Fall Yard

Getting the yard ready for winter: last lawn-mowing; weeding the veg garden and getting the garlic in; bringing houseplants and lawn furniture indoors; emptying the hose, storing it in the shed, and turning off the outside water...amongst many, many other things.

The canning continues

Collecting crabapple juice...

...to make Crabapple Hot Pepper Jelly...

...mixing sweet and tart and a nice bit of bite on the finish!

Good food

Carrots, beets, onions, parsley, cilantro, tomatoes, jalapenos, garlic...and soon, red cabbage and crookneck squash. Still enjoying nice things given by our garden.

Colour Wheel

When I was a kid growing up in the 70's, we had blue bathroom...furniture? appliances? what do you call the tub, toilet and sink? aha - fixtures, I think!

Anyway, the point of this story is the toilet. We had a blue toilet. If you think of the colour wheel, you will get this: I thought that I peed green at my house, and yellow at my grandmother's house (who, I'm sure you have figured out, had a white toilet).

I remembered that yesterday in the lunchroom when I saw 'yellow' nuts in my friend's lunch container -- the nuts being beige, and the container yellow.

The mysterious ways of how children think and perceive the world...

Glow worms

"Okay. Get up, Randa. Get out of bed. Now. Go for a walk. You need EXERCISE."

Discussion with myself at 4:45 AM today. I only hit the Snooze button ONCE.

I am so glad I went out. It was actually warm out; about 16 degrees Celsius (in contrast to a VERY chilly Sunday). Of course, it was dark at 5 AM, and foggy, due to the warm air. I wore my reflective safety vest and carried my flashlight, just in case of any cars (there were none)...but my way was lit (to a very limited degree) by the lamposts every few acres in neighbours' yards, plus my eyes just adjusted to the dimness.

It was a very peaceful brisk walk, with few sounds. A light breeze, frogs chirping, a neighbour's hound barking (rarely stops, actually, but that's a hound for you)...It felt great to get out, and to enjoy the early morning in late September.

But my FAVOURITE part of the walk was the discovery of glow worms. I noticed a tiny greenish light on the ground at the very edge of the road between the gravel and the grass in the ditch. Upon closer inspection with my flashlight, I spied a tiny brown 'worm'. I noticed a few others on my walk as well; I'm amazed I saw them, because when I looked more closely, they were always tucked in between blades of grass or partially obscured by a leaf. I guess their tiny dot of eerie green light just kept catching my eye.

That was the best part of my walk. I love the minutiae of nature.

Beets! Dwight K. Schrute would be proud.

I myself am not a fan, but two family members have a passion for pickled beets. So I happily grew beets in the vegetable garden this summer, and they did very well. Picked them two weeks ago, and pickled them yesterday. It was fun to do, and the final result looks so pretty. It's so satisfying to preserve food; especially food you have grown yourself. And it's so nice to see people smile when you bring out the preserves -- especially on a cold winter day. It's like opening a jar of love...because that's what you made it with :)

Hot Peppers!

From these...


To this!

Two kinds: Hot Pepper Garlic Jelly, and Double Hot Pepper Jelly. Especially good on top of cream cheese or a chunk of old cheddar, perched on a cracker. In the winter. With wine.

Garlic Harvest

113 heads of garlic harvested on Monday. (Finally! A sunny day! I've been waiting for two weeks to harvest the garlic, but it's been raining so much...)

So this will be enough to:
* Put some aside for planting in the fall for next year
* Give some to my sister-in-law who wasn't able to get any garlic in this year (and who was the one who gave me the original five heads to get me started a few years ago)
* Carry us through to about next May in our home garlic use

I'm planning on planting at least 150 cloves this year for next year's harvest. I never have QUITE enough. In addition to having enough to carry us from one year to the next, I'd also like to have enough garlic to give as gifts to friends. There's nothing like homegrown garlic!

July weather in Ontario

It's been very strange weather lately. Rainshowers in the morning; bright warm sun follows; grey storm clouds roll in; air turns cold and the rain hammers down again...sun/rain/dark/bright...It's hard to get anything going outdoors, be it laundry on the line, golf, gardening, sitting outside reading...

These two pictures were taken about 30 seconds apart. The sun shone down on one part of the yard, as ominous storm clouds approached.