After an unmercifully hot summer, fall has finally arrived! Hooray!! It is such a relief and also a bit surprising because we should be having our first frost right about now yet so far there is no sign of it. Sure, the mornings are chilly but the daytime highs are still in the 70s and 80s and the overnight lows of 40ish are forecast all the way to October! 😮

Some things are dying off naturally regardless, like the sunflowers. They look so sad out there!

Speaking of death (it is close to Halloween now!), I’m gathering the supplies to carve our own gravestones and while doing some genealogy the other day I ran across this picture of one of my ancestor’s graves.

It looks remarkably like one in this tutorial:

So that was pretty neat. My supplies for the chicken wire ghost girl are coming today and I’m so excited to get to work on her, too!

Anyway, back to the garden!

Now, I’m not sure why the universe is giving us an extended gardening season but believe me, I am not complaining. I think perhaps this is to make up for the crazy summer weather we endured but whatever the reason, we are grateful for this easing into autumn.

Speaking of crazy, my cucumbers are finally coming in (finally!!) just as the vines are dying (ha!) and the cucumbers themselves are really weirdly shaped.

Some look like little pumpkins and some look like elf shoes? 😄

There are a dozen or so and none are forming properly at all so I’m not sure they’ll be edible, but it’s nice to see that they did something!

We will probably feed them to the meat birds, most of which turned out to be girls (which means they are smaller-ish) and some of them have taken quite a liking to Fred and have formed a fan club that stays close to him even though they are separated out…

I don’t blame them, he’s a handsome dude. He seems to not mind the extra attention. 😄

We’ve spent the last few days doing some cleanup around the yard, a bit of DIY inside (which I’ll share soon) and also processing all of the onions we harvested a couple weeks ago. I imagine the entire neighborhood can smell them!

The dehydrator is working overtime but it’s definitely paying off and we should have enough dried onion to last for years just from this season alone.

This weekend we’ll harvest the potatoes and the rest of the pumpkins. The cherry tomatoes are still going like mad and the bigger tomatoes are much happier with the weather of late so I’m picking several of those a day finally…

My elderberry bushes seem to be quite happy in their new spots and one has even given me berries as a thank you!

As I bid farewell to my garden I’m trying to absorb all I’ve learned from this year including not to let powdery mildew get out of control like I did in the pumpkin patch near the chicken coop. The pumpkins weren’t affected by it but it did kill off the leaves on many of the plants. We’re going to get out there today and clear them all up and burn them.

It seems like the bulk of the work in gardening happens at the end of the year so I’m a bit wiped out! Between everything else I’m doing and this, it’s time for a well deserved break. Lucky for us we are moving into the off season here so the prices of luxury hotels in the area are dropping and I just might be able to talk the hubs into a road trip soon. Maybe even over to McCall so we can sit by the lake and watch the sunrise again.

Ahhhh.

That would definitely be a great way to welcome in the fall!