Port Potager

We had our first real snowfall today, and it was nice to have a weekend snow day for baking and tree decorating: Now that the landscape suddenly has been wiped clean of its color, these photos from a month ago look all the more brilliant by contrast:  Back when we were raking leaves , the kids reported finding a wasp nest in the trees. We had one in each maple tree, and each was a perfectly formed little habitat:  They’re both about the size of a grapefruit, and they’re still hanging from their branches, accumulating snow. They’re empty now, of course, but the craftsmanship is solid – they’ve held up in our perennially windy weather  and don’t seem to mind bearing the weight of several inches of snow.  They’re rather beautiful in their own way, and with the leaves long gone they look like paper lanterns hanging from the tree. Paper wasps are good predators for bugs that like rosebushes , and they’ve never been even remotely aggressive, u...

This weekend we finished our major fall cleanup of the garden, removing spent summer fruits and setting up some of the frames for winter tunneling. The garden is a very different place without all those tomatoes: Also out of the picture are the beans, corn, okra, and all forms of squash. It leaves a lot of empty space: The newly-empty garden could be depressing, but I always kind of like seeing the clean lines of the raised beds again. After all, they've been obscured by a tangle of vines and greenery for months. It's the return of order after the chaos of abundance, and it's nice to have some breathing room again. This weekend is also like New Year's Day for the garden, because I planted garlic bulbs (in the bed above). Garlic is one of the first things we planted when we first built these beds, and it was the first of our crops to come full circle in its propagation . This is the fourth planting of garlic, and it means the beginning of the fo...

The equinox is just around the corner, and soon we will be heading toward the dark days. The chickens are molting rather then laying (Sally remaining our reliable exception, of course). The temperatures (especially in the early morning hours) are cooler, and though we are still several weeks away from frost, the garden has shifted from the lush greens and vibrant reds of high summer to the mellow golds and dusky purples of autumn. I am always sad to see summer go, but there are compensations. Our very small pumpkin patch has produced a good number of heirloom Long Pie pumpkins this year. The vines have died back almost completely, and the fruits are curing in the waning hours of sunlight. Hopefully they'll have time to ripen to orange before frost. Our Cherokee Trail of Tears beans are drying on the vines. They are a papery purple now, and I have been slowly picking them so we can shell them before frost. No rush on this project, though. They dry just as well on the ...