October has been busy

 The Autumn colors are spectacular this year.  In looking back at last year's October in the garden, I find I have many similar photos, though. 

 This is the last clematis that climbs up the deck posts and sometimes surrounds the tub garden in blooms. 
The leaves are beginning to fall and I will need to do some more skimming of debris off the pond.  I will soon need to clean the leaves off the rock plants and put them on the grass to run over them with the lawn mower.  This worked really very well last Autumn to get some mulch to lay over the veggie garden space.  I will add bone meal again and lime and maybe greensand and other nutrients.  I will let this work naturally into the soil over the winter.  We are finished eating the purple plums.  We had more than 30 lbs.  We ate quite a few right off the tree, and I have about 20 pints preserved. 
It is the season for soups and I have been making extra large batches of different kinds of soup.  We are trying to stay away from the canned stuff in the stores as it is generally full of salt and these unrecognizable stuff.  I have also been making ratatouille, a few extra cabbage rolls, lasagne, and other things that I will have ready for when I do not feel like cooking.  I have a few more things that I want to make, yet, so the remainder of the month is going to be busy, too.
We have finally been getting some rain.  The temperatures have been a bit cooler . . . its a beautiful Autumn this year.  The michaelmas daisies, heathers, autumn crocus and heathers have been looking good in the garden too.  I should bring in the heliotrope as its fragrance is heavenly, and it should survive in the house.... maybe I can even carry it over to next year. 

I finally caught another snapshot of a drop on a flower.  This is not set up, but just a natural raindrop on a flower.  I found it while out taking snapshots while waiting to board the Coho to go to the crabfest in Port Angeles last weekend.

 This is shooting from the deck of the Coho while on our way to Port Angeles.  It was fairly cool out there.  The sailors must have been a bit chilly.

This is at the crab fest where there were a few kiosks with interesting things to see or buy.  This was a demonstration by the rescue team in their helicopter.  Thanks Irene and Dan for the wonderful hospitality at your home.  Was so much fun!

Aside from this, I have been learning a bit more about my Ipad.  I bought the movie 2012 from itunes on my pc and then managed to transfer it to my ipad by tethering the ipad to the pc and syncing them.  I learn how to do this stuff and them have to relearn it all if I ever go to do it again.  Once I transferred a photo, without the tethering, this time I transferred a photo with the sync method.  Well... its not as complicated as I like to make it.    Amazing stuff, really.  I have also been reading voraciously on my ipad too.  And so the garden goes without attention, as there is so many other things I want to do.
I have finished the Island Challenge photos and loaded them to my megashot account for the car stuff, and have let the people who were at the meet know of the gallery.  I am now working on the Can Am tour, and have also done a few more for the 2011 Pincher Creek Model T meet... there are some terrific photos in that one... but lots of them!  And so it goes...  I have finished processing the June photos for my album of that month on the gardening page of my old web page.  I need to now create that album with photoshop and them add titles, etc in notepad, before I can load it to the page.  I really like doing this stuff, but seem to have too little time to do it.  ..  So this is retirement?  Time seems to fly by.