In My "Spare" Time: Getting to be that time of year...

From what I can see out the window this morning, we dodged the bullet again, as far as frost is concerned. I don't think we will be as lucky tonight, so this afternoon after it warms up a bit (it is currrently 52°F) I am heading out to the garden to strip out whatever we didn't get Thursday - mainly hot and sweet peppers, and likely more green beans. The season is about over.

These pictures below are mostly from Thursday.

This is the garden as I approached it to work with Frank on picking whatever we could. We both figured this was the last weekend. He is out there working on the beans. You can see the sunflowers are all gone by now, and the tomatoes are dry stalks. Cukes and summer squash finally gave up the ghost too. The nights have been a lot of cold 40s, and windows get closed at dusk. We are not heating the house all that much, but have run the woodstove a few times. The furnace is set to 64° so that if the temps drop too low, it kicks in. My house is fairly well insulated and it does hold the heat.

I am not sorry to see the garden go, my thoughts at this time of year turn to lots of interesting indoor stuff. And there is always next year...

Frank picking beans. If you look in the picture above, you will spot his stepladder. It is 8' tall and broad based so as long as he sets it down firmly he can work alone. I or one of the boys are usually nearby anyway. Beans have really slowed down but we are still getting close to 9 lbs per picking.

Here's all that we got Thursday, We decided to pick as many of the winter squashes and pumpkins that looked ready. There are two more good sized pumpkins and some bottle gourds out there yet to bring in. The round green squashes are Japanese kabochas, my favorite, though others prefer those tan butternuts. As you can see we did fine on beans, but gave away most of them. All those pots, pans, and the crate were flea market or thrift shop salvage BTW, except for the tall milking bucket, which we bought back when we had a cow (long story).

These are Jack-Be-Little mini pumpkins, I like them because they are so cute. They are edible but I mostly decorate with them, or give them out to people. Ben will be getting at least one to go with his big pumpkin. The basin is something I paid a couple dollars for at a flea market. This was all off one hill of maybe 2 plants.

I was surprised that we still got a couple of crookneck squash since the plants looked dead. The zucchini is on a plant that got forgotten in a little pot (recycled pudding cup) and rooted in the ground through the (drilled) hole in the base. It is in the weeds out by the main gate. I might get one more small one off that plant before the frost nips it tonight. The broccoli is all tiny florettes now, a PIA to pick, but I got quite a bit anyway.

This is the results of our sweet potato picking, a bit of a disappointment, but there are some edible ones in here. They went in late, and it was not a warm summer or a particularly long row, so what we got, we got. I saved a couple vine pieces to root in jars of water and grow over the winter as a plant I can take slip cutting from. I hope to get a better crop next year. The original slips were from a piece of a sweet potato we bought in a box lot back before last Thanksgiving. We always get them at one particular supermarket because they have a variety I like the taste of at a reasonable price. It was a big and long sweet potato that never got cooked, and I found it in early spring still solid with buds on one end. I cut off the the 2/3 that wasn't sprouted and ate that myself over two meals after nuking it, and it was still very good. The sprouted end got supported by toothpicks over a wide mouthed jar filled with clean water that got changed regularly. It eventually produced tall foliage slips and roots. Those got nipped off and planted in the garden, and this is the result. Yep, you can sometimes get something for nothing...

I need to get an earlier start on these next year and put down black plastic. They got planted in early June when Roger was visiting.

These are my three holly bushes which line the driveway end on one side. Hollies are dioecious, which means they have distinct male and female blossoms on separate plants, so you must plant at lease one male for every several females in order to get berries. The males have the pollen bearing blossoms, the females the ovaries that once pollinated become berries. The one in the middle is Blue Boy, and on the right end is Blue Girl. The left hand and tallest one is another female variety of holly, I vaguely recall it being Italian something-or-other. I couldn't find another Blue Girl at the time. The Blues seem to be more compact with darker foliage, the other one has a bit lighter colored leaves and is taller and rangy so I should clip it back. We have a good crop of berries going this year.

These are the berries on Blue Girl, they are really pretty. The other female bush doesn't have nearly as many. I love that dark foliage!

Ah, the old homestead. It is a large house now since the last addition, there is a 1 story section on the other side. When Frank and I moved here in July of 1982, it was an abandoned 4 room shack with a partial cellar and a very leaky roof. We found out over the years this house was originally a 1 room shack with a side addition sitting on piled rocks, and the second owner had added the partial cellar and two front gables back in 1948. We are the fifth owners, and have done the most work on the place, throwing thousands of $$$ into it. It looks nice on the exterior but is still very rough inside as we haven't been able to finish the bottom floor - nothing is level or plumb and it is a big headache. I love it anyway. *s*

We have 8 rooms and I need them all since we have 6 adults living here; 4 bedrooms and two full baths, and Lee has his bedroom in one end of the office. The windows you can see on the bottom floor are my mother's bedroom on the left, #1 son Jason's window peeking out on the right, and between them behind the bush is the downstairs bathroom. The upstairs window you can see is the other bathroom, both of them were lined up to make plumbing easier. The master bedroom would be on the left upstairs, and it has a big walk-in closet that is mine, and is why you don't see a window there. There are two huge ones facing the front of the house (north) and the road. The bathroom is long and the window is more or less at one end. The office is behind the bathroom on the right, and it has two big windows facing the back (south) and the woods. Those are mostly 100' tall red and white oaks in my yard. The white door at the bottom is to my cellar, which is where the veggies were headed. Note the eco-friendly solar clothes dryer... *g*

We have 6.62 acres here, and there are state forest tracts on the east side and behind our property up back (roughly south). It is rocky, hilly land here, and the house is almost at the base of the hill, which is well above the river down across the road and through the woods.

That's this year's woodpile, sans anything already in the cellar. We burn wood in a woodstove in the cellar because it really warms the floors, and the exposed brick of the chimney radiates heat on two floors. We also have an oil-fired forced hot air furnace (and a separate flue for each use). People thought I was nuts when I said I wanted the chimney left exposed, because a lot of folks don't like the look of brick, but between that and the big south facing (low E glass insulated) windows in the office upstairs we have not had to run ductwork to zone the furnace up there. Even on the coldest nights it never gets below 62°F in the upstairs and that is ideal for sleeping. I will toss a shawl over my shoulders or put on a sweater if I am sitting by the window, but that is about it. Saves us a fortune in heating costs. The master bedroom has most of three sides of the exposed chimney (the outside of it is flush with the hallway wall) and some nights it is warm to the touch close to morning, even though we let the woodstove go out after 8PM to facilitate cleaning the ash out in the morning. Good to have the wood as a auxillary heating system, because out here in the boonies, power outages are not uncommon.

The split wood is mostly the stuff we bought, we got 5 cords this year. The round stuff Frank got free from a coworker and hauled home over several weekends in his truck. A lot of the scrap and all the kindling is from the property. Standing here you are facing the road behind my forsythia hedge.

In the cellar now, that is the woodstove and the indoor woodbin Frank built, which gets refilled as needed from the outdoor pile. The trash can is for ashes, which are safe in metal when warm. We have several cans and rotate them out over the winter. The wood ash and dead coals get used in the driveway as winter traction, and they help melt out the ice that forms. That is the furnace in the extreme right. My plant starting benches are directly across from the woodstove. This is the oldest part of the cellar, and is the only cement part on this side of the house - behind the chimney and stove is the dug-out part of that cellar. Back in the mid 1980s we put in a solid footing to support the back wall of the house which is why we were able to go up with one story on this section. My kitchen and Jason's bedroom are over the dug out cellar, the downstairs bathroom, middle room (it has the stairs and storage), and Ma's bedroom are over the finished cellar. The front door is in an inset between the middle room and Ma's bedroom. We don't use it often.

Walk past the wood bin and you enter the newer cellar which is fully cemented and under the 1986 1 story addition. That addition has my livingroom, a tiny hallway, and what was the master bedroom for years and is now #2 son Brian's bedroom and computer HQ. He and Jason were the ones that decided which room they would occupy when we moved upstairs, and that is how they wanted it. Jason opted to keep the smaller and more cramped bedroom they had both grown up in. There was no haggling at all. The interior door to the cellar is in that new section, right across from the back door that we all use the most to go in and out.

So now you know how I live. For obvious reasons with the online world as it is, I am not going to say exactly where that is. Nor are you going to see much of my messy and unfinished interior, because that is a big embarrassment to me. But I think it helps to understand what goes on here and why, if you know the basic demographics and layout. We are a varied lot, but we are all family, and family is what it is all about for me.

A family is the people who love you and watch over you, and the people you love and watch over. To paraphrase a current restaurant commercial, when you're here, you're family. Nuff said. *w*

Fall and winter is the time my mind turns to crafts, though I craft all throughout the year at some level. Crochet is probably what I work on the most because I understand it the best, and it is very suitable to 'grab and go' depending on what you are doing. My latest crochet project is below, updated from the last picture of her in progress. You can see her arms are done, and I have added the hair. It's a Caron Eco Simply Soft in pale blue, and I card cut the strands and fabric glued them on, and then did some untwisting. I like my fantasy ladies to have lots of long hair. Next I have to do facial features and something for a bikini top and then she can be accessorized. It's been a fun project, I'd like to make another one to test the pattern I wrote for her and see if it has any bugs.