First, I need to right a wrong. Last week, I got a bunch of writing books in the mail and I tweeted out:

I had no idea where this group of quality books came from, though I had my suspicions!

#dangthatSliceofLifecrew

My friend, Ana (a friendship made, ironically, because of the Slice of Life), added to my suspicions:

So I started digging around on Two Writing Teachers website, where the Slice of Life take place, and I found nothing. Ana, then tweets me this link from March 7. Sure enough, I won a price for expanding “the community, encouraging other to join and mentoring them along.”

#thatsifreakingawesome

So, I need to thank the Two Writing Teachers crew for this awesome award, Heinemann for this great donation, and of course Ana for finding this and helping me realize I need to read for comprehension as I’m going through the Slice of Life blogs! 🙂

Now, speaking of blogs, we are getting our KidBlogs set up last week, working our our One Little Word for the year. I was pulling up my blog in class, I noticed I was at 699 post. So this slice has the honor of being my 700th. Not a big deal, but something to mention all the same.

#longevity

And finally, our Covid garden is no more (and my wife is thankful!). The words “pandemic” and “lockdown” were uttered, so I started planting. Nothing much too much different than before, but we expanded the garden considerable. Most of what we grew came from seeds saved or purchased a while ago. Tomatoes and peppers and eggplants and green beans and cucumbers and squash and watermelon and potatoes, and we’ve put a lot of that food into canning jars or freezer bags for the long cold winter. Why you might ask? Last week, we had two days of frost, one day being a fairly hard frost that killed off much of our garden. We brought in TON of produce, but it’s been fun to do this with my wife.

#thatisalotofstuff

Why did you do this might ask? Last week, we had two days of frost, one day being a fairly hard frost that killed off much of our garden. We brought in TON of produce, but it’s been fun to do this with my wife. We canned a lot new things. We made apple sauce and apple pie filling, putting it into jars for the first time because our freezer is full of frozen veggies!

#wastenotwantnot

The scary part of all this, we’ve got very few jars left. At one point, I had quite a stash of canning jars and lids. They are almost completely gone, and replacing them is impossible. It’s amazing how ALL of the canning supplies have been bought up and are just out of the store. Trying to purchase things at our local hardware store, feed stores, even online, things are just gone.

It will be interesting if producers can catch up or if this is what we’ll be dealing with for a while.

As it is, if we are locked down again, have a blizzard, or just get a hankering for some homemade chili, we’ve got the stuff! 🙂

#thegardeninglifeishard