Late October Garden Chores

Well, although I adore autumn, getting the garden ready for winter is not one of my favorite autumn tasks.  I do love harvest season, hot as it may be in late summer!

This year, October garden chores included a few changes, and a new chore.

First of all, Joseph and Thomas helped to transplant the two perennial oregano plants we have had growing in our veggie garden for several years.

Although they are perennial and not supposed to be that flavorful, we have found them to be just that--very yummy in sauces and other dishes.  Since the critters seem to leave them alone, I decided they would do fine in my front yard flower garden.

They are prolific growers--not in seeding and spreading themselves, but in producing the fragrant, flavorful leaves--so I harvest them throughout the summer and autumn.  Sometimes I harvest and dry the leaves, and sometimes I let the plant go to flower, then cut them for display in vases indoors--so pretty with its delicate purple flowers.

I think they go well with the beard-tongue, which you can see still flowering in pink in the background below.

Here's what I do with the flowering oregano; it's in a vase on my fireplace mantel:

After the oregano was transplanted, Thomas set about digging up any garlic that had begun to re-grow from dropped seeds, and transplanting the seedlings to the area where we had just dug up the oregano.  (We had filled in the holes with some extra compost we had left over from spring.)

On our last sunny and very warm autumn day (October 24), my friend Lori's son Bryan came over and helped work some manure into next year's tomato bed.  He also worked in the rest of the leftover compost, and then covered my strawberry plants with straw to protect them for the winter.  (The straw-covering was our new chore for the year.)

In the below photo, you may not be able to see it but the guys took some bird netting (for protecting plants from birds; I bought it at Home Depot), and secured it over the straw.  They innovatively used a stapler to secure the netting to the sides of the raised bed.  :)

They took the leftover straw and covered some of the walkways with it.  I like the straw better than grass clippings, which we have been using in the past.  The straw seems to keep the walkways drier.  We'll see how it works come spring and wet weather!

Here is the final overview of our "winterized" garden, complete with straw-covered walkways (until we ran out of straw!):

That evening, the sun went down behind incoming clouds which brought rain and a 30-degree temperature drop.

I was very thankful for Bryan's hard work with the compost and hay, and for Thomas' and Joseph's hard work transplanting herbs and garlic so we could expand the garden next year!


Back to life,
Christine

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Our October Garden

October in our vegetable garden usually means harvesting the remaining vegetables, and getting things ready for winter.  Here are a few things we tackled in the garden on this particular October day.

My friend Lori had already harvested all her tomatoes, so one job was to glean any green ones she left behind, and cut out the tangled mass of tomato vines in the bed.  They had gotten really jungly over the summer!

We had also harvested our plum tomatoes, and all that remained were the bottoms of the tomato plants to pull up.

I did a quick check of my strawberry plants.  There were four surviving plants this past spring; as you can see below, they grew like mad this year!

I pulled this entire rosemary plant to chop up the needle-like leaves for the freezer.

My sweet Joseph helped out so much!  Here he is harvesting all the cayenne peppers.  It was pretty easy--I told him to pick everything that was red.  For some reason, all my cayenne peppers turned red this year.  That has never happened before.

Below is the remaining basil and the rosemary plant I pulled.  I picked all the basil leaves, then chopped and froze them for use this winter.

Danny came out to help after doing his college homework; he pulled up tomato cages, stacked them, and put them away.

I also had him dig a nice, big hole in my front flower garden.  :)

He dug up my sage plant from the backyard vegetable garden and transplanted it into the front flower garden.

Below is the sage in its new home.  It flowers purple and has a beautiful scent, and I used cuttings from it to decorate my home throughout the summer.  The critters don't eat it, and I don't use much sage in cooking.  So it will do better out here.  I plan to do the same with my perennial oregano plants.

Joseph continued to cut, break, pull, and throw tomato vines onto our growing pile of garden refuse.

That pile grew quite large after awhile!

Since I always go up to the deck of our pool to capture my wide-angle garden shots, I thought I'd snap a shot of my special place.  The tree looks so pretty this autumn, and has already turned color since this picture was taken.

Here's our garden, with everything pulled.  We want to work in some manure and cover everything with mulch for the winter, in order to replenish the soil for our spring planting.

Back to life,
Christine

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Morning Storm and Baking Day

June 29 dawned bright and hot; the day after a 105-degree day promised more heat for us.  I edited photos in the basement for a while, but when I came upstairs, I noticed it was really dark outside.

We hung out near/in the basement for awhile, until the storm blew over, and then it was up to the kitchen to begin preparations for Fernando's special day--his birthday was the next day!

We made homemade frozen yogurt, freezing the plain mixture for a few hours:

Then we added toffee bar bits and graham cracker pieces, and stirred everything up.  You'll have to wait a while for the "finished product" images.  :)

Jacob mixed up the pie crust ingredients:

And Danny mixed together the ingredients for the pumpkin pie, which was Fernando's request for dessert.

 The pumpkin pie awaits the oven

 Yum--the finished pie

And, I figured if I was going to make one pie, I was going to make two.  So I pulled out some apple pie filling from the freezer:

 Jacob put together the crumble topping for French apple pie

 The French apple pie awaits the oven

 The finished French apple pie

Double pie--double yum!

After all that work in the kitchen, the guys took a break, and we took them to Friday Frisbee.  I actually didn't take a single picture on Fernando's birthday (gasp!), since I was too busy socializing with the two families we invited over.  :)  Fernando loved all the food we had, and the fellowship we shared.  He had an awesome birthday, and we had a grand time celebrating his special day.

Love you, honey!!



Back to life,
Christine

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