Fall again

We had heavy rain and winds on Tuesday, the second day of Rosh Hashana, which ushered in a change in the weather. It is suddenly colder, especially at night, although it is heating up mid-day. The sun is setting earlier. I was caught by sudden sunset while picking tomatoes and couldn't see anything and had to stop mid-bush. Leaves are late in turning because it was so hot early in September, but now there are patches of yellow starting, and the ash tree next door is dropping branches all over my yard and garden. I suppose that is not quite a fall thing but the wind is wreaking havoc on its crown.

Gentian finally in bloom!

I made a beautiful salad for our Rosh Hashana dinner with my last stunted lettuces, nasturtium leaves, cherry tomatoes, wood sorrel and green onions from the garden mixed with red curly and romaine lettuce and cukes from the grocery store and garnished with four different coloured nasturtium flowers. It was gorgeous. I am sorry I did not take a picture.

Iulia and her family were away and left me in charge of her garden in their absence. I was delighted that we had a good rainfall and that there is rain predicted over the next week. I am pleased that I have not had to find time to water both gardens, and their lawn. Ovidiu would never forgive me if I let his emerald green perfect lawn die. Iulia asked me to plant a bucket of lilies given her by a colleague before she left. She started a new garden patch around one of the trees in the front lawn and created a mound of earth so it would slope out from the tree, but without any ground cover to anchor the earth it was eroding. She decided to anchor the rim of the hill with the orange day lilies (Canadian lilies). She has resisted the orange lilies to date, being too plain and invasive. I have offered to share mine (so has everyone she knows who has any, they spread like nuts). She had no time before her trip, so I did the honours. I did not have time before the weekend, and the night before we had a big rainstorm so when I went to plant them they were immersed in water, well soaked. Good thing I planted them before they rotted.

I have had a lot of tomatoes to pick. Iulia has only large beefsteak tomatoes, so they are large but take time to ripen and there are only one or two per plant at a time. They are stakes to poles and carefully pruned. This may lead to fewer but larger tomatoes. Picking hers is faster and easier. Despite her complaints that her mother planted too many too close together, I have an easy time getting around and through. My tomatoes are a veritable jungle, and I need to approach each row from different angles, getting down low and looking up and from all sides or I miss tomatoes. There are buckets of tomatoes everywhere. I am starting to pick them before they are fully ripe just in case it gets too cold one night and we lose them. I also have less time so I am not getting out every day. I have been late for work three times in the past couple of weeks because I just needed ten more minutes to get the last patch of tomatoes.

I have a spectacular huge garden spider who makes amazing webs which I keep messing up trying to get the tomatoes in the back of the patch. I scared it this week so badly it hid in a fetal position under a leaf for a few hours. I know because I kept checking if it had rebuilt the web and if I could get a photo. No such luck. I think it is one of the ones which hatched out off of one of my basil pots back in late May.

I have basil going to seed again, the plants are half the size they were for the first two harvests but still sizable enough for another small batch of pesto. That is part of this week's plans. I have been going to the Sears outlet store near my house weekly to see if any chest freezers have come into stock. We have taken over a few more freezers (Naomi, Alan and JT) and are still producing several litres of tomato pulp weekly. Josh is making more hot sauce from the hot peppers. They are all producing lovely, bright coloured peppers in various shapes and sizes. The hot sauce it turning out very nicely. The groundfall green tomatoes are going into that pot.

I was at Walmart last weekend and as I walked in the door there were chrysanthemums on sale. I impulsively bought a deep red coloured plant and planted it right in front of my house. Iulia convinced me last year that they are perennials but I don't see any of the ones we planted last year. I figure for $6 I would splurge on a bit of fall colour. My flower garden is looking a bit sparse. The lamium is blooming yet again, and there are a few sunflowers left. The single gentian I transplanted from Alex's place has finally blossomed. I hope it spreads, it is really pretty. The nasturtiums are spreading and blooming and stunning. I hope they reseed themselves. I dropped some black-eyed susan heads in a different patch of the garden to see if they will colonize. Otherwise, I will do some splitting and transplanting in the spring. I am not cruising the neighbourhood snitching seeds this year. I am feeling like my garden is coming into its own. I can't wait to see what it will look like next spring!