This past summer Charles and I worked on changing our backyard garden to a larger container garden. We purchased large cattle troughs and drilled holes in the bottom edge to drain and filled them with garden soil and compost.
I did not take a lot of summer garden pictures because we did not grow a lot of vegetables. We grew, cucumbers and bell peppers, some early sugar peas and a few things but mostly we planned for a fall garden because I cannot work in the heat. I am older and I cannot tolerate the heat but also it is just plain hot now.
The climate is changing and we gardeners are having to change too.
This picture above is what is growing now.
The November garden is a gamble as it will get cold soon. I was late planting . But like I normally do in the early spring I can stretch things by covering the plants for awhile. We have turnips, snow peas, onions, carrots, lettuce, garlic, dill, cilantro, parsley, radishes, basil, turmeric, ginger, thyme, sage, satsumas, lemons and we still have some bell peppers that we are harvesting. We have other herbs and lemongrass and such.
Also a few containers of spinach.
Charles built us some cages to grow tender lettuce and radishes, and a few other things. We need the cages because of the squirrels and chipmunks and whatever else has taken a liking to eating our greens.
Charles even added little acorn knobs.
The cages can be covered with plastic to make mini green houses. One of the cages is an old bunny cage.
It is now time to start harvesting the lettuce for salads and we are very happy with having fall lettuce this year.
We are excited about our compost. We have been making dirt from our leaves, grass clippings and food scraps.
we have two compost bins, we are adding a third. This is a finished one...
What I mean by finished is it is ready to use to grow vegetables. It has earth worms and red wigglers and is healthy organic soil. Our grass clippings have no pesticides or weed killer or anything on them because we let our lawn be natural.
I staggered the planting of the lettuce so this lettuce is younger than the other that is ready to harvest.
Back in the house there are many things to tend to. Here is homemade chicken stock cooling. With our little fridge I don't have room to chill them down so I have learned just to do this as our generations before us did and I cool them the best I can then skim the top.
I skim the top to get the fat off because when canning meat or broth there needs to be little fat so the jars seal properly.
I normally can the chicken stock but I still have home canned broth in the pantry and Thanksgiving and Christmas are coming up and I will be needing Chicken Stock so I froze this stock to use for the holidays. I still plan on getting away from the freezer but this is what I need to do right now with all the work we have going on.
On days when we have a lot to do we have been eating one meal per day. This was a hearty meal close to noon. This is a Brunch since we skipped breakfast and is steak with cooked onions, hash browns and scrambled eggs. Late in the afternoon we snacked on some olives, goat cheese and crackers.
Today's meal was sauteed green beans, sweet potatoes, rice with butter, and some leftover broccoli casserole.
Charles added some knobs to the secretary desk to make it easier to pull the desk top down.
I needed a new lamp shade so I bought one at a thrift store that was stained and dirty. So I figured I would chance getting it and washing it. So I wet it and rubbed a bar of my homemade soap over it and scrub it.
I scrubbed it inside and out. The place where the trim joins at the bottom was a quick fix with glue.
I rinsed it well after I scrubbed it...
With the water hose...
Hung it with a hook I made to hang my clothespin basket and hung it on a line to dry for the day.
After it was dry I could see it was in good shape to use.
Now the old lamp has a new clean shade.
I have been digging through my granny's old trunk where I keep things and pulled out some lace curtains and hung them over the bookcase to keep dust off the books.
Yes, I did move the bookcase to another location. I plan on painting it white and it will sit next to Walton. I am still tweaking. :)
Back to the November Garden. The basil will be the first to go as the temperatures will be dropping next week and basil is very sensitive to cold. It does not like temperatures even in the 40s. The basil was beautiful this year and I will miss it. I took this picture today as I wish I knew of a way to keep it alive through the winter.
The November garden now has garlic planted that will grow through the winter and I am going to try a few things new such as hay around some of the plants to protect them to extend the season.
Until next time, Grandma Donna
