Cold Weather

Lemons

We've got a frost alert for the next few nights. This means various tender plants need to be protected from the cold, mostly citrus. This evening I went about covering and insulating my two lime plants and two lemon plants. I also picked most of the lemons from the lemon tree that bears fruit. Last year the fruit froze and fell off in a cold snap. This year I was looking forward to harvesting lemons on an as-needed basis. Now I have a basket full of lemons that will need some sort of processing. I could juice them and freeze the juice or I could make lemon marmalade. I love the idea of doing some of each.

I started making some green tomato jam yesterday, and it is resting before I'll cook it up some more and then process it in half-pint jars. Since water bath canning is so energy intensive I could do a batch of marmalade and process them all on the same day.

Thanksgiving day in the USA is on Thursday, November 25 this year, and I'm thinking I'll make a pumpkin pie using one of the pie pumpkins I grew this year. I'm going to brine two organic chickens on Wednesday and then on Thursday I'll roast them in the oven. One will be stuffed with tomato and feta from my Greek cookbook, and the other will be unstuffed.  We'll have mashed potatoes with lots of butter, perhaps some pan gravy, collards from the garden (which will be nice and mellow from the frost) and perhaps a few other things. I enjoy cooking with things that I've grown. The pie pumpkin and collards in this case. A few weeks ago I made some pumpkin cannelloni with one of the French heirloom pumpkins I roasted and some tomato sauce I made in September, and had in the freezer.

Berm & Basin and other things in early Fall

The weather is starting to feel more autumnal, leaves are dropping, the air is cooler, wind has kicked up, we have even had some rain. The walnut trees are dropping leaves in the front yard, and the berm/basin area is a great collector of the leaves. The leaves gather at the edge of the road and the planting area, and they also fall in from above. I'll rake them off the grass and put them in there too, or use them in mulch piles around the pomegranate and peach in the front yard. The bamboo is sending up several new culms, so we'll have a good clump soon enough.

Berm and Basin progress.

The sole surviving pie pumpkin plant made two nice pumpkins, which have been curing in the sun. The other pumpkin I planted is a Cinderella's carriage type, which has more pronounced ribs and is flatter than these winter luxury pie pumpkins. The Cinderella pumpkin is a French heirloom type and is apparently good for pie also. More of the Cinderella plants survived the gopher attacks and so I have many of those pumpkins to try this year.

Pie pumpkins curing in the sun.

The chickens are adjusting to their environment. The male bolts through the chicken door when I open it in the morning, and the females follow a little timidly. I've made a temporary fenced area that connects to their more secure fenced area and I open their gate to let them out into a larger and grassier area. They scratch and eat grass, which seems to be their favorite food, and then when the early evening comes they all go back into their house. The male has consistently been roosting now and the females still want to be in the nest boxes, so I move them onto the roosts when it gets dark. One night this week they all three went on the roosts of their own accord, so perhaps they are starting to get the idea. It is hard to know what goes on in the tiny bird brains.

Male chicken.