Marc made it through his hernia surgery just fine and I find I am struggling to try and keep a good man down! He has done better than both of us expected in managing the pain without a lot of medication and in not needing to lay out prone resting. Regardless, I still am trying to tame him down a tad to just (finally) taking it easy for awhile.
Our weather has definitely moved into fall and despite my wanting to get out for some photo shoots, it just really hasn’t happened. We’ve been busy with other things looming on our horizon; things I’m not at liberty to yet talk about.
I did get this photo of a neighborhood “home” on a back road I take to go the shelter. The creeping vine is just showing hints of the brilliant red to come but mostly what I love is that this home is very typical of Wisconsin homes—out of the ordinary and made out of buildings originally built for other purposes. Note the bell still hangs in the belfry.
I’m still busy processing food—tomatoes from the garden and apples from the trees. I just about have that wrapped up though and plan to leave the rest of the hanging apples for the birds. I pulled the tomato plants and have the green ones left on their vines hanging in the shop. Marc plans to start canning again soon—we’re closing in on close to 100 jars of goodness! And I won’t talk about the spaghetti squash I am awash in—probably close to 50 of them, also continuing to ripen in the shop and the basement.
Alas, our first hard frost brought an end to my California cosmos—seeds sent from my friend took forever to grow here and then when they did they got as tall as a forest and had just started blooming about a month ago and had produced hundreds upon hundreds of buds, only to be doomed by Wisconsin’s cruel trick. I pulled them all today after seeing them looking so pathetic.
I got the garden “shut” down by removing the water hose and the garden utensil storage bin and turning the compost pile one last time. Right now it is doing so well it looks like a worm bed, turning them up by the hundreds with every shovelful. They must know that with the heat produced in compost they may just survive the winter. I’ll leave the rest of the perennial flower stalks that are dying off to over-winter to provide the birds with some seed and add interest to the snow drifts. The same with the now pathetic looking sunflowers which the blue jays and flickers have been hitting hard. Our hummingbirds have fled as have all the songbirds but the geese are still calling overhead and the Sandhill crane family is still in residence although we will shortly say farewell to them for the winter.
