Getting my hopes up

Just as all is dying in the outside world, the Xmas cactus is causing me to get my hopes up. It is positively dripping with buds. I don't water it very often, and I think that helps with the blooming (perverse plant that it is). But there have been years when the buds came to naught, so I really shouldn't get my hopes up.

Too late! My hopes are up!

First Snow

That's one week after the first frost, folks! We had snow this morning. Sure, it was slushy. It wasn't quite like the true snow of midwinter. However, I am not 100% certain that I won't have to shovel when I get home. We had that much snow. It's still there and it's afternoon. It's still there and it's been raining for 2 hours. Yes, that much.

Jack-o'lantern

The jack-o'lantern I showed in Sunday's post did triple service. I must remember this for next year. Once I had taken the stringy seed-filled pulp out, I carved away at its thick flesh for a while. I left thick enough walls to support carving (in truth, I probably should have taken out much more) and put the pumpkin meat into a covered casserole dish. I cooked it for about an hour at 350F and since then have used the (mashed) pumpkin to make muffins and bread. I will make more muffins tomorrow, I think.

We ate about 1/2 the seeds with lunch yesterday. They'd been cleaned, dried, and roasted, of course. I found that if I put the seeds in a rimmed baking tray (along the lines of a jelly-roll tin) I could easily either let them sit out or pop them into the oven whenever something else had finished cooking. I would wait until the oven had cooled a reasonable amount and then just let them sit in the warm to dry off. That worked well. I have often had trouble getting the seeds properly dry.

The third duty it did, of course, was to be the signal for the non-existent children of our neighbourhood to come by for chocolate. All the more for us, I suppose.

At my door, the leaves are falling

It's another stunning fall day out there. On Friday, the temperatures dropped and we had our first frost (that's Oct 30, 2009, for those of you keeping track). We walked to work through the public gardens, drinking in the thick air and admiring the frost-steam coiling off every surface the sun touched.

Our maple tree is still dropping leaves like they're going out of fashion, which of course they are. Last night it was very windy. I went out in the afternoon to get a composterful of leaves off the ground and within a half hour there was very little to show that I'd done the raking at all. It rained like crazy after that, but fortunately it held out until after the trick-or-treating was done. We had a grand total of 8 trick-or-treaters and that's including the two adults in costumes who came round collecting canned goods for the food bank.

At the market, between picking up fresh eggs and apple cider I passed some beautiful bulbs for sale and thought about picking some up. I want to try my hand at forcing some time and I haven't added any bulbs to the garden this year. But I thought that I was being silly: When would I have time or opportunity to put bulbs in the ground when it was already nearly November? But I absolutely had time, opportunity and motivation yesterday and today is nearly as perfect a gardening day. I shouldn't have dismissed the idea so quickly. Ah, well.

Autumn leaves

At this time of year, my one of my favourite activities is tromping through shin-high stacks of rustling leaves. I know, I know: Simple pleasures, simple minds. But I'm happy and that's all that matters.

Our tree, which has tar spot for the second year running, is less happy. I have been having a go at getting the leaves away from its roots, but since its roots are under our deck and the leaves have complete freedom to wander there I think we are looking at another year of tar spot next year.

I did fill the composter with leaves on Monday night. That was a surprisingly pleasant activity, too. We've had a fair bit of rain, so the leaves were tending to be in well-compacted piles. And I had to do most of the work in the gathering dark. At this time of year (especially after the clocks change) I don't get home in daylight hours. That has a slight dampening effect on my mood and a pretty serious effect on my chore-doing. Any excuse and the garden is neglected. But I do like our tree very much and I didn't want to leave the leaves to rot on our deck, either, so one composter's worth is on its way to the municipality. In two weeks' time I suppose we'll have to start filling bags to get rid of the excess.

Not much, but something

Well, the sweary one and I finally did deal with the garden. I think it was on October 4 that we went out and dug up the multitudinous weeds. What an improvement!

We had prepped the plot for the plot party the previous day. That meant pulling up lots of bits and bobs. We got rid of a good amount of rotting and bolted lettuce (but left in a few towering flowering lettuce plants ... they're awfully pretty) and we pulled up the last of the beans and we chucked a bunch of still-producing broccoli. Too bad it tasted so bloody awful, that broccoli. It grew nicely this year when other things sort of struggled. We threw away in the trash bins any tomato plants. They're all dreadfully blighted, but we got a good crop. Nothing ripe on the vine, though. The last of the tomato plants are still in the plot, but they're just nasty skeletons. They'll have to go into the trash cans when we have a few minutes.

We left the onions in to see what they turn into next year. We never thinned them, so probably this won't work, but they're looking healthy enough on top. I guess we can pull out what there is next spring and thin them a bit. It'll be like planting sets, right?

The side and front yards had been attracting bad things (notably, garbage) and when we finally tackled the mess, they were more weed than deliberate plantings. The weeds went crazy in the bit north of the chimney, and there were not that many in the front (even the new bit of the front) and the far south end. This presumably tells me something about the quality of the soil and the sunshine those parts receive. Unfortunately, I have nothing to do with the info because I am just not here on weekends. That's the main problem. I'm either travelling, prepping for travel, recovering from travel, or treasuring a day off in which I'm not travelling, prepping, or recovering. Hopefully December won't be so bad. But by then the ground and air will be too cold for gardening.

For next year: I really should carry out my scheme to plant mints where I need greenery but can't believe in flowers. They're so aggressive that no weed can survive the onslaught and wouldn't it be nice to have planted plants all around instead of weeds?

If you think the BLOG looks bad ...

.... you should see the garden.

What with one thing and another (and another and another) this has been a lousy summer for the my poor garden. After a really spectacular spring things just fell to pieces and I haven't been able to bring myself to confess it to the blog. Hence the long periods of silence.

There's really nothing to report. There are plenty of weeds which will make it very difficult to grow things from seed next year. Some of the herbs need separating, but since they're the thing doing well (the daylilies did a good job, too, but they're over now) I can't even begin to imagine hacking into them right now.

We got some raspberries. That's happy.