Happy Halloween!

This picture is from earlier this month, but is appropriately creepy:


Sushi posing next to my home-grown pumpkin:


The inside guts of the pumpkin were much drier and spongier than the jack o' lantern pumpkins you get at the store:


Cleaned out and ready to carve:

I'm cooking the pumpkin seeds with a butter, salt, and Worcester sauce coating.

Angry vampire? Or goofy cross-eyed creature? The white spots are hail pits.


Sitting in the front window:

Final produce tally

Here are some nerdy graphs of my cumulative tomato, zucchini, and cucumber counts for this summer:

From garden pictures

From garden pictures

I hope this will help me plan the garden next year. I accidentally staggered tomato plantings for the sweet 100's this year, which gave a good crop of the little tomatoes until the first frost despite tornadoes, hail, and an unusually wet and cool summer. So, maybe next year I will intentionally make several tomato plantings to hedge my bets in a more systematic way.

Pass the sushi, peas

This is the first time I've made sushi using peas. They are a decent substitute for cucumber.

Yum!

First frost

The first frost was on Oct 18. Here's the tomato plant before it thawed and died:


A marigold covered in frost:

Last tomatoes

Here's the last harvest of tomatoes before the first frost a couple of weeks ago:



Some tasty dried cherry tomatoes:



I got more than 6 cups of dried tomatoes out of the last few weeks of cherry tomato production- not bad!

Leaves are starting to turn.. and random scenery

You can see the leaves starting to turn at higher elevation on Linden's knob:


We've been having cool nights with some fog in the morning. The dew on the weeds in the field is blindingly reflective as the sun comes up over the hills:


Sushi enjoying the morning? Sniffing the air? Trying to avoid getting her feet wet?


At the other end of the day, an excellent sunset:


Which bathed everything in pink and orange light for a few minutes:

Peas!

Hooray, the snow peas are producing pods.


I made stir-fry with the first batch. They are very tasty, and it is exciting to get peas this year after my spring attempt was killed off by a heat wave while I was in Ireland.