Summer not quite done apparently

Usually summer is well over by late August, but this year we have been alternating hot and cold right up to late September. I am watching for frost warnings and then suddenly we have several days where we are back in shorts and tank tops.

I have brought in a few hot pepper plants in case I miss a forecast for a sudden turn in the weather. They are still flowering and most have peppers which are still green. The nasturtiums are still going strong, and some new ones have popped up! The sedems are doing fine, but we did not have much luck with the wild variety, the orpine, this year due to aphids and my overkill attempts to rid them with too much soap. They are still alive, though, so I hope we will have better luck next year.

The past few weeks have marked the beginning of the Jewish year and the fall holidays. Though usually both a time of great joy and serious introspection, this year has been particularly difficult for our family as we had a very sudden and shocking death during the Jewish new year of my husband's older brother. A close friend of ours is seriously ill, in hospital, as well. Whatever gardening has happened in the weeks since has been purely maintenance.
We had a shiva at our house, and the day it ended we started the Jewish harvest holiday of Succoth, where we eat our meals in our own version of a harvest hut.

Although we were not feeling very festive, we had some friends and close family join us, and the garden provided a welcome talking point other than sorrow and tragedy.

We are still seeing some mantises. Orianne found one on the fence and called us to look. I caught a glimpse just before it flew up to the branches which make up the porous roof of our succah. I am sure that with the lights and candles burning late into the evening there was a constant supply of bugs. We could not find him up there again, though. 

Despite his best efforts, we actually had mosquitoes nibbling us in our succah, unheard of in Montreal where we usually are wary of possible snow. Succoth fell early this year, and summer stretched out just a bit longer to allow us a surprisingly pleasant week of outdoor eating for this late in the season.

We have some very large spiders around the house and garden. Below is a trap door spider who built a fantastic construction on a milkweed plant. At least it is housing some life, I did not see a single monarch butterfly all summer despite my allowing the proliferation of milkweed on the hidden side of the house, in hope to attract some. In fact, I saw very few butterflies other than cabbage moths. The sunflowers attracted some interesting birds, among them goldfinches, and the bee balm is still pulling in bees even with the flowers mostly dried out.

I did a mini-harvest of carrots, and they were good though not large. I left most in the ground hoping the last few weeks of decent weather will increase the harvest. I served a potato kugel made from our potatoes and garlic, and flavoured everthing we served with our herbs. We had a lot of mint tea, as the mint is still going strong, and the raspberries and strawberries are doing well now that the weather is a bit cooler.

Josh took a bit of time before the holidays to continue working on arboursculpting the crabapple trees into an archway. They seem to be surviving the bending and reshaping.

I had a few late season surprises. My gerbera daisy has decided to bloom again, as did one of the Cannas, and a few Gentians too. I had given up hope on all of them, and picked up a few cheap but glorious chrysanthemums from the grocery store to make things look less dead and dreary. Iulia, my neighbour, came home from work a couple of weeks ago with a big bag full of hostas of the same variety which she already has. After a few days contemplating the issue of where to put them, she decided to give them to me. I did not like hostas when I started gardening, but they are quite forgiving of my lack of sun and crappy soil, and provided a solution to the empty patch on the right side of the garden in front, covering up the ugly yellow pipe and peeling paint on the footing of the house.

I think it might work.

Yesterday, my package of bulbs arrived from Vesey's which I had ordered together with Iulia to plant in the fall. We got together last night and divvied up the loot. Now I have to figure out where I am going to put drumstick alliums, hyacinths, tulips and whatever else I bought. I had a $50 discount so we had a lot of fun ordering last July. The package came with a small guidebook for planting and caring for bulbs, and dealing with common problems. And of course, yet another catalogue (sigh). We both decided to hide it for now and not spend any more money.

From now on, I pick tomatoes, carrots, hot peppers, the last of the potatoes, berries and beans, until the frost hits.  I also need to plan out the design for next year and plant garlic and my new bulbs. 

Late summer blues

It is the end of August. My children have returned to school and life in my household has become once again a frenzy of activity. My eldest has just started a science program at a local college, my middle child started a new high school and my little one is in her last year of elementary school. I now need to learn the new systems, fill in countless forms and start harassing my kids about homework and practising musical instruments and Bat Mitzvah lessons. My job is crazier than ever with four staff out on full or partial sick leave, and two new people just starting. The Jewish new year and fall holiday cycle is beginning just after labour day and we are preparing for that as well. Dinner at my house. A visit to my in-laws who, due to health issues will not be able to join us for the holidays. Learning to negotiate all the new challenges my teenagers are throwing at me daily. Driving lessons. Voice lessons. Violin lessons. Basketball. The dramas and complexities of relationships. I felt for the first time since I have undertaken this gardening lifestyle that it was becoming yet one more burden in a life overcrowded with obligations and undertakings for which there was never enough time. It did not help that my garden was throwing as many challenges at me as rewards: cucumbers decimated by evasive beetles, tomatoes which despite spraying with hydrogen peroxide regularly are still plagued by bacteria, despite copious applications of coyote urine, the damn squirrels beheaded the only two sunflowers large enough to produce sunflower seeds for human consumption, tomatoes and peppers woefully late. My basil has not grown enough yet for a second harvest.  I am continuing to spray for aphids but have not wiped them out yet. If the frost comes early like last year, we will not have enough tomato purée and hot peppers to  get through the year. We have just finished last years'  pesto and are on the last container of hot sauce just out of the freezer yesterday.

We do have some exciting highlights. Yesterday I checked on the progress of the potatoes, hoping we could pick some small, new potatoes to serve for Rosh Hashana dinner. To my surprise, I pulled a full sized beautiful red potato from just below the hay. Tomorrow I harvest my first batch of potatoes. To my surprise, I thought that there was a tomato plant I had not noticed growing in the potato patch. I thought I had identified the few stray volunteer tomato plants which had randomly popped up here and there, and staked them up. This one was dragging on the ground, and looked remarkably like the potato plants. It had a cluster of six green tomatoes, though. As I was trying to drive a bamboo stake in to prop it up, I noticed another plant with a cluster of tomatoes. I checked the leaves of the plant and compared it to the tomato plants and the potato plants and discovered it was not a tomato despite the fruits. Josh called his mother who confirmed that potatoes do indeed produce a tomato-like fruit which is not edible. I decided to forget the stakes and just leave the plant to sprawl as I would be harvesting this weekend. This morning, Josh did the first harvest by sweeping his hand on the surface of the ground just below the hay and picked enough potatoes to eat all week, even with Rosh Hashana dinner.

I have managed to keep my green onions, planted from the ends of one pack we bought at the grocery store back in June, producing all summer long. We just popped the cut root ends in a pot and I cut the shoots whenever I need to and they keep growing back. I am not going to grow them from seed next year.

Josh spoke to our friend and gardening maven Alex who complained that his poppies did not do well this summer either, so I should not despair and try again next year. I did get some isolated blooms, one at a time, which did not have the desired effect but was complemented by the nasturtiums surrounding them which had a fantastic summer. Can't win them all.

 

 

I have also started to cull my carrots. Despite having completely messed up by planting them densely together (those damned seeds are very small), I have been able to selectively pick some decent "baby carrot" sized carrots. I am leaving the small ones, and hoping my selective picking will allow them to grow too. They are delicious. My garlic is still hanging to dry but we have been using it as needed and it is glorious, juicy and bursting with flavour. I hope it lasts longer this year. Last year we ate it all within three months. We have a lot more this year, but much of it turned out small so I am not sure if we are that much ahead. I will keep you posted. The tomatoes are now ripening, and I have thus far filled two large ziploc bags with tomato pulp to make sauce at a later date.
My hibiscus is in bloom, and I now remember why I have not managed to keep hibiscus alive despite multiple attempts to do so as houseplants in the past. They need a lot of water and wilt quickly. I will do my best. This particular plant has wide, flat flowers of a beautiful shade of fuchsia. I now have more pink and purple (hibiscus, morning glory, cosmos) complementing yellow/orange (black eyed-susans, sunflowers, nasturtiums) in the garden, with the annuals still going strong. The peas have just about finished and the beans are still going. I planted some new lettuce and I think I saw a baby or two coming up, and some of the alpine strawberries are flowering and fruiting again now. I am drinking lots of mint tea, and using fresh herbs daily. I also picked a bouquet of small sunflowers, marigolds and a dahlia which looked fantastic. I have enough growing that I felt it was okay to pick some for the table. I am starting to have more ripe sunflowers, and as they are the smaller varieties only I am leaving some as outdoor birdfeeders (seeing some nice birds including finches in the back) and have given one today to my bird Coco. I tried one a few weeks ago and he did not seem to know he was supposed to eat the seeds, but today he got the idea and was hanging upside down off the bars of his cage above the food dish where I put the flower and just going at it. He was very pleased with the gift.