The last week in September and the first week in October, it rained like January showed up early. All my tomatoes exploded and rotted. It was awful! I got enough green tomatoes for three little half-pint jars of pickled cherry tomatoes, and not much else. Thankfully, that kind of weather doesn't hurt the green beans, which kept producing up until the end of October. I dug up the potatoes, and for six plants, I wish I had gotten more, but three pounds of fingerlings isn't something to turn your nose up at, I suppose. It's amazing how nice home grown potatoes are. I mean, you think there can't possibly be that much room for improvement in the potato world, but it's pretty impressive how potatoes out of the garden are that much better.
The last week in September, while my tomatoes were starting to explode, the bathroom was being ripped out and rebuilt from the studs. The only bathroom. It is kind of fun to take a vacation right here in my own town, though if it were just for fun, I'd pick something other than the airport hotel offering the best discount. It was actually pretty nice, a sizeable room and a monster king-sized bed, clean and new, but not much else to recommend it.
The first weekend in October (the only day it didn't rain for probably three solid weeks), The Lovely Boyfriend and I climbed Mount St. Helens. I have never done anything like that in my entire life. Even after training all summer, it was impossible, and it was beautiful. We made it to the top, but I wasn't totally sure until I saw the car that I would make it to the bottom. 8500 feet or so straight up, in about five miles. Then 8500 feet or so (I was sure it was 20,000) back down. We emerged through the clouds early on, then scrambled up rocks in the sunshine, wind, and even a bit of snow on the ground.
I've got to find my next challenge like this!
We've had sun on and off through some of October and a surprising amount of November. The garden is all ripped out. Farmer's market pears and asian pears are made into butters. Apples (from the Portland Nursery apple festival) have been made into pie (though we've got more to go). Pie cherries and Rainier cherries are in the freezer waiting to be made into jam. There are a few last fingerling potatoes to be pan-roasted with rosemary. Garlic is laid out to dry in the basement. Garlic is planted again for the winter. Last weekend, we raked two full huge trash-can-sized yard waste bins worth of leaves, only to have the wind and the rain kick in again and leave the yard littered anew within just a few hours.
Now, it seems, it's time for nesting. Mostly figuratively. Though the Lovely Boyfriend has been telling me for years that I need chickens. It didn't take long for me to figure out that this wasn't about me. HE wanted chickens! So for his birthday, I bought him A Chicken In Every Yard, the chicken-keeping book from Urban Farm Store, a gift certificate for four chicks, and a promise to help build a coop. We'll see what Cat thinks about chickens.
Other nesting projects: We need to paint the living room. Those frozen cherries need to be turned into jam. I made, and will make more, no-knead bread. Soup (lots of soup). A clafouti with some of the berries in the freezer. Maple custard. I bought some cheap port to go in the cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving, and I have this great (?) plan to cook some of it down with some sugar into a syrup to make into a port soda with sparkling water from the Sodastream (perhaps the best hundred-and-some bucks I ever spent). Now here is a toy I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of yet. I've got a gazillion ideas for ginger ale, fruit sodas, spice and herb sodas (Biwa makes a black pepper soda that is indescribable, fascinating, and delicious), and there has to be a vast world out there of sodas I haven't even thought of yet. Yet we usually just stick to sparkling water, maybe with a dash of orange bitters.
Time for me to go to sleep and dream of sugar and bubbles...
