September is shaping up to be a crazy month! (Lucky I’m crazy enough to deal with it.) I’m still picking piles of fruit and veggies from the garden, and we’re busily socking it away to enjoy throughout the winter. The considerable overflow goes to our friends and neighbours as well as the Food Bank.
We might have been just a teeny bit over-enthusiastic when we were planting the garden, but… look at all this glorious food!
(Click on photos to enlarge.)
A single picking of tomatoes. (I pick a couple of times a week.)
Ten gallons of chopped carrots all ready for the freezer.
50 pints of pickles, 22 pints of jam, 7 pints of salsa, 28 pints of beans (another 20 pounds frozen), 24 pints of tomatoes and lots to go, and still a bit of space left for the rest of the beets and tomatoes and pickled hot peppers. YUM!
But our autumn isn’t only about food. The flowers are still gorgeous, too, and the bees and other wildlife are hard at work stocking their own pantries:
This little black bear has been feasting on the wild cherries only a few hundred feet from our house. Don’t be fooled by his casual pose — he’s actually about 30 feet up a tree. (He’s a little blurry because Hubby took this shot using a LONG zoom — we have a healthy respect even for small bears!)
This little guy has been hard at work snipping off pine cones and stashing them away.
I’m not sure whether it was my camera or the tiny white spider (near the centre of the flower) that chased this bee off the zinnia. Either way, he’s buzzing off.
The snapdragons are still putting on a show.
One of our newest rhododendrons, Medusa, is a bit confused as to whether it’s spring or fall, but she’s beautiful anyway!
We’ll have a couple more rounds of houseguests this month, so maintaining my writing schedule for Book 15 will be a juggling act. (Fortunately not with fish.) To salvage some time I’ll dial back my blogging schedule to every second week for the month of September, so my next post will be September 18.
How’s your September shaping up? Are you harvesting any goodies from your garden?
Book 15 update: I’m bombing along on Chapter 4! Hellhound would normally be voted “Most Likely To Get Arrested While On Vacation”, but Aydan’s the one who’s ended up in handcuffs…
Author Diane Henders 