Monthly Archives: October 2022

I brought a bucket of apples from Orleans and spent almost a whole day processing them into applesauce and apple pie filling. I baked a pie that day and I put another batch of prepared filling into the freezer.

Because it’s so dry the apples were dry and weak tasting. I solved this problem by adding apple juice to the cooking apples and a few tablespoons into my pie filling.

I forgot to take a picture of my applesauce and the pie. We netted one giant bowl of applesauce to eat now and a couple of containers for the freezer.

When I slice apples all afternoon like that, I feel it in my hands and wrists afterward.

This was the entire pumpkin crop this year. Disappointing, huh?

I still have a ton of pumpkin in the freezer but I will probably buy a fresh one for my holiday pies.

Normally for November I post every day and I do some sort of National Novel Writing Month goal however things are going to remain busy for the foreseeable future.

At the moment my intention is a small NaNo goal and at least post a photo a day for November. We shall see.

It’s always painful to pull out the tomatoes when there are so many on the vine but the rains were coming and the air getting cold. I did it while I had the chance.

This is one of my best tomato years in a long time. We always had plenty to eat but never enough to worry about processing.

The green ones never taste as good as the ones that ripen on the vine but it’s a nice memory of summer.

These are more shots of my frantic day of gardening before the rain came. I was so busy working on the gravel and planting bed rehab projects that I was neglecting other basic putting the garden to bed chores.

I pulled up all the tomatoes and lots of dead flowers. I picked a bunch of carrots and beets but there are still more out there.

I’ll do another day out there before I’m done.

I also whacked back the rosemary that was getting a big as a car. It smells lovely but looks like a bad haircut.

When we bought this house, this circle of weeds and gravel was advertised as RV parking.

I’m pretty sure we couldn’t get away with that today especially since the driveway behind us is private. How would you get the RV in there? I imagine as long as you have a good relationship with your neighbor it’s doable but still.

I have long planned to turn the gravel into an area for planting. About 5 years ago I spent 2 hours sifting and gave up.

But I was inspired this year by an article about this small city property with lots of fruit trees and bushes and I re-applied myself.

That’s as far as I got–that “where the bodies are buried” little area–working really hard over a period of a couple of weeks. I thought it would go faster.

I was tossing the gravel in the front on the parking strip and Bob thought I was so clever moving the gravel. I didn’t know where else to get rid of it.

This used to be a rhodie and a hedge. The rhodie gave up life all of a sudden and I had the hedge pulled out and it’s been empty ever since. This was also a rehab project because the soil was a mass of roots.

But also neglected year after year. I had tomatoes and some volunteer annuals in there. Those little bits of plants are the pulled up tomatoes.

I was attempting to dig up some of the lawn and make the plant bed bigger but it was tough going and I ran out of time due to all the other zillion projects in my life.

Next year!

Check out this guy, stirring up the bucket and looking suspiciously at the camera.

I usually have the camera attached to the Spool of Destiny (spool) but lately I’ve been attaching it to a bucket so I can move it around more easily.

I had *just* scrubbed out the bucket and it’s all dirty again. After a few days of this it starts looking like a scary pond. Maybe this gives them more nutrients.

Life is insanely busy at the moment. I bet if we went back and pulled up a mid-October post every year going back we’d find the same thing.

I’m off to Orleans tomorrow for the week. Updates, perhaps when I return.