I'm Predicting An Early Winter

So far today we've had glorious sunshine, stiff wind, hail and snow.  At the moment we're back to sunshine, but if I blather on here long enough, it will probably change again.

The temperature is hovering around 40 degrees so none of the snow or hail lasted long after hitting the ground.

How strong has the wind been?

Right before lunch I glanced out into the garden and saw the top of one of our cold frames lying open behind the frame at a funny angle.  The frame tops are secured with hinges on one side and a bungie fastener on the other side which is hooked into two eye hooks.  The wind not only snapped the bungie but pulled one of the eye hooks out of the wood frame.

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Boy, did I get a kink thrown in my energetic list about which I blogged yesterday.  Other than cleaning the bathroom, not a blasted thing got crossed off.  How is it that you can keep moving all day long, but at the end of the day you've accomplished so little of what you planned on getting done?  Yep, the business of "life" does get in the way often times.

And time keeps flying by way too fast.  I just noticed that the cottage cheese I'm making is ready for the next state of processing.  That means I started it two hours ago.  Where did those two hours go?  Or the tidbit that our daughter shared this morning:  She recently bumped into the father of a high school girlfriend and he commented that this is his daughter's twentieth year of teaching.  It seems that this gal and our daughter graduated from college just about five years ago.  Where did those twenty years go?

Anybody else see time zipping by?  Are you, too, getting frustrated waiting until you "have time" to do things you want to do that repeatedly get pushed to the bottom of your list?

Well, if we do indeed have an early winter this year, I'm all for it.  Will I make this the winter I spend whole days snuggled under a quilt on the couch reading?  Or have as much time as I've dreamed of in my quilt room?  Or waking to a day I can spend in any way I wish without thought to the passing hours?

Here's a quote by Lao Tzu that brought me up short and caused me to mutter, "Whoa!"

"Time is a created thing.  To say 'I don't have time'

is to say 'I don't want to.'"

Do you believe that?  Do you think that statement is true?

The End

The definite end of summer, that is.  We had our first killing frost last night so we are now officially done with the summer season of 2012.  (We didn't give it up easily this year.)

No, that's not snow on the potato hills.  Just heavy frost.  And no, we haven't dug our main crop of potatoes yet.  What are we waiting for?  Temps to cool off enough that we have a good place to store them.  We figured they've been better off where they are.  Now we might wanna think about getting the digging fork out and popping out those lovely spuds.  (At least I hope there are lovely spuds to be popped out.)

Don't these sunflowers look as if they could be singing in a Greek chorus this morning?  "Oh, woe is us!  Oh, woe, woe, woe, we are on the way O-U-T."

Nary one head matured enough to give us any seeds for winter bird feeding.  Rats.

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 Since we're talking, what the heck happened to the last few days?  They seem to have zoomed by me so fast I hardly noticed them.  (Hang in there, Mama Pea, the long, slow winter is coming.  [Insert hysterical laughter at such a foolish thought.] )

 Today:

:: Go to Library, P.O., food co-op and Credit Union  (I was gonna be there an hour ago.)

:: Clear my desk of "must dos" that have been piling up since last week.  (Maybe by now I've missed deadlines and I can ignore them?  Ha!  If only it worked that way.)

:: Clean dirty house.  (And don't forget the dreaded bathroom)

:: Put up Halloween decorations.  (Boo!)

:: Defrost at least one of the freezers.  (This summer was conducive to lots of frost.)

:: Wash inside of some windows.  (It's getting hard to see through them.)

:: Put summer clothes away, get winter clothes out.  (Where are my turtlenecks when I need them?)

* * * * * *

Okay, I'm off.  (But no more than usual.)

Apples And Corn . . . And Frost Possibility

Still no killing frost here.  Temp was forecast to go down to 22 degrees last night, but it was only 31.9 when we went to bed so we knew it wasn't going to dip as low as predicted.  When we got up this morning . . . ha!  We had 36 degrees.  An early morning tritz out to the garden did reveal patches of frost here and there on the grass, but it wasn't enough to zap my zinnias which are usually susceptible to a frost.  Gosh, here it is October 7th and we still haven't had a killing frost.  This is strange for us up here near the tundra!

We sorted through all the apples we harvested a couple of days ago.  This year's crop is not much to write home about.  I'll have enough to make a couple of batches of applesauce, and we have two varieties that are good eating apples.  I'll earmark some of the more tart ones for apple pies and that will about take care of them.  I think last year we harvested twice as many as we did this year.  But we had an exceptionally good year last year so I think perhaps the trees just needed a rest this season.

While eating breakfast this morning, we noticed the &$#!!^ Blue Jays had discovered our corn still in the garden, so we decided we'd better get out there and harvest it while there was still some left!

My little patch of corn this year was an experiment.  Like tomatoes, we have trouble growing corn up here.  But hubby had heard of a variety, Painted Mountain, that was developed in the mountains of Montana for its hardiness and earliness (85 days).  The multi-color ears can be used for roasting, animal feed or decorating.  It is also tauted as being easily ground into a high-nutrition flour.

 It's non-GMO, heirloom and open-pollinated so you can propagate it from year to year.  The high protein content (13% or higher) is a definite plus.  The corn is described as a corn that grows where no other corn can grow so we decided to give it a try.

I planted our little block of Painted Mountain corn on June 10th so theoretically it should have been ready for harvest on or about September 4th, but on that date our stalks had not dried out at all, they were still green and the corn hadn't matured so we let it go.

The stalks are now definitely dried and with the Blue Jays helping themselves to it, we were more or less forced to harvest it this morning.

I purchased my seeds from Johnny's Selected Seeds and the packet said the ears grow to 6-7" long.  Ours all measure somewhere between 8-12" in length.  Not exceptionally thick, but long!  Above is a random sampling of our harvest.  The colors are amazing.

Husking each ear was like opening a present.  You never knew what a kaleidoscope of colors you were going to come upon!

The only disappointment was that in the hustle-bustle of this summer's busy-ness, we missed the prime time to harvest a few ears for roasting.  I'm going to put in a much bigger patch of this corn next year so we'll be sure to pick some ears to taste test then.

Well, I just checked a couple of different sites as to how cold we can expect it to get tonight.  The forecasts vary from 32 degrees to 42 degrees.  Quite a difference if you're a vulnerable plant outside that could survive 42 degrees but would be struck deader than a door knob at 32.  It's that time of year when we tend to keep a close eye on the thermometer, but we never know what will really happen . . . until it happens!

Onions, Onions, Onions

Seems as though my onions had dried as much as they were going to so this morning I worked on cleaning them up a bit and getting them bagged for storage.

A couple of days ago, hubby had gathered them up for me from the unheated building where they had been laid out to dry.  He brought them into the garage because we keep being told to expect a hard frost one of these nights although it hasn't happened yet.  None the less, it was best to get the onions taken care of now.  I set up my work station out on the table on the front deck.

Here are the reds.  I really prefer these for salads and anywhere I can add a little color to a dish.

 

And the old standby yellows.

 

Here's the haul all cleaned, bagged and ready for storage.  Yep, we do use a lot of onions over winter.  (I even put them in our morning scrambled eggs.  Will you still come for breakfast?)  I didn't take time to weigh these, but I estimated they came in at about fifty pounds.  We loaded them into a large tote box and when hubby tried to heft it, he said it was definitely more than fifty pounds.  He guessed more like seventy.  He kindly let me take one end of the tote to help carry them inside to storage.

In on the kitchen counter I also have this good sized bowl of "iffy" ones that I'll have to use up soon.  I probably should chop them for the freezer or dehydrate them.  I've got the dehydrator set up in the garage so if I decide to dry them, maybe the whole house won't smell like an onion for a week!

What A Difference A Day (Or Two) Makes

This past Wednesday was a gorgeous day with temps hitting the 70s.  Right after lunch we threw some gear in our Samuri and took off for some exploring and the possibility of finding a grouse for dinner.

We drove down an old logging road that looks as though it's now well used most likely by local hunters.

At a right angle to the logging road we saw a path leading off into the woods so we parked our vehicle and decided to explore it on foot.  In the above picture, we had just started down the path.  I stopped to turn back and take a shot of the Samuri parked on the logging road.

The fresh air felt wonderful and the scenery couldn't have been more beautiful.  What a great time of year to be out in the woods!  Off the side of the trail I spotted this red maple leaf that seemed to be suspended in mid-air in a shaft of sunlight.

We hiked until we came to land that was posted "No Trespassing" where we turned around.  Before we had reached that point, we did see one grouse but it scurried off through the thick underbrush so we had no chance for a good shot at it.

On the way home I suggested we take one more little side trip in to a favorite lake of ours.  Although it's a good fishing lake, we didn't see a boat on the lake.  It was so quiet back in there I think we both could have stretched out and taken a snooze in the sun.

A birch tree in full fall color on the shoreline had recently toppled into the water.

Back home then, but no grouse for dinner.  Instead we filled up on a bowlful of the chili I had made earlier in the day.

For as warm and beautiful a day it was on Wednesday, yesterday and today have been wildly windy with leaves falling like huge colored snowflakes.  The temp hasn't reached much more than the low 40s for the past two days and when we picked our apples this morning, even though we had gloves on, we both had to come in once to thaw out frozen fingers.  A rain and snow mix has been forecasted for the past two days, but so far we've not had any.  Just wind that cuts to the bone and is stripping the trees of all their fall splendor.   Oh well.  It is the first part of October.  Up here it's time for that to happen.

I must admit I am getting a little eager to see the first snowfall!

Do You Have A Flannel Board?

In the last couple of days, I've been sneaking into my quilt room for short periods here and there.  As I've been using my flannel board, it crossed my mind to wonder if all you other quilters use one, too.  

I can't remember where or when I first learned of this handy little tool (if "tool" is the proper word for it), but I use mine a lot.

 A flannel board is nothing more than a square piece of cardboard (I made mine 16" x 16") covered with white flannel.

When cutting the pieces of fabric for a block, it's easy to place them on the flannel board in their approximate spot.  The material adheres to the board with no problem and won't slip around or fall off.

 When you have the whole block assembled (but not yet sewn together), you can even prop the board up vertically and move away from it to take a good look to make sure you like the placement of colors.

Then just take the board with the individual fabric pieces on it over to the sewing machine.

 And piece the block right from the board.

I use my flannel board whenever I'm piecing any size block, large or small.  If the blocks are small, I'll have four of them laid out and all set to go when I take the board to the sewing machine.  Transportation of the blocks from cutting table to sewing machine is a snap.  Plus, having the pieces on the flannel board is so much easier than working with the pieces on a slippery table top.

Yup, my flannel board is a very handy and inexpensive aid to have.