Blog Update!
For those of you not following me on Facebook, as of the Summer of 2019 I've moved to Central WA, to a tiny mountain town of less than 1,000 people.

I will be covering my exploits here in the Cascades, as I try to further reduce my impact on the environment. With the same attitude, just at a higher altitude!

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Indian summer

Yesterday was an absolutely glorious fall day. It reminded me of one of the reasons why I moved back to the Pacific NW rather than staying in California. Sure, our change of seasons isn't exactly comparable to other areas of the country, but I love the fact that yesterday was sunny and warm after a morning of fog. I love hearing the fog horns in the morning and running around in a t-shirt in the afternoon.

We still have a lot growing in the garden which I just so happened to work into dinner last night - tons of arugula, tomatoes, sugar snap peas, carrots and radishes. Eating dinner out of the backyard will never get old. My chickens are in full molt. Sarah has been dropping her beautiful white feathers for the last few days so the coop bottom this afternoon looked like a snow storm in summer.

Our sugar pie pumpkins are all turning orange - the last of them that is. The other ones are patiently waiting to be made into a pie this weekend. I nabbed another downed apple from the neighbor's apple tree for a snack for the chickens tomorrow and one of these days I'll get around to talking to them about saving them for me (they don't speak much English).

We still have the occasional strawberry and blackberry ripening, which gets donated to the chickens since there's not enough to feed the humans.

Ah, life is good. Not bad for an urban garden. And, the holidays are right around the corner.

How is your garden growing this time of year? Have you had your first frost yet or did you put it to bed for the fall/winter already?

8 comments:

Olivia said...

We have had several frosts already. As I type this at 8:40 AM (Atlantic time - we have 6 time zones in Canada) the ground outside is still white and frozen **sigh**. I haven't checked the garden yet - until yesterday I was still harvesting tomatoes (those that grown high enough to avoid the ground frost), carrots, beets, chard and onions. Some of the hardier herbs in pots near the house are still alive. I suspect today will look worse. My son picked many of the remaining tomatoes last evening - that will probably be the end of them. Only root vegetables are hardy enough to survive all this frost.

Adrienne said...

We haven't had a frost yet but should be any time now. The only thing I'm actively growing is Swiss chard, and my herbs are still fine. I'd like to bring them in over the winter but the cats will tear them up. :/

My crazy tomato plant that is more than half dead has put on four blooms.

Unknown said...

I live on the Texas Gulf coast so we're not close to frost time yet. Some years we won't get them until December although other years we'll have a very early frost at the end of October. It's been an unusually warm fall so far (and it was an unusually hot summer). We typically have 2 months (January and February) of what to us is very cold weather with frosts and occasional freezes. The rest of the winter we have a mix of cold and warm days. I've worn a tank top and shorts on Christmas day. However last year we had 4 nights in a row of hard freeze with daytime temps barely above freezing. That is unheard of!

I have radishes, carrots, mustard greens, tomatoes and peppers growing at the moment. Soon I'll put in some garlic, peas, more greens, carrots, lettuce, turnips and I might grow some cucumbers on the western wall of my house. We can grow things straight through the winter here. In fact, our season of no growth is summer...July through August.

Robj98168 said...

Yep it has been nice! Except for weekends

Robj98168 said...

Yep it has been nice! Except for weekends

CodyGirlScout said...

I am so jealous reading this blog today. We are in Phoenix and today it was 102°F. So hot. There is not much to love about Phoenix and this just tops the hate cake. Oh well, moving soon to Flagstaff. We will have real winters and mild summers. I will learn what it's like to have to wait the winter through to garden again. 66 more days!

Anonymous said...

speaking of sugar pumpkins...just made spiced pumpkin butter. Inspired by a CD book of WPA writings on American food ("The Food of a Younger Land"), I placed cooked pumpkin in a crockpot with vinegar, brown sugar, cinnamon, cloves and mace. Sweet success! Now I just need to come up with a plan for the rest of our pumpkins before they go off!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for good stuff