Quote of the Day: Monty Don
“It is strange how autumn surprises you every year, even though it is as predictable as a birthday. You are conscious of summer stretching itself so thin that it is transparent, hardly any substance to it at all and yet enough colour in the garden, enough fragile heat in the sun to cling to. And then you turn away for a moment and it’s gone, autumn in its place, lumpen, damp and chill. Overnight you can hardly recall what summer was like. Yet something positive – if rather intangible – takes its place. It is the scent of apples and leaves, the amazing sight of cobwebs suddenly strung from branch to branch like a string of delicate seaside illuminations, and a mouthful of tastes that have lain dormant or inappropriate for two long seasons.”
Monty Don (The Ivington Diaries)
It certainly seems like it’s officially fall now, there’s a crispness to the air in the morning and evening. The air is starting to smell earthy as the leaves fall and start to decompose back into the soil. The sounds of rustling leaves is the most dominant sound in the garden.
I’m thankful that I live in place where the trees turn vibrant colors this time of year. It certainly helps bring some much needed excitement to what might be an otherwise depressing time.
Do you get to enjoy colorful leaves in your area?
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She’s a Keeper
Miss Tara is really settling in. I figured you’d all be clamoring for an update. We finally got her new tag with our address and phone number, I’m sure you can guess that we found a handmade version. This one is from The Copper Poppy, a small shop in New Hampshire.
She is really getting the perimeter training and has been doing very well at it. We purchased a roll of surveyors tape in yellow to mark the area we want her to stay in. Yellow and blue are both colors that are easily seen by dogs, we wanted to give her visual clues, particularly in winter when the leaves are off the trees. Right now it’s the edge of the woods that make up the perimeter, but when the snow starts piling up they won’t be as prominent.
Mr Chiots has been taking her around the perimeter several time a day, at first she was leashed, but now she gets to run free. She rarely needs correction to stay inside the perimeter. A few days ago, we let her off her chain and she raced around the perimeter as fast as she could. It made us nervous as first to see her take off, but she ran right around the area we’ve been training her to. Training a new dog reminds us how much work we put in with Lucy, she’s great, not because she’s just a great dog, but because we put in many hours of training. Investing time now with Tara will pay off in the future.
I now even let her outside without being chained or leashed, of course I keep an eye on her. She seems quite happy and has done very well with the chickens and the ducks. She still doesn’t have our trust fully, someday she’ll earn her stripes and be allowed out without supervision, that will take a while though. We’re happy she’s progressing so well.
If you have a dog do you let them run free or do they need to be chained or behind a fence?
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Quote of the Day: Monty Don
“The garden at the beginning of October flatters to deceive. The sun still has the heat to warm through your shirt, still carries the tang of summer during the middle of the day. But no one is fooled. This is not the real thing but borrowed from summer, little more than a good memory. Autumn has arrived. The leaves are changing colour daily and the air has an almost tangible opacity you only find in autumn.”
Monty Don from Fork to Fork
It’s certainly starting to feel like fall around here. Plants in the garden are growing much more slowly and brown in becoming the dominant color. This year I’m happy for fall to arrive as I’m ready for a long winter rest.
What does fall look like in your garden?
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Hello Fall
Up until this week, it hasn’t really felt like fall. It’s warm this week, but the leaves are changing and the temperature drops sharply when night falls. The leaves are changing and some are even brown and falling to the earth already. Add to that the pumpkins that dot the roadside stands and it’s really feeling like fall.
There are no pumpkins gracing my front stoop yet, perhaps I should buy a few. I really enjoy seeing them everywhere this time of year!
What’s your favorite fall decoration?
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Quote of the Day: Joe Eck & Wayne Winterrowd
We know, however, that if we were forced to it, we would abandon all the parts of the ornamental garden before we surrendered the little patch that feeds us most of the year. Giving up the vegetable garden would mean that we would cease to eat. We would continue to put food in our mouths, we suppose, though certainly we can both imagine states of loss and depression so grave as to make even that minimal effort at survival pointless. But at this time of our lives, the ingestion of food merely for the purpose of survival is not what we mean by eating. To be nourished directly from a garden for years and year, to become accustomed not only to the tastes but also to the labors and rituals it offers, the small festivals, makes even the fanciest gourmet market seem thin. Corn is not the only crop that, eaten as soon after harvest a possible, surprises even memory with what it can be. Carrots taste both sweeter and of the earth when eaten just pulled, their flavor rusty with minerals. Peas need no butter, no cooking even. Baby potatoes the size of marbles can be bought in no market, golden purslane and orach in only a few. In the door of no market that we know of can ripening tomatoes be smelled as we smell them in August when the garden gate swings open. Artichokes which we grow here with great effort, are tender and sweet, without the ferrous taste and fibrous chew that mark store-bought ones. From each plant we may coax two or three apple sized buds before frosts come to remind us where we live. From two long rows of fava beans we can pick at most only two or three company sized servings. From as many rows of butter beans, sadly less.
Joe Eck & Wayne Winterrowd in Living Seasonally: The Kitchen Garden and the Table at North Hill
I grabbed this book to read on my trip to Cincinnati this weekend. It’s my all time favorite book and I try to read it every year. At this time of the year, I’m always considering my vegetable garden and how much it have provided for us throughout the past year and for the coming months ahead.
As I put most of my garden to bed for the cold winter months, I’m reminded of how many different vegetables I grew. It really is amazing how little space you need to grow a lot of vegetables. My small potager behind the house is only 25×25 feet and yet it provided most of the fresh vegetables that we ate all summer long. From it I harvested: peas, beans, fava beans, chard, strawberries, asparagus, tomatoes, leeks, beets, peppers, herbs, celeriac, celery, broccoli, cabbage, flowers, carrots, arugula, radicchio, kale, chicory, lettuce, and a few other edibles.
