Power Outages, Blessings and Bugs

Last night we were minding our own business, watching the end of the PGA golf tournament, when the power went out. It does that sometimes during a storm, but there was no storm. We waited for it to come back on (fast) since it was quite hot outside. It was about 6:30pm.  Not knowing when it would be back on, we called our son who works at a nearby Sheraton to see if he had any rooms available.  He did. Yay! We decided that we could take a chance that the power would come back on or act then to get settled just in case it was going to be a long, hot dark night.

We needed to run GAB errands today in town, so we decided to opt for the hotel last night.
We discovered later that a car hit a transformer and had taken out power to over 21,000 homes. The power was back on in about an hour (thanks OG&E), but the decision to leave had already been made.


We drove into town and got the VIP treatment from our son and the rest of the staff. Our room was lovely and cool. We were treated to a buffet of shredded beef enchiladas with the fixings and cheesecake for dessert. 

We brought one of our baskets of tomatoes to share with anyone who might want some. We didn't have any trouble giving away tomatoes. ;)




We had the parking lot practically to ourselves. That was great since I was driving the "boat"  (that's what I affectionately call the van and trailer). I don't like driving it, but since Larry is losing his vision to macular degeneration, I do all of the driving. 

As the sun set slowly over the Walmart, we settled in for a cool and comfortable sleep. 


We had a great little "vacation", got up early to run errands run and came back home to do a garden harvest...and feed the cats. They were very happy to see us. 

Here is the harvest that was waiting for me today! For perspective, the small basket on the right is what I used a lot of last year. It is about 8 inches long. Sometimes I had to break out the bigger basket (on the left). It is about 13 inches long. This year,  I have needed the big basket almost daily. I harvest almost 10 pounds of food a day. Today I needed the 16 inch basket. It is full of tomatoes that you can't even see. Plus the big basket has the ones that could not fit into the biggest basket. This harvest weighed 20+ pounds. Granted, we have accumulated about 50 boxes over 7 years time, but still...we are having a bumper crop this year.

I have a Pinterest page where I catalog, date and share pictures of my daily harvests. I took over 100 daily harvest pics last year from June to November.

This year I didn't want to wait until November to start cataloging my pictures, so I started my 2014 Garden Harvest  Pinterest page earlier and add to it daily.  I started harvesting and taking pics in May. It is August and we are harvesting like crazy. We have 56 tomato plants plus assorted other plants. I've planted squash three times this year. As one batch would be going strong, I'd plant another few plants. I'm on my third planting and wonder who will win...the squash bugs or me...?

They have been relentless the past few days. I have a squash bug spray that works to kill them dead, but I have to be diligent, checking sometimes twice a day. I killed a bunch yesterday and came home to find more squash having a party and laying eggs on my new squash plants. Grrr!