Summer time, and the livin' is easy..

So it's been almost a month, and not a peep from me? For shame!
Seriously, though - it's summertime, and that means that things have been super busy around here. We had a week of camp to run at Smoky Mountain Christian Camp, which was so stinkin' fun, and then we had family in from Florida, and in the middle of it all, I had to have emergency oral surgery to remove the wisdom teeth I should have had cut out 10 years ago but was too chicken to take care of (and for the record - I'm still all hopped up on hydrocodone because my jaw is jacked up now, so if none of what I'm typing makes sense, well, there you go). There's been barely any time to do much in the way of gardening, or cooking, or crafting, or any of that stuff I love to do. Any free time I have had in the last two weeks I've pretty much spent drooling on the couch. So. To briefly sum up what's happened here at the farm: our chickens were wiped out AGAIN while we were away at camp. So much for whatever-proofing the chicken run. We think it was a racoon. Or a whole dang pack of them. Like a 50's gang of greaser punks with little black face masks and pointy noses. Urgh. I hate racoons. The garden nearly got overrun with weeds while we were away, so Davey took the weedeater to them, and since then he's been putting down layer after layer of straw.. it looks so nice! We've harvested pickling cucumbers, peppers, peas, yellow squash and zucchini so far, with lots more still to come. I lost all the tomatoe plants in my kitchen garden to spider mites and aphids.. well, really what did them in was the homemade pesticide. It killed the bugs, and fried the plants to a nice crispy black. Got new plants from the market to put in. Now I just have to stop drooling long enough to get the job done.
Today I ripped out the peas and kale, and about double my body weight in weeds, so I'm feeling optimistic. The fact that it's not 110 degrees out sure does help alot.
Tonight's chores are making pesto and figuring out how to turn 15 pounds of zucchini into dinner. Hooray for summer!