Over the garden fence (or where things are starting to escape!)

This has been a very unusual fall. Although technically fall starts September 21, in Montreal, it usually starts by mid-August, with nights getting colder and leaves starting to turn colours. Not this year. It is past Labour Day and the past month it has rained once. One big thunderstorm two nights ago, which did nothing to cut the heat and humidity. (Correction, midway through writing this blog it has started to rain. Make that twice). On Labour day weekend, it snowed in Calgary and was 4 degrees in Edmonton, but Montreal was 35 with high humidity.

We have had heavy dew in the mornings, so I have not needed to go crazy watering the garden, but some of the annuals are pretty much dried out and finished.  Although I am not a big fan of hot, humid weather, and usually can't wait for the cool fall days, with the summer we had, I am grateful for a bit of "overtime" to catch up on tomatoes. We had no ripe tomatoes at all until the third week of August, and more than half of my plants have yet to produce a ripe tomato. This is largely because my original planted tomatoes were destroyed by flea beetles early in the summer, and most of what is growing are volunteers, and a few plants I got from Iulia.

Interestingly, the plants which I thought were chocolate cherries, which turned out to be the wrinkly heritage tomatoes from Alex, have been very resistant to all the other tomato pests that affected the San Marzanos. Some of them were chocolate, but a lot of them were the more familiar orange-red of store bought tomatoes. It seems they had been hybridizing. Two of the volunteer plants that I moved into the cages ended up being the chocolate cherries, which are bigger than they were in the past. Again, I am not sure if that is because of the weather conditions, or if they too have hybridized. 

The raspberries had a period of a couple of weeks in August when they slowed down, but are in bigger production now than they were back in July. I have been picking around a cup a day, and have made raspberry pies the last two Fridays. The first one was expanded with some apple, but last week was pure homegrown raspberry, and we are looking good for this weekend too, even with everyone snacking on them. 

I went around the other side of our back fence last week, because I wanted to check the beans that had grown around the back. The back of our property has a narrow, grassed over lane which belongs to Hydro Quebec as an access point for making repairs to electric lines. Its a no-man's land, which our neighbour behind the back fence uses to park his truck and his RV. I had offered them any produce that migrates over to their side of the fence, but so far they have not taken us up on the offer. This year, we had a lot of cross-the-fence migration going on. There is a new raspberry patch starting in the corner behind the lilacs. They are just ripening now, so they are definitely a first year growth. The sunflowers have grown tall enough that from the back of the fence, you have a sea of bobbing yellow heads visible from the street. One surprise this week was a massive squash plant which had originated in my compost bin (possibly pumpkin, or spaghetti squash) which has a branch growing under my apple tree, and some long, blooming strands running through the lilac canes coming up where we cut down the big patch earlier this summer. Given how late it is, I am not sure that whatever is growing there will be able to fruit, but we may be able to get baby squashes before the first frost. According to the internet, you can eat immature squash as if it is zucchini, skin and all. You can also eat the flowers, lots of recipes on-line. Good to know!

I had hoped to harvest my seven apples for Rosh Hashana, and serve my own homegrown apples with honey this year. I had eaten the first apple a couple of weeks ago (see August 9 post, A visit to Alex's garden in Spencerville) and was delighted that it tasted pretty good. I researched Jersey Macs on line, and learned that they are an early ripening fruit that does not keep well for long, similar to other Macintosh varieties. By the pictures of ripe apples, mine seemed a bit on the green side. After careful research, and the decision to leave the least ripe looking one up, but to gradually pick the rest this week, I went outside to put up a load of laundry and discovered two of my apples were gone. They were not on the ground below the tree. The kids and Josh swore they did not pick any. However, when I took my walk around the back to the patch of escaped garden beyond the fence, on the ground in the middle of the lane was one of my nicest apples with tiny bite marks taken out of one corner. I took a picture for posterity, but left the rest for the sneaky squirrels to finish. Conrad drove over it later in the day when he parked his truck, and a few days later, the rest of the squashed apple had disappeared. 

The back yard is full of spiders. I can't go anywhere without disturbing some web or other, and some are really quite beautiful.

They are hard to capture on film, but I managed to get a decent picture of an unusual web over my cucumber plants which was twisted (see top picture.)

This afternoon I was looking out the window and saw a monarch butterfly! It was the first wild one I have seen all summer. I was at the botanical gardens two weeks ago, and saw a short presentation on monarchs. During the presentation, the animator was tagging and releasing monarchs (until today, the only monarchs I had seen all summer).

Because of habitat loss, pesticides and other possible reasons, the monarchs are disappearing. More directly, they rely on milkweed for food and breeding, so it is the loss of milkweed which is most closely linked to the monarch becoming increasingly endangered. This year alone the population that overwintered in Mexico was 80% smaller than historic averages. The butterflies that hatch out in September are the ones that make the voyage all the way to Mexico, so at least here is one that will carry the future south. You can see it here sugaring up for its epic flight on Iulia's zinnias (seen from my side of the fence). I have been letting the random milkweed that have cropped up in my garden spread in hope that some monarchs may find refuge to lay their eggs in my yard, but so far we have not seen any caterpillars. Still, very exciting! I ran and got my camera. The monarch did not let me get too close, but obliged me with a couple of decent pics before flying in circles around Iulia's yard and flying west.

  So these days, we have been eating cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce and mystery greens (more volunteers), fresh, raw sunflower seeds, garlic, potatoes, carrots, fresh herbs, lots of basil, beans, more beans and more beans. Chloe sent us some beets, beet greens and watermelon, and tons of basil (I declined the beans, she also planted too many this year).

I would like to have included apples, but the squirrels got the rest before we did. We had only three of the seven. At least there are enough sunflowers to go around.