The Craftiest Workshop

Summer finally began its transition to fall this week. On Friday morning it was only 2° when I got up and by the end of the day all my squash, zucchini and pumpkin leaves had turned black. I cut off the three squash and one pumpkin and put them in our cool garage. Now we only have corn and strawberries producing in the garden.

I am trying to figure out what I ended up with for squash. In January we cooked a pale yellow spaghetti squash while I was at my parent’s visiting. Mom put the seeds from that squash onto a sunny wndowsill to dry and I took home half of the seeds. This spring I started a few of those seeds in the house, moved them into the greenhouse and eventually planted them into the garden. Two of the plants grew like zucchini where the vines never travelled and the flowers and fruit came from the center of the plant. Another two created vines more like pumpkin where it travels around the patch. Here are the end results. What are they going to taste like: a spaghetti squash, butternut squash, zucchini or pumpkin?

The lighter one came from the vine that travelled. The other two came from the zucchini type plant. I am curious too, if I save the seeds from one of the orangey or green ones, will they look even odder next year? The internet doesn’t have a lot to say about how squash combos end up looking or tasting.

I added some cow manure to one of the garden beds this week that had zucchini in it earlier in the season. I planted three different types of garlic in there. I wanted to be conscious about putting it in a bed where I want root vegetables for next year keeping with the crop rotation of the four types: fruit – root – leaf – legumes.

I have been tearing up egg cartons to add to all the vegetable and flower greens coming out of the garden and going into the compost bin. I would like to be adding leaves but they are just starting to fall and most are still on the trees.

I have begun reorganizing the greenhouse for winter. Stacking empty plant pots, cleaning the potting soil off the counter and stacking five gallon pails that we no longer need for moving water.
I emptied the dried sunflowers of their seeds this week. The ones that were tougher to extract seeds from or the ones with too tiny of seeds I left on the floor of the greenhouse for the squirrel. Earl got a lot of extra food this week.

As with everything in the animal kingdom, only the strongest survive. I haven’t seen Merle (the female squirrel) since the end of August. Earl has moved into her shed, our garden shed, and has started stacking moss in the corner for his winter bed. Another bigger male squirrel with a longer fluffier tail ousted him from the insulated shed. Good or bad, Earl has taken over from Merle as my pet and he no longer runs away. He likes to jump onto me from surfaces but isn’t quite as patient to sit and listen to me talk. Who knows, maybe Merle will return in the spring when she doesn’t need to fight for shelter.

Over the next couple weeks we will add compost to the remaining garden beds, cover the plants that need a bit of insulation with straw and cut down the larger raspberry patch to the ground. We will wrap the trunks of the newer trees with a hard plastic wrap to prevent the mice from eating the bark.

I was almost giddy when the frost came. I was getting very tired of watering. There are a few flowers that are still blooming but we finally had a big rain today after so long so they will be good now for at least a few days. In the long term forecast I see a steady decline in temperatures and 0° as the night time low 14 days from now (for us that means -3 or -4).

Our beautiful sunrises have returned and this is what I woke up to this morning. Taken at 07:30.

There are many things I love about fall. I can stay outside for the whole day without getting too hot. The leaves changing from green to yellow and red are always so beautiful. The deer and moose begin coming back to our area from wherever they spent their summer. The chickadees visit me more often for peanuts as there are less bugs to eat. The weeds and grass stop growing so no more pulling or cutting needed. It really is the best time of the year when you are putting the garden to bed.