Gardening, anyone?

Beans are done. Grandson picked apples and tomatoes - the apples were turned into apple butter. Tomatoes were made into sauce and daughter tried drying some tomatoes and made sundried tomatoes! She had a great time with my garden. Corn is almost done.

Mommy, What do you do to the tomatoes to freeze them?

Cold rainy day.

Yesterday, woke up to a light frost in the North Country.

Deer for the appetizer......ate the sunflowers then for the main course......ate all the bush green beans and majority of the grape tomatoes. They saved the amaranthus - love lies bleeding for last......dessert.

We did enjoy plenty of scallions and some delicious grape tomatoes.

May everyone have a fun Labor Day weekend............last call for summer!

teka I hope you enjoyed some of your garden. It sounds like the deer sure did.

Jazzy such a pretty picture. I love the gerbera daisies.

This is when I assess what worked this summer and what did not in each spot. I was super happy with my ageratum and alyssum combo. Just gorgeous. Moved my sum and substance hosta to the shadier back and much better result. Hostas on the east side look quite ratty the last half of the summer. Think I might move my coral bells over ther next spring and rip out the hostas all together. A gardeners work is never done.

Always love my sedums. They are blooming now and covered with honey bees. That is my sign of summer ending. I managed to get a shot of this guy this morning before I scared him off.

Got to get out to the garden to get more of the tomatoes in to process.

Went to Santa Fe yesterday to spend time with a friend and we walked into town on a trail I have been curious about and saw lots of interesting wild flowers. Below are my favorites from our time on the trail

Wild geranium

I am not sure what this is, not in my wildflower book but love it

Sacred datura (white flower) that is very commmon here and featured in many Georgia O'Keefe paintings. With globemallow

Saw some fabulous globemallow clusters yesterday. One of my fav wildflowers

Cool Native American indian garden where corn is planted on the outside, and bean and squash on the inside

Perfect yellow rose in a garden we walked through at the Shrine of Guadaloupe

BTW, the smoke from the fires is all the way down here in NM. Warnings on the news about anyone with resp issues (me) and outdoor time. I had a scratchy throat after being outside yesterday on my walk.

Please be safe friends whether you are in the path of the wild fires or the path of the next hurricane heading along the east coast.

Air quality is bad here too. Ash falling in Seattle. Not sure which fire it's from.

I'm hoping it doesn't blow east. DS lives in Hood River.

Scottie, I love my hummingbirds - I was so worried with the smoke here - but it looks like they survived. Here is one outside my home office window. BTW, we did get a little rain last night and our air particulates are out of the "Hazardous" level into the "unhealthy" level.

We're lucky that the Anna's hummingbirds over winter here.

I never got my hummingbird feeders out this year, but I love the hummingbirds. They are so entertaining, especially when they are not shy.

Pretty pictures, Jazzy. The unidentified picture looks kind of like Indian Blanket, Gallardia?, with some petals missing? I think I would love New Mexico. Have to take a trip sometime.

We have also gotten the smoke in the Chicago area! Just one day. I was out walking and I thought who is burning wood. I couldn't identify any source in the neighborhood, then I thought they were doing a burn at the forest preserve. When I watched the weather they mentioned it was from the Canadian wildfires. It only lasted a day here because are winds are usually from the south and southwest in the summer, so the wind switched back to the other direction.

Found a recipe for my tomatoes - you dry them until they are brittle then put them in a blender - make them into powder - 1 tbsp of powder equals an 8 oz can of tomato sauce. Just add water. - so tomatoes were dried last week. I got 2 pints of powder for tomato sauce.

Froze about a dozen quarts of apples and made hubby and his friend a 9 x 13 pan apple pie (no extra sugar). Still have another big bucket of apples to go.

I don't even want to think about the champagne grapes that I make into jelly - they still need to be harvested.

We had beavers here felling trees in a natural area park. They decided they were just doing what beavers do and left them alone. Perhaps they'll return to finish the job at your house.

Still raining in North Alabama. Despite this, I covered up and headed to the garden yesterday afternoon. Hubby made a roast in the Romertopf and his new recipe called for herbs. The garden was fresh and clean from the rains.

I realize we are so fortunate to just have rain and wind.

Coach Vicky