Pretty cool

Today we were blessed with cool, breezy weather.  In the last four days, we've gone from a high temperature of 102 to the high today of just 66 degrees, and I am not complaining.  Mainly because my chores run by the weather.  And I needed a cooler day to accomplish some tasks I could not do without Mother Nature's cooperation.

First on the agenda was transplanting next fall's butternut squash into the ground, along with some late season tomatoes and some marigolds (the last purely for color and decoration).  A cool day is a perfect one for transplanting.  If temperatures go much above the low '80's, plants here will struggle as they try to recover from both heat and transplant shock, and I've had many plants either die this way, or just barely hang on, producing nothing, because I planted them while it was too warm and they never quite got over it.

The other task I needed to do was put up some of the apricots Big Ag brought home over the weekend.  I did two quarts of canned fruit, and four pints of preserves this morning, which used up about half of the apricots I had.  The other half I am going to dry, because there is nothing better than the sweet but tart taste of dried apricots, either on their own or in recipes which call for them, like a Moroccan Chicken recipe I like and make a lot.  Since commercially dried fruit usually has sulfites, it will also be nice to have some apricots on hand that won't induce an asthma attack in anyone.  

But I'm waiting on drying the fruit until later this week, when it is supposed to warm up once again.  I can't say I'm looking forward to having the heat back, but I'm glad I will get at least a couple more days of cool ocean breezes before it comes back.