A new year, time to start planning again

Just starting to dig out of another snowstorm here. I have almost 10" of snow covering my garden right now. A far cry from 55°F that it was two weeks ago.

24 November - A glorious 'black Friday'

Since I do not partake in the madness at retail locations today, we spent the morning preparing a new flowerbed for next year.


This is next to the garden, on the east side, and will be a perennial bed, mostly. (also a place to toss rocks that are found in the vegetable garden) The bed is about 8' wide at the center, and tapers off at each side, with about 6" of dirt in the front section and 10" in the rear section. If I run short of time to plan flowers, this will be a gourd or squash bed next year.

23 November - Happy Thanksgiving Pumpkin Bread

Or maybe pumpkin muffins.... either way, the pumpkins were a success. One of the relatives actually baked and mashed the pumpkin for pies, I'm not so adventurous, and went with the canned variety. (also, I found myself beginning the Thanksgiving baking the morning of, and was told very late in the process that I'd need to make an emergency apple pie - nobody was bringing the apple pie!)

Pumpkin Bread


1 1/2 Cups Flour
1 teaspoon Baking Soda
1/2 teaspoon Salt
1 teaspoon Cinnamon, ground
1/2 teaspoon Nutmeg, ground
1/4 teaspoon Cloves, ground
1/4 teaspoon Ginger, ground

1/2 Cup Butter
1 Cup Sugar
1 Cup Pumpkin, prepared
1 teaspoon Vanilla
2 Eggs

1 Cup Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips

Sift dry ingredients.
Cream butter & sugar. Add eggs, pumpkin, and vanilla, blend well. Add dry ingredients to mixture. Stir in Chocolate Chips.

Pour batter into greased loaf pan or muffin tin. Bake loaves at 350°F for 1 hour, muffins at 400°F for 20 minutes.

Bread is done when toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

I have omitted half the sugar with no ill effects.

Edit: G'ma liked the muffins, so they MUST be good!

11 November, A month off

Well folks, I've been traveling a bit so I didn't get any posts in for a few weeks now. For that matter I didn't get any work done either.

But we did have a somewhat surprise "thunder-snow" Friday night, dumped about 4" of the stuff on us. The carrots and parsnips are buried. If the weather dries up a bit, or freezes the ground just a bit, I can go back out and pick some. But as it stands, there's way too much mud to be traipsing about in the garden.

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14 October - Hard Frost

Also known as "Killing Frost". We had snow on the 11th, and a very hard frost to go along with it. Some of these tomatoes are solid ice (I probably could have saved a couple by just throwing them into the freezer, but I didn't bother).


This is the labor-intensive time in the garden. Every dry day is another day to work on the general cleanup of debris from the season. As I've learned through making the wrong decisions - clean up all rotting tomatoes! The compost piles have been turned, and a new pile with this year's garden debris takes up an entire bin.

When we have several dry days in a row, I'll attempt to rake and shred leaves to use as winter mulch for carrots and parsnips. I should have enough carrots to last several months, and more than enough parsnips for the winter.

The pumpkins turned out a hit - I had 9 pumpkins of respectable size from the 2 vines. Most are ending up as halloween decorations, with some going to the relatives for jack-o-lanterns.

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19 September - Light frost tonight?

Weather says it's going to be 36°F tonight. That means, in my area with a strong west wind, my garden may or may not freeze. Not hard, but it might kill off the basil.

Tomatoes were neglected this weekend, and most are rotting off the vines, which have begun to shrivel. Such a shame to lose all that fruit.

The cucumbers have begun a second crop, and the carrots are wonderful. The photo below is the most perfect carrot I've ever grown. It's about 6" long and was very sweet (I had a carrot for lunch... well not just a carrot)

8 September - flowers

The Dianthus are blooming nicely. I didn't expect muticolored flowers on the same plant, but I have whites, pinks and reds all blooming. If I kept the seeds properly labeled, these are perennial plants, and will be ready to divide in a few years. If I didn't keep the seeds labeled correctly, they'll die off, but hopefully re-seed themselves.



The marigolds are also in full bloom. This bee was happily inspecting the flowers & in no rush to fly off. Marigolds make a great filler plant, to border areas that aren't very well established, and to provide color and distraction from unkempt beds. I hope that front electrical box area takes off next year, and the marigolds will no longer be necessary.