Some Observations from the Hill
by H. H. "Hub" Brown

 In my interview with the reporter for the Sun-Bulletin, evidently I didn't explain things clearly enough. For Sue Meridith thought that I worked garden with the big tractor. But my garden is too small and the tractor is too large for that. 

 I drive the tractor to the garden and then I have a small plastic foot propelled cart that Jerry Shirley gave me and this is what I use to plant, weed, and gather produce with. Tom goes ahead with a rope tied to two iron stakes and a yard stick and marks the rows. Then I follow and do the planting so you see this garden isn't all my effort, it's kind of a neighborhood affair. 

 I told Fritz and Tom we had a pretty good garden this year what would have happened if it had rained?  Another thing I told Sue about Fritz taking me for coffee mornings down to Joe's place and usually once a week to the packing house at Wyalusing, Pa. I tell you I would lead a pretty dull existence if it weren't for Fritz - and Pat! 

 Tomatoes seem able to stand this hot dry weather better than a lot of plants. Especially the ones that come up from seeds of the ones that didn't get gathered last year. Dry weather doesn't even seem to slow them down for they crowd out or grow over anything next to them. 

 Luckily for me, Tom took over the tomato detail. He gathers them, cleans them, puts a kettle on to cook, and then puts them through a cone-shaped colander and bags and freezes the juice. Next winter that will make a welcome drink with a little flavor added. I like to add a little leftover pickle juice to mine. 

 Speaking of pickles, Tom and I tried our hand again at making some sliced sweet pickles that you freeze, according to Fritz's sister, Frieda Baker, and some dills that you put in a crock. This was from an old cook book and called for some cherry leaves and some grape leaves and some grape tendrils for a variation in flavor. We'll see.

 Norma's husband, my son-in-law, and my neighbor have both had some type of pneumonia that has been very difficult to overcome. My neighbor had lung cancer and was sent to Bethesda, Maryland, where they finally cured the cancer but seemed unable to be sure about the pneumonia. Ray has had some trips to the hospital with pneumonia and is finally on the mend.

 I read in the paper where a columnist was worrying about mothers walking the children in strollers in Central Park and were pushing the stroller with one hand and exercising the other arm. The writer, Mary Haupt, was wondering if they had to try and do two things at once. I remember a story where a teacher told her pupils they couldn't do two things at once. One little boy piped up and said, "My Grandma does three things at once, she reads her Bible, smokes her corncob, and soaks her corns all at the same time . . ."

 Fritz has been busy putting up temporary electric fence so the cattle can gather what grass has come up since the hay was cut. That means he will have to make an early trip to see how much fence the deer have knocked down in the night. Sometimes when they run into electric fence it makes a slingshot effect and those insulators can be shot 30 or 40 yards.