New Arrival

Fall is definitely here. We’ve had blustery rainy days and all the maples have changed colours and are dropping their leaves. Though the sky has been overcast our porch seems brighter since Ryan has cleaned up most of the summer planters. Those huge tomato plants blocked a lot of the light. Our summer garden isn’t completely gone, we still have a nice bunch of swiss chard and some basil. We’ve also gotten a renewal of blooms on several of the marigolds.

Our fall garden hasn’t been a big success. The spinach and kale are small but still growing, the garlic looks like it is doing well, but the brocolli is a complete failure. Spindly little plants.

We haven’t seen any frogs around lately but we hear them every night. One evening a froggy was singing a very LOUD sad song. Froggy sings the blues. This afternoon I glanced out the slider and “plop” a little splot landed on the patio. I got up to see what it was and it was an itty bitty frog. I’m assuming it was inside the spinach planter and had just jumped out. I went and got the camera and took a few shots. Brave little fella, didn’t even try hopping away when I slid a penny next to it for size comparison.[newline]

[thumb:457:l][newline]

Fall has also led to the arrival of the spiders! Those big garden spiders are everywhere now. One even had the gall to build it’s web across our front door frame. I opened the door one day to get a box from FedEx and there is this huge spider hanging over me. The guy said, “I hope you’re not afraid of spiders?”

“Terrified of them”, I responded.

He then reached up an grabbed the spider out of it’s web with his bare hands!!!! Now I’m sure he was thinking brave man helps scared woman but all I could think of was freak grabbed the spider with his bare hands!!!!!

Garlic shoots

The garlic has sent up shoots. From what I’ve read the growth will slow down as the weather gets colder and they should survive fine through the winter. In fact they need the cold snap to develop good bulbs. It’ll be interesting to see how it goes.

Fall/Winter Prep

The tomato plants are gone. I harvested another big bowl of tomatoes today and then took out the plant (which was looking pretty sad).
[thumb:454:c][thumb:453:c][thumb:455:c]

With the plants gone I took out the remaining cages, except for the beans. They’ll come out after the beans dry. Our flowers are still going strong.
[thumb:452:c]

This is our first year trying the garlic. We planted Inchelium Red garlic bought from Baker Creek Heirloom seeds. They’ve sold out already. One of the other sites I’ve checked is sold out as well. This is our first attempt at growing garlic so we’ll see how it goes.

I think next year I want to find some sort of mulch cover to use in the containers. The first year we used the plastic covers that came with the boxes but I’d prefer a natural alternative. I’ll think about it and maybe come up with something by spring.

Transitions

I harvested a bowl full of tomatoes this afternoon. I took out the cucumber and the patio orange tomato plants. I also removed our old flowers. Didn’t spend too much time on it since I’m still recovering from a cold. Next weekend maybe I’ll put in the garlic cloves. Assuming the rest of the pink egg tomatoes are ready to harvest and the plants can be taken out. In the meantime the new broccoli, spinach and kale is all growing. The beans will start drying soon, I think. We’ve got more marigolds blooming and our sunflower is starting to bloom.
[thumb:451:l][thumb:450:l]

Westport Light State Park

Last week Ryan said we were going on a road trip on Monday but wouldn’t tell me where. So early Monday we made a picnic lunch, gathered up the dogs and got in the car for our surprise. We drove out to Westport on the coast, to the Westport Light State Park.

It has picnic tables, a bathroom (but no drinking fountain), and parking lot at the trail head. There is a paved trail, with benches and lookouts along it, that goes for 1.3 miles and meets up with Westhaven State Park. The paved path is up from the beach surrounded by tall (and sharp) beach grasses and small bushes, wildflowers, etc. There are dirt paths leading away from the paved path down to the beach. Several times we picked a path that led to a big dropoff and had to backtrack to find a safe path down to the beach. The beach is a nice sandy and pebbled shoreline.

Poppy Seed and McCoy leading the way up the trail.
[thumb:431:l][newline]

Views from the path.
[thumb:425:l][thumb:429:l][newline]

One of the lookouts.
[thumb:434:l][thumb:432:l][newline]

Heading down to the beach. You can barely see the dogs in the tall grass.
[thumb:438:l][newline]

The dogs aren’t to sure about this beach business. McCoy says, “that water tastes NASTY!”.
[thumb:421:l][thumb:422:l][thumb:420:l][newline]

After our first walk along the beach we went back to the trailhead and had a nice picnic lunch then headed back out to the trail. By the second time around it was getting hot and the dogs were getting tuckered out. When we got back down to the beach McCoy just flopped down in the wet sand to cool off. We stayed there waiting for a wave to come in and get him (I know, evil parents!) but I didn’t quite catch it with the camera.

[thumb:437:l][thumb:436:l][thumb:441:l][newline]

“Okay, we’ve cooled off our paws.
[thumb:440:l][newline]

Home is this way, follow us” –Poppy and McCoy.
[thumb:439:l][newline]

We had a lot of fun and really tuckered the dogs out.

x Powerful Protection for WordPress, from Shield Security
This Site Is Protected By
Shield Security →