Most unexpectedly, since mid-September, the weather has picked up. We have had alternating rain, clouds and sunny days with temperatures varying from a low of 1 degree to 24, sometimes within 48 hours. Although this resulted in a very early season for colds and flus, it also produced spectacular shades of red and orange fall leaves and an extended harvest. My hibiscus as well as some purple flowers Iulia gave me waited until perilously late to bloom, and seem to be undaunted by the thermometer hovering just above zero at night. I have not needed to bring in the peppers and basil again, nor cover the tomatoes, although I have all my extra blankets and sleeping bags piled up on a chair in the basement ready to roll if needed.
I am continuing to harvest tomatoes, hot peppers, basil, lettuce, some occasional beans, mint and green onions. The raspberry bushes are at their peak, I was picking a cup per day for the last few weeks, though they are slowing down over the past few days. I have a few strawberries still ripening as well. With the cold nights, the onions I left to overwinter in the garden have thrown up new shoots. I may check if they have grown enough to be worth harvesting some before winter.
The Jewish holidays were beautiful. Despite intermittent showers, we managed to eat in our sukkah every day through the holiday of sukkot, sometimes in a winter jacket and other days in t-shirts. Its been that kind of a fall. On a couple of evenings we waited to eat a bit later until the sky cleared. One evening we tolerated a bit of drizzle as we shared a cheese fondu with friends. A few evenings we had to clear the table and finish with dessert in the house. It was a beautiful week.
On Thanksgiving Monday, I took a break from piles of correcting to take a walk with Josh and Orianne. A friend of Josh's mentioned to him that he found a lot of mantis ooths in the bushes behind the parking lot of the local Walmart. We decided to take a walk. It was a beautiful late afternoon before sunset. The area is technically private property, once owned by Blue Bonnets race track, a small strip of land with tall grasses, wildflowers, and a few odd trees on a hill which looks like it was made by excavators dumping earth when the racetrack or the parking lot were originally built. The chain which marks the edge of the area is loosely ignored by the occasional dogwalker, but it is a fairly low trafficked area. We were interested in picking up a few mantis ooths and attaching them to convenient locations in our own yard. It seems that the local variety of mantises prefer to lay their eggs in areas with tall grass so the newly hatched babies have a good food source, as they tend to prefer crickets and grasshoppers to flies. Our garden does not seem to meet their criteria for an ideal nursery, which would account for why most of the hatchlings we had migrated and laid their eggs elsewhere.
We found no ooths, despite a lengthy stroll through tall grass. We did find wild roses, several beautiful crabapple trees in full fruit, and to our surprise and delight, two apple trees, one of which was covered in fruit at the perfect stage of ripeness. We had pockets, a plastic bag intended to collect ooths, and a couple of hats which we filled with some of the crispest, tastiest sweet/sour apples I have ever had. I am eating one as I write.
On our way home, we took a shortcut through an alleyway, and Josh spotted some perfect shaggymane mushrooms, just around the corner from our house.
Now that the holidays are over, we are waiting for the first frost to finish off the harvest and wrap up the garden for the year. Until I take the tomato plants down and dismantle the remaining haybales (the only ones left are those in which tomatoes are still growing), I cannot do the rest of the preparation for winter: cleaning up, weeding, laying out last year's compost, putting down new hay. Josh is following up with our friend Jack to try to find a source of hay. I am hoping for some soon, but it looks like the weather is holding out for another week at least.
