Saturday was an historic day. We got to meet a long time friend of mine for the first time, which sounds strange in a way. We met online at my most favorite website, and have been friends pretty much ever since. Nick visited Washington State over the weekend, from Sydney.
Since it was too far from Seattle to where we live for either one of us to go during such a short time frame, we met in the middle at one of our favorite State Parks. We planned our picnic for months.
It was raining so hard, the camera insisted on using a flash, which obscured the gorgeous greenery surrounding the covered picnic table. Nick’s wife, Linda, knitted his scarf. Beautiful! Love the colors. All my favorites.
We had black bean chili, with salsa and grated cheese; homemade bread; scones and a bunch of different jams; and hot black tea.
And the weather was perfect! Or something approximating perfect. Just keep thinking that….
From the top of the pass, looking down and across, you can barely see the top of the peaks through the fog and rainfall.
Looking uphill from the same spot on the road. See the track in the snow? Rocks were falling as the warmer temperatures, to above freezing, and heavy rain dislodged rocks, sending them skittering across the road. Some of the rocks were really big, and they always seemed to fall on corners. That added an extra level of adrenaline into driving through drenching rainfall. It was a long two hours to get out of the mountains.
Fortunately the snow plows had been somewhat active during the morning, cleaning the middle of the road, but leaving the sides and pullouts through the North Cascades National Park way too deep to attempt to stop and take pictures of the heavy snow falling on our way over to the west side of the Cascade Mountains.
On our way back, they had cleaned more of the road, and the heavy rains which fell during the day had melted the sides, so only six inches or snow remained in the pullouts, and we could take pictures.
We also planned a hike during the picnic but the rain was pretty heavy and the drive back was promising to be very hard (it was), so we didn’t venture too far into the old growth forest in the park, a temperate rain forest which was living up to part of its name.
It was a lovely day, even with bad driving conditions for all of us, and hopefully Nick and his wife will come back this way again someday and visit our place, and stay long enough to do some exploring.
Seeing snow did have a meritorious effect, which I will explain.
I never did post pictures of our greenhouse once all the plants got big and started producing. We’ve been picking swiss chard, tomatoes and peppers for a couple of months. It’s so neat to just walk out to the greenhouse and pick something for immediate cooking.
Big Beef tomato plants. They were slow in ripening, and we let the plants set too many fruit, which means they didn’t get as big as they could have. Lovely taste, however.
Chianti Rose tomato plant there at the end. Didn’t produce much at all, so we won’t be trying this variety again. We don’t think it likes the greenhouse.
Ilander pepper, such a pretty color. This variety produced really well and will definitely be planted again next spring.
Two of the Monica roma tomato plants. This variety produced really well, and we’ll plant it again. We planted six of them this year, and that may be enough to provide us with tomato sauce all year.
Jalapeno and anaheim pepper plants. I’ve been picking these for a couple of months, using them in salsa, and tofu scrambles.
I’ve been picking the roma tomatoes, as well, for salsa. We’re kind of addicted to this stuff.
Such a cheerful place to walk into, surrounded by green and growing plants.
The weather forecast for tonight was freezing temperatures (just barely), and tomorrow night is a killing frost. While the greenhouse can protect our plants near freezing, or even a bit below, 26F will be too far below that threshold. So, it is time to pick things.
And the drive through the snow in the mountains made us think. “Ruh row, winter really *IS* going to be here sooner than we think.” Time to wrap up the garden!!
So on Sunday we went down to the garden and harvested all the remaining root crops. We dug up 120 pounds of potatoes, 15 pounds of carrots, and 4 pounds of beets, the keeping white onions (not the sweet Walla Walla onions which I picked a while ago), plus all the swiss chard which barely fit into two plastic kitchen garbage bags.
The Polaris Ranger proved its usefulness again, hauling up the root crops. Otherwise we would have been trudging up the hill, and I wouldn’t have felt anywhere near this cheerful. We have two bins of Gold Rush potatoes (a russet type), five bins of German Butterballs; two bins of carrots (different varieties); and a partial bin of beets.
Then we went into the greenhouse and harvested all the ripe tomatoes, peppers, and parsley.
The green tomatoes will ripen over the next couple of weeks, and then I’ll finish processing them into sauce.
Today I have a lot of work to do, blanching and freezing all the swiss chard leaves, and blending the parsley leaves with oil to put into ice cube trays for adding to dishes over the winter. I also need to sort through all the tomatoes and lay them out on the dining room table, and then I have to make tomato sauce out of them.
A few weeks ago we harvested the apples from our two trees. We got 35 pounds of apples, and I made an old-fashioned Apple Brown Betty. Delicious!
The carrots have been put into plastic bags and are stored in the bottom of the refrigerator for eating fresh or roasting over the winter. They should last until January, at least.
The beets were small this year, and I’m going to make pickled beets with all of those. They are in the fridge until I can get to them. They’ll keep a bit, so no hurry on that project.
The potatoes are drying on a tarp in the garage, and we’ll turn them over this morning to dry the other side. Then we’ll have to move all of them into plastic bins and store them in the pantry this afternoon as they can’t take freezing temperatures. They will last all winter, depending on how fast we eat them. The new variety we planted, German Butterballs, produced really well, and they are supposed to be good for both baking and cooking for mashed potatoes, and roasting. Can’t wait to make something with them.
So, thanks snowfall, for getting us off our duffs and inspiring us (or freaking us out, depending on your interpretation), into bringing in the harvest. See that? I thanked the weather gods, so they aren’t going to do anything nasty to us like snow this coming weekend, right? Right?