Hello and welcome or welcome back! I hope all of you are doing well.

In researching ideas for the September issue of this newsletter, I searched what days/holidays are celebrated in September. The list was surprisingly long.

The month of September is:

* National School Success Month as well as Better Breakfast Month. * Labor Day is September 3. * Newspaper Carrier Day is September 4. * National Cheese Pizza Day (who knew?) is September 5. * Read a Book Day is September 6. * International Literacy Day is September 8. * National Teddy Bear Day (also who knew?) is September 9. * National Grandparents Day is September 10. * We remember and honor what happened on September 11th with 9/11 Day. * Positive Thinking Day & Milton Hershey's Birthday is September 13. * Uncle Sam Day is the first day that Uncle Sam became a known figure is also on September 13. * Mayflower Day is September 16 when we honor those who risked everything to come to America on the Mayflower. * National Play-Doh Day (who thinks these things up?) is September 16 as well. * Constitution/Citizenship Day is September 17 * The First Day of Autumn is September 22.

I have to say some of these hit my hot spots such as Read a Book Day (I love reading), National Teddy Bear Day (who doesn’t love teddy bears?), Grandparents Day (I’m a grandmother a/k/a Nana), obviously I never want to forget what happened on 9/11, I love that there is a Positive Thinking Day, and if I needed a good excuse to eat chocolate, what better excuse than to celebrate Milton Hershey’s Birthday? As a proud, patriotic American, I believe we should remember the Mayflower and those who risked everything to come here seeking freedoms such as freedom of religion, freedom of speech, etc. I also think it’s very important to remember our Constitution and be thankful for our American Citizenship. I love fall, so the First Day of Autumn is a win for me as well as I get to break out my fall decorations, pumpkin spice it up and my favorite . . . caramel apples!

For more information on the history of Grandparents Day and/or Labor Day, check out the links below: History of Grandparents Day History of Labor Day

This particular year, we had both a very bad drought as well as temps in the 100+++ for weeks! That’s right, weeks . . . not days . . . weeks! I don’t care if you have shade cloths set up over your veggies and water like crazy, things are not going to grow in that kind of weather! But we are finally staying in the upper 80’s to lower 90’s during the day and I’m seeing signs that those veggies that managed to hang in there with me through the summer are showing signs they may produce vegetables again. Thanks be to God!

I’m not an experienced gardener and have had to learn a lot. This fall, we are going to invest in some straw bales and try our hand at straw bale gardening. If it goes well (and I pray that it does), we may turn more of the yard into garden using the straw bales. Check out the book I’ve been reading on Straw Bale Gardening. If you try it yourself, please let me know how it goes. StrawBaleGardening

Here are links to some pages that might benefit you as you start another school year. Back-to-school-organization.html Kids-chores.html Kid-crafts.html Kids-learning-center.html Kids-school-bags.html Kids-with-autism.html Organizing-kids.html School-lockers.html School-tips.html Toy-storage.html

Unfortunately, we are not able to sell our home and move to the country (at least not yet) 😊 We firmly believe in using what we have so we began doing what we could with our suburban home. We have a very large yard that came with two mature pecan trees. We planted two peach trees 7 to 8 years ago. We turned approximately 1/3rd of our backyard into a fenced off organic vegetable garden and I have been learning to grow some of our own produce. We spent a lot of money on water bills this summer, so we decided to do something about it.

Last year we picked up a 100-gallon rainwater collection barrel and this year during the 100+++ heat and drought, my intrepid husband put up 16+ feet of gutter on the back of our home and got the rainwater collection system set up. August 19th no rain was predicted, but we got our first fall rain . . . a nice 1” of good soaking rain! To our surprise, that 100-gallon barrel filled up in less than 5 minutes! Wowzer! I had no idea it would go that fast! Now I’d like to get a couple more barrels and connect them together!

The barrel and the garden are not close to each other, and the yard slopes upward from the barrel to the garden, so my husband is investigating a pump to get the water to the veggies. The other alternative is to collect rainwater in barrels that are on a waist-high stand that can gravity feed into a drip irrigation system. Not sure which we will end up with.

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Gratefully, Shelly Morton