5C's Que Pasa

Our garden just keeps growing. However on October 11th we knew that we needed to start pulling some things out.

We still had close to a hundred if not more of tomatoes to ripen.

The green beans were still growing.

Colin took out all the smaller cherry tomatoes and left the larger ones on the vine.  Here he is cleaning out the dead part of the bean vines in one of our two bean sections.

Squash that belongs to some friends further down in the garden.  See that huge read tomato.  They had quite a few hanging and going bad. I think they are hunters and were away at harvest time.

Some lovely fall colours in a garden.

The Mountain Ash trees are full of berries. We all know what that means. Brr.

Part of what we took home that weekend. One zucchini and nine cucumbers and beans.  The end of the cukes for this year.

The first row of Swiss chard or the right was been pulled.  I am leaving the second sowing of kale to grow a bit more in behind and to the left my second sowing of Swiss chard is ready to be picked very soon. I am going to leave the beets and carrots in the ground for a bit.  I also took some beet tops for steaming.

Today we got the bad news. An early snowfall starting tonight and with 5 – 10 cm / 2 -4 inches of snow on Friday and a low of -9C/16F. We are going to sink or swim.

These are my winter boots for now.  They are Encore Ice 4 by Merrell and come with a grip outer sole. I love the shearling lining and cushion heel. I wore them out yesterday for two appointments and some grocery shopping.  My bare feet are very warm and my toes survived. I do have a pair of old snow boots that I can wear when I really need to – as in more than 2 inches of snow.

We have a difficult road ahead of us.

Think about it. Time to get back into smaller bubbles for just a while until things slow down again.

It actually was ready Friday the 9th ( we only brought it in on October 1 st ). But we could not get there sooner.

Colin cleaned the batteries and then disconnected the negative posts. On Saturday, the 17th we put it to bed for the winter. Sniff!

How many heaters can you count? One electric and three oil burners. I will admit to having three oil burners on as well as the fireplace.  Not sure how I am going to survive.  My happy place is between 80 – 84 F.

Colin brought in a mat from the RV and we put that outside the door.  The darker charcoal mat inside the door is new from Home Depot for $25.00 to stand on to take boots off, etc, it has raised knobs so the moisture ( snow ) goes between them. You can barely see our boot tray under the entrance table.

Thank goodness for Canadian Tire, we got this tray for about $12.00. Perfect area to place wet shoes and boots. I really like how the table fits on the tray.  That way we can leave the table in place for the winter. I so love doing research and finding deals on stuff like this.

That night as a treat I made us a zucchini, spinach lasagna. New recipe that I found that incorporated our garden veggies. I used Swiss chard instead of spinach.  It was beyond yummy, definitely we will make it again.

Of course we added tomatoes, cukes and carrots from our garden. I can hardly wait to make it again.  I has three bites of leftovers for lunch today:)

This pair of Colin’s glasses have been lost for 4 -5 weeks now. We turned the house upside down over and over. Suddenly they were found – locked inside the hot water on demand box on the outside of the house. We are having an issue with hot water and he had gone to check & obviously left them there. So it wasn’t until a few days ago when we had another problem that he found them:)

We harvested our first row of Swiss chard last week, the second row is ready as well. That bucket was packed with chard.  Once cleaned I remove the stems I layer them on a cookie sheet and freeze the tray for 2 hours or so.  Then we put them in a food saver vacuum seal bag and pop it into the freezer.

Guess what is coming sooner that expected.

We have gone through all of our clothing bins and now have some empty ones. We only have the Christmas bins left to sort but that will have to wait a few weeks.

I still have both windows sills full of ripening tomatoes.

I saw these ducks the other day, they were just passing through. A female and male Hooded Merganser.  So very pretty.

Sunset reflection to the south, last Wednesday, the 14th. Beautiful.

A few minutes later to the west. Stunning.

Even a reflection into our windows.

Colin took this about 8PM.

Mars itself. Pretty good for a hand held camera.

I noticed that several homes here decorate for fall, so I made a bit of an effort. The owl is there to keep the birds away but adds a bit of an effect. As do all the spider webs on the arch.

Many years ago we used to carve pumpkins and place them out front with candles in them. The best part was roasting the pumpkin seeds. Now I simply enjoy seeing them on my steps.

Isn’t this beautiful. It is a photo of a painting that our friend Bella did and added to her Thanksgiving greeting to us. She is a wonderful artist and we enjoyed many winters with her and Carl in Mazatlan on the Isla.

We had so much rain during the evening and night of October 12. Eventually the clouds cleared yesterday ( Oct. 13 ) and we were treated to this rainbow. The first time ever in 17 years that we have seen a rainbow in the north. they are usually in the east.

And to the south that same morning as the clouds lifted we saw all the snow that the storm had delivered during the night. Looks like that snow is here until next spring, with more coming of course.

Last night we enjoyed another wonderful setting of the sun. Three very different nature photos during the day yesterday.

A very nice fall display by a home here in the park.

One of my favourite photos. Sadly this is a photo of a photo. Between us we have spent two hours tonight looking for the original to no avail.  This was taken in October of 2003 & used in the calendar of October 2005. We moved here to the park in September of 2003, put our things away and took the RV to Taber, Alberta to pick up baby Carmeh in October, she was just over seven weeks old. It took a week or so before Cloii fully accepted her. Top right shows the street we lived on 🙂 Dacshund Drive!

One year later in 2004, we had lost Cloii. On the left is our newest doxie, Caeli  ( who was just 6 weeks when we picked her up in Taber, mid summer ) and Carmeh is on the right. You can see that we have painted the front door and the steps.  Those steps were eventually replaced with composite stairs.

This photo was taken in October, 2016 during trip to Napa Valley. The girls, Carmeh & Caeli, left us just five months later.

Our last autumn photo taken on October 1st, 2016, Carmeh with Colin and Caeli with me.