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!

Feeling Like Summer

I was getting spoiled by the lovely weather in the 70's with low humidity...it was very unlike the typical June in PA.  That weather came back in vengeance last week, bringing some severe weather with it.  Apparently, there were actually 6 tornados that touched down in Southwestern PA on Saturday evening.  Our power was out for about 12 hours, but many folks in the state did not have their power restored for several days.

JP and I took a drive around the property on Sunday in the Gator, looking for downed trees.  The only thing that we found is that 2 of my hens disappeared.  I did find feather trails and the remains of one of them the following day.  I was concerned that their electric netting was getting shorted out by tall weeds and debris that they had scratched up against the fence, making it less effective at keeping out critters.  I spent about 6 hours on Monday raking and scooping up gravel and returning it to the top of the chicken yard near the barn, and weed eating around and under the fencing.  So far the remainder of my flock appears to be ok.

My flower garden is thriving without being mowed down nightly by the deer.  My rose bush is tiny, but prolific, and the rest of the garden is filling in with plants that have already or will soon flower.  It makes me so happy!

My vegetable garden is looking good as well, although things are growing more slowly than I expected.  JP mowed the fields, so I had plenty of grass clippings to mulch things with.  Unfortunately, the lawn sweeper gave up the ghost after 5 (?) years of hard use.  We have purchased another one, but I need to put it together first. :(

I got a lot of nice strawberries, but something got my last few.  I harvested the first half gallon of blueberries yesterday, and am planning to bake some muffins today.

I also harvested herbs from my little herb garden last week - parsley, oregano and mint.  The mint was made into iced tea, and I dried some of the parsley and all of the oregano.  I've been using a bunch of the parsley and some fresh thyme in cooking recently as well.  I also cut some sage and hung it to dry - I might get 2 harvests out of it.

My potted and hanging plants outdoors are filling in and looking very good!

Meanwhile, JP and I have been working on taking down the pool.  I got weary of being the only one taking care of it AND the only one ever getting in it BY.  MY.  SELF.  We are clearing it away and putting in another much smaller one.  We are also switching to a saltwater pool, hoping that the maintenance will be tenable. 

JP recently purchased a 10 lb bag of mayocoba beans - they were originally grown in Peru, and are high in protein, and cook up super creamy.  I decided to can them so that they would be quick to fix into a meal, so I started by soaking them in water in my biggest bowl overnight.  The next morning, they had increased in size so much that beans were spilling out onto the counter and the floor!  I think I canned about 16 quarts!

I need to close and get to work.  I have that lawn sweeper to assemble, muffins to bake, work from home that is scheduled for today, and grocery shopping.

Enjoy the growing season!

Mother Earth

First an update on my dueling roosters...they have plenty of battle scars now!

We have finally had some warmer weather with sunshine and I have been reveling in getting dirty outside!  We took our annual trip to the nursery for Mother's Day.  I love visiting this place...it is remote, quiet (except for the peacocks) and nestled into the hillside surrounded by enormous trees.  We didn't see (but we heard) the peacocks this time, but L and I watched the frogs in the pond for awhile.

We came home with 2 flats of flowers, herbs, and veggies to plant around Poplar Ridge.

Fan flower in the cast iron kettle by the garage

I added sage and thyme to my herb garden - the oregano is
perennial, and I was able to over winter the parsley.

Some new additions to the big iron kettle by the front door
are curly grass and these gorgeous black velvet petunias.

The shasta daisies on the deck have over wintered in
the garage for years...this year they are looking
particularly robust!

I planted my 4 hanging planters, and also planted some flowers in a planter on my Mom's deck as my Mother's Day gift to her.  No new plants for my flower beds this year, but I did get a couple of pumpkins for the garden.

I did weed both flower beds for the second time this spring and put out all my pig statues for the first time in 2 years.  I noticed that the weeping cherry is starting to eat my fence!  It looks a little bit like Jabba the Hut, doesn't it?

I have been working down in the garden also.  The strawberries have started producing, and I have both beds weeded and covered against the birds.

I have done 3 runs with the broad fork, since we are still doing the no-till gardening method.  This is how it looks at first.

Then I go through and pick out the rocks - after almost 15 years of gardening in the same spot, I don't understand why I am still finding so many rocks!  This is just one of 6 piles that I picked out this year.  I also break up the clods before it is ready to plant.

Here it is after planting the first 7 rows of seeds:  sugar snap peas, carrots, parsnips, beets, radishes and lettuce.  I have plenty more to plant, but had to give my shoulders and hands a break for a couple of days!

Since I finally have chicken wire up around the entire garden, and it doesn't look like anymore freezing nights, I can start planting out my seedlings soon!

Happy Mother's Day and happy planting!