Big Apple Pie, Garden Progress, Free Pond Fix, Free Pet Food

Big Apple Pie-

Autumn is in the air! The forest fire smoke has pretty much dissipated, and clouds are coming in for a potential rain storm. The low Friday morning is supposed to be 47! Time to get out an extra blanket for the bed, and keep an eye on the coop. Fall always reminds me of cider, gingerbread and pumpkins. Soon it will be time for coats, gloves and turning on the furnace!

I finally used up the last of the box of our fresh apples make a big 8" x 12" baking pan 'pie'. I had some ready-made crust in the freezer, so I used it for the topping. I used a basic apple pie recipe, but added about 1 cup of walnuts, and 1/2 cup dark raisins for something different. A little over browned, but tasted great! I still use my classic Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook for basic ideas. I love Pinterest too! The rest of the apples are canned, a great feeling to have food on hand that we grew for the coming next year!!!

Volunteer Pumpkins from compost

Garden Progress-

I think in the old vernacular this is "high summer", everything is big and lush! Everything is producing and abundant. Sunday was gorgeous, 75 and breezy, perfect for gardening! Dave ripped out the mildewy beans, while I did a major thinning of the tomatoes. They were so thick they were all growing together! I trimmed and thinned. Thankfully our city now has composting big bins. We filled it up! Dave also pruned the blackberries, always a nasty job. Our tomatoes got a slow start due to bad weather in the N.W. late spring, creating limited choices in the nurseries. We always buy starts, so we wound up having to buy smaller plants than usual, thus the later harvest, but our peppers did great! We just harvested our pears this last weekend about 2 Dozen-

Here's a tour of the garden, mostly the food producing one-

A new hot pepper (for salsa) the Bulgarian Carrot pepper, pretty! Hot? Go here- Pepperscale.com

Gypsy peppers doing well, think peperoncini flavor, I need to harvest and use soon

My fave Lemon By tomatoes, so sweet!

Giant Marconi Pepper, so tall we had to tie it up on a grading stake! 

Pruned back the tomatoes, lost of green ones, more sun hitting the green ones

More raspberries coming on

Sunday we ripped out the beans but have leftover "volunteers"! 

Mini pumpkins are under there too

volunteer Roma tomatoes

  

Deck with herb planters, 2 lavenders ready to plant, it's been too hot. Time to make pesto...

My European style garden corner- flowers, grasses and veggies (peppers), all mixed

Ripped out the cukes, chickens got to work! They didn't do well this year, not enough plants

Bluebeard we divided and moved, doing well!

All in all it's been a productive year, with a few failures, but that's gardening!

Free Pond Fix-

Dave is a natural engineer at heart! Our pond trumpet spout kept falling over even with some rocks holding it in place. Recently he thought of using a plastic tote from our dishwasher pods. He drilled some holes, added a clamp attached the black filer, and sat in the pond. It filled with water and now it's stable! Love free fixes! 

Free Pet Food-
We buy our Science Diet cat food at a local Petsmart store. A while back we started receiving these coupon/cards periodically, for "up to a 16 (big!) pound bag" of their cat food. Scored a $35.00 bag of food!!! Stashed for later use. Score!