First Frost

We had our first frost two nights ago. Foreseeing the chill, Nanny picked the remaining green beans (4 gallons of them!) and bell peppers. She covered the tender lettuce with a sheet of plastic. I never got around to buying that extra plastic sheeting, and so she didn't have enough to cover up the other greens. Hopefully, they can take a little chill. Hopefully, I can remember to get more plastic today.

I am also crossing my fingers that the sweet peas can stand the cooler temperatures. Few of the pods have matured. I picked the fattest ones yesterday afternoon, and they yielded a handful of peas, which I tossed into a noodle concoction for last night's supper. There are many more immature pods still on the vines. I left them there, hoping that they will grow a little more.

After leaving the garden yesterday, my husband and I went into town on a furniture-buying mission. We have not had new living room furniture in 20+ years. For a long time, we've been talking about buying new furniture, but never got around to it. When our son and his family moved in with us (temporarily) a few months ago, we gave away our old living room suite, making room for our son's furniture, knowing that when he and his family moved into their new house, we'd be forced into action.

We began shopping for furniture in mid-September, anticipating a late-September closing date on the new house. We each found a few things we liked - my digital camera is full of pictures of sofas and recliners - but, naturally, we did not agree on anything, and, since the closing date kept getting pushed ahead, we kept putting off the decision. Last week, while we were on a camping trip, we learned that the closing is "definitely" to happen this week. I said to the husband, "Since we can't agree on anything, and since we've both seen what the other likes, one of us should just go and buy the furniture, and get it over with." On the way home from the camping trip, the husband said, "Since I'm off work again tomorrow, maybe I'll go buy the furniture."

I gave him the "have-you-lost-your-mind?" look.

He said, "Well, you SAID that 'one of us' should just go do it."

I said, "Yeah, but I meant ME!"

Wisely, he refrained from going to the furniture store until I got home from work. As we should have anticipated, none of the things we had liked on our previous outings were still in the store. We had to start from scratch. But 30 minutes after I walked in, I knew what I wanted. So did the husband. Unfortunately, they were not the same things. The compromising started.

Other customers came and went. A friend came in, and called to us, "Hey, how are you guys doing?"

"We're about to fight," I told him. He waved, and ran for cover.

Before it was over, poor David, the store owner, had rearranged about a third of his inventory, moving "that chair" next to "this couch" so that I could see how they looked together. (I believe if we had debated a little longer, David might have paid us to take some furniture and get out of his store.) We finally agreed on one chair - a cushy burgundy leather recliner for the husband - and were able to build a suite around it. "Put 'sold' signs on these," we told David, "and we'll call you when we're ready for them." I thought David was going to cry.

He may cry for sure when I go back to the store today, to see if I still like everything in the daylight. ;)

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This Year's Last Hurrah

The greens are ready to pick. According to my last blog entry, I planted them about a month ago. We have plenty of mustard, turnip, kale, and lettuce. Sarah took home two sacks full on Monday. This barely made a dent in them. Come Saturday, I'll be picking greens for the freezer. Wish you lived close enough to help! ;)

The spinach is being persnickety and has come up thinly. Same goes for the beets. Right now, there's enough spinach for a couple of small salads from the baby leaves, but not enough to sautee. We intend to make a plastic tent for all of the greens, hoping to extend their growth into winter. I should go to Home Depot for plastic tomorrow, so that Jack Frost won't catch me unprepared.




This afternoon, I picked the first green beans from the "new crop." (We planted those two months ago.) I went to the garden hoping to find enough for supper, and came out with 2 gallons of beans. They'll need picking again by the weekend. After skimming a couple of handfulls off the top for our dinner, I gave the rest to a cousin up the road. Mine are now slowly steaming in garlic butter, to go with the potatoes and the pork loin that are roasting in the oven.

The sweet peas, planted two months ago, have nice, big pods on them, but they're not filled out yet. I can hardly wait for those!

Back in the summer, I found two scraggly brussels sprouts plants at a garden center, and stuck them in the ground. It was way too late to plant brussels sprouts, and they just sat there, doing nothing, during the hot part of the summer. Last month, I noticed that they had begun to grow, and I thought we might get a little crop of sprouts, after all. Today, I noticed that they are now green skeletons, thanks to some cute little green/black striped worms that have helped themselves to the leaves. I'm going to leave them - and the worms - alone to see what happens.

It's too bad that there aren't more resources for fall gardening around here, because gardening at this time of the year can be so pleasant. It's not too hot or too cold. The bugs (except for those pesky brussels sprouts worms) aren't too bad, so there's no need for pesticides. How nice it feels to eat vegetables that are fresh and crisp and, except for maybe a little bug poo, clean enough to eat while standing right there in the garden.

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