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.

On the 30 of Sept. we took the 1912 Model T out and road tested it's speedometer.  We clocked the fastest speed at 50 miles per hour, but that did not include the fast downhill runs we sometimes do in order to get a good run at the hill we must climb next.  In the evening, we packed our prepared supper into the Dodge Lodge and went out near the airport to try to catch the sunset.  With a little help from photoshop, this one turned out not too bad.  It helps to shoot in RAW.

 I am adding photos from our trip to Sask to an account at Megashot, where I have shared the link with family members.  This is somewhere in the Merritt area.  You can see the damage from the forest fire of some years ago, is now growing in green again. 

 This is one of the photos from our Island Challenge meet of the Antique Chapter of the VCCC.  Our meet hotel was at Campbell River Lodge that is located right next to the river.  Its a marvelous location.  I am uploading photos from this meet to a gallery on Megashot.  I will be linking all the participants in the meet to the gallery, as soon as I am finished adding all the photos, which should be soon. 

This is Pat's car at the "I blew it" Glass blowing studio on Quadra Island.  It was a challenging road to arrive at this, our final destination on the Island Challenge.  More photos in my Megashot gallery for the Island  Challenge

I have been making soups and freezing them.  Last one was the Classic Pea Soup with ham made from split peas, carrots, celery, onion, ham and the meat stock from cooking some smoked turkey legs.  We tested it for lunch today and it was pronounced good.  Today I made cabbage rolls, but only have one meal of them to freeze.    I must make more.  I found a very nice recipe for clam chowder that I will be making up next week.  I will be making lasagne also. 

We have had no rain for a month.  The soil is very dry.  Perhaps I should be out watering. 

The Heron is back

 While making the salad and looking out the kitchen window, I saw this very big heron land on the deck railing.  It noticed me while I was backing away and going for my camera.  It flew to the garage roof where I managed to get a quick shot of it.  It then flew down to the edge of the pond, and as I was trying to sneak up to take a shot over the deck railing, it saw me and ran to the neighbors yard, where it has room to spread its wings and fly away.  It is a huge heron.

 This is the tomatoe that grew from the plant on the deck.  There are 2 more.  The one that grew on the garden tomato was full of flavour.  I really must try to keep them watered next year.

These are some of the ingredients that go into the mulligatawny soup.  Basically, it is a chicken, rice and vegetable soup.  I made a double recipe and have 10 of the 590 ml containers to add to my frozen soups.  I have made minestrone soup, and a squash with quinoa soup, also.  I have about 18 pints of the purple plums preserved and frozen.  I will be making a few more soups to freeze, for the convenience of having prepared lunch items.  We are trying to stay away from the high sodium canned soups available at the stores.  In this regard, Campbells Soups are shutting down several of their plants, due to the slowing down of their soup sales.  This is probably partly due to the economy and perhaps partly due to people wanting to eat more 'healthy'. I must say, the soups I have made so far are delicious.  I make my own chicken stock, and have now started to make my own beef stock, also.  I have made fish stock, also, but have none on hand right now.  These stocks add so much flavour and goodness to the soups.  I use them when I prepare rice or quinoa, also. 
Oh yes, we had a fig from our tree for dessert this evening also.  The green apples you see in the photo are from our backyard tree.  They are golden delicious, but not yet ripe.  The recipe called for green apples.