Fall

Insalata Caprese

Heirloom tomatoes, mozzarella, and fresh basil from the garden.  Salad in the style of Capri "Insalata Caprese."  Yum.

Some of Our Harvest This Year

My husband took a wonderful photo of some of this year's harvest.  We had three Cinderella pumpkins (before the gophers got them).  We covered the pumpkin stems with a bit of wax to keep them from rotting. Pictured above are some persimmons, calamondin, beans, tomatoes, honey, dried tomatoes, canned tomatoes, dried zucchini, and some preserved limes.  We had much more than this from the summer garden, but this makes a great display.  Some of our neighbors seem to really enjoy the honeycomb in the honey, and some wonder why we added it to the container.

Rose Hips

We have one Rosa rugosa rose bush that produces some lovely rose hips each year. Last year I made a Rose Hip Syrup, for pancakes or ice cream, and it was delicate and quite nice. This year I decided to dry the rose hips in our dehydrator for tea. I could also remove all the seeds once the hips are dry and grind up the dried rose hip for use in smoothies or other sorts of concoctions. Rose hips are very high in Vitamin C. 

I went out into the garden and picked a harvest basket full of rose hips. I rinsed them off, removed the bud or flower end, and placed them in my dehydrator at 115 degrees. 

First Rain

Our first heavy rain of the season started today in northern California.  Everything is battened down outside, for the most part. We are trying out one of our new Smith and Hawken rain chains.  Not sure if it will be something we keep on the front downspout, for that one gets lots of water and the pretty copper cups are busily overfilling and splashing onto the front porch.  Our leak in the roof onto the porch seems worse this rain; we should have attended to that before now.

This is quite a heavy rain. Our street is quite covered with water. The winds have started to pick up a bit too. Hope we don't lose any of our trees, but I don't think it will be that damaging a storm. We shall see.

Last Look at the Summer Garden

Here's a last look at the summer garden. This photo was taken at the end of August, but between then and now the only changes have been that the tomatoes kept on producing like crazy and the sunflowers grew quite tall and bloomed well.

They Just Keep Coming!

This has been THE year for tomatoes. I didn't even have that many plants, but the plants I had were so productive. The deep watering from the new drip system is probably the reason. I've been drying, canning, and freezing the extras, as well as giving them away to those in need of some. They have been tasty. The plants are finally slowing down, but the weather here in northern California is still warm during the day (it has been in the 70s), and not too cold at night yet. I pulled out a few tomato plants this weekend so I could get more winter vegetable seeds planted ('tis a bit late for that).