In A Pickle

I discovered this lovely book, The Modern Preserver, just in time to preserve some of our home-grown produce, much of which was saved after September’s post-tropical storm.

Kylee Newton turned a hobby of creating preserves to give as gifts to friends into a business, and she shares some of her most popular recipes in her book.

As it was too late to try preserving summer fruit, I decided to give the pickle recipes a try.  I made her pickled cucumber relish, with pickling cucumbers, red onion and red pepper, as well as a selection of spices.  This pickle only keeps for four weeks (in the fridge), so it wasn’t suitable for longer-term storage.  I found it a bit sweet for my taste, but I would consider making it again, but with less sugar.

I also made a spiced zucchini relish with our garden produce, but I don’t have a photograph of this one.  

I used a Mennonite recipe as the basis for dill pickles and these should be ready to eat about now.  I grew the dill in the garden, so it was nice to put it to good use.  

As for our beetroot, we had a very disappointing harvest this year, despite sowing more beetroot seeds than last year.  Our entire harvest only made two and a half jars.  I don’t use a recipe for this, as I prefer my beetroot unadulterated.  I boil them until tender, peel, slice and add them to sterilized jars, then cover with pickling vinegar.  They are absolutely delicious, so I’m saving a jar for Christmas.  

Autumn

When I last posted in September, it was in the aftermath of hurricane Dorian.  Almost two months later, the clean-up continues and successive storms have brought down yet more trees.

On one of the rare sunny days of autumn, I did manage to go down to the boardwalk and take a couple of photos of the changing colours, in the more sheltered areas where the leaves remained on the trees.

It has been a very wet and windy autumn so far, but at least we have been spared the early snow of last year.  As the clocks go back tonight, there is a real feeling of change in the air, as winter approaches.

NaBloPoMo 2019

November is here again and with it, the challenge of NaBloPoMo: to post every day for the month.

I looked at my blog last week and I was surprised to find that I had only posted on ten occasions this year.  Where has the time gone?

Yesterday was Hallowe’en and I thought that I would share this unusual piece of ironwork, made from an empty propane tank.  We discovered a local blacksmith in the early part of the summer when we had friends visiting from Ontario.  They had read about this place and we found it on a back road that we had never been along before.  They had some great pieces, including these seasonal ones.  I wonder how the local children would have reacted if we had had these in our garden last night?

Autumn turns to Winter

This is the last colour in our garden for this year.  It is sedum Autumn Joy and it has been a joy to behold for the last few weeks.  I've watched as the colour changed from a pale pinkish-green to the deep pink of its last flush before it goes into winter hibernation.

The temperature dropped dramatically on Sunday and it felt like winter had arrived as we headed out to the Remembrance Day service.  With a temperature of minus 1 C, but a strong wind, it felt like minus 9 C.  The water in our birdbath has frozen, so we need to rescue it before it cracks.  The poor birds are left to fend for themselves - they have been visiting for water, but have left disappointed.  We had hoped to put our winter bird bath outdoors, but we don't have anywhere to run an electric cable.  I've seen birds massing and a huge flock of geese flew overhead, so I think most of them are now migrating.  Winter has definitely arrived.

Autumn on the Boardwalk

A sunny morning allowed us an opportunity to go for a breath of fresh air and some exercise on the boardwalk.

I took the camera to capture the few remaining glimpses of colour after a week of stormy weather.

Although it was sunny for most of the time, many of the trees were in shade, so the best colours didn't look very impressive.

I love these last days of autumn, but the unsettled weather has resulted in far fewer walks than usual.

We tried to get out for another walk a couple of days later, only for the heavens to open and heavy rain set in for the rest of the day.  We made a dash for the car and returned home to dry out.

Thought For The Day - Part I

‘The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts

Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose.’

William Shakespeare

First snow of the season: 25th October 2018

Time Turner

I love autumn walks but I feel a little cheated this year because many of the leaves came down before the trees had a chance to put on their usual display of colour.

We have had very windy, wet conditions lately.  We did venture out one morning last week and revisited the Friendship Park, where we found a hint of colour amongst the fallen leaves.

The season is changing and the clocks go back tonight, so the darker evenings will be upon us.

Hallowe’en

We ‘stopped for a bite’ last week on our way home from Charlottetown.  We found that we were in some interesting company.

The spiders were somewhat larger than any that I had seen before.

And some folks looked like they had been waiting for service for too long.

We counted ourselves lucky to have got out of there alive.

Happy Hallowe’en!

Harvest

Well, autumn has arrived and our short growing season is over.  We had a glut of tomatoes from four plants and they were absolutely delicious.  I will miss homegrown tomatoes.  

Mr Candytuft ripped out the last of the peas and beans after we had a couple of frosty mornings.  I pickled the beetroot and we have a few new potatoes.  It still seems odd to be eating new potatoes and fresh peas in September, but that is when they were ready to harvest.

I tried growing zucchini (courgettes) for the first time this year and one plant gave us plenty.  We also grew purple beans (they go green when cooked).  We had quite a good crop from a relatively small plot

Autumn has officially arrived and the harvest moon on Monday night was magnificent.  Sadly, I don’t have a camera with which to do it justice.

Wishing you all a happy autumn!

Maritime Days

From misty mornings to torrential rain, we have seen more than our share of Atlantic weather in the last couple of weeks.

Yesterday, we awoke to the first dusting of snow, which resembled a sprinkling of icing sugar on the top of a cake.  It is the end of November, so we've been fortunate not to have had some of the winter storms which have affected the other maritime provinces.

Preserving Autumn

I saved some of the last leaves of autumn and decided to try preserving them in vegetable glycerin.

I tried some berries too, but they were not successful.

I didn't have a suitable container in which to soak them, so ended up using our roasting pan as a glycerin bath.  I found a method online, which stated that the leaves needed to be weighed down to prevent curling, but I just pressed them down into the solution.  After a few days, I turned them over to ensure that they were completely saturated in the solution.

I also tried doing some stems in a vase, though this was not a huge success.  Relying on the stems absorbing the solution is a long process.

The photo doesn't really do them justice, as they have actually turned out quite well.  Considering that I've had them indoors for about three or four weeks now, they are not all shrivelled up.  I had hoped to wire them and display in our kitchen, but time got the better of me and they ended up in this vase.  Maybe next year, I can be better prepared and actually display some properly.

New Additions

There were some recent additions to the bird boxes along the boardwalk.  These cheerful red and white boxes appeared.

Here’s a close-up of the larger one.  It looks cosy, doesn’t it?

I took these photos a couple of weeks ago when there were still a few remaining leaves on the trees.  The windy, rainy conditions that we have been having mean that they are all gone now.  We were on the boardwalk yesterday and managed to avoid getting wet, but it was very windy - it certainly put some colour in my cheeks!

Dawn's Early Light

I must say that the sunrises have been fairly spectacular recently.  The change in the weather to these first days of winter has resulted in magnificent colours.

I was mesmerized by the dawn last week and paused to enjoy the display.

The sun slowly appeared in the east and the sky underwent a transformation.

I wasn’t feeling brave enough to venture outdoors in order to capture the moment, as it was -3 C at the time.

So my apologies about the reflection on some of these photos, which were taken through our living room window.  I think that a little bit of glare isn’t too high a price to pay for the beauty of the surroundings.

In The Garden

We had the bird bath outside and in position for quite a while before we had any visitors.  This little sparrow seemed to be enjoying it though.  It is quite deep for small birds, so we added a strategic rock close to the centre and they seem to like it.  The water level had gone down a bit too, which probably helped.  The sparrow was able to hop off the rock, splash about and then hop back on.  

It always makes me smile when I watch them enjoying a bath - they are like small children, as there is lots of splashing!

Elsewhere in the garden, we planted our first shrub.  There is little evidence that there has ever been anything planted in this garden, even though the house is 50 years' old.  We chose to plant Ilex 'Blue Prince'.  We would have added a princess, but they were out of stock, so it is on our list for next year.

 As the woman at the garden centre said when I spoke to her on the phone, 'We have a few boys, but we are out of girls!'

To The Orchard

Not long after we moved here, I discovered that there is a local orchard where the public can go and pick apples in season.  I made a mental note to add this to our 'things to do' after we talked to the woman at the fruit stand about the varieties they grow and when they are available to pick.  I was excited to learn that they grow my favourite eating apple, Cox's Orange Pippins, and Mr Candytuft's favourite, Golden Russets.

Like many things these days, the planned trip was postponed until the end of the month and we finally made it there on the last day of public picking.  We got directions and headed off to pick Golden Russets.  

At first, it seemed like the trees had all been picked over and there wasn't much fruit, but we found that if we walked further along the row of trees, there were still lots of apples.

We soon had quite a collection from these trees, though the upper boughs were laden, as they were completely out of reach (the public can only pick at ground level).

The yellow-gold foliage shimmered in the sunlight.

Sadly, there were no Cox's to pick.  It seems that they only have four trees and they were finished.  We were directed to the Cortland apple trees, after being informed that they are good for eating and also for baking.

These ruby red apples stood out in sharp contrast to the orange-gold foliage.  Many windfalls lay beneath the trees and the air was heady with the aroma of apples.

I don't think that I had ever tried Cortlands before, but they are less crisp than a Cox's and not as tart.

The orchard supplied the little red carts for harvesting, which certainly made the job easier and we quickly filled the bushel baskets.

On the way out of the orchard, we stopped for this photo opportunity.  The trees along the drive were dotted with similar characters, including a unicorn but, as the drive was narrow, I didn't have a chance to take any other photos.

Once home, I set to work and baked an apple crumble, which was delicious, as evidenced by the fact that it wasn't around long enough to take a photo!