This weekend was glorious. The last days of November and I think today made it to 70 degrees.  It was time to put the house garden and vegetable garden to bed.  Yesterday I worked in the yard and did the last of the winter pruning, weeding, tidying up, spreading leaves in the beds.  Today I spent the morning at the vegetable garden raking the oak leaves to the street corner, weeding my bed and snipping arugula and lettuce from my gardening neighbor Richard (he said I could have some).  I finished cleaning the porch at home of all gardening utensils and such.  On my way home from my veg garden, I stopped at a neighbor's to take some free canna bulbs.  They are now nestled in moss in the basement.  I've never planted them so look forward to trying it next year.  Here is what is left in bloom in the yard.

Japanese Anemone puffballs

Japanese Anemone puffballs

Rosebud - there are lots of rosebuds on a particular plant

Lavender stalk

Oakleaf hydrangea flowers

Hellebores - the first to bloom in Feb and March

It was a beautiful weekend so the kids and I did some yardwork - raking leaves for the compost and cutting back most of the perennials.  Full disclosure:  the kids were being paid for their work although I told them they were off the clock when their dad stopped by to chat and when the neighbor stopped to chat!

Here are a few things that are still in bloom or have lovely fall foliage.

Kouza Dogwood

Beautyberry

 a new plant - Amsonia - blue flowers

Asters

The stems from the Guara plant

The last remaining Blanket Flower

 A blurry flower on the rosemary

Dark Days Challenge

I have been taking a break from blogging because I just couldn't face logging on to the computer every night and thinking of things to say.

Now that the Dark Days Challenge is back, that will get me motivated to start writing again

Hurricane preparations

Guest blogging from the hurricane bunker today - Sean.
When the flood waters come, we'll need food and shelter. So we got a start on the food. Actually Brian got a start last night and had a Dutch Baby for dinner. Weird.

Stacey started the day by making tomato jam which may not be too good on toast because it's more of a thick ketchup.

Then we moved on to pizza dough for dinner tonight. The dough sits and rises for six hours at room temperature.

With pizza, we need roasted peppers.

Stacey dried basil.

And used the rest of the tomatoes to make tomato sauce. This is being canned as we speak.

The only thing left is to make sure our fluids stay topped off. Got that covered too.

How goes eating from the fridge?

Pretty darn well

Day 3 - Monday
Cereal for breakfast - finished the raisin bran
Ate lunch out with a friend
Dinner - greens with garlic, salad, zucchini sauteed with tomatoes and leftover chicken curry.  All vegetables were in fridge.

Day 4 - Tuesday
Scrambled eggs with chopped tomatoes
Lunch - leftover curry and zucchini
Dinner - more greens sauteed with garlic and sausage, mixed with pasta.  Tomato and mozzarella salad.

Sean and I went to Costco Tuesday night.  Hoo boy, I spent the most ever - stocking up on dry goods and food for the freezer.

Also tonight I took a couple pounds of green beans and blanched them and froze them.  Grated the big zucchini and froze that.

Day 5 - Wed
Breakfast  croissants from Costco, with homemade jam.  Peach smoothie
Lunch - leftovers from fridge
Dinner - out with Sean and friend Patricia

Tonight I took a chicken that had been defrosted and boiled it up for a couple of hours.  Strained out broth - tomorrow I will make chicken and dumplings

Stopped by the garden today with my friend Patricia and picked a few things.

Tomatoes!

Day 2 of beanie vacation

Last night Sean and I went to a lovely 50th birthday dinner party.  That meant no eating from the pantry although I did bring some garden vegetables to the hostess.

I have a long to-do list that mostly focuses on yard work while the kids are away.  Sean and I went out to Homestead Farms to pick peaches and blackberries.  Before we left, I made scrambled eggs with chopped tomatoes and chives and parsley plus some of the heritage pig sausage.

Blackberries - these will be frozen

Peaches - still hard but when ripe, I will freeze these too

Once back from picking peaches, we took a look at the worm compost.  There is quite a bit of lovely compost but it's pretty wet and hard to sift out.  There didn't seem a good way to separate out the little red worms from the compost so I added food in one corner and prepared another layer of bedding for the 2nd tier. Let's see if that will do the trick to separate the worms from their poop.

After that, it was two hours weeding and pruning in the front yard.  It's supposed to get to 100 degrees later in the week so I'm going to hurry up and get the yard done in the next few days.

Lunch was leftover macaroni and cheese plus some lovely fuschia colored beet buttermilk soup.

I also made a batch of dill cucumber chips and used up all the cucumbers to date in the house.  While doing the dishes, I stupidly put a glass baking pan atop other pans in the dishrack and yes, it fell and broke over all the kitchen floor - I reached out my hand to try and stop it and in return cut the joint between thumb and first finger.  I think I will have a hard time typing tomorrow.

Beets - ready for the freezer

Dill cucumber pickles

Garden Harvest this week - July 16

The vegetable garden needed some TLC so Sean and I spent 3 hours there this morning.  He staked the tomatoes (they were staked but are heavy with fruit and many branches had fallen over) and I weeded my little flower garden.  Then I tackled weeding the vegetable garden.  Sean picked the edamame and decided he didn't like picking.  So he watered and I picked the everything else that was ready.

The harvest!  From lower left:  red potatoes, edamame, zucchini, carrots, parsley, beets, shallots and onions, tomatoes and kolrahbi on the far right.

What to do with all this?  The potatoes I stored.  The zucchini and kolrahbi went into the fridge.  The onions and shallots will stay outside to dry.  The carrots were washed and stored.  The beans and beets were also washed.  I boiled the beets, skinned and vacuum sealed.  I blanched some of the beans and froze on a tray.  They will also be vacuum sealed.  The parsley is being dehydrated.  The edamame was boiled and then shelled and frozen.  No wonder I'm tired.

Fresh Edamame.  This is the first time I've grown it and it's a big success.  This vegetable will be back next year.

Ready to be frozen

I weighed all the cucumbers and found there is enough for a batch of dill pickles with some cukes leftover.  Tomorrow I'll make the dills but in the meantime, I made a batch of refrigerator pickles.  Layer sliced cukes with chives, rosemary and sage.  Boil cider vinegar and salt and then add cold water.  Pour over cuke mixture.

Last week I pulled up all the garlic.  These heads were a little squishy so I decided to roast them. I'll then squeeze them out and freeze the garlic paste.   The rest of the garlic is in storage in basement

Tomorrow we are going to pick peaches so that means more preserving.