It will soon come to the time when we can’t enjoy the fresh smell of laundry on the line. It hasn’t rained here much at all lately and the brown grass crunches under your feet. Anything that’s still trying to grow in the garden is only hanging on cos I’m watering every day.

A couple of the tomato plants are still trying, tho the tomatoes get smaller as we go.  My Hopi orange Limas are almost over but those plants are still trying a little too, making a few new thin shoots and even a couple blossoms.

The black walnuts are mostly down off the tree and the squirrels have most of them gathered up to store away for winter. There are two new big leaf nests in the one oak tree beside the house.  They are putting food away for cold days just as some people have been.

The King Limas are starting to wind down, and the green beans look rough now. I have a few of the King pods marked with a magic marker to remind us to leave those pods for seeds.  We’ll still get to eat a few more King Limas but the rest of the green beans are going to dry for seeds for next year. (Insert regular short soap box speech about heirloom plants and growing natural, real food, etc, lol.)

My son and almost daughter in law enjoy their fall evenings with their smoker, making good things for suppers and work lunches for the next week.  They both look like they are asleep in this picture, but are actually awake and tending to the temperature inside the smoker, lol. I guess they had smoke in their eyes.  They had some amazing ribs smoking here. In the spring they will get married, in a beautiful handfasting ceremony on Beltane, a wonderful day for new beginnings in a season full of new beginnings.

There is lots of fall work to be done as one thing after another ends its cycle and gets taken down.  Sad, but the cycle continues, and all the work we do now makes the beginning of spring gardening easier to get started. We’ll grow more good things to eat and watch nature give us more blessings as the earth warms up again. And eat some good stuff I prepared and packed away for the cold icy days that are coming.