Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Frost -- It's Coming

An icy breeze wafted into our windows last night. The forecast for the next few days confirmed it:

Frost warning. 

Brrrr.

I spent part of the afternoon picking beans (a handful), pulling the zucchini plant (one zuke total -- sigh), some bean vines, then heaping a wheelbarrow high with tomato vines. The Brick wants to try hanging these in the garage to see if the tomatoes will ripen more effectively still on the vine.

The chickies got armloads of green stuff, which they loved.



I hauled in a pot of geraniums, another few pots of flowers, and covered up the rainbow chard in the front stone bed. With care, we might be able to continue cutting greens through Thanksgiving.



Summer's definitely over...but it's okay.  We're not getting snow, like the high country. It's just chilly weather, good for hot coffee, a fireplace and snuggling.

  I love fall. 






P.S. We finally got it -- the night of Oct. 6. Only someone forgot to tell the beans. They're protected by a leaning V-shaped frame (made from bunkbed bedsprings tied to each other), and down in a hollow. Maybe they'll keep producing for a while -- we often have warmer temps after our first frost.

2 comments:

LouAnne said...

Cindy: One Fall I hung my tomato vines and also layered the loose green fruit single layer in a flat box with newspaper and managed to still have a couple of ripe tomatoes during the Holidays - My daughter was surprised when I went to the garage and came back with a ripe tomato for a salad at Christmas. The last ones never ripened, but most did.

Cindy Brick said...

LouAnne, we tried storing our tomatoes in the garage this year -- I pulled the vines, and the Brick hung them from the ceiling rafters with string.

He noticed that tomatoes were gradually disappearing over the coming days. Today, he said we don't have ONE.

The mice have been running down the vines and helping themselves as the tomatoes ripen. Every single one of them.

We're going to set some traps, and see if we can at least get some fresh protein for the chickens. (Little dinosaurs, I mean.) But oh, I was looking forward to those fresh tomatoes...

thanks so much for writing. Good to hear from you.

Figures...