Friday, October 17, 2008, 14:38
Past Prime
The trees are starting to lose their leaves, although some of the ones that remain are still brilliant. The hills and ridges are turning the rust brown of the oak leaves that will remain until spring, and there are only a few bright-yellow spots of color where there are aspens or wild cherry trees.The bright red of the maples is gone. In places where there are sumac, the sumac is especially crimson this year. The sumac are still holding onto their leaves yet.
The wild cherry and chokecherry have been especially colorful this year. The wild black cherry trees were as brilliant this year as the aspens. And the chokecherry were a lovely shade of burgundy.
The big oak tree along the road is brilliant this year, too, surprisingly enough. When I fed the horses one evening, it was absolutely glowing in the little light left from the sun that had just set. It is a bright orange-yellow color. Quite unusual.
I have to say, though, that I miss the burgundy oak across the road by big pines that the town patrolman cut down. It was so lovely every fall, highlighted against the green of the pine trees behind it. And now it's gone.
With the trees losing their leaves, it is beginning to look more like November. And along with November comes that dull time of the year when everything is brown and gray and dreary. Ho-hum.
The other depressing thing is how early the sun sets. By 7 p.m., it is getting quite dark. Of course, by Christmas, it will be starting to get dark at 4:30 p.m. So I suppose I ought to enjoy what little evening daylight remains. Daylight Saving Time will make the evenings shorter yet, although on the other hand, there will be more light earlier in the morning.
Now that we've had some cold temperatures at night down into the 20s, the rest of the garden is pretty much finished but the ornamental kale remains looking quite well. I am disappointed in the ornamental kale, though. The plants have interesting leaves. But they were supposed to get brilliantly colored heads on them that look like roses. Right. All they did was get a faint blush of purple at the top. That was it.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Monday, October 13, 2008, 18:46
Tomato Juice
I picked my tomatoes again on Sunday afternoon. Seems strange to be picking tomatoes in October. Before this, I have eaten the ones that I picked. Sunday I got about three gallons of red, ripe tomatoes. I also picked a heaping two-quart casserole dish of half-ripe tomatoes. I'm saving those to eat when they ripen the rest of the way.
The tomatoes were very slow to get ripe this year. They are all volunteer tomatoes. I have not planted tomatoes in years. Most of them are a cross between cherry tomatoes and roma tomatoes. I think they were so slow to ripen because of the cool nights we had in August and September. Now that it is October, I think we've had more warm nights in the 60s than we had in August, when most of the nights were in the 40s and 50s. We had a few cold nights last week when it got down in the 20s, but it warmed back up again almost right away.
I washed off the three gallons of tomatoes outside, then I took them inside and put them in my mother's big aluminum kettle. That kettle has done a lot of work in its lifetime. My mother always used it to bake bread, and she used it to make jam and jelly and to cook tomatoes. I remember that kettle when I was a kid, so it must be about 40 years old now.
I cooked the tomatoes down until they were nothing but juice and pulp. Then I got out the antique sieve strainer and strained the pulp and seeds out of the tomatoes. The sieve has been around for as long as I can remember, so I'm thinking it is probably more than 50 years old. It still works very well, and I ended up with surprisingly little pulp and seeds when I was finished.
When the tomato juice was all strained, I heated it to boiling, added lemon juice and put it in quart jars. I ended up with three quarts and a pint of tomato juice that will come in handy this winter for making chili. It's not a tremendous amount of tomato juice, but still, not bad considering that the tomatoes are volunteers. Unfortunately, there are about four times as many green tomatoes out there yet as what I picked, and I know that most of them will not have time to ripen before winter arrives.
Perhaps I should just dig up the bed next year and plant some roma seeds in March so they've got a good jump-start by the time I can set them out at the end of May. That's the only way I will get rid of the cherry tomato and roma crosses (maybe). I won't plant cherry tomatoes again. So many of them go to waste because as soon as they start to get a little ripe, they split. Very disappointing.
LeAnn R. Ralph
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