Still growing and blooming....

October 19, 2023

The sun was shining through the young beech leaves this morning, casting a golden glow on the world.

Here and there, a flash of colour lingers.

The oaks are starting to change colour now.

Under our crab apple tree, this year's single puff ball grew and grew...

September 30

October 13

 The water tanks are all drained and stored for the winter.

60 fat garlic cloves are nestled into the earth, mulched with leaves and covered with screening and rocks.

The baby plum trees have had their trunks wrapped to prevent vole incursions over the winter, and then fenced to deter deer nibbling.

The pond is very low. By spring it will be full to the topmost step visible in the photo...hopefully.

The spuds have been dug, cured, brushed off and stored. Red, Gold and Russet.

There has not been an hard frost at all yet. A few asters and nasturtium seeds I poked into the new perennial bed later in the summer, are now blooming.

A couple more of the sad little rutabaga seedlings I also popped in there have come into their own. The last two are showing their mettle. We ate one of the previously harvested ones at Thanksgiving...so delicious.

Marigolds are still a cheery blast of colour, and a small bed of spinach is doing very well under it's deer deterrent cage.

Radicchio, arugula and a few lettuces under deer deterrent screening are really enjoying these mild fall days.

I've been "got"!

 October 7, 2023

This is my fall greens patch. It was pak choy and collards. I am pretty sure these are the culprits. (ignore the date on the camera.)

There is a doe with two fawns, (one of the fawns is front and centre, and the doe is behind her) who have been hanging around. We have many trail camera pictures of them and have seen them in daylight under the apple trees in the front yard and behind the barn. The little guys appear to not have a care in the world, prancing around and play butting each other, their little white tails flipping up, while the doe watches cautiously. We are pretty sure it is the same threesome I posted a picture of in the spring when the fawns were small and still had their spots. 

So...I cleared out that mess and installed hardware cloth to protect the lettuce and radicchio that are behind, because I am sure they will be back. They also had a nibble on the broccoli plants that I have been harvesting shoots from, so those are pulled and composted as well.  

We have still not had a hard frost, and all the remaining blooms are crawling with pollen and nectar gathering insects. The red dahlia has exploded into this.....

the blooms all drooping down from the heavy rain we had Thursday.

We did a little back roads drive to see some colour before the rain arrived.

The colours are a little muted this year because of the last few weeks of drought. I did find a branch or two that was worth a close-up.

I am so done with apples. This is the last harvest I did with ladder and picking pole.

And this is where some of those apples are now.

More apple pie filling. The rest are filling a crisper drawer in the fridge, and will give us an "apple a day" for quite a while.

"All you need is tea and warm socks..."

October 1, 2023 

But...it is 15C (59F) at 8:30AM this morning!! Yesterday was hot and humid, today looks to be gearing up to be the same. 

Tea, yes; and the latest socks, hot off the needles. Shorter hours of daylight enabled a little knitting.

The harvest continues...

The last picking of peppers, now dried and frozen.

The watermelons, butternuts and acorns....Something had a little (big!) nibble on a couple.

Should have grown more pumpkins..

 Garlic cleaned and stored.

One of the next chores on the list is preparing a garlic bed, for planting in a couple of weeks. 

Four rutabagas that grew like crazy once they were transplanted. Must have been all the rain.

We have had 4 mornings of light frost. Nothing was seriously injured.

A dahlia grown from a freebee in a plant order. 

It was labelled as a variety called "KA's Cloud", and on looking it up, it is supposed to be a "blush-kissed white". Obviously someone boobed somewhere!

The big water tank being towed to its winter hibernation behind the barn.

The wood shed is on the way to being totally filled, and cleaning the chimneys is a job for this week, as we'll surely be needing a fire if the forecast for this weekend is to be believed. This stretch of unusually warm, dry weather is supposed to come to a screeching halt this weekend, which is Thanksgiving weekend in Canada. 

I usually bemoan the end of the garden season, but this year...I am so ready!! Come on Jack Frost!

Summer is done and dusted.....

September 22, 2023

 We are having a lovely stretch of warm, sunny days, great for working outside and getting things done. There has been a touch of patchy frost two nights running, but it wasn't severe, and I covered the cherry tomatoes, (which are bearing like crazy), the pepper patch, and the watermelons.

A few pictures of some of the pretty flowers that are blooming. The marigolds are a bevy of cheery blooms.

The two-tone red glads are still putting out blooms. Some have just little streaks of white, while others are more flamboyant.

A packet of wild flower seeds tossed on some bare soil this spring, have finally produced some blooms. A few cosmos, (see the tiny spider on that one?),

and some red poppies are blooming now....

as well as a pretty pink thing, perhaps a mallow of some sort(?) with a very beautiful star shape in the middle.

I am still waiting for the red peppers to turn from green to red. I harvested most of the green peppers, diced and froze them. This summer's patch has been a lot less productive than last year's. I left the smaller green peppers on the plants, hoping that maybe they will get a little larger. Until a severe frost is forecast, I am leaving them alone and will continue covering them on cool nights.

The watermelons have continued to grow. There are 6 of a decent size, and we sampled one about a week ago. It could have used some more time on the vine, but it was so very sweet and juicy.

 One of these will be our next victim!

The bush is still mostly green, a tinge of colour showing up here and there. 

Pickling and preserving is in full swing. Cucumbers are done. This is the last batch of pickles.

I don't usually reuse store bought pickle jars, but I have used up all my quart sealers on the amazing cucumber/pickle harvest we have enjoyed this year.
It is now tomato and apple time. I had to strip the fruit from my tomato plants a while ago, as the plants were badly blighted. Every couple of days I sort through the tomatoes spread out in boxes, processing them as they ripen. A batch of chili sauce is cooling on the counter now. 

Apple slices have been dried and frozen, the first batch of apple sauce is on the shelves, tomorrow will see another batch canned, and hopefully a third one will keep us in sauce until next year's apple harvest.

Hubby has been busy....

He has made a box with 2 inch thick white cedar planks he milled, levelled the spot in front of the slab retaining wall beside the root cellar's entrance, and buried it. He built the frame to fit the window we found up in the barn loft when we moved here. Now for some soil and some seeds!!!

 

 

Some Gorgeous Glads, Root Cellar, and Helicopters....

 September 12, 2023

For your viewing pleasure.

 

 "Generally, gladioli represent strength of character, faithfulness, moral integrity, and remembrance. Gladioli are actually the traditional 40th-anniversary flower and the birth flower for the month of August!" (Shamelessly copied from the internet)

The marigolds encircling the onion bed have sure taken off since the onions were harvested. They are so sunny and cheerful, and will keep going until frost, and they can even take a light frost.

"marigolds symbolize purity, auspiciousness, and the divine. Their strong fragrance is believed to ward off negativity and evil spirits. The vibrant colours of marigolds also represent the sun's energy, signifying warmth, passion, and creativity." (ditto)

The tire planter is abloom with beautiful asters, just lucky that the seedlings I put there turned out to be a mixture of colours. It is a long wait for asters to bloom, but so worth the wait.

"Asters symbolize love, wisdom, faith, and colour. (ditto)

 So the root cellar build is coming along. It occurred to us that in front of the root cellar's hump would be the perfect place to put a cold frame, as it is south facing. I have been looking around, and had chosen a site, but it was not an optimum location. Hubby has sunk posts, nailed the slabs from the hemlock beams milled for the cellar across the front, will be bracing them, filling in soil behind, and then the cold frame will be sunk in at the front. So that plan is coming together.

Over the past weekend, we headed to an auction sale along the Petawawa river. It happens that the location is just downstream from Garrison Petawawa, and the military were practising air drops with big helicopters with double rotors. (Chinooks??) They flew up the river past the auction site about every 30 minutes, their noise and vibration drowning out the auctioneer. It was very cool to watch them. On some passes, they were so low that one could look into the aircraft as they zoomed past.

We could also hear rapid gun fire in the distance, more practising. We wondered if the noise was instrumental in the cottage/house being sold!