To The Surbiton Manor Born

  Half of our wood for the year Our annual wood deliveries arrived this past week. Two cords on Thursday (which I moved to the back yard myself) and another two cords on Friday (which I stacked, while we got help from one of the kids, currently the Golden Child, and her boyfriend.) It's a satisfying feeling to have it laid in and know that we will be toasty warm, even if fascists attack the power grid post-election. The season has well and truly changed. The last cosmo (and, coincidentally the first cosmo) of the summer bloomed last week. The deck furniture has been eaten by a large chocolate blancmange that has taken up residence outside of our kitchen window. On the positive side, the grass and clover that I started from the end of September through early October has taken over the dirt patch that was our back yard after I'd raked and ripped up the creeping Chalie infestation. Too early to say whether the grand army of nematodes has managed to slaughter the foul invasive whit

I've been using October 12, 2024 - my annual marathon date - as the end of summer all year long. That marks #15. With age-grading, #5 fastest.  Not terribly surprisingly, it turns out that it truly is the end of summer. Leaves are at full color, and this week we will get a hard freeze. I pulled the last of the vegetables: some tomatoes, the second lettuce crop planted in early September (which produced very well indeed), and, of course, jalapeño peppers (which went berserk and couldn't be stopped). Hopefully the grass / clover seedlings that I planted over the past few weeks after ripping out the creeping Charlie have set. The first part of the lawn that I did this seems to be in good shape. I'm worried about the bits that I only got around to seeding last week. There is a haze of green across all the bits that were laid waste to in the culling. We ate a squash soup for dinner. There's a fire in the fireplace to keep the house warm.  Fall is here.  

  Every living thing is the amazing product of four billion years of slow growth and adaptation. Some would say that every living thing is precious.  I'd make an exception for invasive Asian beetle grubs. Vile, horrible, disgusting and slimy are just a few of the words I'd use to describe these hideous visitors to my yard. Almost as bad as Republicans. They love our apple trees, and have tormented them and stunted the last two seasons of growth. They skeletonized Kirstin's flowers.  They seem to thrive in another unwelcome and invasive thing that grows freely in our yard: creeping Charlie. Horrible stuff that makes the ground spongy and provides haven for the foul grubs.   Now, to clarify: We are not sticklers here at Steepmeadow. We are not striving for some "perfect lawn" full of weak non-native fescues. We won't artificially fertilize. We are loathe to water. We are going after a pollinator lawn, with healthy swaths of hearty clover, red creeping and sheep

 And made a very successful batch of ketchup.  Or catsup. The cats were up as I began the messiest of messy tasks, but they grew weary and abandoned me to my red nightmare. If you want to give up most of your morning while handling many containers of very threatening red stuff, make your own condiment!  I had planned to snap a photo of the process but where to even pause and do so? There was no respite once it began. So, all I have in what is left of the final result. Sorry. Terrible let down, really.  As for the artistry of the process, let my words be your eyes... Imagine- a colander heaping over with 5 pounds (about) of bright red tomatoes and three ripe plums. See the onion and garlic gently cooking in olive oil in the bottom of my bright red Dansk enameled pot? Gaze as the tomatoes get added once they have been coarsely chopped. They cook for 15 minutes until all the small cherry tomatoes have burst and the very full pot is bubbling -suddenly, in go the plums! They too, have been

Pretty Much Every Day This Week Bumper crop this year. The rain has diminished, but still enough to avoid watering. So the plants are taking care of themselves.  The raspberry patch, even after I cut it back from the neighbor's fence, is going to be massive next year. And to think, a few short years ago it was four canes. So far, we have been able to share or consume all of the garden's output, but we are right at the edge...So many tomatoes. Though this may be short lived. The tomato plants have had a lot of rot, despite my attempts to cut them back and treat them. We've lost several of them already, and I'm not sure how long those that remain will last.  We have a massive glut of jalapeno peppers. I've been pickling the banana peppers, but the jalapenos are...well, typically recipes only call for one or two. When you take in 10 in a day, it is sort of overwhelming. We did make a delicious tomato, onion, lime & jalapeno salsa yesterday.  We've had some of t

Harvest! Harvest time has begun in earnest. Tomatoes are finally ready. We have as many bananna peppers as we know what to do with. (There must be something besides pickling them...need to find some recipes.) We have lovely jalapeño peppers that are just the right amount of heat to eat. We have cherry tomatoes. We harvested the first zucchini. Early in the year, I worried that the winter squash I was planting were not taking off successfully. This is no longer the case. There are five of them already formed in this mass of foliage that has already brought down one of the sunflowers I'd planted with them.  The soaking that we took last month is now being replaced by some really strong heat. Today, for instance, we'll reach 90 & soupy with humidity. I do love this weather, and because it lasts such a short time I feel compelled to embrace it. This is not entirely easy to do when you have an October marathon to train for and you need to run 14 miles in it (as I did this mornin