(AF) GARDEN FRESH VEGGIES IN NOVEMBER!

  It is an absolutely BEAUTIFUL Fall day, here, today! The sun is shining brightly and the day has warmed up very nicely. Out in the direct sun, it even nearly feels hot! I am loving this!

Although Dave's Farm wasn't quite so lucky, I once again dodged a damaging freeze night before last. (only by about half a degree, I would say.) I don't think I have ever had this much garden this late into the season! Today I thoroughly enjoyed fresh green onions from my garden with my lunch. As I type this post, I am looking out my window at the beautiful contrast my tall, ripening Tabasco peppers make against the brown and nearly void of leaves trees. And I still have ripening tomatoes (both cherry and full-sized), green ones not yet ripe, and .... blooms coming on and setting! Oh, it will be a sad day in about a week when a stretch of several hard freeze nights in a row hits! But until then, I am going to really enjoy this rarity!!!

I have had 2 figs ripen so far, and quite a few more are on 2 of my trees. This is the first time I have had them this time of year, and the first time I have had more than 2 or 3 figs on them at all. I have no idea if they can tolerate a light freeze or not, and I sure do want  them to ripen! My mouth drools at just the thought of eating all of them right off of the trees! Dave and I shared the first one the other day, and was it ever a treat!!! Nothing at all like the figs you get in the grocery stores. And oh, those trees are looking so beautiful this year! One we thought had died last winter, then a couple of tiny leaf buds finally peeked out from low on the dead looking little trunk. Now the tree is taller than my head!

I have one ripening pumpkin left to pick, and I think it will ripen just in time, but that crazy pumpkin vine is now putting on more pumpkins! Will they go to waste? NO! Just before it freezes, we will pick them and fry them up like summer squash.

It is going to be a very hectic week preparing for the inevitable harder freeze a few days from now. I need to be doing so many things all at once. I have online work to do tonight for myself and the flea market, I have flea market set-up and sales the next 2 days (well, I hope sales) and now it will be dark when I get home from that, then Monday is catching up from the weekend, and Tuesday, when Dave is off, we have plans for some pressing chores that need both of us together to get done. So, somewhere in there, I have LOTS of plant work in preparation for the freeze, including potting quite a few up, and carrying in potfuls of the ones we want to winter over.

 It hasn't helped at all that yesterday, I took a hard fall and I am very sore and have jabbing pains in a few places now, today. My legs just don't work so good any more, between arthritis and a couple of other things that I don't know what the problem is, yet. Some days my legs might work so well I could dance all day, then others, it is all I can do just to make it to the bathroom, and then most days are in the middle ground. Yesterday was one of those latter. I stepped on something tiny that threw my step off and I was down fast, twisting like a pretzel as I fell, scaring poor Dave because I was on the phone talking to him when it happened. Naturally, I landed on my worst knee, and jarred my recovering back. Oh, well, I took it easy on the walking around end last night and ended up getting a couple of afghans that I had started finished. and came up with an idea for a new knitted item. I will show you that if it comes out when I try making one up, lol.

I haven't forgotten that a couple of you have asked for some of my recipes. I got very behind in a lot of areas when this site went down and I spent countless hours for over 4 days trying frantically to repair things (and had no idea what I was doing) to get things back up. (And yes, when I have a long stretch of time, I will tell you all about that, too.) So please be patient with us as I catch up both online, and off.

The wind is very high, today. I am enjoying listening to it as it forcefully rustles through the crisp, now browning leaves, grabbing them up and tossing them onto the ground to replenish the nutrients in the soil that this  year's plant growth consumed. But the wind today isn't enjoyable for everyone in our state. As I got on here, I noticed that according to the Weather Bug at the top right of this blog, that the Western half of our state is under a Fire Warning! If knowledge serves me correctly, that means there IS a fire somewhere and all those areas in the warned counties are in danger of it spreading to them. Even with as much rain as we have had in recent weeks, even my area is still listed under High Fire Danger. We had just gotten so dry that all the recent rains have only dampened the surface and just a little ways down, it is still VERY dry. I hope and pray that everyone in the Fire Danger areas are safe and don't have any losses today!

I hope all of you wonderful readers are having a beautiful day, today, and we would love to hear from you as to what your weather is like right now in your area, and where your garden stands, if you have one. Even if your garden is simply in a state of rest, we would love to hear from you.