Thanksgiving and it feels like summer

I have been neglectful of my blog the past few weeks. With the exception of two or three days when it rained long and hard, it has been a fairly gentle autumn. There has been no frost as of yet, and although it has been chilly at night, we have had some really nice, sunny days. As I write this it is an unheard of 23 degrees, I am wearing a t-shirt, my windows are open, and I got a couple of mosquito bites picking raspberries.

They are still producing great quantities of fruit, while the alpine strawberries are slowing down, but still flowering and making a few new strawberries daily.

This has been a month of holidays for us. I last wrote just after the Jewish New Year, which was followed by the fast day of Yom Kippur, and then 9 days of partying in a Sukkah (we take our Thanksgiving pretty seriously). Josh feels very strongly about having guests as often as possible in our Sukkah, and as Jewish tradition holds that Sukkot is a holiday for all the nations of the world, we do our best to invite guests who are Jewish, who are not Jewish, who deny they are Jewish, etc.


In other words, we are as inclusive as possible in our "Hebrew Hippy Hut."


Josh was chatting with our neighbours across the street, a religious couple, about sukkahs: he went to see theirs, and they came to see ours. They were mutually impressed with the creativity of each other's sukkahs. Shortly after, their sons came to visit our sukkah and asked if they could feature it on the online Jewish blog Bill 613. It is on their Facebook page, as Montreal's Most Interesting Sukkahs number 10. I still had enough sunflowers and calendulas to put bouquets on the table.

This year was particularly special because Josh's sister Dahlia has been visiting with her daughter Ariella from Cape Town, South Africa. We have not seen them in 8 or 9 years, and as Ariella is the same age as my daughter Zara, as well as two of my nephews (2000 babies) it was a lot of fun for the kids to hang out and get to know each other better.

Not only did we have the family over for Sukkot (on one of the nights it poured rain, unfortunately), but just after the holidays were over, we invited the whole extended family to our house for a Friday night dinner. I think it was the biggest Shabbat dinner I have ever hosted, as my sister-in-law's family from Toronto happened to be coming in for the long weekend and a high school reunion, so we had EVERYONE here. It was loads of fun! 

Another unexpected surprise was my son Isaac and his girlfriend Lisa, after living in Wetaskiwin, Alberta for three months, decided they were not happy there, and it was quite expensive renting an apartment in nearby Edmonton. They are not sure of their future plans quite yet, but are back in Montreal for a bit until they decide what to do. They did not make it back for the holidays, but they arrived in time to join us for our big family reunion which was a real treat.


All this eating meant a lot of harvesting and food preparation, leaving not much time for blogging. As of today, I have finished harvesting the green onions, carrots, and potatoes. I have made a lot of mint lemonade which everyone loves. The mint is getting a bit ratty looking, so I have been cutting the new shoots only at this point, and have to wait a week between harvests. I still have lettuce and swiss chard.

The raspberries and strawberries and beans do not know when to stop, so I keep on picking them. I have gotten pretty good at making tarts.

I have left some of the beans to go to seed, and hope to cook them as well as keep some for seeds. Next year I will plant fewer, the quantities I have been harvesting are ridiculous. The colours (and size!) of the scarlet runners are amazing. Below are pictures of some which have already been drying for a few days, and another tray of ones I picked today.






There are two kinds of beans, the ones I got from Iulia (the big yellow ones tinged with pink or purple, whose seeds are pale yellow and dry to brown) and the scarlet runners, which are the big, hairy green beans, whose seeds start off bright pink and then become purple/pink swirl. I have not finished harvesting them all. There are a lot that are still small or at least tender enough to eat as is (those are the ones in the bowl that I picked today), and there is a limit to how many we can eat, so I am picking them gradually on both sides of the fence.

Some of the beans are a bit confused about the weather patterns, and I have opened some of the large ones and found the outside of the seed has already split open as if it is about to sprout. Those will be the first ones I will cook, I don't think they will keep well.




The massive squash plant behind the fence is putting out lots of flowers and some squashes have started to grow. They look like they could be decorative squashes. Maybe some will be ready to decorate our neighbour's for halloween (I believe that they grew from last year's halloween decorations that were left to rot in the corner of their driveway).


There are a lot of green tomatoes, and most of the hot peppers are still green too. Most of what survived to the end of the season were the volunteers which came up in early July, so they are just beginning to ripen. As long as we have some warm, sunny days left, I still have some harvesting, but I did not have buckets of tomatoes as I have had in years past.

On one of her visits, Dahlia had just gone shopping at Jean Talon market, and brought us a variety of unique tomatoes: bright orange, green striped with yellow (they looked like pickles), pale yellows. We kept some seeds to try out in our future gardens.












Some of the pepper plants started out in one of the hay bales. In late July, when they were not thriving, I gave up and transplanted them into the garden where they took off. They are now in full flower, so it maybe too late for them to fruit, but with a bit of luck we may get some green hot peppers and pick them immature.

The flowers are also ignoring the calendar and are continuing to bloom, including some new ones which held off until fall. The orange/yellow dahlia, which clearly did not get enough sun on the side of the house, has finally produced its first flower, once the other dahlia has finished. You can also see the tail end of the closed gentians in the picture (right). I don't think I got any pictures of the hibiscus, which bloomed big pink flowers throughout September.

My delphinium decided to bloom, I think this is a branch that did not bloom earlier in the summer. It opened up just before my monk's hood, which finally has started to open.


Iulia's has more direct sunlight, and bloomed around a month ago. As long as we don't have an early frost, it is fun to have a few late blooming flowers.



The sunflowers are at their tail end, producing some smaller blooms on the stalks that I have cut for bouquets or seeds (or those that the squirrels got.)


The calendulas continue to calendulate, and a whole bunch of new plants have sprouted up in the grass below where they grew this year. I am relieved, because it is too late for them to produce flowers and seed again, so maybe we will have a reasonable number crop up next year.

Or perhaps I will have a sale next year of my surplus.


The other annuals just keep on going too.


One of the stella d'oro lilies just decided to bloom again today!