October Garden

Yesterday I had the day pretty much open to my own interpretation. I was torn between the studio, the housework and decorating, and the garden.

Here's Rosie, she took over the warm spot I vacated on the bed as if to say "Well, fine. Go ahead then. But I'm gonna stick to the regular schedule and stay in bed."

(GRRRRRR - have you ever had a post where everything goes wrong - the photos load wrong, things keep disappearing, blogger won't work, ARGHHHH! I'm just gonna finish this up quick before I give up and forget the whole thing!!!)

Since our freezing night temperatures seem here to stay, I decided to check out the garden first.


I found these beauties out there. Didn't even know they were out there. They showed up now that the leaves have frozen and shriveled away. Since they were a bit soft from the freeze, I used up most of them in a sauce for spaghetti squash last night. The last few will cook up tonight in or on something.

I had pumpkin plants that grew out of the compost and covered EVERYTHING this year. I was hopeful earlier but alas, I never did get any pumpkins, just this amazing vine. Now that I give it some thought, it was probably because it was too rich for them, thriving in the compost, to want to set fruit until too late in the season. I should have transplanted them. Oh well. Here's part of it growing up the birdfeeder post. It also grew up over the compost, all along the dog kennel fence, and over the grape arbor.

Lots of great blossoms though. I bet one can fry these up like squash blossoms. Hmmm, gotta check that out.

I wanted to do a squash, beans, and corn thing for Mary this year, like the southwest native american plant grouping. The pumpkins qualify for the squash. I never got beans in there. But look at the teeny corn plants that grew from broom corn seeds. Hey, they're tall if you're Rosie.


At least, I thought I didn't have any pumpkins. Look what I found on the side of the compost bin! I doubt it has time to ripen, but I'm still happy to see it. Maybe if it gets a bit larger I can pick it green and see how it does inside.

On the other side of the grape arbor the pumpkins grew along the ground, up some metal plant holders, up the back fence and INTO the apple tree. The neighbor's flowering vine also was growing up there. And what did I see when I looked up in the tree? Apples, yes. But what's that green thing?


Another pumpkin, looming above my head, about eight or nine feet up in the air. A Halloween Tree!!! This one looks a bit farther along. If it doesn't get so heavy it falls and smashes to the ground, it might be ready to pick early sometimes this week!

Another pumpkin in my garden. It's pointing north (okay, it's really pointing west, but just go with me on this one, okay), telling us that cold weather is blowing in. Which, hmmmm, it should be pointing south if the wind was coming from the north, right? So, moving on...

Here's the last of the Halloween garden I made in spring. There was a Black Prince tomato. It actually gave us the most tomatoes this year, dark black red ones. There's an orange and black garden ball (an old bowling ball), lots of orange marigolds still, a touch of witchy purple, and a few ghostly white petunias.

On another blog someone asked "What's your favorite part of autumn?" Wandering through the garden I realized that I'd be hard pressed to say any one part of the season is my favorite. It's the collective wonderfulness of it all. But I do have to admit that the harvest aspects would have a hard time getting knocked out of favor, even if I do grumble about it as "work". There's something so incredibly satisfying about a garden that has given it's all and gifted you with whatever bounty it could grow, even when it's been so ill taken care of as some **cough** MINE **cough** gardens.

Did I do anything else besides wander the garden with my camera yesterday? Go see on Laume's Studio.