Early Summer

When the electrical power went off I located my portable charger and plugged in my phone. The WiFi was dead yet access to the internet is crucial in an emergency.

A neighbor asked if our power was out via text message. I responded, “Yes, do you need cucumbers?” I walked a bag of freshly picked cukes over to the back door of their house where they were preparing the grill for a cook out.

The rural electric cooperative website reported more than 1,600 homes without power. The plotting of outages on their map was based on reports from customers so I phoned in our report. The operator was patient and helpful. All the information she had was on the website except that crews were working on the problem.

Our association has a Facebook page which was more active than normal. The loss of electricity didn’t have any apparent effect on social media. No new information there, just neighbors asking what up?

The duration of the outage was about 90 minutes. Just as power came on the doorbell rang. One of the well volunteers came down from the well house to report the water pressure was going down and soon they would have to turn on the back up generator. He smiled when I told him the electricity was back on. I made a post on our Facebook page pointing out the well volunteers were monitoring the situation.

In a rural subdivision we rely upon each other for information. Mobile phone technology makes our lives better. Glad I adapted back in 2012.

These summer days are gorgeous. Temperatures are rising to about 90 degrees each day with clear, calm skies. Humidity has been high so I get my outdoors work done early after sunrise and spend most of the day indoors. There is plenty of work.

I harvested the rest of the celery yesterday. Most of the harvest gets chopped into bits and frozen for use in soups and stir fries. The flavor of home grown celery is hard to believe, better than any celery grown for commercial sales. Fresh celery lasts a shorter time than store bought. That’s okay. It is worth the 120 day growing season for the flavor.

I sorted and brought the last of the 2019 onions to the kitchen. They need using up. In the meanwhile the portable greenhouse shelves are filled with this year’s crop, drying so they can be trimmed and stored.