Hot, Hot, Hot

We are having one of the hottest summers on record here, and severe drought conditions.  Tempuratures have been in the 90's every day in July so far and a few days over 100 degrees.   We have had very little rain in the last 8 weeks,.  The one day it did rain, I was waiting in line to check out at Michaels and everyone around me started screaming and running to the front windows to see the rain, everyone was just so excited, it was crazy, but we hadn't seen rain in so long it was an exciting event.  The sad part about this is that a lot of the farmers around here raise corn and much of the crop this year is going to be lost because of the weather.  My daughter's fiance however has sweet corn ready, and it is so, so good.  There are not as many ears as usual, and the ears are much smaller than normal and not filled out well BUT it still tastes amazing.  Around here, this time of year we eat sweet corn a LOT, freshly picked it is so sweet and yummy.  Not anything like what the grocery store carries as sweet corn.  Usually, we would pick and freeze 12 to 14 dozen ears of corn to have throughout the next year.  This year we were only able to get about 5 dozen decent ears to freeze, but thats OK. 

I always cook the corn in the husk in the oven, that way you can do about 2 dozen at once.  Then let it cool a bit and shuck it, the jacket and silks all come off easily since corn has steamed inside the husk.  Then we cut the corn off the ear, put it into freezer bags and freeze it.  I also have a tool to cut the corn off the ear which works pretty well. 

My daughter Kelly's fiance Doug also plants fields (yes fields! usually 3 or 4)  of sunflowers every summer.  It is such an amazing sight.  So she and Doug had their engagement pics done at the height of the sunflowers.  I will post some of the pics later, they turned out really well.  The photographer loved the sunfower fields.

Amazingly the heat and drought have not affected the sunflowers.  They are shortlived however, only at their peak for a week to 10 days, then they all turn dark brown and start falling over.   I should add that these pics are from last year, this year that corn in the field behind the sunflowers is barely half as tall, and mostly brown.

It is always so amazing to me that they all face towards the sun., and the flowers are so huge, just makes you smile.

Every year I take pictures of them.  Someday I am going to make a sunflower inspired quilt.  Not gonna happen this year though, way too busy with all the wedding plans.  Kelly and Doug got engaged on May 31st and the wedding is planned for October 20, 2012!  And my daughter has all kinds of ideas and plans for cute vintage burlap table runners (to be sewn by Mom), galvanized buckets with burlap printed numbers and dried flowers in them arranged by Mom, an album quilt with each guest at the bridal shower signing a center block, (my idea), cute homemade invitations with burlap and scrapbooking paper ....  so yeah we are keeping busy around here.

Thanks for stopping by hope you are enjoying your summer!