Frosty Friday

Last week end we went over to Vancouver.  While visiting friends we went to lunch at the Boat House, on Indian Arm. The tree colors where ever we drove were marvelous, even through the fog.  We are having very good Autumn colors this year due to the light frost, and not too much rain and wind.  Its so beautiful where there are trees and shrubs that are planted for their Autumn foliage colors.  The Virginia Creeper, the Smoke bush and the sweet gum tree in my front garden are still in full foliage.  The back has color in the berries of the holly and fire thorn.

We picked the apples this afternoon, and I washed and sorted them.  I took the culls across the street and dumped them in the deer pasture.  There are a few more on the vegetable garden.  I put most of the apples into the plastic bin in the garage.  They should last for the winter.  I will need to make at least one pie soon. 
After finishing with the apples, I raked leaves off the flower beds and the paths.  Then I ran over them with the mower.  I now have a nice leaf mulch put over top of the compost on the vegetable garden. I gathered up most of the leaves off the moss garden.. which is really starting to look good.   The trees at the back still have about half of their leaves, so I will be doing this again.  The front trees have more of their leaves.  The pond will need draining and cleaning in the Spring.  It is covered with leaves.  I have the pump turned off, as it keeps getting its filter plugged up.  I read in a magazine that it is not good to have it run all winter, as the bottom layer of the water gets too cold for the fish.
I have been doing quite a lot of cooking lately, from recipes that look good.  Pumpkin soup, ratatouille, fennel, apple, walnut salad... it makes a nice change from the same old, same old.  I think I have the right kind of fennel growing in my garden.  I shall transplant some of the little ones I see popping up in the flower beds.  I grow this plant because the swallowtail butterflies like it.  It makes a nice vegetable in this salad.  I will want to try it sliced and cooked, next.

More mid October color

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This is the Virginia Creeper from about 10 days ago.  I cut it way back to about 3.5 feet up its pole, in the Springtime.  It has grown right up to the top again and is putting on some gorgeous autumn color.  I used the old dead twigs to line the woodland path and the composted dirt from the cleanup as compost in the woodland at the back.  I am finished cleaning up this woodland area and have transplanted 12 perennials and some daffodils, hyacinths, tulips into the area. 

this is looking over my back fence at the sumacs in a neighbor's back yard. The reddish tree on the left is my Japanese cedar that goes this interesting bronze/red color for the winter.  The area under this tree is cleaned up, but the compost I had did not extend to under this tree.  I have self seeding perennials in this part of the woodland.  I am not sure if too much compost added would be good for them.  I cleaned out 4 bags of compost from the old compost bin, but I think I will be using it on the vegetable garden patch.  I think the soil there needs to be beefed up so things grow.

The sweet gun tree is starting to show a bit of color in this photo of about a week ago.  It should be really nice in a few days.  We have had a light frost or two and more rain.

My light garden is looking ok.  All the African violets are in bloom.  The little magenta dendrobium has a couple of flowers.
I have been making soups.  I tried a ratatouille recipe.  I am not a big fan of food with tomatoes, but this was delicious.  Today I made a salmon chowder and it had tomatoes in it as well.  Was good, too.

mid October color

The Autumn colors are looking terrific.  It has been raining for the last couple of days... not all the time, but enough to put an inch of water into the rain gauge.   Since I am mostly finished my Fall clean up, I can play with my photos.  I hope you can see the rain drop trails in the top photo.  The second one is the coreopsis in its container next to the bird bath.  The bottom one is of a willow I somehow got horn-swaggled into buying at the Rock and Alpine garden show and sale this spring.  Its an interesting story.  Not everyone gets treated to the generosity of a Count... I think that is his actual title.  As I shopped at the sale at the show, I chose a few choice plants ... lewisias if I remember correctly... from on the table, and put them into my tray to buy.  Lo and behold, this man came to my tray, grabbed the lewisias and said 'those are mine'.  I meekly said, 'you can't take my plants!'.  He said, they were in my tray, I just left them on the table while I talked to someone... I suppose it is my own fault' he muttered.  and proceeded to give me these willows, because I had said I was looking for one particular miniature willow.  Well, I must say, after talking to him and saying that he did not have to give me his plants, it was just as much my fault for taking his stuff, I was very generously compensated for the loss of the lewisias I had chosen.  I also learned a lot about the plants.  This was a very enthusiastic plantsman, and truly of some Royal designation, as I found from reading the newsletter, later.  Our city is populated by all kinds of people who find it to be a paradise. .. from rock stars to royalty.  We let them alone to live a normal life, too, it seems.  Life is good on the left coast.
The colors of Autumn are changing very quickly.  Sometimes the light is amazing... I don't think I could capture it with my cameras.  As we had dinner tonight, I watched out the dining room window, as the light faded from the glow on the leaves and color in the sky to grey and black in a matter of minutes.  It was truly marvelous.  And so was the conversation over dinner.  Just as an aside, I think a civilized and interesting dinner hour is wonderful.  I am definitely blessed.
I spent quite a bit of time on Megashot, today.  This was fun, too.  The site is quite fast.  I believe Cyrus is working like crazy to get Version 2 designed, coded and on line, asap.  There are a few glitches in the site since migration, but as the site will be a lot different on version 2 these things should not matter.  (I can't believe I typed CITY instead of SITE in the above sentence.  Yes, the site is like a city, inhabited by friends and as it grows, by people we only see in passing, through the Explore or the Contests or in members photo uploads, or other places. )
I ran into a small annoyance ... Java wanted to update... well hells bells, everything wants to be updated, constantly.  I said No and googled this Java update thing.  After reading some of the answers to my search saying its a virus... eeeek ... everything is a virus...  I found a site that seemed to me to say what it really is... Java seems to have this checking thing running in the background and asking to be updated.  The people on this site say you can disable this annoyance, and your computer will run faster.  ok... I just left it at "no" for now.  I have no idea what Java does, or why I might need it.  According to the geeks on the site, that I tend to believe, it can be disabled with no loss but with an improvement to speed of the cpu.