Might freeze tonight

So I'm sitting here listening to music, loud.

Janiva Magness, "Eat the Lunch You Brought."

Clara Ward Singers, "Traveling Shoes."

Bonnie Raitt and Ruthie Foster, "Angel From Montgomery."

John Hiatt, "Tiki Bar."

Ruthie Foster, "Death Came A-Knocking."

Leslie West, "Stormy Monday." 

Leonard Cohen, "Everybody Knows."

Ruthie Foster and Robben Ford, "Stormy Monday."

Vaughn Brothers, "White Boots."

We're betting that freezing temperatures won't hit the garden tonight. The forecast says 34 degrees, with patches of frost in the valleys. Some years we gallop madly around draping plastic sheeting over the tenderest plants, but I think we'll play it cool and just pick all the green tomatoes when the forecast looks more serious. Fingers crossed, because we have a lot of green fruit out there.

I picked almost-ripe tomatoes today, and green beans and a few strawberries. And brought in the potted plants.

Yesterday we hit the book sale, then hauled in 25 very heavy cabbages. I'm hoping to give some of those cabbages away, since we have a 10-gallon crock of sauerkraut percolating in the kitchen, as well as a batch of cabbage-rich borscht in jars in the pantry. And there are a few more cabbages in the garden!

C. canned 10 pints of chili sauce.

Bug nut

When I was a secretive bookworm child, I had a sign that swiveled out from between books on my desk bookshelf and said 'BUGOLOGIST.' I'd made it with cardboard and one of those 1970s label-makers that punched raised letters into a bright colored adhesive strip – remember those?

We found a big ol' preying mantis on the porch the other day, and took pictures. 

I guess I'm still a bugologist.

Catching up

Well, summer has been and gone, and all kinds of stuff has happened.

C. adopted a new dog. That's her on the right. She's a 15-year-old Maltese-poodle mix, toothless, bouncy and deaf as a post.

She is very demanding. C. calls her Imelda. 

My plan for zero population growth in the chicken house was a bust. Every day when I collected eggs, I poked under the three setting hens. There were never any eggs, and rummaging under their feathery butts seemed, well, rude. So I quit. And the little fiends managed to lay and/or steal a dozen eggs, and hatch six chicks. I'm sure all six are hens. Really. Damn.

Skeeter and one of her three chicks.

The hairdo sisters hatched three between them, but Skeeter stole one.

The garden has been amazing. We got our first tomato, a Dzvin, on July 21. We've had a steady supply since – tiny cherries, huge pink Prudent Purples, meaty plums... C. has a batch of herbed tomato sauce in the canner now. Yesterday she canned a batch of choke-cherry syrup from fruit she picked from the roof. And she made and canned catsup for the first time. Delicious. And chili sauce, which is basically spicier catsup, full of tomatillos, peppers and garlic. 

She's kept rabbit greens, sunflower seeds, shell beans and all kinds of other stuff rotating through the food driers. 

And our boy was up the other day and put his chef skills to work chopping cabbage for kraut.

The house is full of food, which is just how I like it.

More later.