First Frost

It feels like November in New England.  The fire is burning, 

cozy boots are on,

the bird feeder has been filled,

and the trees are looking bare.

AND.......

we had our first frost last night.  Soon I will be digging dahlias-  YAY!

***

Looks like my timing was just right yesterday when I harvested some more rosemary, sage, and chives for freezing.  (For more information on that go here.) I also picked some orange thyme and threw them in the container as they were rather than stripping the leaves.  Lazy gardener.

 I tried my hand at rosemary propagation (again).  Last year my first attempt at rosemary cuttings failed, but it was a bit haphazard.  This year I did it the "right way", no shortcuts.  Fingers crossed.

The pots were filled with a 50/50 mix of peat and a perlite substitute (I had some vermiculite mixture on hand).  Then 2-3 inch cuttings were taken and stripped of bottom leaves before being dipped in rooting hormone.

In the pot they went and the tops were pinched back to promote branching.  I have them under a cloche in attempt to keep them from being dried to a crispy death by the wood stove.

***

Yesterday was a busy day on the homestead.  The kitchen was put to good use with a pot of lentil-vegetable soup on the stove-top, and a chard tart, roasted potatoes, and Halloween Cookies in the oven.

(Chard Trat Recipe HERE.)

LaRatte Fingerlings & Baby Georgia Jets

A concentrating three year old.

I love cooking a meal centered around home grown produce!

I also took stock of my current stash from the garden.  The results are not bad, but I will post on that another day- this entry is lengthy enough already!!  While writing this my son spied a bird through one of the sky-lights....this thing is big and beautiful!  It doesn't appear to be a Red Tail (our usual hawk in the trees) at first glance, we will need to do a bit of investigation. The quality is not great, but that is what happens when you zoom through a screened bathroom sky-light.  Majestic isn't it?

(Here is another shot for scale, this was a good sized hawk sitting in a tree that dwarfs my 2 story house.)