That Time of Year

Some may view it as a winding-down time.

Others may figure it's avoidance season.

With The Festival and the POAC Arts and Crafts Show for 2019 now history, many visitors will be heading home.

  Sandpoint's likely to be quieter than usual for a while.

BTW:  Bill picked up that new piece of lawn art at the craft show yesterday. 

As for us locals, some may be doing their best to go on the hideout to avoid any of generous souls willing or even desperate to give away their zucchinis or plums. 

Keep remembering that if you want to keep your friends from avoiding you, there's always the Food Bank which will happily accept most of your home/garden-grown overabundance.

I think I'm fairly safe from people avoiding me because of zucchinis.  

I did not grow any squash this year. 

The other day, however, when I did mention to my neighbor that I have a lot of plums and made her a "plum good" offer, she snapped out the speediest and most emphatic NO I've heard in a long time. 

So, as mentioned, I figure that the people at the Food Bank can't run away when they see me coming with my bucket of plums. 

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to check out some of the abundance showing up in the fields at Hickey Farms.

Cameron Holt, who plays high school lacrosse along with his band instrument,  was nice enough to take me out to the corn, bean and squash patches. 

He waited patiently on the farm 4-wheeler while I walked the rows and got down close and personal with several squash and some rather shy green beans.  Those beans like to hide under their leaves.

I actually learned the bean phenomenon at home yesterday morning when the  heavy overnight rain and cooler temps had rid the garden of those pesky bees which threaten attack if you so much as stick a finger within the veggie leaves.  

They think they own the garden, and it was obvious that they had been keeping me away from a rather generous crop of green, ready-to-pick beans well hidden beneath the leaves. 

With bees gone for a while, I filled a container with beans and added them to others in the freezer.

Riding around the Hickey Farm reminded me that the Bonner County Fair is coming soon, next week, in fact.

I'm betting that the produce section of the fair could grow a bit with the event being moved further into August by a couple of weeks. 

I believe also that many high school fall sports will be having their first official gatherings today.  

Summer is quickly evaporating into a distinct feeling of fall, and there are plenty of good reasons to enjoy the seasonal changes, especially from the gardens. 

Happy Monday.