fall

Autumn Aliens

~ McArtor ~ Leave a comment

We visited a farm in wp-image-1536863450jpg.jpgPennsylvania to pick some pumpkins and gourds to bring home.   My son was intrigued by their funny shapes and bright colors.  They reminded me of the silly monsters he draws – cute alien creatures with round or oval bodies filled in by swirls or dots and topped with one to three eyes; each creature has a name like,  Dingle, Yugi, Ygug, Hithy, Hicamawiks, Hallywak and Dotty-Spot.  They make us laugh.

These alien-like squashes make us smile, too.  Any names come to mind for them?  I will ask my son, he will have some ideas.

Can you guess which ones he named, Backhoe, Emerald,  and Pouty?

answers: (no peeking!)

Backhoe is the creamy, white gourd with the curved neck on the very top of the hay bale. Emerald is the bright green one in between the bumpy faint, pastel blue pumpkin and the orange pumpkin. It’s underneath Backhoe, a little to the right. Pouty is the crazy, pale blue pumpkin with the frown next to the green and the white gourds. He’s the closest to you!    😉

Saving Fall Leaves for the Garden

~ McArtor ~ 2 Comments

The wind swirls and scoops up leaves from the neighborhood and dumps them into our tiny front yard.  The yard is covered with brown leaves when  the only tree in it,  a Bradford Pear, still has its green leaves.  Every fall we collect at least 4 tall bags of  these extra leaves.

We are grateful for the extra leaves because we save them for our garden plot.  We keep our compost healthy by adding the extra leaves to our compost bin. The brown carbon rich leaves balance the green nitrogen rich kitchen waste in our composter.  We add a dense layer of  minerals and nutrients to our garden plot by mulching the garden soil with the leaves.   We provide winter protection for tender plants in our garden by surrounding them with the leaves.  When our fig tree was smaller,  we protected it from the cold winter winds by covering it with  leaves and a  burlap blanket.

My son jumping into a pile of our extra leaves.

This fall, gathering and chopping our leaves became easier due to our new  electric leaf blowing-vacuum- mulchinator.  We do not have a grass lawn in our front yard, but perennials and bushes.  It is tedious to comb out the leaves from our Nandina, Hydrangea and Azalea bushes and flower beds.  Instead of raking the leaves into piles and chopping them with a lawn mower, we gently vacuumed up the leaves and created mulch at the same time.  Our new garden toy is gentle on our plants and saves time.  Fantastic!

We did not vacuum up all the leaves immediately.  We saved some for my son and dog.  My son likes jumping from our front door steps into a mound of leaves then pretending he is a bird sleeping  in a nest.    My dog likes to catch, in his mouth, bunches of leaves tossed up in the air.

How do you collect and use or play in your fall leaves ?

The Unexpected Sprouts

~ McArtor ~ Leave a comment

A clear blue sky, crisp cool air, warm sunshine plus adventure equals a perfect Saturday in autumn.  We headed for our garden plot this afternoon but had a few diversions before arriving there.    We stopped at a pet store and a fall festival.  We went to the pet store to purchase biscuits for our dog and my son discovered a playful kitten.  My son slipped a thin metal wire through the kitten’s cage.  The cat flipped, batted, jumped and kicked at the bunch of cardboard strips hanging at the wire’s tip.  My son roared in laughter.  He did not want to leave the pet store.  We redirected  him with hope of a hayride at our community garden site.    The Howard County Conservancy was full of activities for its fall festival.   We bumped through rolling fields and woods on a hayride pulled by a tractor with wheels taller than my son.   A master gardener at the compost demo gave my son a bunch of pink and blue balloons.  My son slurped honey from a straw and chatted about bees with a woman from the Howard County Beekeepers Association.  We listened to steel pounding on steel as a blacksmith hammered a hot orange metal rod into a fork after heating it in a coal fire stoked by large bellows.  My son said the banging was his favorite.   While my husband and son lingered and asked questions  in the blacksmith shop,  I finally visited our garden plot.

 

Turnip Seedling

 

Our plot is still producing tomatoes, peppers and beans.  I picked two grocery bags full of red and green tomatoes and peppers.  I pulled out and composted three tomato plants that had toppled to the ground.  Our fall plantings sprouted!  Radish, turnip, spinach and lettuce seedlings  now sprinkle the brown earth in unplanned patterns of curving rows, circles, clumps, pairs and triples.  Some extra seeds must have dropped from my hand during planting.  Many seedlings will need to be pulled out to allow more space for underground growth.

Those unexpected sprouts remind me of our day.   Unexpected adventure and fun popped up despite my plans.  Thank you God, for your goodness and for dropping some extra seeds outside my rows of plans.

Fall Clean Up and Demolition

~ McArtor ~ 2 Comments

Welcome to the first entry on my garden blog!  Just in time for fall clean up of the garden.    Summer harvests are slowing down after a fabulous season.  All those tiny seeds planted in March produced hundreds of cherry, olivade roma, big boy and grape tomatoes and numerous zucchini and  cubanelle, bell, habanero, jalapeno and banana peppers.  The wonder of this marvelous bargain, one seed planted buys a crop of nourishment.  It is hard to say goodbye to my generous plants.  How is your garden clean up going?

This week in our garden plot,  I uprooted five brown shriveling  tomato plants and sixteen huge sagging sunflower plants.  The tomato plants folded and twisted nicely into my crowded compost bin.  But the  10 foot sunflower plants stood rigid.  Immovable posts stuck in the dry dirt.  I used a shovel to chop the 4 to 5 inch thick stalks and dig around the wide root balls.  When the first giant toppled to the ground, hundreds of bugs scattered.  I destroyed  the Sunflower Hotel for bugs!  Ugh!  stink bugs, wasps, bees, flies, caterpillars, butterflies, beetles and even a wolf spider evacuated in a flurry.   After my skin stopped crawling, I felt appreciation towards those stubborn sunflowers.   They brought  VIP bugs to our garden…..wasps, bees, flies and a wolf spider!  Unfortunately,  the Sunflower Hotel had to be condemned because the pesky stink bugs outnumbered all the VIPs.