I Have Been A Bad Reader but a Great Pickler!

It is sooooo hot.  I should be laying in the air conditioning, on the pool deck or beach reading my heart out.  But I am not.  Instead, I am trapped in my kitchen hovering over boiling pots of water, pickling, making jam and blanching.
I had this great idea that we were going to save money, eat healthier and know where our food came from.  I had visions of our pantry packed full of homemade tomato sauces, salsa, pickles and jam and our freezer full of green beans, corn and peas, homemade pesto and a cabinet full of dried herbs from our own garden.
I did not envision how much time this would take.  So 16 quarts of pickles, 2 gallons of frozen green beans, 4 pints of dilled green beads, 12 pints of blackberry jam and 10 ears of corn later I am exhausted, and I still have lots of tomato's that need to be taken care of and a raspberry patch that will be ripe in a week or two. 
I have to admit I abandoned my herbs a while back, let them go to seed and cut them totally out of the garden over the weekend - I need to scale back!
But I did make delish German Dill Pickles, Polish Dills, Refrigerator pickles, bread and butter pickles and pickled green beans - I need to figure out what else I can pickle!!  Labor day weekend I plan to can salsa, my green peppers and Serrano peppers should be ready and I did hold on to some home grown cilantro.
And, I promise to read!  I am nearly finished with my first ARC, The Tulip Eaters, watch for my review soon!.  It helps that it is baseball season I can read in the late evenings while my husband watches the St Louis Cardinals.