R.I.P. Orangeglo Watermelons + First Fall Harvest

Yesterday,  I went to check the last watermlon...

My other watermelon had been attacked by some critter and became worm food.  Well, there is a reason why they tell you to keep your melons off the ground because my last watermelon became worm food, too.  :-(  Oh well. It was time to kill the plant anyway.

Weekend Winter Garden Prep, Day 2

I spent the afternoon yesterday continuing the garden prep for the winter.  I had to figure out how to secure plastic sheeting over my hoop tunnels and came up with skinny sand worms, :-)

I just bought nylon utility fabric and stitched them into long tubes.  I bought the cheapest bag of sand from the hardware store and filled them up.  They seem to work pretty well so far.

Bye Amish Paste Tomato Plant

It's cold.  My face is cold, my fingers are cold.  It's cold.  What happened??  It feels like we just went right into winter. I think the first fall frost date is supposed to be around Oct. 31st here, but I think it's coming early!! It got really cold last night so I ended up covering some of my beds to protect them just in case it actually got frosty; and because of the drop in temp, I decided to kill my lone tomato plant today.  Of the three varieties of tomatoes I planted this year, I had one Amish Paste tomato plant that out performed all of the others.  It became this monstrosity that decided to use my Korean pepper plant's cage for added support.

Mind the Chives and Other Weird Garden Things

So if I've ever given you garlic chive seeds or plants, I hope I warned you. :-P  I usually am pretty good about being honest about my garlic chives and their ability to never die! If I didn't warn you, I am deeply sorry!  I will tell you now, please mind your chives!!!

I thought I had contained my chives by growing them in a container and in one of my raised beds, but I was SOOOOO WRONG!

Sunday Breakfast: Lemon Kefir Pancakes

I wanted pancakes this morning.  Buttermilk pancakes.  But I don't keep buttermilk around on the regular.  Then I wanted ricotta pancakes but no ricotta on hand either.  I thought about making my own ricotta, but no whole milk on hand.  I looked in the fridge and there it was, my jar of kefir!

My Not So Relaxing Vacation Week

This past week was my first week off!! A real vacation. OMG! Great, right?  Sleep in, watch a bunch of TV, spend the whole week in pajamas.  Yeah, I suck at vacations. I have a hard time doing nothing.  I think I spent one day sleeping in and being a couch potato but then the rest of the week, I pretty much spent it thinking up stuff to do like preserving herbs. It was "thyme" to dry thyme....

Olla Chicas!

Yesterday was a busy day.  Having a 3 day weekend pushes me into overdrive sometimes.  Besides doing more fall cleaning in the garden, I was drying peppers, putting up seeds that I collected in paper envelopes and making OLLAS!