Our little tomato plant is wrapping up.  For such a little plant, it was a power house.  We had 5 waves of at least 20 tomatoes each.  There are maybe a dozen or so tomatoes still on the plant, most of which are green or yellow green.  In past years I brought them in and ripened them on the counter.  This year I am going to try a recipe for green tomatoes.  Haven’t decided on one yet.  If you have a favorite, please share!

 

It’s getting to be hot tea time in the fall garden again.  Not to worry – I have plenty in stock ☺ Lemon and raspberry and mint and matcha, english breakfast and irish breakfast, and, of course green.

The buffet is stocked and the pantry is full.  It will be a while til I need to buy any more.   But what a treat to sit in the garden on a cool morning with a hot cup of tea.

Looking forward to that this weekend. But maybe not until 9am or so on Saturday.  We’re supposed to have a chilly 33° at 7am on Saturday.  Brrrr!

Friday night we are supposed to have a frost.  If that forecast holds, it’s time to pull in the hibiscus and shamrocks.

The shamrocks look fine, but the leaves on an entire main branch of the hibiscus turned brown a couple weeks ago.  It is probably 10 years old.  I put fertilizer on it in the spring, and coffee grounds to also fertilize and keep pests away.  I’m hoping it is not failing.  It is in a very large pot, so big that my husband and I have to carry it outside together, but I suspect it is getting root-bound.  Getting a larger pot is not an option.  The plant barely fits through the door now.  So I think I will just watch it for now.  Hopefully it will recover.

Tonight I saw something new.  I heard a lot of an unfamiliar chirping out by the smaller pine.  It went on and on so I went to look.  I saw a male cardinal feeding a female cardinal.  The female was the one chirping.  They started out on separate branches but soon she sat on the branch right next to him.  He would get food out of the feeder, and feed it to her.  Very cool.  I’ve never seen that before.  I looked it up and it sounds like cardinals are monogamous.  Maybe it’s the Mom and Dad that we saw going back and forth to feed the hatchlings we heard this summer.  Maybe it’s a new “couple”.  It seems unlikely they are breeding, as we are at the end of September, but maybe.  We’ll see.

Two Saturdays ago I spent time in the garden without my phone.  I watched a mama squirrel eating cautiously at the back bird feeder.  Two young checkadees were flitting about the small pine tree.  Three young finches were all trying to get on the front bird feeder together.  A young cardinal was picking away under the pine tree.  And the monarchs had been around all week and were flitting by.  It was awesome just to take it all in.  Our guest in the garden was half-snoozing on my lap.  It was good.

Then a large crow flew in, silently, and started looking around the greenspace.  Soon two more large crows and a third came.  They were noisy, cawing back and forth.  And another came.  Three sat in one tree, one in another, and one struted across the lawn, all large and in charge.  By now the song birds had stopped singing and were flying away from the pine, and the squirrel had stopped eating and just sat crouched on a branch.  I was so inclined to shoo the crows away, but knew that would further disrupt the previously peaceful scene so I waited and watched.  It didn’t take long.  Apparently finding nothing worth their energy, within a few minutes the crows left.  And then the squirrel left.  I watched as it ran  off.  It was on edge.

I went in to look at the time.  I got my phone and went back outside with Sandy.  Soon the birds started coming back, more than before.  Then one squirrel and then two.

I thought to myself, there’s a lesson here.  Things were peaceful, good.  The birds were singing.  And, as so often happens, something had to come in and stir things up.  But, if you don’t take the bait and make things worse, if you just sit there for a while, things calm down.

We just spent some relaxing time on the north shore of Minnesota.  Lake Superior, as always, awes and inspires us.  A bit further inland we enjoyed the more remote areas.  More to come on all of that in future blogs this week.

 

 

This morning we did garden errands.  We went to the farmer’s market to buy produce from other’s gardens and then we went to shop at our local garden store.  I have a gift card from Christian and Kelly from last year  🐸

I bought one hosta – a ‘Rainforest Sunrise’ (that is now the 5th one in our garden – I love them!).  I also bought another ‘Hush Little Baby’ daylily.  Here’s them in their new locations.

We had a really long, harsh ’17 – ’18  winter and I lost 5 mature hostas.  I’m not sure if it was the temperatures or the late blizzard or the chemical from the black-oiled sunflower seeds in the temporary location for our new bird feeder, or maybe even a mole, but those 5 hostas never came back.  2 were beautiful, mature ‘Touch of Class’ hostas.  I am just now deciding on what to put in the empty spaces.  I hope today’s purchases will fill two of the spots nicely in future years.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton