Harvest!

Come harvest time, we think of the traditional root veggies coming up out of the garden soil -- potatoes, squash, zucchini, onions, carrots, beets. And yes, we've 'been there, done that'. Carol has also been bringing in flowers: dahlias (let us know if you'd like a few... we seem to have hundreds!!! Far more than we can replant next spring!), and her exotic passion fruit plant that summers in the garden climbing here and there over a huge trellis.

But we have some less traditional October harvests as well. Rose hips, so thick on the wild rose that grows along the garden fence the entire bush looks red from a distance. Loaded with Vitamin C, they boil up into quite a pleasant tea.

Raspberries -- Carol found a new variety this year, that bears fruit twice. It is still getting itself established in our soil, and this year the frost put the brakes on the second harvest, but it is currently heavy with berries that are just not quite ripe. And probably won't ripen, given the cold nights. It augers well for the future, though, since we all love fresh raspberries picked from the vine. With hope springing eternal, on every warm day we get, I prowl along the vines, just in case...

The chickens were deliriously happy to find us cutting back the asparagus. In and out of the fronds they explored, snapping up the tiny berries.

Carol was emptying the greenhouse, readying it for winter by relocating various plants into indoor quarters. In the big garden, she was admiring the row of leeks, just waiting to hop into the soup pot with the potatoes. Then she dug into the dark soil, bringing forth part of what is not a large harvest, but a funky one. She planted peanuts this year.

And they grew. (Both of them!) While she maintains she'd hoped to have them to make boiled peanuts, we suspect she really grew them to ensure she remains her status as Chippy Chip the chipmunk's title of BEST FRIEND EVER. So this is what peanuts look like, folks, before they get into the little tiny bags you get on the airplane...