Yes, I still have garden stuff to post about! On October 20!
I have no errands to run today, so doing my morning rounds was more relaxed. And gorgeous!
We had another night with thick fog that was still hanging around, while a bright, golden sunrise shone through. Truly stunning!
Not quite enough to make me a morning person, but I can still appreciate it. 😄
With how mild the temperatures have been, the frost hardy carrots, onions and radishes are still being left to be harvested as needed. Well. Not the radishes. We’ve got the two that are happily blooming, and I want to see how far along they get before winter hits. I don’t expect to have harvestable pods in time, but you never know!
The old kitchen garden has only the chamomile and thyme (the thyme is doing very well!) growing, plus the strawberries we grew from seed.
Amazingly, there are not only strawberries ripening, but they are still blooming! They’re just tiny little things. I have no idea if that’s the variety, or if it’s because it’s their first year after being started from seed. The kit they came in did not have a variety name that I can recall.
Then there’s the luffa…
The smaller one that was hanging up near the top of the lilacs was getting pretty sad looking, so I went ahead and picked it. Definitely not developed enough, but I’ve set it aside in the sun room to dry. I’ll crack it open later to see how it looks inside. The larger one is still resting on the branch I set it on, so it wouldn’t get bashed around in high winds. The vine might be long dead, but that one is still looking very green, so I’m leaving it for now.
I’m hoping to get more work done in the garden today. Things are really damp right now, and we’re looking at the possibility of rain. I’d like to finish cutting that tree to size and dragged it out of the spruce grove for the second trellis bed. If it’s too wet to use the electric chain saw, there’s plenty of other work that needs to be done to prepare the garden beds for winter.
With all the crazy distractions we’ve had for the past month or so, I’m really appreciating how mild our fall has been, and that being able to get work done in the garden is an option at all, never mind trying to catch up on all the stuff that’s been delayed, time and again. That there is still stuff growing and blooming is absolutely amazing! I really like strong El Niño years! It may mean more snow, but the temperatures tend to be milder. Both are a huge bonus for our area.
In other things, we set our battery charger up on the truck overnight, since I had no idea when we’d be doing any longer drives that would do it for us. When we moved here we found a battery charger in the garage, but our own will stop charging when it’s full, making it safer to leave overnight. So that is taken care of. As much as I’d like to be driving the truck as much as possible, now that we have it, I don’t have the time or gas budget to waste on unnecessary trips. We’ll be doing plenty of driving at the end of the month, when it’s time to do our stock up shopping.
I’m so looking forward to being able to do full trips again! Especially with the Costco shopping, and all those bags of cat food we can now fit in there. While looking over the truck when I first brought it home, my daughters suggested we keep some sort of hook to help reach things at the far end of the box, without having to crawl all the way in. My brother keeps a garden hoe for that. Something similar, but with a narrow hook that can fit into the small handles on the ends of our hard sided bags, for example, would be better. A long handled version of the metal hooks we used to drag hay bales around, back in the day, would be perfect. I should look in the barn and the sheds and see if there’s anything we could repurpose. In the van and my mother’s car, we could get away with using the spare canes with pistol grip handles we keep in there, but those are too short to use in the truck box.
What a nice problem to have. 😊
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 
Daammmmnnn, that is a gorgeous photo!!
Your deflated loofah is better than anything I ever got… vines without flowers. That was years ago, maybe I’ll try again next year.
Our strawberry season is March so I’m extra impressed with your fruit & flowers!!
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I was pretty happy with how it turned out! Not bad for a cell phone picture, that’s for sure.
The loofah (luffa? Whichever! LOL) this year was very encouraging. The last couple of years, they just didn’t have a chance. Now that I know this sheltered raised bed made such a difference, I definitely want to try again. I will have to buy more seeds, though, as I don’t think anything from these gourds would be viable.
Strawberry season here is usually June, except for everbearing varieties. The ones we planted last year were late because of the deer getting at them, but I honestly did not expect anything from the ones grown from seed this year at all!
What we have going on right now is pretty unusual. We often have had at least one snowfall, storm or blizzard by now.
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Duct tape, broom handle and a spare cane…or some hose clamps instead of the duct tape????
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😄 Yeah, we might just McGyver something like that together!!
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