A New Twist on "Gardening"

This summer I've been working on inviting native bees to my garden. 

We are enjoying unseasonably dry and warmer temperatures than is the norm for fall. This is what passes for a drought here. A month at a time without rain. Although I normally spend September cleaning up the garden and canning or freezing the stragglers, this year I am working outside straight through October. There has been no frost and not enough rain to keep me inside which means some canning is on hold and my house is suffering immensely. After all, rain is the gardener's excuse to clean house. That brings me to the fall garden. I have been working on putting in raised beds because I have just had it with fighting the sandy soil that wont hold ANY water. What a difference. I planted carrots and beets (yes we love beets) and they are growing like crazy. I also as of October 15th got all three varieties of my garlic in. The raised beds are so easy to weed and maintain and they hold moisture.

Got another good crop of potatoes this year although not as good as last year. I have to chock that up to the fact that I didn't get them planted in a timely fashion.

Yukon Gold, German Butterball, Cherokee Red, and a Russet.

This also brings me to the cold frame. Now that my neighbor cut down all his trees to put in a horse arena, my cold frame and grapes get tons of sun. Yep. I actually harvested bags of sweet grapes. So it was time to clean out the cold frame a few days ago and replant some spinach. I needed to enlist some help from a friend that is really good at spotting what looks like cut worms.

Yummy! Lunch!

She also likes taking a nap in the warm sun.

Will finish with pictures of what has been happening around here since spring. I also want to thank you all for sticking with me while I went through my writers block. I can't guarantee I will be much better but with the advent of colder weather maybe, just maybe I will find something interesting to write about.

Out of 15 baby geese we kept two, one died (see previous post) and we sold the rest. However I wont be doing that again. There are too many bird factories churning out unusual birds for people that think they want them.

Our youngest graduated from high school in June and will
be in her second year this fall at the junior college thanks to
Running Start.

I got 5 Lavender Orpington chicks in July. This is a picture
in September. 

We were finally able to remodel the deck that has been rotting
off the house (read dangerous to walk on) since we bought
the house. I am really pleased with it. 

In addition I have finally started renovating the landscaping in the front yard however that is going to have to wait until spring now. I have coop winterizing to do. Then on to the indoor projects.