I would like to send out my condolences to the friends and family of Violet Normandeau (nee Hearty) who passed away Aug. 14 at the age of . . .

89. She was the wife of the late Jules Normandeau.

On Aug. 9, I drove to Port Carling, Ont. and spent the night at my daughter and son-in-law’s. The next day Shelley and I drove back to Vinton and she spent the week with me. That was great timing because the beans were in full growing mode and we picked beans every single day when she was here. We canned, pickled and froze beans. The cucumbers were all coming at the same time and we made a lot of pickles.

August is always my busiest time of the year with the garden and trying to prepare everything to put away for the winter. We made zucchini fingers and canned a bunch of carrots.

Carl and the boys came Aug. 17 and spent the weekend and left after Violet’s funeral on Aug. 19.

While the boys were here, Tao wanted me to make some homemade clover honey so I told him if he went and picked the flowers that I would do it. Didn’t take him long to come back with all the flowers I needed for the recipe. We ended up with eight pint jars. As soon as the honey had cooled off, Tao sliced up a banana and poured the honey all over it and had that for a snack. It was so good that he cut up a second banana and enjoyed that with the honey too.

Last Tuesday, Theresa’s sister Marie from Arizona and her daughter Susie along with Isabell came and had lunch with me and Shelley.

On Wednesday, Cindy Normandeau came to visit with Shelley and Amber her daughter, stopped in too. On Thursday, Shelley and I went to aunt Betty’s in Otter Lake and had lunch with her and Gilbert.

So, between the garden and visitors and visiting, we were very busy all week. On Saturday night, we went to big D’s corn roast here in Vinton and had a great evening. It was a pleasant evening.

Now I have a couple of stories to tell you about myself that are kind of funny. First of all, I’ve had this lawn tractor for two years and my neighbour, Jennifer wanted to borrow it because her tractor broke. I told her sure go ahead and take it. A few minutes later she called me and asked if the tractor would go any faster. I told her no and that as long as the rabbit is up high, that’s as fast as it will go. She called me back a few minutes later and said, “I found the other six gears on your tractor and you should see that thing go now.”

When she was done she came over with my tractor and showed me where and how to change the gears. It usually takes me an hour to mow my lawn but now that I’ve learned how to use the gears, it only takes me 10 minutes. She couldn’t believe I was using that tractor in first gear, not knowing it could go any faster. She sure had a good laugh at me.

Then on Thursday, I was going to go to the dump and Shelley had put the bag of garbage just outside the door. She had to go back in the house before we left so when I went out, I just grabbed the bag of garbage to put it in the truck. All of a sudden this bee attacked me. I started screaming and ran back in the house and slammed the door closed. I thought I had gotten away from it but I was wrong. All of a sudden I felt a stinging on my right chest and there he was in the house with me. Shelley came running out of the bathroom to find out what happened because she thought I had fallen down and was screaming with pain. I said, “No, I just got stung by a bee and he picked a nasty spot to sting me.” So now, I have Shelley laughing at me too. Oh well if you can’t laugh at yourself you shouldn’t laugh at anybody else.

I would like to wish the following people happy birthday: Mario Ladouceur on Aug. 28 and Suzanne Kluke on Aug. 31.

I called my cousin Steve to come and help himself to the beans. I’m tired of them and I have enough put away for the winter. He brought me a bunch of jars so now I can pickle again all this week.

I’m going to wait until the end of September to do my beets, turnips and carrots. It’s just simply amazing how much stuff comes out of the garden and it’s so tasty.

It’s been so dry that the cucumbers have stopped growing and everything else actually. The flowers are all wilting and even when we water from the well it’s still not the same as a good rainfall. Sunday night it was down to five degrees Celsius so you know fall is just around the corner and our gardens are going to start freezing. It’s such a shame when they’re just producing so nicely.

We have a long weekend coming up and Shawville Fair.

I had another pleasant surprise this week. Sharon Crawford dropped into visit and she brought her niece Vicky with her. I hadn’t seen Vicky in a few years since she went away to college. Vicky was really interested in my paintings and ended up buying two of them. Thanks Vicky for the visit. It was so nice to see you.