Fall in New England – Page 2

A Little Thanksgiving Garden Update

In the midst of the cooking and cleaning and prep I managed to get out to the garden this morning, and to take some photos, and to do a little blog post! Yay!! Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. For me it’s about giving thanks, real, true thanks, from deep within. I love preparing the food and spending a quiet day with family and friends.

This morning I harvested the last of the carrots. When we grow carrots I always try to save some for Thanksgiving dinner. There were more there than I thought, we will enjoy these for a few weeks..
There’s still some mesclun… this is so resilient, it’s amazing…

And there’s still sage. I picked a nice handful for the turkey.

And rosemary and thyme… for the turkey, stuffing and dinner rolls..

And of course there’s still plenty of chickens… they look pretty happy that this isn’t their holiday, ;

I wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving.

Lots of love, Michele

What We Do With (Old) Pumpkins

Get this, we bury them, strategically, around the yard and woods… We really do! We have put them into the compost before but they take a long time to break down and we’ve been known to end up with crazy pumpkin plants coming up everywhere. So, we prefer to make a sport of choosing some good growing spots and plunking them into or sometimes, onto, the ground.

I love this white pumpkin. This one wasn’t carved this year because we didn’t get all of them carved. It’s kind of a long story that involves the emergency room and stitches. We won’t go there today.

Michael and I worked together to clear off the front steps and load the wheelbarrow… (not barrel, barrow, thank you spell check!)

Winnie was helping us, he loves to help whenever he can!

Did I mention that it’s very cold here today… 38 minus the wind chill. The wind is blowing at 30 or 40 miles per hour… it’s cold!Hence, the lovely hat and scarf 🙂
We identified a spot for the white pumpkin on the hill leading to the woods… This gets a good amount of sun in the summer and the vines will have a place to spread out.Michael just dug a little hole and buried it in..
I helped him… we are a team after all! Now, its good to go. In the spring the vines will come and if weather conditions are good and the bee population does it’s job, we’ll have lots of pumpkins from this. It may be run over by sledders all winter, but that’s okay. I think the kid activity actually helps things grow in a weird way… it’s just good energy!And the process is repeated with the hardy mums, they’ll likely re-emerge to enjoy next year. We just look for a good spot, plunk them in and see what happens…

Spring will be here before we know it! This gives us lots to look forward to all winter..

Stay safe and warm today!

Love, Michele (and Michael)

Watching and Waiting

The title of this post has changed a couple of times since I took these photos the other day. I started with something like “Fall Color, Now and In Years Past”… I was going to include photos of past years too, when the colors were brighter and prettier. Then I went to “The Colors Before the Storm”.. thinking that all the little bits of color that we had this year would be gone by Tuesday. Then it went to “The Calm and Color Before the Storm” which morphed into “Watching and Waiting”. I’m pretty settled with this one. It best describes how I’m feeling here on the coast of New England today. Hurricane Sandy is projected to track south of us a little bit. We will likely experience strong winds, rain and very high tides. That’s our best case scenario, which isn’t too bad for New Englanders who don’t live directly on the ocean. I’m thinking a lot of our countless family members and friends who live on the water or right in the mid-Atlantic area that may be hit the hardest.

My “fall color in the garden” photos are pathetic this year. Here’s what I have:

A little pink and yellow and a happy looking spruce tree…Bits of yellow..and red..and the garden. That’s it!

As you can see, we went from green, to bits of yellow and red to brown. I kept waiting for the day when I’d get outside and take those beautiful photos! It happens some years. I never made it out of town during the peak times to see the foliage north of here but it was probably quite lovely. This is a very small concern when we have much bigger worries on our minds this weekend.

I’m thinking of all of my east coast friends and family this morning and sending you love and safe thoughts!

I hear that Halloween is being celebrated wildly downtown. If I make it down there later today or tomorrow I’ll posts some photos that will be sure to make you smile!

Love, Michele

Pumpkins Pumpkins Everywhere!

It started with these two pumpkins that we grew…

then a few more were added to the landscape in the front yard…and onto the front porch…

Some of those came from our Columbus Day trip to Russell Orchards..

All of our kids were with us that day, nothing else makes me happier!

This sign ended up in the front porch planter this year..So, we now have this…Then the older girls went to youth group and came home with these amazing creations!And my oldest daughter baked a cake with fondant pumpkins…

That looked like this 🙂 It was four layers, with chocolate mousse filling…seriously…

We really have a lot of pumpkins.

Do your pumpkins multiply like ours do?

Just wondering…

An October Saturday Night in Salem

Last night we took the kids for a walk downtown with the idea that we would visit a Haunted House that Michael had tickets for. We got there and looked around the entrance. This is everyone hanging in the door making the decision about whether or not to go in. I was very clear, I don’t do haunted houses, sorry, but I did strongly encourage the rest to give it a try if they wanted to… The final verdict was “not today, maybe another night”… Just call us “the brave family”!We walked by the Salem Witch Museum, where my oldest son was at work. The museum erects these canopies for the month of October so that guests don’t have to wait outside in bad weather. The line stretched out the door and way down the street! Needless to say I had a very tired teenager coming in at 10:45 after work.There are lots and lots of places like this right now… we, of course, say hi and keep going 🙂 but the crowds waiting to vist are huge!Here’s one of many guided tours that we saw. There are lots of these right now with different themes, everything from “ghosts of Salem” to a food tour that stops at different restaurants. They look like fun!Salem Common is the place to head for carnival food and games…
There’s a cute hay maze on the common for toddlers and small children (and they don’t have to be “too small” to enjoy it)!Donations collected at the maze benefit the schools.
This young lady was encouraging people to visit one of the haunted houses. She said that we just had to say “monsters be gone” and they would back off if we were too scared.. still no takers from my crowd! Michael looks ready to go!There’s lots of interesting shops to visit..and a witchcraft and wizardry school..
Or for a lighter experience you can relax on the ferris wheel…My little kids loved this ride..So did Dad, but he was concerned about the safety of it. We’ll stick with the ferris wheel and merry go round next time.You can win a great witch decoration at the water gun game..

And there are ghosts in windows everywhere…

Just a very small glimpse of an October night in downtown Salem. Next Saturday the costumes will be out! We just saw a few last night, nothing too exciting, but their coming!!

What’s Happening in the Garden–October 10

It really feels like fall out in the garden. I can’t say that I love it, I’m a summer person, but it is beautiful here and the Holidays are right around the corner, then the snow, and then spring will be here.. sorry.. I’m getting off track :).

Okay, out to the garden! Here’s our white pine tree undergoing it’s annual fall browning. It may look a bit sad but this is just part of it’s fall process. You can read more about the conifer life cycle here in this article by Margaret at A Way to Garden, one of my very favorite gardening blogs. The conifers will be just fine, they really will!

We still have a few hints of summer, like mesclun.

and some sage. I need to dry some for the winter.

The tomatoes are hanging on. This tomato plant volunteered from last year and grew all over the asparagus bed.

The peppers like this cool weather.

There’s lots of green tomatoes. My neighbor and I were talking about what to do with them last night.

This morning on the phone my mom said that they can be wrapped in newspaper to slowly ripen. I may try that… will keep you posted!

The cabbage are just about ready.

There’s still some basil hanging on

and zinnias and gladiolas.

I’m wondering if the gladiolas can winter over in the ground, or should I pull them and put them away for the winter?

(I should probably pull them out)

Our trees are still quite green. we should be seeing some good fall color soon, I hope!

There’s so much clean up to do. We’ll get there, one bed at a time.

Happy fall! Enjoy everything!

Michele

Halloween in Salem is Here!

It’s October 1st! To those of us in Salem, Massachusetts that means that Haunted Happenings, is here. There is nothing quite like Halloween in Salem! I used to resent all of the traffic and tourists and craziness but then a few things changed. Ten years ago we moved up and out of the downtown. We lived right in the heart of all of the festivities for many years and Halloween really took over our lives. Since we moved to the edge of town Halloween has been something that I enjoy rather than endure. I also went to a Halloween themed decorated barn in Pennsylvania several years ago. I had never really visited another Halloween celebration and I found that I loved it! Suddenly my perception changed and I understood why people love to come here to celebrate. Over the last several years the city of Salem has pulled together and does an amazing job of managing the month. There’s lots of police and safety protection, lots of porta johns and lots of great things for people to do. People love it and it makes great income for most local businesses. I’m hoping to get out there, take photos and share it with you throughout the month of October. If you have a question or if there’s an aspect of the celebration that you’d like me to post about, send me an e-mail or leave a comment. I love to hear about what you like to read about!

Happy Halloween from the Halloween Capital of the World!!

This Morning’s View

I was having my coffee this morning and I looked up and saw this…

I couldn’t believe it, the first glimmer of fall!

Fall in New England is knocking at our door. I really don’t feel ready for it, but I’m never really ready for anything (except for maybe spring and summer).

Are you ready for fall? Winter isn’t far behind…