Pickled Green Tomatoes

I put up seven pints of them today. Finally, a use for the tomatoes that will never ripen.

That is all.

Sukkah (A Little Late)

This year's sukkah certainly belongs on the blog. I took pictures when I put it up, but haven't gotten around to posting until now. Better late than never (at least it is before next year's sukkah.

I started with the gourds that I managed to grow by simply leaving last year's gourds around the tree in the back. Sure enough, I got a plant, and quite a number of gourds. (Described here.)

The really cool thing is that it is possible to put these up without cutting them. I left a couple of vines with the gourds on them, and just draped them over the sukkah's roofing. Worked great.

I also put the leftover sunflowers to good use. Even though the birds ate all the seeds, the heads were still impressive, and they are on long and stiff stems. So I draped them over the roof and pushed the sunflowers through the schach.

Here's the sukkah's entrance:

with a sunflower and some gourds by way of greeting. And here's a view inside:

There's one of the sunflowers, and some gourds in the background behind the light.

A view with decorations:

These were provided by our neighbor's preschoolers and toddler. No question but that they make the sukkah. Every sukkah needs decorations made by kids. Really, I need to rent out children to decorate once we become empty nesters next year.

Been Awhile

Between fall holidays, the fact that the garden is winding down, and my desire to include pictures, I've been neglecting the blog. Even though I've got a few interesting things.

First, the garden in fall:


I cut down the sunflowers (and more on their fate in another post). So everything looks short. The tomato plants may look droopy, but they are still producing a few tomatoes. And I'm still losing some of them to fungus. Next year I'll spray! There is still some basil, and lots of parsley. I don't have time to freeze it all (or make and freeze another batch of pesto). I will regret this during the winter.

From another point of view:


I'm not sure there is a "before picture" from this angle earlier in the blog. But there used to be butterfly bushes next to the fence on the right-center. I started to prune them for the sukkah---they need to be heavily pruned---and ended up removing them. Which I have been meaning to do. My plan is to fill in the space with red currants which sound really interesting, easy to grow, would fit in the space...and are not attractive to birds! Anyway, that's the plan.

Meanwhile, I've already started next year's garden! At least one part of it. It was time to plant the garlic, and I've now dedicated a row to it (21 cloves, to be precise). And I used fertilizer. Believe it or not, I've never bothered to fertilize when I planted the garlic. I got smaller than usual bulbs this year, which got me thinking, however. Which is usually pretty dangerous.