Thursday
Linda
August is a tough month to get through. If the heat and humidity don’t do you in the crazy horse flies and other bugs eat you to death. I don’t know about other places but here in West Virginia during the month of August the horse flies go ballistic. If they’re not drilling craters into your skin they are dive bombing your head and crashing into walls and windows.
It’s especially hard on my cousins donkeys, and any outside animals. They are just tormented with the stinging bites of these flying demons. Despite August’s fiery disposition it does have it’s good points.
It is a time of harvest and today I picked our first batch of Lima beans. It was only about a half a pint but they are just coming on. The vines are full of immature pods and blossoms. I also picked another load of tomatoes and plan to can them up tomorrow. So far we have canned seven pints of tomatoes from a previous haul.
I hear a thunderstorm rolling in from a distance and the sky is turning a dark hazy grey behind the mountains. Hopefully some cooler weather will tag along behind it.
The cicadas are chanting for more hot weather, but just underneath their chatter you can hear the crickets tuning up for the Autumn concerts to come.
August can roast us, and bite us, and test our endurance, but the cheery song of a little cricket gives us sight of the finish line.
Off-Grid in West Virginia 
those beans…I bet they are good! And Alabama must be close to WV, cause I think I heard the thunder too.
Lima beans, lima beans. I remember as a kid having to help harvest them. Grandma, mom and all canned and froze them like everything else we ever had (except the potatoes that stayed in the cellar .. p.s. we had to dig them by pitch fork so we didn’t damage any; the plow seems to cut to many up).
I never cared a whole lot about them unless they were soft, but, hey, they helped raise me!