time in our grandparents’ gardens, so I knew where food came from. I do remember feeling bad for this little girl that she lived in a big city, though. Maybe she grew up and now she lives on a farm and has a garden and raises chickens and pigs.