Fall cleanup

It's that time of year- fall cleanup. Mama N has blessed us with some glorious warm weather, so though I weep to pull spent plants, at least it was nice weather for it.

Smoked a lovely bone in ham over the weekend- when the price is low, I love to pick one up. I save the fat for later rendering, the bone always yields wonderful stock for many dinners to come, and there's enough meat there for a few dinners.

Been raking up lots of leaves to cover beds with. The garlic beds are under, as well as the tomato and little squash bed. Today I pulled the last of the squash, bean, and pepper plants and dumped on several wheelbarrows of leaves over those beds. The tarragon bush finally got it's last clipping and the whole herb bed is now buried too. Gotta love that free mulch :)

Planted in a bunch of spring bulbs too. Snowdrops under the cedar at the bottom of the mint border and in with the sky blue irises. Mediterranean bells along one side of the east bay of the pole barn. Mixed colors of hyacinths along a section of the south side of the solarium. And a few Gypsy Queen and Gypsy Princess hyacinths on the other side of the solarium in the wee folk garden. Slowly but surely I'm getting more flowers into the yard, and I'm rather pleased about it.

Decided the first batch of pickled nasturtium seeds were ready to try- I used a handful of them chopped up in some tartar sauce last night. A bit more peppery than true capers, but they for sure has that wonderful salty brine taste to them. Made nasturtium flower pesto and leaf pesto, both are delicious and in the freezer- I'm debating picking another batch before Halloween. Still got tons of the things out there if I so desire. I noticed a bunch of the wild chives are making an autumn showing too, so I might have to pick some to make butter or oil with.
Been dehydrating stuff too. Pretty soon I will publish this seasons preserving total- it's getting to be quite a lengthy list!

Been working on some more Halloween village stuff, a skeleton gazebo and my love printed me out the stuff for a jack o lantern water tower. I can't believe the holiday is right around the corner already!

Otherwise life has been the same ole around here. Doing chores, trying to deal with shit, work, life.. ya know... So I keep plugging away and hope things get better.

Been working on some crafting stuff, mostly beading projects. I'm starting to feel somewhat hopeful that I might be able to start selling some of it sooner rather than later.

Elections are coming up, and I'm sort of looking forward to being an election official- this will either be a good thing or something I rather not do again, we shall see. Maybe I just need something that is mine alone, and not shared. Greedy of me, I know, but I really miss having anything to myself.

At this point, I have several kitty litter jugs saved up for wintersowing. I think their bigger size and sturdiness will be of greater benefit than the milk jugs are. I still got milk jugs though, lol. I know, seems kind of weird that I tuck the garden away today and now I'm thinking about the next planting, but a girl has to plan, ya know? Through the winter I will probably make a thousand plans for the yard, and discard about 990 of them, hehe. My wish list for seeds is getting fairly small and specific to Pine Tree and Baker Creek- so even though I have a ton of trade seed, I think I might have to face it and just order seeds to fill in the little bit that I want.
I've culled out some more tomato seed- now I just need to settle in on what color I really want to grow next year.