§ I spent Tuesday evening pulling up the remainder of my vegetables in advance of an overnight freeze.
The tomatillos were the biggest surprise. The matured late so I was left with a harvest of just under four pounds—a fraction of what have been getting the past few years. Over the weekend I used those, a basketful of poblanos, and some Hungarian peppers to make chili verde. A delicious autumn meal.
Although the San Marzano gave me a lot of blossom end rot trouble early in the season, it ultimately became one of my new favorite plants. I’ll certainly be growing more next year.
I’m hopeful for a longer, more plentiful growing season next year.
§ I planted six different varieties of garlic for a spring harvest. I can’t wait to see which one fares best.
§ We had the first snowfall of the year overnight Tuesday—very early! October 31st, for future reference.
§ Leaf blowing takes more skill than I appreciated. Raking is almost certainly more efficient at this point. The best I can manage with the leaf blower is to transport the leaves to other, equally inconvenient, areas of my yard.
§ During some of the warmer evenings this week I’ve been working on winterizing the backyard greenhouse. Our plan is to keep our quails there for the winter instead of moving them into the connected garage like last year. The best practice, as far as I can tell, is to use bubblewrap as a extra air barrier. I am looking into different options to provide active heating too.
§ As I write this, daylight saving time will have just started (or ended? I can never remember) which means, in practice, it will start getting dark at like 5:30 rather than 6:30. I used to get pretty upset about this but the truth is that there are just fewer hours of daylight at this time of year and there is no great solution to that other than moving somewhere more equatorial.
This year, I will embrace the night.
§ My big exhibit debut was a huge success. It has been an wild few months and this past week was a particularly big push to the finish line. Seeing it all come together I am, in one sense, exhausted. More than that, though, I am ready to do it again.
