So here we are. October. Thanksgiving weekend is coming up.

Our first year here, we had a blizzard on Thanksgiving weekend.

Yesterday, we rained quite a lot, all day, and we’re supposed to continue to have showers off and on today. It should be good for the septic truck to come in, though, and not sink into the ground. I’ll have to give him a call later on.

It was pretty damp while doing my morning rounds. Not as many cats made appearances when I started putting food out. Nosencrantz was there, which I’m happy about, even if she still won’t let me bring her back into the house. Oh! I had a surprise last night. I saw Driver! We haven’t seen him in months! Even his sister, Adam, isn’t around as much, now that there’s no need for a creche mother, but she was around last night and this morning, too.

Now if only Butterscotch and Marlee would make appearances!

Speaking of appearances, that poor dog is still missing. The owner still has a trail camera set up in my brother’s driveway, across from ours, but I don’t know if the dog is coming by. I’m seeing posts on our local community FB page from the owner, every now and then, and he’s mentioned having a feeding station set up, but not knowing if he’s feeding the dog, or the wildlife! Wherever that’s set up, it’s not near our place. We have never seen the dog triggering our own trail cams, but it would have to come pretty close for an animal that size to trigger the motion sensors, given how our cameras are angled.

While going through the garden beds, the rain seems to have been well enjoyed by what’s left! Looking at the melons, I think we may as well harvest some under ripe ones, since their stems appear to be drying up completely, but some of them are still on live vines! Even the peppers are still surviving, though with the cooler temperatures, they don’t seem to be ripening. Not that I can tell with the Dragonfly peppers. They are completely dark, right from the start. I could probably have harvested a yellow patty pan this morning, but decided to leave it to get bigger. Even the green zucchini and zucca melon vines are showing fresh new growth! Even the Spoon tomatoes are still producing, the the transplanted volunteer tomatoes have had a growth spurt, and most are now taller than the plastic rings protecting their bases. Not that I expect any tomatoes from them, but I’m curious to see just how far they will get before it gets too cold. Several of them are even blooming! The Sweet Chocolate peppers in the wattle weave bed have more ripe brown peppers on them, and many more green ones developing.

What amazes me are these.

Yes! We have strawberries! The strawberries we started from seed are blooming and producing berries! Very tiny berries. Not much bigger than wild strawberries. I don’t remember the kit packaging these came from has having a variety name on it. If they survive the winter, we’ll see if the fruit it produces will be any bigger, next year.

This berry was quite tasty, though!

I’m even more amazed by these Classic Eggplant. Our one surviving transplant of this variety is now the only one with eggplants growing on it! The Little Finger eggplants by the chain link fence are still stagnated, and just a fraction of the size of this one.

Well, we now know we can’t plant gourds or eggplants in the blocks that make up that bed!

We don’t expect the eggplant to reach full size, this late in the season, but they can at least be eaten at this stage.

Looking at the forecast, we’re supposed to get another rainy day tomorrow. The day after, the rain is supposed to finally end, but overnight temperatures are supposed to reach a low of 2C/36F. Which means potentially frost. I think we may actually make the effort to cover some things, like this eggplant. I think, with the peppers, it’s time to cut our losses and just pick what we can. The only ones that did well are the ones we started really early, indoors. The other 4 varieties were short season varieties that, in theory, we should have been able to direct sow. Yet some of the plants are just starting to bloom now, while the others that have started to set fruit have done so so late, they no longer have time to mature. Even the hot peppers, which were so much further ahead, are completely green. They should have started turning red quite a while ago. We might just dig one of those up, bring it indoors and treat it like a house plant. We did that once, during our attempts to garden in the city before we moved, and it worked really well.

Oh, for crying out loud. I just momentarily looked at the weather app again, and the overnight low expected on Friday just changed to 1C/34F.

I understand why the weather predictions keep changing, but it does get frustrating. Especially since they tend to be off by quite a bit, in our area, since the weather stations are all so far from us.

Everything in the garden is on borrowed time right now, but it would have been nice if the warmer temperatures predicted on the long range forecasts a while back had actually been at least close.

The Re-Farmer