Mystery Solved

Well, the mystery plant looks like watermelon, since my last post, its grown and changed to a darker green. We both hope it will taste good as in the past 3 years we've tried to grow different melons with mixed results. We tried cantalope, a oriental melon, and pumpkins. The cantalope and pumpkin got eaten by bugs and neither of us liked the oriental melon. Who would have thought watermelon was the way to go? Someone must have spit a seed into the open ground last summer and with all our winter rains, it sprouted. There are several more smaller ones developing so this is rather fun!

Saturday, we canned beets! Beets have to be canned using a pressure canner. This is ours that we bought after the great garage fire of 2010 when we lost all our canning supplies.

And here are the results 7 nice pints of beets for the winter. Our beets did very well this year and we've eaten our fill of greens and the beets themselves. The cutting board is one that Alan made back in the day when we were first married. Its held up well, hasn't it? all of 40 years.

Also on Saturday, we did an Find A Grave assignment. We signed up as volunteers to photo grave sites for family members and genealogists. Someone asked if we could find their great grand parents in the Lake Elsinore Cemetery which is 8 miles from us. Neither of us had been to that cemetery so it was a nice trip on a beautiful day. I know some think its weird to visit cemeteries but its never bothered me or the big guy. I like especially the older ones with the beautiful monuments. This cemetery is one of the older ones in the area, having been started in the 1890s.
There were flags on many of the graves because of Memorial Day, mostly WWI veteran graves. The Big War.  It wasn't too hard to find the graves and we found them within 15 minutes. Took our photos and then spent the rest of the time walking around quietly, looking at different monuments and enjoying the day. I noticed a family having a picnic on a grave site which I thought was nice.  It was very peaceful.
Later we entered the photos on the website and got a nice message a few minutes later, thanking us It was the first time we'd done this volunteer work but won't be our last !

If you'd like to find a grave, I did put a little gadget at the bottom of the blog for just that! Have fun!