ooooooooooo, leaf mulch

Neighbor Judy came over today to tell me that I could help myself to her HUGE maple leaves. Aren't neighbors great?

Look how beautiful my neighbors tree is.

Allan came home and promptly got out the mower and started running it over the leaves.

Partially mowed

The mower was filling up very quickly so the odd leaf didn't get totally mulched, but I am just so happy to have leaf mulch.

Close up of future compost

I actually spread some on top of the straw, on top of the compost, on top of the newly planted garlic!! The rest went into compost bin two.

Doesn't he just make an awesome gardeners assistant?

A lovely new knife...dehydrating tomatoes...and, can you guess?

Aren't these beautiful. Jess's little red and my yellow Lemon Boy tomatoes.

I offered to dehydrate some tomatoes for my sister, so she gave me her bucket of small but sweet tomatoes. I took my lovely Henkel knife, very new and super sharp, kind of like a razor blade sharp (I know, you know where this is going) and started cutting. Tomato number two and I just barely touched my left index finger tip with the knife. It looked like a tiny little nick. And then the blood started. I would have taken a picture at that point, but I was worried about the camera. I went to the bathroom, tried to stop the bleeding as much as I could and cinched a bandaid quite tight to hold the cut closed and a got back to the business at hand. This actually took a while to type, as the band-aid is wreaking havoc with my usually pretty capable typing skills. I didn't actually feel anything until about five minutes ago. It stings now.
Earlier today, I spread some more straw around the Swiss Chard and cauliflower, so while I has at it I tucked some around the raspberry too. I didn't get very much dill this year but what I had I pulled out and cut up and put in the dehydrator too. It won't take nearly as long as tomatoes so I'll keep an eye on it.
It's now looking like it could rain.

Beautiful tomatoes, a razor sharp knife and a very tightly bandaged finger.

Oh my gosh, the whole house smells like dill. I wish I had smell-o-vision so I could share it with you!!

23:00 hours. Update. My finger has a heartbeat. Yup, there's real stinging going on. Just sayin'.

Pouring rain and coffee grounds

Okay, so it isn't much, but at this time of year we take what we can get. I went out in the absolutely pouring rain with a full five gallon pail of wet coffee grounds. It was really heavy, maybe thirty pounds? I spread this full bucket between two of my blueberries. My plan is to mulch very thickly creating a bed of black rich coffee grounds, amending the soil and feeding the blueberries the acid they need. So that was it for this very rainy day on Vancouver Island.
My sympathy goes out to all the bloggers out there who posted their snow pictures today.

Not really...ALREADY!! (add a high pitched shrieking voice)

It is only October 27. I'm supposed to have another nine days. Yes...it's the "f" word. Our first expected frost date is November 5. We awoke to frost today!!! It's not fair. It wasn't quite zero degrees, but clearly it was frost. It was white, it was on the roofs, it was frost!!
My husband just came into the living room, laugh, snort, giggle, pulling a hoody on cuz it's so cold in here. He's always been a bit of a lightweight when it comes to the cold.

Plants still determined to flower and be beautiful

Even at the end of October you can find flowers blooming, trying to bloom, sending out new growth...isn't nature amazing!? Here are some pictures of my plants doing just that...as well as a few Japanese Maple photo's just because I love the colour!

Japanese Maple

Japanese Maple, again

Perennial Fuchsia. Love perennials.



Another perennial fuchsia. This one gets flowers about
three inches across.



Looking up into my twenty foot holly.

Daylily sending up another flower spray.

And yet another Japanese Maple.