Cotton

 Arizona is known for the four cees - cactus, copper, cattle and cotton.  When the weather turns hot they switch from growing vegetables to growing cotton.  When we come back to Yuma around the end of October they are starting to bring the cotton to the cotton gin.  Huge bales of cotton come to the plant and go through the machines and come out in piles.  The piles are put into nice wrappers like another bale and shipped off to wherever-  most likely China.  When we go by the plant the area is white with cotton flurries.  I made the mistake of picking up a piece of cotton  that hadn't been processed and was shocked at how sharp the plant is.  When they used to pick cotton by hand I don't know how they did it without getting blood all over it from all the pricks your hands would suffer from the thorny stuff. 

We have been busy getting things fixed on our RV.  It is as bad as a house especially when it is getting older.  We are still looking for a permanent house to buy but the market is a little too crazy right now.  So we keep putting money in our RV since we don't know how long we will be keeping it.  We have to keep it looking as new as possible because a lot of RV parks don't want RVs that are more than ten years old.    It is good to be able to send a picture of a nice looking rig so we can get into these parks if we want to stay there.  

Meyer Lemons

 One of our neighbors here in Yuma gave us some lemons from their tree.  They had already picked over 100 and had twice that left on the tree.    They make pie, lemon cello, lemonade and also freeze slices and juice.  These lemons look like oranges on the outside and the inside but they are lemons.  This brand is some kind of hybrid of a lemon and orange tree.  I like to grate the rind and dry it.  I use it where lemon peel is called for in a recipe.  It is expensive to buy and so easy to make your own.  I let the grated peel dry outside.  Here the air is so dry that the peel dries out quickly.  I even made some homemade lemonade that turned out pretty well.  I squished the lemons through a fine colander.   You add the juice to some sugar dissolved in water and add ice.  

It is warming back up nicely now.  It was getting down in the 40's at night and now it is staying in the 50's.  It was in the 60's during the day and now it is back up in the 70's.  Winter is over down here.   The only issue is if there is some wind out of the north.  That makes it feel cold because it is blowing down from the cold north.  We are going out gold prospecting again now that it is nice.  It sure would be nice if we were better at it but it is something to do.