Monday, October 17, 2011

Another amazing day. How lucky are we.

It is sunny...again. It was between 13-15 degrees. I spread a bag of compost over the garlic. I weeded all the gardens. Deadheaded the asters and cut the peonys as short as I could. I'm going to top dress them to try to eliminate the blight thing that they have. I then hacked back the pinks that strolled about three quarters of the way across the sidewalk and made my husband crazy. It's a pet peeve of his. Plants roaming across walkways, plants making opening doors difficult, that sort of thing. I hadn't noticed during the summer that my cottoneaster was pushing against the door of his shed. To be fair, I never go in there, so I wasn't aware. On the deck I have an old Woodstock water bell fountain set up in the summer. The bells make the most wonderful sound. Today I cleaned it up and put it in the greenhouse for the winter. It feels really good to have most of the cleanup done. Allan will go for a bale of straw this week, so we should be able to wrap everything up within a week.
Oh I forgot, I cranked up the dehydrator and did up a load of red and yellow tomatoes. They turned out fantastic if I do say so myself.

5 comments:

Andrea said...

Hi Erin, I smiled when your 13-15C is considered warm. I can't imagine the feelings of our countrymen who migrated to Canada, and i think there are many! Our coldest temperatures in Dec-Jan are from spillover winds from Siberia, which just go down around 20C. This months we feel heaven. From then on it goes soaring again reaching peaks in Mar-Apr at around 33-37C, coupled with high humidity, making you really hot, sticky, sweating profusely when outside. Can you imagine that!!! hahaha. And we cannot plant anything in those months.

Erin said...

Hi Andrea. Okay, I really cannot imagine those temperatures. We will occasionally go over 30 but not very often. Maybe a week in the summer. I just popped in to see where you were and I saw your book reading list. I have a spiritual/metaphysical/self help type store. Hard to define. I call it 'a candy store for the spirit'. I carry books by Brian Weiss, Caroline Myss and Greg Braden. It really is a small world isn't it? My store brings me nearly as much joy as the garden!! :-)

Mark Willis said...

Erin, you must do us a post about how you use those dehydrated tomatoes. I bet they make a great cooking ingredient.

Gardeningbren said...

Erin...I also wouldn't mind more info on the dried tomatoes..and wonder if you stored them in oil, froze them or what? I actually read something recently about blitzing them (after drying) to dust, store and just add to soups etc. Sounds interesting. Think I would miss the 'bite' though.

You are very busy in the garden and it is good to compare ours on the east coast to yours on the west coast. Got my garlic in too,high five.

Erin said...

Hi Brenda. I dried them then put them in the freezer, froze them and then bagged them. There were some that weren't quite dry, so we put them into a pasta with some of my fresh pesto. It was really good. What is blitzing them and dust? I have so much to learn.
I was just showing my neighbor the little dwarf apples. My tuxedo cat Beamer, decided to dig and prepare to piddle right on my garlic. Sacrilege.
I have to do a hort poston my aches and pains from yesterday.
Bye for now.