We Plough The Fields and Scatter

Gardening season is winding down. I pulled all the zucchini plants. The cucumbers are done and the other squash vines are looking a bit peaked. We will be buried under a mountain of butternut squash, I think. Last year, I didn’t get any because they just didn’t ripen in time. I love to make soups with butternut squash and pumpkin, so having a good number of them won’t be a hardship.

I got about a dozen nice ears of corn. I blanched those yesterday and cut the kernels off and froze them. Next year, I will do a bigger patch of corn. I’ve had mixed success with corn over the years. This variety was Fisher’s Early. Starting the corn and beans in the greenhouse after the plant sale worked exceptionally well and I will stick to that schedule next year.

I canned up another eight quarts of tomato sauce. I still haven’t gotten to the pie filling, but the apples are in the garage where it is cool and they will keep. I have one eye on the Red Wealthy and Honeycrisp trees. They will need to be cleaned off before long.

We’ve dug up and eaten some of the volunteer potatoes around the garden. We won’t dig the big patch of potatoes until everything else has been cleared out. I cut lettuce from the tray in the greenhouse and made a big salad to go with last night’s meal of spaghetti.

I brought in one large cabbage and there are half a dozen others waiting.

I am happy with this year’s harvest. I would have liked to have had some broccoli and cauliflower, but the ground squirrels won that battle. I’ll figure out a plan for next year.

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My college roommate got me a gift certificate to Spoonflower as part of her thank-you to me for finishing the Sunbonnet Sue quilt. I’ve been dithering on how I want to spend it. I chose this design, called Botanical Green Water Garden, and had it printed on their Modern Jersey substrate, a 95% polyester/5% spandex blend. (The photo doesn’t do the fabric justice—it is more greenish-blue and less yellow.)

I thought it might be a double-brushed poly but it’s not. The hand of the fabric is lovely, though, and I got enough to make a dress.

We’ve come a long way since the polyester double knits of the 1970s.

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I happened to catch Amanda Murphy’s livestream last week. She was going over her fall teaching schedule and mentioned that she was going to be in Idaho, at Becky’s Sewing Center in Coeur d’Alene. I love Amanda Murphy’s quilting rulers and would love to take a class from her, but her classes always fill up quickly. Wonder of wonders, I was able to get a spot in the class on December 4.

The November processing date for the pigs is the week of Thanksgiving, so if we keep that date, I won’t be able to take my annual birthday trip. (This year, my birthday is the day after Thanksgiving.) The Amanda Murphy class will be a nice consolation prize.