Almost done

The garden has been very busy this fall, and Mike has found it a lot of work when the girls and I went back to school. Finally, however, it has begun to slow. This weekend I harvested the last of the herbs and the final green beans, peppers and kohlrabi. The girls picked the final raspberries, strawberries and rhubarb. We are still harvesting a lot of potatoes, beets, chard and tomatoes.

The tomatoes have had a good year because we still have yet to have our first frost. It was scheduled for last night, but didn't quite get there. That was a good thing, as the 43km winds made anchoring a tarp challenging. Although most of our tomatoes are in full swing, I harvest all the fruit in the front and pulled up the plants. That was nearly 40 pounds, and most of the tomatoes we planted are still on the vine.

Mike and I made salsa this weekend and canned seven liters of tomatoes. We also made bread, rhubarb muffins, tomato based soup, pizza, iced tea and green potato curry. We were so happy when the last red tomato was used Sunday, and there will be lots more ripe by tomorrow.

The flowers are doing well and Anwyn picked me massive bouquets on Sunday. She and Leora also helped me plan nearly 300 bulbs from my mom and dig up a bit more of the front lawn for transplanting. Mike did more work on the stone path to go with it, but has mostly worked on the greenhouse.

Mike has been lining the interior with bubble wrap for insulation, and has a large blue barrel filled with water to retain heat. So far this seems to keep the green house about 5 degrees warmer that outside at night. Leora's transplanted herbs are doing well there, as are peppers, cilantro and chard (in the ground).

Life remains really crazy for me. I am still doing two people's jobs, but my replacement Jay starts full time this week, which should help. My time in the yard has been great stress relief, but I'd like be able to really enjoy the last beautiful days. Last week we had 30 plus temperatures that shattered records and I saw very little of any of it.

Tonight our family joined James' family in a bike ride on the new designated bike lanes with 340 plus Saskatoon cyclists. It felt great to be out, although it was cold and windy. I definitely need more of these days before I am snowed in for the season!

High Harvest

It's that time of year again, when you look at bins of things you harvested and think about how much you have to do to get it all processed and stored for the winter. Anna took a bit of stuff of my hands on Friday when she came over and made supper. We had a great evening playing cards (she and Ian played Kaiser for the first time), but the rest of the weekend has been pretty yard oriented.

The girls were at their grandparents this weekend, so when Mike went to work on Saturday, I had the yard to myself. I picked about 6 cups of strawberries and 10 pound of tomatoes, in addition to the standard harvest tomotillos, beans, onions, herbs, chard, kohlrabi, beets and pumpkins. I am reminded of how much I like the square foot gardening method for so many of those things because I get the right amount to eat but not so much I need to freeze and can.

I also mowed the yard with the new reel mower, deadheaded the flowers and started moving some rich compost to some of my garden beds. I also dug up all my corn and the finished beans. Hauling it to the compost was a bit complicated, because we lent the wheel burrow to James.

Much of the garden is turning yellow as fall approaches, and I wanted to pull the peas, but Mike is trying to save some for seed. I also finished the watering of the boxes. We have been watering out of the girls swimming pool for two weeks - and they have been hot ones with plus 30 temperatures.

I have been waiting to finish a section of the new flower bed and connect it to the shade bed in the back under the pine tree. I started by digging up the grass and banging off the dirt from the roots. Then I added the compost to it and transplanted the remaining plants. I really wanted to start putting in all the bulbs Mom sent me, but it is still to hot and I need to wait for the first frost. Regardless, the bed looks nice - I'll just feel great when it is completely done.

We started working on some canning about 3:30. We got two boxes of crab apples from Pat and have been processing them into apple sauce using Anna's food mill. We also got a box of plums from Dana and turned those into jam. We also made some bread and a plum/strawberry crisp. We've been freezing down lots of zucchini, but still have a lot of pumpkin to deal with. We finally finished our batch of cooking about 8 pm and are feeling very pleased with ourselves. Take a look at the current yard pics and all the stuff Mike has been canning.