Killing frost

Well, we finally had a killing frost here on October 28.  We had some warning from the weather guessers, and so we spent Sunday getting the vegetable garden prepared for the event.

We went out and picked all the greens there were to pick, filled one wheelbarrow up with swiss chard, another wheelbarrow with russian kale, and my laundry basket with arugula.   We set up the beer boiling apparatus and blanched all that stuff outside, brought it inside, chopped it and packaged it for the freezer.  By the time we were done, we had 35 pints of greens put away.   

I think that is pretty impressive, since in addition to already freezing a couple of batches this summer (not as large batches, but still), we also ate as much of those greens as we cared to all through the summer.

One of our freezers is so full you really can’t put anything else in it, the other one has a few cubic feet left,  but there’s not enough room for half a beef or even a pig.   A small deer might fit in that space, or a few chickens.  I think we are pretty much set for the winter; there won’t be much in the way of veggies or fruit that we need to buy.

It is very gratifying to have such a tangible result of all the work we did this summer in the garden and orchard.

The very night after we picked all the greens, the weather man turned out to be right, and we had a hard freeze.   So the next day, I went out and cleaned the dead pepper and eggplant plants out of the beds they had occupied all summer.   I also removed the spent asparagus.  The garden looks really great right now, especially since Jim got another one of the flagstone paths finished the other day.   Now we have 4 out of 6 done and the area is really looking beautiful.

A few days ago we got the cold frames set up, so we didn’t have to scurry around to get that done while we were picking the greens.   Jim did have to build extensions for them this year.  The lettuces and mesclun and spinach I planted in September got so happy they were too tall for the original frames.  If we had just put those over the plants and closed them, the lids would have been shoving down leaves and when it got cold those leaves would have been killed.  So we had to raise the frames up.   

Jim figured out that it would be more convenient if there was a cross bar that connected the legs that support the lids, and that has turned out to be such a great idea we can’t figure out why we didn’t think of it a couple of years ago.  Now the legs swing as a unit, and since the cold frames are six feet long, it means that you can move both props at the same time without having to run from one end of the apparatus to the other.   We still don’t have automatic openers, though, so we have to be careful not to cook our lettuce patch on warm days.   

I finally got motivated to clean the floors around here.   I can’t remember the last time I mopped the mud room.   Usually I am contented with just removing the loose layers of dirt.  The mud room is, as its name suggests, the interface between the outdoors and the house proper.  Theoretically, one is supposed to sit down on the chair there (when it is not covered with clothing or tools) and remove one’s muddy or grass covered shoes and boots before walking into the living areas.   This tends to confine the largest accumulation of dirt to the area closest to the doors.

Notice I said theoretically.   About the third time you go into the house during a big job, taking the boots off seems disproportionately fussy and you tell yourself that you can get to the bedroom where your handkerchief is (or whatever you have to fetch on this trip) without dropping a big clot of “outside” on the way.   Usually you can manage to get to the door of the bedroom where the white carpet is before the mud or grass clippings fall off.  God forbid that should happen on the way there while you are still in the kitchen where there is linoleum or in the dining room where there is hardwood floor.

Anyway, I noticed that there was a sticky place near the stove yesterday morning where some of the latest batch of onion marmalade got spilled.   So I wound up moving all the shoes and furniture out of the mud room and vacuuming the whole house and then mopping the hard surfaces.

Please don’t ask why it was necessary to vacuum the whole house in order to mop the floor in the mud room.  I do not have a rational answer for that question.

Ruby has begun to have an uncontrollable urge to lick the carpet in the family room, so I suspect that I probably need to clean the carpets too.   I really HATE trying to clean the berber carpets in here, they have such a deep woven in pattern that mostly what you do when you run the carpet cleaner is clean the tops of the patterns, thereby leaving an intriguing two-toned “dirt under clean” effect behind in what was originally a one color carpet.

I could wax wroth and turn even slightly crazy when I start to talk about what kind of person installs white carpet in a house.  Imagine me more wroth and crazier when I add my opinions of berber carpet into the rant.   

Quite a while ago I swore a mighty oath that I wasn’t going to clean the damn carpets one more time.  I was holding out for installation of hardwood floor treatments.   I don’t see that happening any time soon with the economy the way it is.  In order to afford the change from old carpet to new hardwood I would have to win the lottery or come into a substantial inheritance.   Besides.  There are beams under the floor of our house that are starting to show signs of dry rot that really need to be replaced.  That needs to be done before I get any new floor coverings.   

The contractor that I know prefers to remove the floor to do that sort of work any way, so if he did the beam repair I would necessarily get new floors in the bargain.   I suppose we could get a new mortgage to do all that work, the bank would be happy to provide that service for us since we paid off the other one.   We’ve been enjoying the security of NOT having a mortgage, though, especially with the economy the way it is. 

Well, I’ve go to go.   Y’all have a great day, and DON’T FORGET TO VOTE!  (that is, if you happen to live in the USA)