Twenty Things You Didn’t Know About Pumpkins

...but were afraid to ask...

.

1.  According to Wikipedia, a pumpkin is a cultivar of a squash plant, most commonly of Cucurbita pepo, that is round, with smooth, slightly ribbed skin, and deep yellow to orange coloration.

How did it get to be Christmas already?

What a summer it was!

The garden expands each year, and I find myself almost living inside that wonderful fence, with little Koukla who loves to hang out in the garden with me.

The biggest news about the garden happened in April:  I got a real greenhouse and we replaced all the wood chips in the pathways between raised beds with good old-fashioned sand.

First the greenhouse!  This pic was taken before I moved a ton of pallets and supplies inside.  We added two rain barrels to give clean chlorine-free water to all the seedlings, and they love it.  It only took 4 years to get this, and not a moment too soon.  Love love love my new greenhouse!

Painting the mud room

Painting the Mud Room

Sherwin-Williams has always understood me.  They know that if they send me a coupon for 40% discount, I will be in their store in nanoseconds.  They also know that, when we had the house built, I left two rooms unpainted (just basic ceiling white) because there had already been too many colors, texture, shape, size, pattern, etc., decisions to make and my decorator's brain was exhausted.  Those two rooms would have to be painted another time, by me.  

The coupon comes, Bruce goes out of town, and I get to work.  What a horror of a room to navigate in with ladders, paint buckets, and drippy brushes!  But I can do this!  YES!

The mud sink (aka Mutt Sink)

Wood you do the same as I wood?

Short Post.  Bought a Lumber Mill this past winter in order to make use of some of the many logs that we have at Bufflehead Pond Farm.  Most are trees that have fallen in a storm or were dead but standing so I cut them down.  After buying the used Mill, my neighbor and I bought about 20 large Washington Redwood trees that had been cut down to make way for a new fire station on Bainbridge Island. 

So I started with this:

And then we did this

And then we got this:

So I could make this

More projects coming

Survival of the Species

Puttering in the garden is the only activity that sets my brain free from the daily concerns of running a farm business, wondering what’s for dinner, will I have time to bathe my dirty dog tonight, what are those (bleeping) politicians going to screw up next, and so on.  It’s impossible to have stress in the garden, and that’s one of the reasons I spend so much time out there.  Time to recover from daily brain damage, time to listen to the birds, time to touch the dirt/compost/vermiculite/peat mixture that our veggies love to sink their feet into, to feel the cool greenness of our growing “children” who want nothing more than to end up on our dinner plates.

Shuckin' and Chivin'

My garden in autumn always looks like a hurricane went through it.  (My apologies and sympathies to so many out there who actually did go through some horrid storms this year!)  The tomatoes are at an end, still struggling to ripen before the rains descend, their leaves yellowed and tattered and pathetic.  Peas have come and gone a couple of times now and the stragglers hang on the fencing with their tongues hanging out, making seeds for next year.  Same with all the beans.  The cucumbers Bruce uses to make The Best Pickles In The Known Universe have succumbed to the cool and the chickens today are happily munching on all the immature ones left on the dead vines.

New chives under protection of fading cornstalks

Spud Berries and Other Distractions

Long ago and far away in a remote village in central France, a mere stone's throw from Chambord, we hopped into Dad's Van Ordinaire and headed to the local dump.  This place wasn't shown on any tourist map but it should have been well marked... even highlighted.  Aside from being the town's social gathering place on Saturday mornings, it was a literal treasure house of wonderful things, barely used, lovingly given up for adoption.  First come, first served.

A stainless steel goldmine!