To The Surbiton Manor Born

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

Just one day's haul of raspberries The garden is truly coming into its own. There's a certain point in the spring when you think, "Nah, we're never getting anything." Well, we're past that point now. Kiki made white chocolate raspberry scones with these. She also made beet-burgers (or, really, more beet sloppy Joe's): But the big news is that a major project - the stairway from the shed to the garage - is finally complete, and I can die happy.  

  We've acquired a kitten. Her name is Princess Poppyseed Watson, or Poppy for short. We finally got a break in the endless rain, and managed to put the cushions out on the deck for more than 24 hours. This allowed us to resume projects around the garden, of which there are many. As a side note, I ran across this lovely headline this morning:  17 Manure Pits In MN Overflow Due To Historic Flooding . If I may, this entire vile mess that is the result of pointless cruelty could be obviated if people would stop eating meat like barbarians. It is simply not necessary.  Now it's the taxpayers' problem, with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency getting involved. Anyhoo. The weather has been fantastic for growing grass and clover. We've reached what looks like the end of our meager strawberry harvest. We have a whole bed devoted to them all season long, and we get three handfuls. It is starting to look like it isn't the best use of the space. Raspberries, on the other ha