when it is foggy we call it froggy. lately, a usual
sign of fall is froggy mornings. waking up to pea soup
and having to wait a bit for things to burn off and dry
out enough.

the dry bean harvest is coming along, i'm weeks behind
in a few chores and the large drainage project is about
a month behind schedule. such is life, eh? at
least i'm still kicking, taking prisoners and turning
them into mulch. that's a bit of a joke, as we have
watched _Arsenic and Old Lace_ a few times too many.

oh look, a shadow!

ok, back to the comment about prisoners and mulch,
sometimes we have raised beds that look an awful lot
like gravesites. last year i even pounded in a bit
of flat wood at the end of one of them and it was
a bit spooky. oops, wrong month, it's not October
yet...

new growth in the one strawberry patch is coming
along very nicely. the peas are mostly taking over
now that we've had a few light frosts which knocked
back some of the beans and soybeans. that is fine,
they accomplished what they were planted for (a bit
of green in the bare spots). the peas will chug
along until we get some hard frosts.

planted one garden yesterday, it is one of the
larger patches, had to get it cleared of dry beans
first, the crop looks ok, but some varieties didn't
fare well. as it has had beans two years in a row
the rotation is now garlic in the side part closest
to the pathway (with a band of winter rye and
winter wheat along the very edge which will be
chopped back once it gets long enough to block
light to the garlic). and to the north side i have
winter wheat and winter rye as green winter cover
crops and perhaps will leave it or some of it in
the spring to go to grain stage. i've not had
any grains here before so it will be interesting
to see how they do.

already the winter rye, winter wheat and oats in
the cabbage patch are well up and growing. it's
scary to look at that and see grass. we just aren't
used to grass in those gardens any longer...

i planted enough garlic this year for the
future but about half of what i planted last
year. and i made sure to put in about 80
in a more closely spaced planting to be used
as green garlic in the winter and early spring.
so much easier than trying to seed bunching
onions. though some day i have to get the
welsh onions or some other more perennial
versions to trial in our soils.

the lack of a hard frost has meant that some
cherry tomato plants are persisting in turning
green fruits into edible delights. the golden
cherry plants have held up well the fruits don't
taste off like many of the sweet 100 cherry
tomatoes. Ma dislikes the gold ones (the color
is unnatural), i think they taste as good or
better than the sweet 100s. anyways, the variety
is good with me too. we've raided them at times
to use in juicing/canning.

for sure we are over 160 quarts canned of
tomatoes, tomato juice or salsa this year, a
welcome restocking of depleted supplies. now
we are canning beets.

onions this season didn't do well. i suspect
mostly the poor month of June with a lack of
sunshine, but also i think the sets weren't all
that great quality. i have a ton of seeds to
plant someplace, both in a formal garden and
i'll scatter some about in wild places.

the back green manure patch is flowering again
and looking very nice, the few bare spots from
digging the garlic out were seeded in with
buckwheat and turnips. the tops of the buckwheat
were knocked back by the light frosts, but the
bottoms are still green and blooming. the turnips
are mostly now overgrown by the alfalfa and
trefoil, but they are there. we'll see if any
of them survive the winter and give me a crop of
blooms and seeds next spring/summer.

ok, well, time to scrape up a bit of breakfast
and then putter around shelling dry beans and
such until i can get outside. only a few more
dozen bushels of beans to pick and shell and
even more gardens to get ready for winter and i
sure hope soon to get back to the drainage
project, would be nice to have that more settled
before the rains and cold weather return.

c'est la vie. cheers, *hugs*, etc.


songbird