Backtrack: August

August was ....having friends over where all our girls play famously together, swimming in Lake Michigan (in Manistique), picking 4 gallons (20#) of wild blackberries in the woods (in an hour x4 1/2 pickers), canning 2 bushels of tomatoes (100#), 25# of jalapeños, and 10# of onions into 37 pints of spaghetti sauce and 80 pints of VERY hot salsa, and grandparents and fires in the backyard and friends and fires...    Did I mention we had about 3-4 fires a week in the month of August?

 Cold, yet refreshing!

 My dad on the shores of Lake Michigan down the Garden Peninsula.

 Gloves are a 'must have' with that many peppers!