Time Flies When You're Having...Pumpkin

We are one week into November...it's hard to believe!  Soon it will be Birthday, Birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Birthday, Birthday!  Sigh.

 

The garden is completely finished with the exception of 2 tomato plants and one pepper.  I brought in the melons today as the vines were dead.  Unfortunately, they were not ripe or edible.

One small watermelon and 2 honey dew

There were lots of winter squash, and we've already eaten a few, which were delicious.

And lots and lots of pumpkins.  The little one are sweet pie pumpkins.  I've cooked up several and made pumpkin bread, pumpkin and peanut butter dog treats, pumpkin chili, pumpkin butterscotch muffins, pumpkin pie cake, date and pumpkin overnight oats, 4 pumpkin rolls, and toasted pumpkin seeds.

My favorite variety is a recipe adapted from Martha Stewart:

Sweet and Spicy Pumpkin Seeds

- 2-3 cups of dried pumpkin seeds

- 1 1/2 T oil                                   

- 6 T sugar                                     

- 1/2 t each kosher salt, cinnamon, 

ginger & cumin                         

- pinch of cayenne                         

Mix salt and spices and set aside. Heat oil in skillet over hi heat.  

Add pumpkin seeds and sugar and stir until sugar melts and seeds

 are coated and begin to caramelize.  Toss with spice mix.

The three largest pumpkins had a different purpose.  These were our Jack-o-lantern pumpkins.

Meanwhile, the Fall colors were gorgeous.

Stella and the kitties hanging out

Now that it is November, the trees have mostly lost their leaves.  My little skeleton now looks like a zombie trying to escape. 

And it is nearly hunting season.  This little buck seemingly has no fear of humans, so he may be in trouble in a few weeks!

Even though we have been having unseasonably warm weather, summer is long over.  We finally finished cleaning, drying and folding up the pool and putting it away for the winter.  We also had to cover the sand with landscape fabric, since the kitties think it is a giant litter box.  Next summer we will put pea gravel over it.

I am not much enjoying the end of Daylight Savings Time, although I did appreciate this sunrise on the way to work last week.

 Winter is coming.

Fall-ish

Some mornings of late have felt Fall-ish...there is a chill in the air, along with the scent of dead leaves.  It always comes as a bit of a surprise when Fall arrives, especially this year.  I still haven't had a summer vacation!  I am not ready for Winter yet, but as is typical, I am ready for the garden to be finished.

Things grew like crazy this year (except for weeds - I had very few in my garden this year), although the blueberries were sparse.  This week I processed 4 pounds of rhubarb, and I made 2 pounds of tomatoes into Gazpacho (which no one except myself cared for.)  I still have a big bag of jalapenos and cucumbers to deal with.

I also pulled the carrots and beets.

So I have those to deal with as well.

The pumpkins are ripening up...and taking over the top of my garden!

As of 3 weeks ago, I had 3 of them
weighing over 30# each!

L and I have been doing battle with the invasive and very nasty lanternflies.  We took an extension cord and the shop vac down to 2 trees at the edge of our woods that have been covered for two days in a row.  We sucked up hundreds of the little buggers into the vac full of soapy water.  As of yesterday, there are a few lanternflies remaining on the trees, but just a fraction of what there had been.

Carnage! 2 piles of lanternfly bodies.

Extreme Close Up

Speaking of insects, I noticed this lady on the back veranda.  When I got down on my knees to photograph her, she slowly turned and looked at me.  Isn't she amazing?

We have released the kittens from their cage, and they are now residing on the veranda, but wandering the grounds in between naps and eating.  Poor Fitz injured his toe and/or pad on one back foot yesterday, so he is limping around with a swollen foot.  He is getting plenty of healing rest as well.

L and I have been working in her room.  She has collected many, many piles of books over the past 2 years, as gifts and discards from the library.  They have been sitting all over the floor of her room for months and months because her bookshelves were full. J visited over Labor Day.  JP and I helped move them and their roomie to a new apartment the end of August.  They acquired a new bookshelf and wanted to take some of their books back up to the city with them.  Fortunately, this freed up some room to move some children's books (that L doesn't want to be packed up and stored away) into J's old room, leaving more room for L to shelve her books!

J had organized both theirs and L's books into rainbow order, which is visually appealing, but difficult to find anything.  After working at the library for 2 years, L wanted everything back in alphabetical order, so I spent a long time alphabetizing before we even began the process of shelving!  Here is the end result:

J's bookshelf...you can see that the 
top 3 shelves are in rainbow order.

L's shelves - alphabetized and categorized

Last week we received a package from Costco with an ice pack included.  Imagine my surprise to find that it was actually eco-friendly.  Nice going, Costco!

Sadly, my parents had to euthanize their little dog yesterday.  He was almost 15 years old, and had been in failing health for awhile.  There is another small grave under the oak tree in the Pet Cemetery now for Throckmorten P. Gildersleeves, Morti for short.

Preserving

This summer has been fairly wet.  I haven't had to water my garden very much, and everything down there is looking very lush and green.  Despite all the rain and green-ness, very little of it is weeds this year...a fact of which I am quite proud.  The amazing pumpkin plants are taking up close to 1/4 of the garden and there are 2 enormous pumpkins, and several smaller ones.

This guy is at least 18" high and 12" across
...and still growing!

The second time that I planted flower seeds in the top tier of my strawberry bed, they came up.  They are just starting to bloom, and look wonderful!

Zinnias and Cosmos

I am harvesting so, so many veggies from the garden that our extra refrigerator has been full frequently and I feel quite overwhelmed some days just trying to keep up!

This week I froze green beans and rhubarb, made zucchini bread, and ate corn and cucumbers.  Yesterday I picked a 2-gallon bucket of tomatoes (our first) so JP and I had tomato sandwiches for dinner last night, and I made and froze a pot of pasta sauce today.  I also canned 3 pints of sliced jalapenos for JP's tacos today.

L brought home apples and baby carrots from the library last week.  The Summer Reading Program is finished for the year, and these were left over from the lunches that they provided for the children.  They were going to be thrown out, and having Mennonite blood coursing through her veins, L couldn't let that happen.  So, I froze 6 pints of carrots and made 10 half pints of apple butter this week as well!

Tonight I am down to a small bag of green beans and about a dozen cucumbers in the refrigerator, a couple of tomatoes, and about 5 or six yellow or zucchini squashes.  Sigh.  There is more to do!

It is raining again tonight.  A few days ago, I witnessed the sun shining and the rain coming down.  It was beautiful.  You can almost see it in this picture if you enlarge it:

You know it's summer when...

 The fireflies are twinkling at twilight.

The monarch caterpillars are munching.

The garden is green and abundant.

I am canning and freezing like crazy.

Pickled Beets

Sweet Relish and Green Beans

And finally for some projects:

I folded an origami pig in honor of Yellow Pig Day, July 17th 
(look it up)

JP and I repaired the chickens' shade
structure with metal from the old pool - 
the ultimate in recycling!

Gardening and Such

Everything is growing and growing!  We are getting a nice rain right now to cool things down after a week of blazing hot temperatures.

The flower beds keep surprising me with flowers that I haven't seen for a long time.

The garden is getting greener (and not from weeds this year!!)

Tomatoes, Peppers, Pumpkins, Chard, Cabbage,
and the Blueberries...

...Everything else

I've been harvesting plenty of stuff:

Blueberries and Rhubarb

Blueberries and Sugar Snap Peas

Two Varieties of Cukes

The Blueberries are finished for the year.  Usually I have more than I can use and I beg friends to come and pick.  This year I only got about 4 gallons, which sounds like a lot, but I also have been using a lot:

Blueberry Basil Lemonade

Blueberry Cheesecake

Luckily we finished the new pool last week in time to cool off on those sweltering days.  It is much smaller and has significantly easier upkeep.

And finally, we acquired some new mousers for Poplar Ridge, meet Zelda and Fitz:

They have been a lot of fun!

Keep cool and Happy 250th Americans!