Autumn's here
After a long and exhausting battle, summer has finally given up and left us in the much more capable hands of autumn. Mornings are chilly, yellow leaves are raining down from their respective trees every time the wind picks up, and the praying mantises are looking for the best place for their eggs. And the rain has returned.
A lot of people like blue skies. The female members of the Slav household not so much, not after three full months of blue skies. In fact, Cat has had enough with summer so much that she dreams of going on a trip to Siberia, preferably the northern half. It would have to be a ladies-only trip because Cris does not take kindly to cold. But that’s in the future, and the cloudy skies are in our glorious present. As is an unexpected little green thing.
We planted half a dozen watermelon seeds in the spring. Three sprouted and two bore fruit, or shall we say fruitlings. We harvested the two Cat-fist-sized melonettes a few weeks ago and, amazingly, they did taste of genuine watermelon despite their size.
This one was a surprise — the last, going-out-of-business-sale growth spurt of the third plant. Better late than never, probably. It would need to grow fast, though, because single-digit minimum temperatures are coming next week. Good news for our tomato-pickling plans.
They’re big, they’re plump and they will never get the chance to ripen because that’s not what we’re growing them for and, for once, the weather is cooperating, which is a shock we've have yet to recover from. Then it’s marinade time.
This tomato underperformer just deigned to form a fruit about a week ago. It probably won’t grow enough to join the winter jars but it certainly looks fancy with its new companion. And so do the sowbreads.
Just when you think colour is over for the year, these little guys spring up seemingly out of nowhere after the death of their leaves. They’re wildlings, they flower every year and they clearly appreciated the September rains this season. As did we. Here, have a double rainbow.
Just before a catastrophic flood. I gave my late producing Tomatoes to the grave made after the destruction of what was left of my tiny garden. I only had three veggies planted, those being Tomatoes, Squash and Cucumbers. My bigger Tomatoes were damaged badly from cut worms and bug bites not to mention extreme heat and cracks following said heat with pop up thunderstorms which cracked the top of ALL of them. The squash died early from a wet start rotting the plants b/f they ever produced. I had installed an elevated cucumber ramp to make the fruit more easily available to pick but used chicken fence for them to climb, resulting in the fruit growing through the fence and being impossible to extract..lol. So pretty much a wash out except for the millions of cherry Tomatoes arriving very late in the season.
I grew a larger garden years back with two watermelon vines. They did good until the weeds made the vines die, and so late in the season I noticed three small round nearly black fruits that I didn't realize the obvious watermelony similarities. They weren't getting larger, so I picked them, cut into one and found some of the best watermelon I had ever eaten.
God bless you and your family and neighbors, Irina, and I hope it isn't out of place here but I would ask that you pray for the good people of my area in the southern Appalachian mountain who were totally wiped out and are being neglected from our government. Anyone who lived in close proximity to any stream were dangerously flooded with an already inundated ground a week before to hurricane Helene's
A rough summer is ending here as well. But the rats have returned. There will be a reckoning and much crunching of bones.