Harvest Time

 I spent some time preparing the garden for winter, cut off the sunflower heads and took them into work. The storytime kids pulled out the seeds and we used them to design jack-o-lantern  faces on construction paper pumpkin shapes. I like projects that allow individuality, they'll have plenty of time for following instructions and completing finished products according to the instructions  when they get to school. In fact if they'd rather color or paint all over the paper covering the tabletop,  that's fine with me too. They had fun and I told them if they save their pumpkins till spring, cover them with soil and water them, they can grow their own sunflowers. Since we used non-toxic school glue, it should work. Instilling that love of nature and gardening into the next generation is giving me a much needed sense of purpose right now. I'm definitely not in my job for the money.

 I  heeled in my blueberry bushes and covered them with straw since I still haven't decided on the perfect location. I thought they needed full sun, but found out I was wrong about that, plus they're very particular about the soil acidity and need lots of loam. Plus I bought three plants of the same variety when I should have gotten three different varieties for my temperate zone. I planted the lavender I kept in pots all summer. I can't ever seem to have too much lavender, and the bees love it too.  Hopefully I did it in time to survive the freeze. I should probably get more straw to insulate my more delicate beauties, which only helps the clay heavy soil and keeps the weeds at bay.

I thought I'd dug all the potatoes, but saw a couple peep out after the last rain. When I got done digging through the patch I had 12 gigantic tubers to feast on this week. I might even make a nice potato soup, and all that bounty from a 3 ft diameter patch. Some of the key things I learned about potatoes this year ; they prefer a thin soil, when the blossoms are done, the plant is through producing tubers, that the way to get a bigger crop is to pile more soil on top while the plants are in bloom. So, take that info and use it for your own potato patch. There's nothing quite as wonderful as growing your own food.