The Gates of Fall


This is a Martin's carrot pepper, and it is indelibly spicy. We got quite a few of them, even though the garden is now winding down to just about nothing. The tomato bed is still green, but producing orange mushy tomatoes that are good for just about nothing. There's one last pumpkin on the vine. There are a couple of cucumbers. We may actually get to eat one eggplant. For the whole summer. started them in the greenhouse in April. That was not a successful experiment.

Feeling a bit overwhelmed with the fall cleanup projects. There's the solar panels that need a good cleaning, and the windows, inside and out so that we can see the winter descend on us. There's the rip all the plants out and add manure/compost to the raised beds. This year there's the project of dismantling two raised beds that are no longer useful because the neighbors let a sucker tree - which could have been solved with a weed-whacker - turn into a full blown young tree, which shades them into darkness. I'm planning to use the pieces to define a sort of terrace to receive a new pollinator garden from Prairie Moon Nurseries next spring.


The biggest project right now is preparing for the wood delivery. Four cords are coming sometime this month. This led me to the side of the house fence/gate project that I've been purchasing supplies for since this past spring. Been meaning to get to that...like so many things. There are two reasons: 1) the fence is rotting, and 2) the gate has never worked in the six years we've lived here. For some unknown reason, the Hated Previous Owners (HPOs) installed a gate that was much larger than a standard 48" gate. It was, of course, too heavy, and got so it had to be lifted in order to open or close it.

The good news: they used solid cedar posts, and did a good job sinking them. So mostly what I had to do is dismantle everything that wasn't a post and replace it. Because I wanted a 48" gate, I did end up sinking one new post, digging down 24" to make sure it is as solid as the HPO's posts.

I still need to build a gate, but I ran out of materials, time, and energy.

The good part about doing this now is that the waste wood can be used to make ricks for the firewood. It's not in great shape, but it should be decent enough to last a few seasons. Of course, that's another project...

Creeping Charlie is still running rampant, the garden needs to be turned to compost, the raspberries need to be trimmed back (the producers from this year cut to the ground), and then removed to the yard waste place. Pleh. That's a lot of backing around with various rough boys in trucks. Always a good time.

We still have a few weeks.



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