Final Harvest

 

The forecast is for 29 degrees tomorrow night, the end of our growing season here. Thus the last tender things must be brought inside or their loss accepted. The fuchsia will be left out. I have never succeeded in wintering one so... Ditto the toothache plant, a first for me this year. I saved some seed and may harvest a bit more, but it's gonna be a goner. An ugly thing, but a fun novelty this year.

Lion's Ear...Many thanks to the nice lady who sent me seeds

The cannas are let to freeze, trimmed back to the ground, dug, and stored in totes and buckets in the pantry until spring. The potted ones I just haul in pots and all. I do try to winter the minis as house plants. They are kind of a pain to care for but I don't want to lose them. I saved seed from some of my favorites last year and they made it to bloom pretty early this summer, so I have been saving lots of seeds this year.

One miserable job is finding all the green tomatoes and stashing them somewhere indoors. For some reason tomato ripening was terribly sporadic this year and there are lots of green ones. There are also a number of bright red Alma peppers that need to come in to be dried for paprika. More on that in a later post that I have so far been too lazy to write.

Then begins the long cold. I recently read Alaska Challenge by Ruth and Bill Albee and Lyman Anson. It was written in 1930 about their insane adventure traveling across British Columbia following an uncharted path through the wildest of wilderness. It made me feel like a puppy, whining about modern NY winters, but still... BTW, it was quite a book. Becky got it for me as an audio book and at first i was so aggravated by the foolish things the Albees did that I almost DNFed it. However, as they got smarter, it got better, until I simply hated to see it end. If anyone knows of any websites detailing their later lives, I hope you will share. I am really curious to know what became of them and their Artic born children.

Anyhow, summer's over, the fun part of fall, ditto. And all I can say is BRRRR....