The First Days of Fall

Hello, friends.   Last week, I harvested the first eggplant, and stir fried them in homemade plum sauce, our garlic and green onions, which we enjoyed over brown rice.  While in town for groceries, I stopped by two thrift stores, where I found two canisters for my shop, and a piece of slate wall decor for our skoolie.  I made a stop by the library, and picked up three books.  With some leftover sweet potatoes, I made two pies, one GF for me.  I gathered bachelor button and rudbeckia seeds to save.  Two quart bags of banana and aloe bits were blended with water, which made several quarts of fertilizer, to feed a number of plants.  I wiped down shelves that will hold winter squash and sweet potatoes with vinegar solution.  I watched what I thought would be my last Netflix movie, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, which was lovely, but they ended up shipping the last movie on my list, which had been saying "very long wait" until then. 

 

J & I planted our lettuce seedlings, along with swiss chard and chive seedlings he bought this week.  He gathered some of our pile of chicken manure to add to the raised bed.  We also planted seeds of carrots, mixed greens and beets, which pretty much finishes our fall planting.  On Sunday, I noticed the greens were already coming up.  My favorite garden basket had started coming apart around the handle, so I mended it with a combination of T-shirt and leather strips.  Hopefully, that will extend it's life a long time.  Bananas were frozen that were about to get too ripe.  We're in that in between place, where we're using neither a/c or heat, and able to be open most of the time.  A simple, seasonal pleasure. 

I finally got around to cleaning and braiding the garlic.  There was some rot, which I'd rather not have seen.  Some heads had to be totally composted, but in the ones that were partial heads, I saved the good cloves, cut them thinly, and dehydrated them for powder.  Celery with it's leaves was also dried, and while the dehydrator was going, I harvested mint, and dried it for tea.  A batch of golden paste was made for the pups.  One dinner, I made pasta sauce with our tromboncino, tomatoes, onion, garlic, basil and rosemary, along with a jar of our tomato juice.  Another night, I made my Mom's lentil soup, using a jar of homemade broth and our onions and potatoes, and sloppy joes with home canned lentils and broth, onions and garlic were made another dinner.

I'm loving the current variety of purple, pink and blue flowers.  We had some cooler days, with highs of 72 and 69.   To add a little heat to the house, the first day, I put bags of vegetable scraps on to simmer, and canned up broth the next.  There are still very few birds, but I did see the first one bathe in the new birdbath, which was pretty exciting.  Another suet cake molded, so I gave it a break for a few days, and scrubbed the suet feeder and other feeders, while they were empty.  Harvests this week included muscadines, figs, pawpaws, cucumbers, yellow squash, eggplant, a tiny tromboncino, and tomatoes.  Pawpaws were brought to a neighbor who loves them, and others were offered some.  A couple of soap shop orders came in over the weekend, for which I'm always thankful.  These cooler fall days are giving me energy to do lots of little tasks on my to do list.  Many wishes for a most enjoyable week!