the beets are picked and that last
garden is cleaned up and ready for
winter. we'll be pickling them Sunday.
today i may take some of the smaller
ones and clean them up and steam them
for us to eat.

whatever else i can do from now on
will be me getting ahead of the spring
projects. now that's a thought...
probably the first time since when i
started helping out here that this has
happened.

kinda scary and it's not even halloween
any more...

our 70F day yesterday was so nice that
i had the garden shed foamed in and done
pretty early, so i went out with a garden
pillow, sat in the sunshine and picked the
beets. i dunno how good they are, but i
bit one to see and it seemed ok. it took
me about an hour and a half to get the
beets picked and about 45 minutes to dig
the hole, scrape the squash vines and
beet tops and weeds from the surface in
there and bury it again.

came in and made a nice dinner of toast
and hot chocolate and was relaxing when Ma
came home with a double cheeseburger and a
turtle sundae. i haven't been that full in
a long time. to say the least once i
crawled back into the futon and got warm
again i was very sleepy, but did manage
to stay awake the rest of the evening until
a more proper bed-time came around.

yes, i know, i live a very exciting life.
now i have to figure out what to do
today... hmm...


songbird

On 11/19/2016 7:38 AM, songbird wrote:
the beets are picked and that last
garden is cleaned up and ready for
winter. we'll be pickling them Sunday.
today i may take some of the smaller
ones and clean them up and steam them
for us to eat.

whatever else i can do from now on
will be me getting ahead of the spring
projects. now that's a thought...
probably the first time since when i
started helping out here that this has
happened.

kinda scary and it's not even halloween
any more...

our 70F day yesterday was so nice that
i had the garden shed foamed in and done
pretty early, so i went out with a garden
pillow, sat in the sunshine and picked the
beets. i dunno how good they are, but i
bit one to see and it seemed ok. it took
me about an hour and a half to get the
beets picked and about 45 minutes to dig
the hole, scrape the squash vines and
beet tops and weeds from the surface in
there and bury it again.

came in and made a nice dinner of toast
and hot chocolate and was relaxing when Ma
came home with a double cheeseburger and a
turtle sundae. i haven't been that full in
a long time. to say the least once i
crawled back into the futon and got warm
again i was very sleepy, but did manage
to stay awake the rest of the evening until
a more proper bed-time came around.

yes, i know, i live a very exciting life.
now i have to figure out what to do
today... hmm...


songbird

Wife is out picking kale, peppers, and eggplant at this time, probably
some lettuces too. Looks like she's getting ready to go to her church
and deliver some grub to the pantry there. The kale plant is nearly five
feet tall and looks like a palm tree, there were to others also but they
gave up the ghost earlier in the fall.

Yesterday was mid-seventies, it's mid-forties this morning and a freeze
is forecast for next week. It's summer one day, winter the next, strange
weather.

George

Derald wrote:

Not so, down here. Had a couple of cold-to-us nights this week
(low 30s) but this Thanksgiving morning it's 76 at 10:30AM. Low was 50.
The cold nights damaged the eggplants and yellow squash a bit and two of
three tomatoes are goners. The green beans, I think, just "wore out" so
I pulled them yesterday. The gigantic peanut that shared the bed with
them is next. It was uncovered and suffered a little chill burn on the
uppermost leaves. The peanuts on that bush are probably far too ripe to
boil properly but my indomitable "cracker" genes will, of course, compel
me to try.

yesterday i shelled out the last few box tops of
dry beans i had forgotten about. that ways i could
get them in the worm bins to give the critters more
to chomp on. takes a few months for them to be
digested.

no snow that is sticking yet, but some was on the
ground around my brother's place. still too warm for
anything to stick.

that's a thing on the coasts (boiled peanuts) i
haven't ever tried them that ways. roasted and
peanut butter and various things made from those
are as much as i've ever done.


Of course the "greens" and garden peas are thriving in the cooler
weather, although, the collards don't appear to be all that proud of
their location—just not enough sunlight, I think. Waiting for newly
planted thyme, oregano, marjoram, onions ("green") and onions (bulbs) to
show their faces. Yes, I know the bulbing onions were planted late but
so what? Just means I'll start getting onions in late June or early
July instead of May or June (01, 02 June, this year), as usual.

thyme is a major low growing ground cover here that
we both like (and more importantly does not react with
us after contact with the skin). the bees are all over
it. we have several types here and i am encouraging
it to take over some edges so there will be less weeding
to do there(s). i've never planted any from seeds.
same with oregano. our oregano seems to have gone
missing, smothered by the pennyroyal. we don't use it
in cooking that often anyways.

for onions, they seem to keep ok through quite a bit.
i have some nice red onions left over in the garage to
replant or use up this winter. more seeds than i can
ever possibly use. buggers cross pretty easy too so i
am only trying to plant two kinds now the red ones and
the giant sweet onions Ma likes to use. the white onions
rot easily. the red onions and the sweet ones may
provide some fun crosses. we'll see...


Spending quite a bit of time spraying aphids from the zipper cream
"crowder" cowpeas and not exactly loving it. I know that many insects
become even greater pests at year's-end but the aphids' sheer number,
AWA their astounding affinity for the peas is astonishing. Clumps of
the little devils seem just to coalesce out of thin air. I have adapted
a wand from a "Hudson" type pneumatic sprayer to hose-end use, making
myself better able to avoid damaging ladybugs, their larvae and those
little white spikey, spiny things that have such marvelous appetite for
aphids.

with the millions of ladybugs here it is very
rare that i will see any aphids. sometime in the
past 20yrs they imported ladybugs from some place
and these are in addition to the natives. always
a lot of them crawling. hard to keep them out of
the house (but my recent foam sealing and caulking
should help with that). i think the various green
patches i leave in the gardens act as enough of a
refuge for them. the alfalfa, thyme, trefoil,
lillies, strawberries all seem to harbor them over
the cold spells. as soon as there is any kind of
warmth and growth again in the spring they are out
there crawling around.

oh, at one time i grew a lot of the dwarf grey
sugar pods (peas) and harvested them. kept them on
hand to replant but also had enough to try cooking
them up to see how they tasted. while Ma did not
like them mixed in with other beans i did like
them myself. so an easy crop for sure, very
productive even if i don't get the pods for eating
or the young peas for shelling. i don't know
if you like dry peas cooked up much at all or not...


songbird