first snow of the season~โ„๏ธ

Goodbye mid-60s and sunsets after 6pm, it’s winter time baby~

Now that it’s getting colder and darker, it’s time to pack up the gardening for the year. Some kale may be salvageable for soup, those beans I was waiting for may be ready to come in and the few remaining calendula flowers are soaking in olive oil.

It’s time for everything to slow down and start planning for next year. I can’t wait to start getting all my seed catalogs in the mail to fawn over and daydream about~

second summer โ˜€๏ธ in maine

just another unreal sunset I was able to see~

It has hardly felt like fall the past couple of weeks, consistently anyway. While writing this, we’ve had ~2-3 days in a row that it’s been at least 65 or warmer. It’s been very confusing to me and my patio garden.

My little tomato plant seems to be trying its damnedest to give it another go and I secretly wish it would because now that I’ve made my own pasta/pizza sauce, everything else is garbage~

My humble chard is happily growing in this mini warm wave and the herbs I previously harvested are acting like their haircut never happened. And of course my kale has been thriving as well, only getting sweeter with each night in the 40s~

I think some sweet and purple cayenne peppers are giving it another go as well. Not that I think I’ll be eating stuffed peppers off the deck for christmas but it’s been interesting to watch them come back to life. My dried bean harvest is lacking a bit as I only planted ~4 or so plants in a not so great spot but I’m keeping my eye on what did grow and am patiently waiting to harvest them.

Lastly, the always sunny calendula. I’m really proud at how well these did considering they were sharing a small planter with kale. I’ve been saving the dried seed heads for next year and may need to try my hand at a smol batch of calendula salve.

While I’m not exactly thrilled with the warm weather since it’s a tad (very, extremely) concerning for the overall climate that we’re all sharing, I’m interested to see how far some of my plants will last before the bitter hand of a New England winter crushes them for good.

the lazy homestead ๐Ÿ’ค

Regular chores pile up easily and homestead chores are no different. With daylight savings pushing us back into darker nights, there’s no shortage of homestead adjacent chores that need to be addressed.

pictured L-R: parsley, sage & carrot greens

The perfect example of homestead laziness is my collection of dried herbs and greens above the fireplace. They’re most certainly ready to be bottled and used but they add the Skyrim-esque charm I’m looking for so maybe I’ll take them down later~

Another chore that’s been pushed to “next weekend”, saving dried seeds. These are some sweet pepper seeds from the few small-but-mighty peppers I managed this past summer. In order to keep my seeds easy to navigate through I’ve started a seed binder.

one of the many lumpy pages in this binder

The binder I’m using doesn’t hold my entire seed collection so what’s left is organized by type of crop: flower, grain, veg, etc.

Using different colored washi tape helps to keep like with like~

Aside from seed saving, all that’s left to do is empty what pots I’m not using over the winter. Though with the warm weather we’ve been having I may see how long I can keep harvesting chard, kale and calendula flowers.