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| Colorful flowers of Autumn |
This is the last full day of our month called Song Time. We're in the middle of autumn, but we've been busy preparing for winter here.
The garden is being "put to bed". This month I nearly completed the harvesting.
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| Eggplant pasta sauce ready to freeze |
The last of the eggplants and tomatoes were made into pasta sauce. Some yummy winter meals there!
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| A small cranberry crop this year |
I picked our cranberries and put them in the freezer.
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| Preparing apples for dehydrating |
Some of the Crispin apples were made into dried apple slices. I filled the dehydrator and ended up with nearly a gallon of dried slices.
The rest of the apples are in the root cellar.
The dried beans have all been harvested and they are in the cellar curing; waiting to be threshed out this winter.
All that remains in the garden is the kale, chard, carrots and beets. The kale and chard will come out at the end of the week. The beets and carrots will stay a while longer, while the root cellar cools down some more.
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| Cleaning off the bean trellises |
With the crops mainly gone, garden clean up is underway. I've got all of the bean trellises cleaned off, and on the weekend I'll cut down all of the flowers. I left them for the bees, but they seem to be finished with them now. I hope to put away all of the structures this weekend, too. This is a two person job so I have to wait until Bob's available to help me.
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| "I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay..." |
Bob's been busy building the wood pile. He and a neighbor, with whom we share wood, have gotten thirteen face cords ready.
Bob cuts the logs, the neighbor splits them into stove size pieces and Bob (or occasionally I) stacks the wood. Everyone is responsible for their own kindling.
Lunette's job is to make sure the piles are free of rodents and cats.
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| Bob stacking his "small wood" |
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| Lunette takes her work seriously |
Bob's annual vacation falls during this month. We had a fair balance between chores and recreation. (Our resting vacation occurs when Bob has the last week of the year off for Cornell's shut down.) On this vacation, we toured the 1828 Brick Tavern Museum and went on a special event tour at Rose Hill Mansion. We also did a little shopping, ate out just a few times, played games and worked on jig saw puzzles. We enjoyed ourselves.
We've had typically wet weather, a bit on the cold side. We had snow on the ground on the morning of the 18th. The birds at the feeders are our winter friends now: House Finches, House Sparrows, Blue Jays, Nuthatches, Chickadees, Cardinals and Woodpeckers. The Juncos haven't come yet. Many Snow Geese flew over the day before the snow.
All of nature around us is getting ready to settle in for a rest. We have just a few more tasks before we're ready to join in. We hope you're all getting ready, too. We have found late fall and winter much more enjoyable when we mold our expectations and activities to the season, rather than expecting to live "summerly" all year 'round. "To everything there is a season..."
Till next time - Happy Autumn!
Kathleen, Bob and Lunette
