Let it snow?

My moodling for the past few weeks has mostly been in my head as I've been busy with the last of the garden produce and cleaning up before winter. 

The greenhouse is ready for spring, more or less...

(The last of the basil will be used in a tomato salad

for Lee's birthday supper tonight)...

Suzanna turned our big pumpkin into a wonderful

jack o'lantern...

He was baked yesterday for future soups

and Shadow's favourite --

peanut butter-pumpkin puppy treats...

The garden beds are empty

(Lee dug the carrots last weekend)...

and his brother, Louis, who is visiting,

helped me to dig and cover the last beds yesterday.

We finished at 4, and it started snowing at about 5!

And this is what I see today...

I'm grateful that the snow held off until the garden got put to bed... but I'm very concerned about all the homeless folks still living in tents in our city. Quinn and I were downtown yesterday, passing out the usual granola bars and toiletries, and the first of winterwear donations. Shelter spaces for outside folks were supposed to be ready for November 1st, but we've heard nothing yet about where our downtown friends are supposed to go.

My garden is happy under this snow, but people aren't. I've written my city councilors, but they're running out of funds. It's the province and feds who need to cough up some more support now, so Danielle, Justin, and friends will be hearing from me too... 

In the meantime, if anyone has cash donations for socks, gloves or long underwear (or some of these most-requested items) to pass along, I can get them to people who need it!

Scrambling with produce

It's been a wonky week, mainly because we woke up to snow flurries on Monday morning.
We haven't had the accumulations that Calgary is getting, but still, I groan.
Snow in early September?!! Ugh!!
It means we have to scramble to take in the garden before it freezes tonight,
since I don't have enough blankets to cover everything!

Codie McLaughlan took this pic for the Edmonton Sun a couple of blocks from our place.
Fortunately, Edmonton didn't get much whiter than that.

I donned my most waterproof clothing (which didn't turn out to be very waterproof) and spent almost five hours in the garden, salvaging vegetables that, fortunately, hadn't frozen. It was one degree centigrade, and the wind whipped the snow around so that I wondered if a blizzard was on its way. I found myself shivering a few times, which made me decide it was time to change my soaked and very chilly garden gloves. I went through a pair an hour, with little cotton mitts inside them that kept some of the warmth until they got too wet.

My Belgian friend, Gaby, tells me that I look like some sort of astronaut!

There was a lot of organic matter for composting, 

Nine bags of leaves layered amongst bean and squash plants.

and more fruits and vegetables than I realized!  (14 spaghetti squash!)

As always, there were a few cukes that had hidden themselves well and had grown to outrageous size. 

I also harvested Ralph's Romas, 

and found that the biggest, four-fist-sized tomato had a little frosty spot on it...
so 1/4 of it was my lunch for today.
There was definitely more of everything than I realized!

We harvested our pears last weekend, thank goodness, so all that's left to deal with are the pumpkins, kale, chard, onions, leeks, beets, carrots and kohlrabi. 

I managed to salvage four tomato plants growing in my compost bins

and move them into the greenhouse on Saturday (we'll see if they amount to anything),

and our pepper pots are happily settled there, too. 

There should be lots of lovely peppers for spaghetti sauce making in October.

We are extremely fortunate that it didn't freeze outright. There's a lot of work ahead to make the most of all this produce, but it's worth it for a fifty-foot diet. And there's nothing like tomato and cucumber sandwiches this time of year. My favourite!

Thanks again, God, for our garden, and your abundance!

The garden takes over my life

Twin squash! And more where they all came from!

Online moodling gets erratic when the garden is doing things like this. For the last few evenings, it's been processing time. Tonight I worked on pickles, jams, zucchinis and beans. There are already two pails of tomatoes in my freezer waiting to be turned into spaghetti sauce. I haven't even looked at the kale, broad beans, and beets, and the spaghetti squash is a story unto itself! In short, the garden has outdone itself this year, and I'm struggling to keep up. (Mom and Dad K., shall we bring you some spaghetti squash? Anything else??)

Even as I deal with produce, there's plenty of moodling going on in my head... and I promise, once the garden has been cleared out, more than video clips will appear here... Watch this space.

Garden moodling

Today's moodling was all about... carrots.



About twenty lbs, chopped and blanched and in the freezer. Notice the Alexander Keith's premium white on the side. Made my blister feel better.

Our garden is one of our big efforts to live with less impact on the planet. Carrots, beans, beets, potatoes, etc. from the back yard are much tastier than the ones imported from the US and other places, and cost the environment much less in terms of soil degradation (we're organic growers) and greenhouse gases for production and transportation. Of course, Alexander Keith's brew had to travel across the continent to get to me, so back to Big Rock (a Calgary beer) if I want to live with less impact. Or maybe, no beer at all? I could have had a homegrown mint and lemon balm tea...