There's a tinge of fall in the air...

I love the end of summer (okay, Jeff, which season don't you love?). I'll admit I enjoy the passing of the seasons.

The kids started school last week. Our youngest climbed on the bus for the first time with his sister and I'll admit I shed a few tears.

It's been an odd summer. What was supposed to be summer was wet. What was supposed to be spring was hot. Despite the strange weather, the tomatoes are coming in by the pound (I planted 6 different varieties) and the kids and I made a first batch of spagetti sauce using the Squeezo that I inherited from my folks. It seems to be missing the tomato screen which I will have to get. The first batch of sauce had a fair number of seeds in it which I re-screened through the pasta colander. The sauce was made with some of the last Walla Walla Sweets that I grew from seed for the first time and dried basil and thyme, also from our garden.

The garden was prolific this year and I managed to freeze some produce for a taste of garden fresh in the midst of winter. I'm getting better at it. Grass mulch keeps the weeds down pretty well but they still managed to get ahead of me late August. I also managed to get a second planting in of beans and lettuce. My goals this year were to both freeze and can stuff from the garden which I have done. There isn't much to show for my efforts but it is a start. We're up to our ears in tomatoes and cucumbers and I have made one batch of fresh gazpacho and will make another for the school's welcome back dinner next week. I'm contemplating pickles for next week as well as some stewed tomatoes for winter soup stock.

There's a tinge of fall in the air; there has been since the third week of August. Some of the soft maples have started turning and losing their leaves and there's a hint of yellow in many of the other tree species we have here in our area. Folks round here are saying that we're going to have an early winter. I'm not quite sure what that means, whether its just the cold temps or if it includes snow. I guess we'll see.

I've made a verbal commitment with a local farmer to harvest some of our poorer pine this winter. He uses oxen to haul the wood which is nice due to its minimal impact on the forest floor. After fixing skidder damage on our land, I'm leery of large equipment though if wood is properly harvested over frozen ground, there should be none of that type of damage. Given my choice, I'd much rather use this sustainable option. The farmer lives around the corner so he and his oxen will walk to work each day. Little fuel will be used to harvest and buck the wood. The logs will be yarded by the oxen to a point where they can be picked up and taken to a local mill by truck. Given the price of fuel, everyone here is looking to minimize fuel expenses which is fine by me as this means that folks are being forced to be a bit more sensible.

Quietly and quickly it seems, most of the birds have disappeared; heading south for the winter. I first noticed that our hummingbird feeder wasn't getting drained the last week in August and I didn't hear their high pitched squabbling. We had hummingbird babies for the first time since moving here. There have been a few flocks of Canadian geese heading off that way as well. We don't see too many as we are pretty far east and out of the flyway. There are still a few Mourning Doves around and of course the sparrows are still here too. Most all the others are gone and, if you listen, the crickets of late summer rule the airwaves.

The nights are good for sleeping. Open up the window, add an extra layer and sleep well in the coolness of the night. We almost had an early frost. One of my neighbors reported a frozen layer on her car. We didn't get it but soon it will be time to put the garden to bed.