October 2023: Fall Fluctuations

Temperatures were all over the place in October. We began with days in the 90’s, but things quickly turned colder, and after the first week the lows were consistently forecast to go below 50. That was my signal to bring in my houseplants. Often, this process is really rushed because I like to leave everything out till the last minute, but then the last minute comes unexpectedly and the next thing I know I’m dragging a bunch of plants into the kitchen in the dark after work. This time around, I was able to spend an entire morning giving the plants a little TLC before I brought them inside and found places to put them all. Finding places for them is always a challenge because there are very limited spots inside the house where they will get enough light. Because of that and because they take extra fiddling indoors, I start looking forward to taking them outside again as soon as I bring them in.

Temperatures stayed pretty steady through the middle of the month. Some days were a little warmer and some were a little cooler, but there were no extremely warm or cold days. That meant everything could just keep growing pretty happily–as long as I watered. Our drought continued with hardly any rain to speak of. Leaves gradually started to change. My plants started to crisp here and there as they began to anticipate the end of the growing season.

I picked several rounds of lima beans and got a few more of the fancy blue beans I was trying to grow. Among the limas, I successfully got some very pretty ping zebra beans. I’ve been trying to grow them for a few years without success, but this year I’d read that they simply take a long time to mature. I took the suggestion of starting some plants early indoors, and that did the trick. The blue beans were an experiment that I shouldn’t try again, but it will be tempting to give it a shot. They have an amazing blue color, but only if they mature in cool temperatures. Apparently, temperatures here weren’t cool enough for blue beans until September, so I only got 5-7 blue ones, but those few were pretty spectacular!

I also got an assortment of tomatoes. Every time I enjoy fresh autumn tomatoes in a meal, I think of the guy I passed once at a farmer’s market who was proudly proclaiming that he never eats a fresh tomato after Labor Day because he thinks they’re inferior then. He’s missing out on a couple months of tasty tomatoes!

Things continued along until the final full week of October when temperatures ticked back up into the mid-80’s. Despite the toasty temps, the forecast was to end the month with a serious freeze, so I spent the final weekend of October working to harvest everything I possibly could. We also (finally) got rain, though that made the harvesting more difficult. I was able to harvest my sweet potatoes before the rain started, which made digging through the soil much easier. My harvest was ok, but not nearly as good as last year. The plants had looked healthy, so I’m not sure what happened. I also picked even more lima beans, a few more of the giant zucchino rampicante squash, all my basil, some tomatoes, and some melons that may or may not be ripe.

The zucchino rampicante squash was incredibly happy in my garden this year. I’d gotten three giant squashes from it in September and it was working on several more through October. Unfortunately, quite a few of them had blossom end rot and weren’t usable, but I also got the biggest one of the year that was about 34 inches long. Another had buried itself in my neighbor’s hydrangea plants. A few more of the squashes were still young and tender, so I picked those to eat like zucchini.

I’d hoped to have time to turn all the basil into pesto to freeze for later, but there was too much to do and I wasn’t prepared with enough of the right ingredients, so I decided to grind up the basil with a little olive oil and freeze that. My hope is that it will still be relatively easy to pull out of the freezer and turn into pesto one batch at a time.

A Cat a Day: December 3

Junior

October 2022: Turning Colors

October began green and ended in a beautiful multitude of yellows, reds, oranges, and browns. That’s all despite the fact that we remained in a drought, which I might have expected to mute the colors more than it did. We also went the whole month without a killing frost or temperatures below freezing, so everything was still growing at the end of the month. In fact, the month was all unseasonably warm.

Early in the month we did have a stretch of nighttime temperatures forecast to get to the freezing point. Of course it wasn’t conveniently on a weekend, so I spent one evening harvesting all my basil and the following evenings going step-by-step through the process of turning it into pesto. I’d thought that a lot of my basil had died when it didn’t get watered this past summer, so I was surprised to end up with a gallon or more of pesto. It’s all in my freezer so we can pull it out for a quick meal anytime all winter long. The air temperature reached 33 degrees, and that’s as cold as it got, so it appears I wouldn’t have needed to rush harvesting my basil. It was good to have it all taken care of, though.

The last of my monarch caterpillars disappeared from my garden on October 1. I never saw any chrysalises this year, so I don’t know where they went, but 14 days later a monarch butterfly flew by me at Patchwork. It’s not that far from my house, so I told myself that maybe it was one of my caterpillars headed for Mexico.

My harvests included several rounds of tomatoes that ripened nicely indoors, lima beans, squashes, and one final melon. My zinnias and marigolds continued to bloom profusely. My toad lilies also bloomed happily. They’re a plant I’d never known about before planting one the first year I had my garden. I always feel echoes of my initial pleasant surprise when the fancy, orchid-like blooms appear. They look like something tropical or spring-like, but they bloom in the fall and their purples and blues look fantastic with the yellow and orange leaves falling on the ground around them.

Toward the middle of the month, John and I returned to Scratch Brewing in Ava, Illinois to sample their Octoberfest beers. You may remember some of our previous visits. They make very unique brews using local ingredients from farms and plants foraged from their property. The flavors are really unique. Some taste like you’re drinking a tree–but in a good way. It’s in the middle of nowhere, so it’s beautiful place to sit and eat and drink all afternoon.

As you scroll through the photos below, notice the changing colors that predominate. It’s pretty cool to see the way that fall arrived. And click on any individual photo to get some more detail about what is in it. After the photos, I’ve included another video tour of my garden recorded at the end of October.

December 2021: The Final Shades of the Year

December was quiet in my garden. I moved around a few more leaves but that was about all I did all month. All the plants pretty well finished settling back into the earth for the winter. Slowly the last pops of vibrant color drained away. At first glance, the photos of my garden from the start and end of the month look the same, but on further examination you might be surprised at the things that were left to fall away as the month progressed. The blackberries were the last plants to have their leaves turn color and drop. I love their colors darkening from yellows into reds and purples.

We did some good cooking in December (though we cook well every month!). Early in the month we made acorn squash stuffed with Beyond Burger, veggies, and breadcrumbs. The squashes were not from my garden, but they were local. They tasted amazing and 100% like they contained actual meat. We don’t normally cook with Beyond Burger, but we had some on hand and this was a great way to use it.

On Christmas Eve we made Smoking Bishop, a British mulled wine drink mentioned at the end of Dickens’ Christmas Carol. One of the most interesting parts of the recipe was that you roasted citrus fruits in the oven before putting them along with some other spices into some port and heating the whole thing up. It was tasty! Apparently it’s called Smoking Bishop because it’s the color of bishops’ robes and the steam rising off of it looks a little like smoke. (I was inspired to try making it after watching this video.)

I didn’t include a photo, but we did cook up some of my garden produce, too. Our Christmas meal included some of my sweet potatoes roasted.

And I decorated for Christmas! It always looks cheery. I hate to take the outdoor lights down in January knowing we’ll have a few more dreary months to go. I’ve had solar lights on my bottle tree/stump all year, and I thought I’d leave them up for Christmas, but then I saw a photo of the tree last year with real Christmas lights on it. The non-solar lights were so much brighter and really made the bottles sparkle, so I decided I needed to switch out the solar lights for some higher-powered ones for Christmas. I was not disappointed.

And finally, you’ll notice we have a more conventional Christmas tree this year. John and I normally go to a secret spot on strip mine land and grab a cedar. People from Patchwork have been getting their trees that way (though usually with official permits) for nearly a half century (yikes!), but this year when John and I arrived at the spot we knew it wasn’t going to work. It was like the gates leading to Brigadoon had disappeared. There was no route to the clearing where we’ve found our trees over the last many years, despite multiple passes down the road where we knew it should be. And it looked like things were being actively mined again. Without a permit, it felt like a really bad idea to stop, so we didn’t.

We ended up getting a nice tree from a local tree farm. The tree farm’s trees weren’t big enough to cut yet, but they’d gotten several pre-cut trees from a big tree farm in Northern Indiana. I felt a little like one of the people in the Charlie Brown Christmas Special who choose the fancy trees instead of the scraggly little one. The one we got has even been dyed a little bit to ensure a nice, green appearance. Oh well. It was the right choice this year.

November 2021: Rapid Changes

At the start of November, we still hadn’t had any real frost and definitely no deeply freezing weather. That changed soon. On November 1, I went out and picked all my beans because freezing weather was imminent. I got a lot of lima beans, but not nearly as many cowpeas. I need to stop growing cowpeas and start growing more limas in their place because the same pattern has held for several years now.

I thought my cowpeas were doing really well this year, too. Especially the odd ones that looked a lot like lima beans. But it turns out the cowpeas that were growing well were actually limas. They were labeled “black-eyed” and didn’t say pea or bean after that, so I just assumed they were a weird kind of black-eyed pea, even though I noticed the seeds were pretty broad like limas when I planted them. Oh well. Since the real cowpeas didn’t do so well, these limas had plenty of room to expand.

After the beginning of the month, the frosts came repeatedly. First there was a little frost damage here and there. Then a little more. Next the maple trees lost their leaves. Some time later it was the magnolia. Gradually the hosta leaves were edged with yellow, then they were fully yellow.

Finally mid-month the freezes started coming. The hosta leaves gracefully lost their structure and collapsed as the water in their cells burst their rigid cell walls. From here they eased into softly folded fabric. The more severe freeze was also the point when my sweet potato vines finally started to die back and I decided I should harvest the potatoes. I had hoped for a bigger sweet potato harvest, but it really was decent, and we’ll have plenty of sweet potatoes to eat. I planted a sampler mix of three different colors, which will make them even more tasty.

In all of my cleaning and organizing in my garden I spotted several garden spider egg cases and three Carolina praying mantis egg cases. Hopefully that will mean some nice insects next summer. I’d seen several praying mantises around my garden this past summer, but I wasn’t sure whether they were the native Carolina variety or the inasive Chinese mantis that is infamous for killing friendly insects and even hummingbirds. Seeing the egg cases, it looks like I have the native kind.

And this month saw several nice blooms around my garden. The toad lilies kept going until the harder frosts, and the marigolds bloomed until the hard freeze. The zinnias were beautiful even as they were killed off by the cold. And I had some sweet autumn crocuses that I’d planted only a month or two before. They’re the flowers that saffron comes from, though I didn’t attempt to harvest the stigmas.

By the end of the month, everything there was to harvest had been harvested, the dead vines were cleared, and the leaves blown into my garden beds to tuck everything in for the winter. It’s time for things to rest.

November 2020: Slowly Relaxing Back into the Earth

At the start of November, my garden had yet to be touched by frost, although we had had several chilly nights where the temperature flirted with freezing and below. So, most of my plants, even the more cold sensitive ones, were still growing though with plenty of touches of fall color in their leaves.

My elephant ears, which are quite cold sensitive, have had a very good year and got very large. They just barely survive in the ground here from year to year, and only then it’s because they’re in a very protected spot. I was amazed that they are so well protected that they lasted all the way through the month of November with their big, showy leaves still on display.

Another remarkable bright spot for the month was the hearty geranium plant in the garden on the east side of the house. I’ve thought about planting one for several years, and now I’m sad I didn’t do it sooner. It produced beautiful, brilliant purple flowers all the way through November. They glowed against the brown leaves.

My garden began November with golden leaves still on the trees, but by the end of the month the trees were all bare, the leaves were on the ground, and I’d blown them over my garden beds like a blanket. You’ll notice that process slowly taking place in the photos from the month. Also across all the photos below, you’ll notice more and more yellows and reds creep into the leaves before browns start to join them. You’ll notice one pretty hosta leaf that began with a nice variegated green color before its outer margins slowly turned deeper and deeper shades of caramel and then the leaf began to completely collapse in on itself.

By the month’s end, things had mostly begun to collapse into the ground, even though the month came and went without a deep, killing freeze. At the start of the last full week of November, my sweet potatoes finally got a frost that killed most of their leaves, so at that point I harvested the potatoes.

The kids at Patchwork always get super excited when they harvest sweet potatoes there, and I thought understood that: it’s fun to dig around and find buried treasure! Last year was my first one growing sweet potatoes in my garden, but I got them in late and they didn’t have a chance to make many potatoes. I was happy enough with them that I planted more sweet potatoes this year. However, this year’s harvest was something different: there were so many! I’d think I’d found them all, but then they just kept going! I’d move over just a little bit and there were even more! I got the shovel out to help me, but immediately it sliced through two potatoes and destroyed them, so I put it away and knelt on the ground and dug around with my hands. It was like some reality TV show challenge, but in the end I got a bunch of sweet potatoes. They just finished curing, so now I need to figure out what to make.

In other culinary highlights from the month, my birthday came early on and John and I celebrated with steaks with a side of fresh lima beans from my garden. Later in the month I cut up the first of the butternut squash from my garden and made mac ‘n cheese using a great recipe that includes lots of squash in the cheese sauce. Later in the month I got really daring and used the second squash to make filled pasta from scratch. I made the pasta dough and then a filling of roasted squash with sage and cheese, and then I rolled the dough, stuffed the filling into it, cooked the pasta, and made a browned butter and sage sauce with toasted walnuts. It was a very long process, but the food turned out to be amazing. I only started experimenting with homemade pasta this summer, but I’m really liking the results! And for Thanksgiving, we had locally sourced turkey and some sweet potatoes from Patchwork’s garden (since my sweet potatoes still needed to cure for a few more days).

Oh, and as you look through the photos you’ll see a very large building going up across the alley from us. It will be an affordable housing complex. Hopefully it turns out ok. It’s really big and really imposing as you walk down the alley. Apparently the lot behind us wasn’t the top pick for locations for this apartment block, but several other options didn’t work out so they went with this one. It seems like a lot crammed onto not a lot of space, but Evansville desperately needs more affordable housing so apparently it came down to either building in this location or the project wasn’t going to happen at all.

A Cat a Day: November 10

Prince among the redbud foliage

November

If you’ve been following along, you might remember that October was unusually warm. Then came November. The first frost came on November 1. It was cold enough to begin to affect the plants. It warmed, then we went into a deep freeze of polar air and temperatures were in the teens with wind chills in the single digits. Then came snow. Then more warmth. Then cold.

All of these cycles altered my garden through the month of November. If you look through the photos below, you may recognize the same plants appearing repeatedly through the month. The green slowly bleaches away. The yellows descend from the trees onto the ground. Everything falls in on itself and flattens to the earth.

The changes are most evident among the hostas and variegated Solomon’s seal. I love the patterns and colors of the collapsing hosta leaves in particular. Their distress is beautiful. I also like the patterns in the oval scales of all the magnolia leaves on the ground as well as their mixture of greens and tans.

You can also see the progress of the ice and cold in my sweet potato bed. The first frost at the start of November did some damage, but the plants kept going until the deep freeze did them in. After things thawed again I decided to check for sweet potatoes and I was pleasantly surprised to find some. The plants had gone in late, so the potatoes weren’t large, but they look good. I’ll be eating them soon. They were an experiment, but they did so well in the limited time they had that I plan to grow them for real next year.

There’s always a week in fall when everything is the most beautiful, golden color, and this year that happened mid November. The snow came at the very end of this week, making gorgeous golden-white landscapes. I like fall snows because the colored foliage shines through the snow in interesting ways.

And, the cats.

I worried about the boys outside when the temperatures were set to plummet. There are plenty of places nearby for them to hide, and the guys who were outside last winter made it through a few Arctic blasts, but I decided to add more to their winter options. I bought two heated outdoor cat houses. Spike, the older gent with one tooth, moved into one immediately. I’d suspected as much. He now spends most of his day inside it.

He is always letting the other outdoor cats know he’s the boss, so he made sure he had the cat house to himself from the start. I hadn’t anticipated, however, that he would keep everyone else away from the second house. For a long time, they chose to sit ON it and not IN it. Or they slept in the more exposed cat bed in a box nearby. It wasn’t until December and over a month of this ridiculousness that I flipped open the second roof so it wasn’t so tightly enclosed and a couple of the other guys settled in.

Perry hasn’t gotten to go on walks very often now that it’s getting dark so early. We’re trying to keep him occupied with indoor play and clicker training. Overall, his behavior has improved dramatically in the 2+ years we’ve had him…but there’s so much further he needs to go.

The girls are perfectly lovely. Late November Lady Morgaine confirmed that winter is truly here–she started sitting on her heated cat bed on the window sill again. The girls also started sleeping curled up together at night to stay warmer. They’re super cute when they do, which is good because they take up half the bed.

October

I’m starting to settle into a routine of one blog post per month. Maybe if I get less busy, the number of posts will increase, but it seems like a decent plan to recap each month. So, on to October!

October was strangely warm. There was never a freeze or even a frost, so the plants continued to grow and mature. Many of the perennials were ready for their winter dormancy, growing crisper and browner, but others reached their best form. Among the latter are the toad lilies. They are definitely not what I would think of if someone asked me what a “fall” bloom would look like, but they only start to bloom mid-to late-fall, so they would definitely qualify as fall flowers. I think they look way too exotic to be a typical “fall flower.”

With no freeze to stop them, the zinnias also continued their perky blooms, which brightened many a day for me. Also, the sweet potatoes really took off, filling the raised bed with a sea of leaves. They provided a great setting for my found metal predator and prey. I have yet to see if they actually had time to produce sweet potatoes, since I planted them so late. So far it’s looking like the answer is no.

Oh, and I planted a little garlic. It was late to be ordering it, and I’d kind of decided I didn’t have room this year since you plant it in the fall and it takes up space until you harvest it late June or early July. Then I decided I might have the perfect little spot for a few plants. I took one head of each variety I harvested this summer and planted its cloves. I’m not sure if it will be enough of a supply for an entire year, but it’s something.

While there was no frost or freeze, temperatures continued to get colder. It was enough that both the indoor and outdoor cats found warmer spots to frequent. The Ladies are back to toasting themselves at the furnace register on the stairs. The outdoor cats found new sleeping spots on wood chips and dirt, which are clearly warmer. And I decided to get Perry a new walking jacket that better matches his personality. It has skulls, daggers, and roses on it. I think he looks very good in it.

While there weren’t dramatic temperature changes to help the fall color along, there was plenty of gradual fading from green to yellow and orange. You can see that happening in the photos below.

On a separate note, October began and ended with some great food experiences. The first full week in October is always the Fall Festival. It’s a stunning week of excess in Evansville when four city blocks are lined with well over a hundred food booths. There are also carnival rides, talent shows, and bands. I absolutely love it for its glorious excess, but many people around town hate it for the same reason. John and I went to the Fall Festival three times together and then I went once by myself to soak up more atmosphere. In the slide show below you can see a sampling of what we found to eat on our final trip. It was stupendous.

At the end of October, John and I rented a cabin at Audubon State Park in Henderson, Kentucky for an early birthday weekend for me. The forecast for the weekend included a lot of rain, and I was one of the few people in the area who was really hoping that that forecast would be correct. In the end, it was a rainy weekend that John and I celebrated with a lot of good food and a fire in the fireplace. Saturday evening as the storm clouds rolled out we went into Henderson to try a relatively new restaurant, Hometown Roots, which was also great.

Golden Leaves to Snowfall

Two weeks ago, we were at the height of the late but brilliant fall colors. Golden light rained down on my garden. The marigolds and the toad lilies still bloomed. Leaves began to fall. Then came several nights in the 20’s and chilly days. Tender leaves froze, their water-filled cells bursting then thawing into pulpy masses. The leaves began to quickly leave the trees. Then came a light dusting of snow. Then a “wintery mix” that accumulated overnight and collapsed the broken plants under its weight. The progression is remarkable and beautiful. It is what autumn is all about as the natural world prepares for the dormancy and barrenness of winter. You can follow the process in this series of photos.