Harvest time

 

With the hot weather the last couple of weeks, the tomatoes have been turning red by the bucket.  I planted some Roma tomatoes for sauce--pizza and spaghetti, and I found a variety that claimed to be good for sun drying.  Linda likes sun dried tomatoes, so I thought I would give them a shot.  I have two large cookie sheets in the oven now drying.  Sun drying is basically done in the oven if you do not live in an arid area.   Hopefully they work.  I am allergic to garlic and that allergy is not getting any better as I age.  So getting any sort of tomato sauce or sun dried tomatoes without added garlic is nearly impossible.  We fixed that problem by doing it ourselves.  We did make a batch of pizza sauce--picture above--that was olive oil, basil, salt and  Roma tomatoes.  Add some heat and cook it down and you have pizza sauce.  We have already eaten on jar and I am going to repeat the process this weekend.  We have been enjoying fresh veggie pizza with onion, peppers, basil, tomato and some sort of cheese and meat if desired.  Yum.. I love the fresh veggies.

 

 

This year is the first where all our garden is in one spot and inside a fence.   Our favorite deer was all over the yard on Wednesday.  I must have seen her a dozen times during the day.  I used some salt water to kill some weeds in the driveway and she was after that.  She grazed all over the yard during the day, the hot weather must have been making her extra hungry and in need of salt.  She is staying out of the garden and that makes gardening a lot more fun.   We feed us, not he deer.  She does trim any squash runners and leaves as they escape thru the fence.   But the fence has paid off handsomely.

 

 

I have been running on a regular basis and depending on the weather, I may run in the morning or evening.  Humidity makes it a challenge in the morning and the heat makes the evenings a little tough.  Today I am nursing a head cold and I am not sure what caused this snot attack.  I have been pushing it for training and I may have pushed my body a little too far and it is pushing back??

 

 

Once I can go again with some normal breathing I will get to the track.  I have been doing some speed work, but when it is speed day, I have been cutting down the volume to less than 2000 meters per session.   More intense with a little less volume is working in the hot weather.  My feet are holding up fine--speed and my feet is usually a bad mix.    I purchased a thigh sleeve last week from 2XU to try out.  My right ham string was a little ouchy the other morning after warm up and I slipped on the sleeve and ran the entire work out without any more issues.  Apparently I found another device to keep in my running bag of tricks.  I was very happy with the results of a leg compression sleeve.  I use sleeves on my lower leg, so the upper legs appears to be a normal progression.

 

 

I am still on target for the Michigan race in a couple weeks, and I hope this little sinus mess will not linger and cause any more delays. Off the garden to gather some nice bright red tomatoes for some more sauce!!