It has been hot and humid around here in Eastern, Pennsylvania, except that today we finally got a break. I do not know what else to call this season, but while researching this post, I learned that Indian Summer is the not the term for this sort of weather. We have not really had any cold or chilly weather yet this fall, and Indian Summer is a hot weather burst that comes after at least one frost. But “a week’s worth of crazy hot and humid afternoons in September where nobody wants to go outside” isn’t really catchy. In any case, I wanted to share with you some of the things that I have been up to this week.
For starters, Patrick and I have been going to the playground most mornings this week. Yesterday, in fact, we got out of the house by 8:50am so we could meet a friend there before it got too hot. Great success, we burned off some energy before it got really warm and humid around 11am.
I have also been taking a renewed interest in our garden. This is the first year we had a garden and truth be told we haven’t been doting gardeners who carefully watch over our plants. We have been gardeners who occasionally check in and harvest if something looks ripe. Forget weeding too, we really didn’t do any of that all summer. On Sunday though, my husband noticed that some of the cherry tomatoes were still turning red. So we quickly picked those and I picked some more on Tuesday. I also read that some tomatoes will ripen on the window sill so I decided to try that method out for myself.
We noticed that we had a few red peppers on the stem. I decided to leave those on the plant and monitor them to see if they would get any bigger.
Our plant markers got lost not long after we planted the garden so it has been mostly guesswork to try and figure out what was growing in our garden. My parents had a garden while I was growing up and we mostly grew green peppers, corn, tomatoes, green beans and peas but I have had no life experience growing broccoli. I had forgotten that we even planted it. On Sunday, while we were looking around in the garden, we were surprised to see what we thought was broccoli growing in the garden. We also had what looked like yellow broccoli flowers, and I really did not know what to do with those either.
I did some quick research online and I learned that the broccoli can grow back if it is cut and broccoli that has flowered has a mealy texture and should be cut off right away. I decided to harvest the green broccoli and to cut the head off the broccoli flowers.
On Wednesday after it started to feel too hot to be at the playground, Patrick and I were not quite ready to go home so we decided to stop at the Salvation Army Store and have a look around. I have found some fun bargains there in the past so I hoped to see some interesting things. I had not stopped in in several months, but the consignment shopping I did this past weekend got me interested in thrift shopping with the possibility of reselling. I came in originally to look at some new maternity styles but I came up with nothing so I decided to quickly peruse the housewares section. I ended up leaving with two Pfaltzgraff plates and a new looking Tervis tumbler with a price tag that said $0.99.
Back in the spring I had a grand idea that I would go to thrift stores and buy things that I thought might be valuable in the resale market. I never really followed through with my plan, but I decided today to challenge myself to open up an eBay account and give it a try. I will let you know how it goes. Keep me honest and ask me about it.
What kinds of Indian Summer activities have you been up to?
