Halloween Flowers

Happy Halloween! I know I'm early, but I wanted to get a picture of our chrysanthemums before they are potentially crushed by Frankenstorm Sandy, or whatever they're calling it now. 


I know these don't look like those compact balls of flowers that we usually think of when we talk about fall mums. These are more like their giant, naturalized selves, obviously happy in their spot. 


The bumble bees love them. They don't smell like much, but they're the only game in town right now if you're a bee, so every bee in Newburyport makes its way over here, I think. We've had a really nice week of sunny, warm weather, and they've been covered in bees. Good thing the kids mostly use the back door.

As for Hurricane Sandy, the latest headlines are still full of hype, but this latest rain forecast from the Weather Channel doesn't seem so devastating:


1-3 inches I can totally live with. Still, I'm going to postpone planting my fall bulbs until next weekend to avoid having them get flooded and rot in the ground, and we have quite a few things to bring inside for the winter (our still unattached-to-the-gutter rain barrels, tomato cages, bales of straw, outdoor furniture, etc.). 

We are also hoping that the wind isn't too terrible for too long. We had to postpone having two ailing tree removed until after the storm, because the electric company is too busy to honor our date for taking down wires so the tree guys can get their crane in. I get that, but hopefully these trees will stand through this storm, because they are nerve-wrackingly close to the house. Will post updates as long as we have power!

Comments

  1. MagnaflorOctober 24, 2018 at 4:03 AM

    The blog is absolutely truly incredible. Lots of large information and inspiration, both of which we all need.
    Halloween Flowers

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What to Do With an Unripe Watermelon

Image
Back on the first weekend of August we were so excited to see how big our watermelons were getting. We checked all the signs of ripeness: good sound, firm skin, yellow bottom. So Kirk brought one in: And we sliced it open: Shit. This is not meant to be a yellow watermelon. It only even looks that way in the photo because of the lighting — it's really white throughout. It's Sweet Favorite, and it's supposed to be red.  After the huge wave of disappointment rolled through the room, we all took a bite anyway.  It's not sweet, but it's not sour or bitter, either. It tastes like watermelon, just without the sugar. Kind of like a watermelon-flavored cucumber. It's too big to let go to waste, and we felt obligated to wrap it up and keep it in the fridge until we figured out something to with it.   Dish #1: Watermelon Kachumber Kachumber is an Indian salad that is normally made with cucumber. Here we used some of our unripe w
Read more

So Where's Everybody From?

Image
I don't have any new garden pictures or updates for you today. I have to say, it's getting kind of hard to get a good photo during the one hour of waning daylight left by the time I get home from work. These are the darkest days now, as we hurtle toward the solstice. Without any photos for me to share with you today, I thought it would be a good time to ask: Where're y'all from? If you have never kept a blog of your own, you might not know that the writer of one gets a bunch of stats about who has hit on the webpage. Most of it's not very interesting: I don't care how many of you use your iPhone vs. a PC or what browser you use to surf the web. The one interesting part, though, is the map . Blogger keeps track of what country readers are in when they check out my page. It's fascinating! Here's my readership map for November: I figured my readers were mostly my Facebook friends, and I know where they are. But now my list of countries is gettin
Read more

Last Weekend of Winter

Image
It's the last weekend of winter! Next weekend we'll be beyond the equinox, and the days will be ever-so-slightly longer than the nights.  We still have snow on the ground, lots of wind, and temperatures in the 30s, but we plowed ahead with our almost-spring garden chores anyway. Here's what we did this weekend: 1. Got the chickens out on the raised bed where to prep the soil for planting greens: 2. Poked around the greenhouse tunnels to harvest the last veggies: parsnips and a couple leeks, plus a few leftover fall cabbages for the chickens (which they were very  excited about). We do still have some spinach, mache and kale left as well, but not much. 3. Improved the maple sugaring set-up by building a bigger firebox: Kirk used leftover bricks we had lying around to make a floor (so as not to ruin the bricks on our patio), then got nine cinderblocks to make the three walls of the firebox (solid side toward the fire). He also picked up some steel
Read more