October Happenings

The scenery here in Southern Maine is nearly at the peak of colored foliage.

I just love this time of year. Between the colors all around, the fantastic smells in the air, and the lovely crisp afternoons, I am one happy camper when autumn arrives. I love watching squirrels gathering acorns and the bees making their desperate trips to the remaining flowers. I try to grow flowers that bloom all season so that the bees have a little something to snack on.

Cooler weather (for me) means more baking. I also tend to make a lot of soups and stews, and naturally gravitate towards warm foods. In this pic I have a buttercup squash baking in the oven (on the right) and some healthy banana and zucchini bread on the left. Up on the stove in the red pot is a lovely soup bubbling away. You can well imagine that the house smells amazing!!

I simply gave a quick spritz of olive oil, a sprinkling of salt and pepper, and popped the squash into the oven. What's nice about buttercup squash is that it is relatively easy to cut it in half with a sharp knife, unlike some of the larger, tougher squashes. I scoop out the seeds and fibers, rinse the seeds really well and then bake those separately with a little salt and pepper on them...they're great for snacking on!

I dug my little greenhouse out of the shed this past weekend to put in front of my sliding doors. On the floor is the chia I started in late spring (which seems to be growing excruciatingly slow). The 2nd shelf has peppermint (I want to be able to snip it off for teas this winter. If I don't keep it in a container in the garden, it has a habit of spreading invasively). The top shelf will be my basil, which I dug out of the garden and placed in a pot inside since basil is not winter hardy.

I will be starting some lettuces and some scallions soon to place in this greenhouse so I can enjoy salads all winter long.

Here's my basil. I'm planning to snip off the seed heads and extract the seeds for drying and storage. Then I'll place the plant on the top shelf of the greenhouse.

This delicious basil will be going into today's soup! Yum, yum!!

Can you smell this amazing basil??

Here's an onion that I'm getting ready to place in my soup pot.

I just *LOVE* this little food chopper!!

A bit of garlic for the soup to help keep our immune systems up.

These two bags are filled with tomatoes from my garden. Several handfuls of these will taste great in the soup!

I run the frozen tomatoe under hot water, and the skin literally falls right off. Into the blender they go to be pureed, and then poured into the soup.

We've been busy putting air conditioners into storage lately. Now to get the kids to help me wash all of the windows on a nice sunny day and give the house a good airing out. I'll be doing my fall cleaning over the next couple of weeks, and airing out as much as possible before we close everything up well for the winter.

I have decorated the house for All Hallow's Eve, which I'm making a mental note right now to get some pictures of. The kids were so excited to see me come up from the basement with the autumn decor boxes in my hands. The more decorations I put up around the house, the more excited they got.  I just love having seasonal traditions that the kids get excited about.