Sleeping under a quilt at night keeps the chill away, but once I opened the back door to let out the dogs, I flipped on the porch light and saw the temperature was 52-degrees.
A cool September morn like this reminded me that it was time to bring out a few extra quilts. Most of my quilts are stored away but I had some that I pulled out from a trunk.
During cold weather, I keep a few quilts laying around for snuggling. We keep our home fairly cool during the winter months and use layered clothing and quilts to warm us up if necessary. Visitors used to joke about how cold our home was. Then energy prices soared. No one’s laughing now… they’ve all turned down their thermostats, too.
With our unseasonably cool growing season, our squash season has been squashed. We were awaiting the bulk of our harvest as this year, I planted later than normal to avoid the vine borer. Don’t know why I bothered — our harvest was destroyed anyway. Last weekend, the deer got to the side garden where I grew almost all of the squash plants. They not only ate all of the squash, they ate every leaf AND uprooted all of the squash plants and vines. We’ve never seen so much destruction. No longer deer, they’re being referred to as venison. We have plans to cull a herd that has become too destructive in the past years.
The Loofah plants are growing more baby Loofahs and strong tendrils — they were planted next to the back porch stair rails for support. I’ve been closely watching them, hoping I can harvest just one for a few scrubbers this winter. I may be in luck — one Loofah is growing well, about an inch a day. I grey-water this plant and it’s about 10-inches long now. I am thinking about artificially heating the grow area with an insulating wrap-around for the next couple of weeks. The lengths some of us go to in the garden….
Yesterday morning I worked in the vegetable garden. I cleared out 2 rows of green beans to make room for some late fall greens. Once the beans and debris was cleared, I added compost, then raked it in before I did the soil turning. This area, roughly 3′ x 27′, will be hooped with the 2 rows of kale and covered with insulated covering for our late fall harvests. The greens will include lettuces, beet and turnip greens, spinach, and mizuna.
It’s time to grab an overshirt and head outside again, seed packets in hand.
