It's finally looking like fall!

 

This is late for us!  The leaves usually start turning around the last week in August.  This year they didn't start until mid September.   Just this last week temps have mostly been in the 60's and low 70's - today's forecast is a high of 58!   I'm going to have to get my sewing machine in gear and start making my daughter new school clothes - I've discovered that most of her long pants are too small :(

My sunflowers have all done their thing, and I think I'm going to start pulling up what's left of the garden next week.  It was an awful year for gardens in the Northeast!  Between the blossom-end rot, the tomato blight, and that hailstorm we got in June I've pretty much had to give up on the tomatoes.  

Tomorrow I'll go out and collect any that are salvageable, then on Monday I'll start pulling them up and putting them in the trash.  What a waste!  I can't even compost them! 

Notes for next year's garden:

• plant two more Japanese eggplants.  Four were good, but I still didn't end up with enough ripe fruit at once to cook with.
• shell peas are pointless unless I can have a much bigger garden.  I will stick with snap peas.
• be less eager to start the cucumbers - the peas will be producing longer than I think, and I can't plant the cucumbers until I pull up the peas.
• start my flowers indoors - ignore what it says on the seed packet!
• find a way to deal with the voles that are eating my leeks! They pull them down into their tunnels, leaving nothing above ground but a tidy hole where my veggies used to be :(
• give the bush beans one more shot, since the hailstorm and the odd weather this year threw everything off!
• break down and acquire some row cover so that my beet and carrot seeds don't get washed away or eaten up before they can germinate.

I'm sure I'll think of more, but these are my top priorities!  If anyone has any advice on how to deal with small rodents I'd love to hear it!