September 2021 – Summer burn out, totally ready for quieter days

Well it wasn’t quite September 2021 when the temperature dropped and it started raining here but I didn’t have time to add it to the end of my August 2021 post. Us locals were all like, “Um so… not that we’re complaining (we’re really not) but, do we HAVE to get all the rain we’ve been missing for three months in a week? It just seems a little extreme… totally not complaining but… WOW.” And suddenly summer was just over. But I don’t think anything the weather could have done would have either surprised us, made us happy or even ticked us off at that point…

We can all agree this September 2021 we, like so much of the Midwest, certainly deserved a real fall this year after feeling like we lived on the surface of the sun for three months.

Summer has always been my favorite season but I realize now that it was actually normal northern Minnesota summer that was my favorite season.

This wasn’t that.

By the time September 2021 got here I was just cranky.

With three straight months of record heat and drought there was not a single enjoyable working day outside all summer.

I was not motivated to finish our garage addition or do another damned outdoor project. That’s, of course, not how the cookie crumbles, but it was a real KICK MYSELF IN THE BUTT AND FORCE MYSELF kind of month.

And we all know how that feels – pretty crappy.

Everyone can relate to those projects that just feel like such an endless battle that its not even a celebration to get them over with.

It just felt like a trial we had to plow through.

But we did get the garage covered in plywood and steel / siding in September 2021 and if nothing else gets done on it this year (electrical and a garage door) I won’t be losing any sleep over it.

Its done ENOUGH for now lol.

Time to return to the days when we work on things when we feel like it and not because we HAVE to. (Nothing takes the joy out of home improvement like a deadline. (Just knowing winter is coming is bad enough!) Suddenly its now WORK and I HATE that and you guys know how much I love improving this old house!)

September 2021 I’ve never looked forward to indoor projects more in my life… and that’s really saying something

Speaking of indoor projects I know I had planned on finishing the basement this coming winter, the kitchen needs a total overhaul, the stairwell needs sheetrock (among other things…) and the closet down there needs some shelves and serious organization.

But, you know what?

I don’t want to work on it at all.

I’m stubbornly returning to my to-do list from two years ago before Lodi moved in and our lives merged to work on things that we both needed to be done for us.

(Guest Bedroom redo for when his family comes to visit, makeover of the main floor bath (also for guests), Lodi’s own space for his own hobbies and the big project of the basement living room and basement bathroom for our overflow of furniture and, also, for guests! Not to mention having to move the back door into the workshop and replacing it with a window!)

I can finally go back to the things I’ve had on my back burner for two years!

(Most of my books have been in storage this entire time… I miss them.)

My focus (hopefully as soon as November) is returning to the second floor master suite which has needed to be repainted for years. I’ve done very little up there since I moved in besides adding bedside tables, building a bed frame and doing some rearranging.

The door for the master has literally been in the garage since 2014!

The entire floor deserves and needs a makeover and I’m VERY excited to get on it.

Even when it was finally nice out, we were so sick of everything to do with the outdoors that we hardly used our new lower deck and fire pit at all. I just have to believe though that by next year (and we’ve put some serious time between us and this boiling summer) we are going to absolutely appreciate all we got done here this year.

Like with all Septembers this year I was secretly kind of hoping our garden would just die already…

Garden burn out happens every year for me, HOWEVER, I really think this year was worse than ever because we had to constantly water our poor garden for so many weeks.

I made about a dozen quarts of bread and butter pickles and they didn’t turn out too bad.

With the death of our dill from the heat this year I didn’t have the option to make dill pickles so I’m pretty thrilled the B&B pickles turned out ok.

(This is the recipe I kind of followed. Though I ended up skipping the onions, apple cider vinegar, garlic and added more sugar.)

We were overwhelmed in zucchini and summer squash which forced me to get creative when we just could not eat yet another raw summer salad.

(My salad recipe is basically everything I can pull out of the garden cut up raw and tossed in a vinegar and sugar dressing, its good and really easy, but no one can eat it forever lol.)

The first thing I learned with the squash was to microwave it to death before cooking with it. It helped A LOT actually and made the zucchini a spectacular replacement to noodles in lasagna or in any kind of hot dish etc.

It also made the summer squash melt in your mouth almost like mashed potatoes when stuffed with cheese and baked for awhile.

Yes I know I could have made zucchini bread but we’re both on diets and really don’t eat sweets… I did freeze a bunch of it to throw in chilis and stews this winter though.

We have yet another concert to go to!

That’ll be like at least four this year I think lol – this is what happened to us for a year in quarantine – we just kept buying tickets and dreaming of the day we could leave the house for the fun of it.

Definitely making up for lost time!

In early September Lodi and I celebrated two years together!

We have no plans in October and I am thrilled by that.

I am entirely ready for quieter days.

Like with every year (this time of the year) our pellets were dropped off at our front door. This will be the fourth year in a row for me after replacing my wood stove with a pellet stove and I can’t even begin to express how happy I am with it.

This year we purchased three “skids” of pellets instead of just two because two was never quite enough. Every skid holds sixty, 40 pound bags.

(Our guy calls them skids because trying to say a pallet of pellets is just too confusing!)

Lodi had to work late the day the pellets arrived, “Wait for me!”

My goodness he knows me better than that doesn’t he?!

He wouldn’t have waited for me!

By the time he got home I had nearly 80 bags in the house and, admittedly, was starting to flag lol we got the rest tucked in the garage for winter together.

All in the cost was about $1,000 and that, combined with our electric backup heat, puts us at about $2,000 to heat our entire home for the winter which is pretty impressive if you ask me. This is northern MN after all.

We keep our pellets in my Grandma’s old carrot box in front of one of our deck doors right by the pellet stove to make it super easy to fill up.

I had it sitting in the kitchen when Lodi got home, “We don’t need to cover up the door yet do we?” He was so sweet and earnest and I felt the exact same way!

Covering up that deck door with our pellet box feels like we are literally closing the door to summer.

We’re just not ready for that yet!

I mentioned our dog Annie’s new food from TheFarmersDog.com in my last post because she was feeling so much better on it. Now she no longer has to put her seat belt on in my Honda either because, drumroll please, she’s lost some weight too!

My horse Garcia is more like a dog than any horse I’ve ever met, meaning he is utterly obsessed and totally nuts when it comes to his food… Which also means he INHALES his grain.

Which, unfortunately, also means he’s been choking a lot over the past couple of years. I finally figured out how to just mix his grain with hay now so he can’t inhale it but GOOD GRIEF.

(A horse choking is not as immediately life threatening for them as it is with humans. They have two separate passages in their throats for air and food so its really just a case of waiting it out until the obstruction passes. Yes, it can be serious but, usually, they’re just super duper mad and uncomfortable for awhile. If you’ve never seen a horse “throw up” I don’t recommend youtubeing it lol it is one wild sight! The first time I saw it I really thought he was a goner.)

I called my vet in to float Gar’s teeth (the horse dentist) because horses do need to have their teeth ground down and fixed periodically. For a 30 year old horse he’s got lots of teeth left but they didn’t need a lot of work done…

So that wasn’t the problem!

That’s me in the horse pasture literally in my pajamas keeping him company saying over and over again, “Really old man!? You haven’t learned how to chew your food yet?!”

Aw the weird days of our lives