Photos of the Season

Just a short post tonight.  I love fall.  It was still 80 degrees this afternoon as I sat on the back patio shelling pecans.  I'm going to shell all the big ones we picked from the neighbor's trees and will bring all the small pecans from our tree to the feed store for cracking.  Then I'll shell those.  As the sun was lowering toward the horizon, I heard the unmistakable honking of geese and looked overhead.  There was a solitary line of geese flying west to east.  You can see them flying directly into the palm tree in the center of the photo below where the lowest green fronds are.

Pecan leaves are always the last to bud out in the spring.  Their leaves have held on until this week and now we're seeing a nice change of color as they turn yellow and fall to the ground.  The pecans have already fallen and we've already picked all we're gonna get.  That's a good thing as it is hard to find them once they are buried underneath a thick blanket of pecan leaves.  I usually mow the leaves into a pile and bring them to the compost pile in the back of the garden where they'll me amended into the soil.

We harvested the first of the fall broccoli.  It's either been unseasonably warm this fall (it has) or I planted the cole crops a little earlier (I did), because all of our fall crops have a head start over last year's crop.  You just never know.  When it stays warm you have a rough time with pests.  Army worms ate all the leaves off of my three rows of beets.  They are starting to come back now.  Hopefully, they'll make it.  I have a few carrots that can start being pulled, too.

Finally, I want to show you the neatest idea.  My sister-in-law came in from New Orleans for Thanksgiving and brought a creative centerpiece.  We put it on the island where we served all the feast buffet style.  She found a colorful pumpkin/gourd, cut out the top and inside and then placed herbs still in the pots into the empty pumpkin.  She used lemon balm, thyme, and rosemary, but of course you could use whatever plants you wish.  Then she got some Spanish moss and wove that around the herbs and top to hide the pots.

Isn't that the coolest idea?  We kept it in the kitchen until earlier this week when the pumpkin softened.  I took it out and composted it in the garden, but we'll have to remember this idea.  It makes a festive little gift to bring over to a friend or neighbor during the holidays.

Bushy Tailed Bandits

The first cool front dropped temperatures into the 70's, but it warmed up with a vengeance after a few days of teasing.  It is back in the 90's again, but the weatherman said to expect another cool front, bringing temps back into the 70's.  I can't wait.  To celebrate this onslaught (hopefully) of cooler weather, Tricia and I have been thinking about driving to Beaumont and purchasing a new fire pit.  We've had our eyes on one outside Buccee's that is built in thick-gauge steel and built to last for a lifetime.  It has a grill on a pivot so that you can build wood fires on it and barbecue.  Our old fire pit has rusted out.  It did give us many years of service, so we can't complain.

Here's the other thing about the beginning of fall.  Leaves start falling.  That's a good thing, but something better falls out of the trees - PECANS!  Last year we harvested exactly ZERO pecans.  It was the first year that we didn't get any pecans.  Most years we pick up buckets and buckets of them.  We shell them and freeze them and use them throughout the year to snack on and to use in various recipes.

So craning my neck upward, I begin assessing this year's crop.  I can see some up there.  I began calculating how many future pecan pies will be baked when those pecans ripen and fall to the ground.

But we've always been told to not count our chickens before they hatch, right?  It was not until I looked down beneath the pecan tree that I saw the dire straits we're in.  Can you see what's littering the trampoline mat?

I'll zoom in a bit.  What you are looking at is chewed up pecans.  The stain on the trampoline is the rich pecan oil that has leaked out of the chewed up pecans.

Who is the culprit, the perpetrator, the vile, evil doer?  I submit to you Sciuridae.  That's the Latin family name for Squirrel.  The bushy-tailed bandit.  The rascally rodent.  It is nice to share, but if we aren't careful, the squirrels will eat every pecan and we will have no pie.  Troubling thoughts indeed.  I looked for a meaningful squirrel poem that would memorialize my thoughts, but alas, there are no poems about squirrels that capture my ruminations.  So I had to write one myself.

Our pecan trees are really loaded down

With thousands of pecans that will soon be hitting the ground.

But there's trouble in paradise and this is why,

The Bushy tailed bandits are eating my future pies.

They watch me each day as I drive off to my job

And they come out of their nests and commence to rob.

But I have a plan I'm cooking up in my head

It involves a shotgun loaded with high powered lead.

Then like autumn leaves on breezy nights,

The dead squirrels will fall from lofty heights.

I'll look into their beady eyes

And relish the thought of my rescued pies.

Harvesting a few Pumpkins

On September 23rd Autumn officially began.  Autumn is a nice time of year around here.  The weather (at long last) cools off, the grass stops growing as quickly and thus doesn't require mowing as often, and finally, you begin to see every product advertised from cappuccino to muffins to M&Ms having a pumpkin spice flavor. There are not many fragrances that are better than a Pumpkin pie baking in the oven!

This year we planted a 45 foot row of pumpkins, with three different varieties.  I haven't talked about them since THIS POST FROM EARLY JULY, so it is time for an update.  On cool mornings you can walk out by the pumpkin patch and see their beautiful flowers opening open wide, encouraging honeybees to come pollinate. Here is a bee that is obliging...

Busy Bee on the Pumpkin Flower

The bee does its job and then, using the flower petal as a runway, launches off to search for another flower.  It doesn't take long to find the next one, mere inches away!

Cleared for take-off

Here is a New England Sugar Pie Pumpkin still growing.  It is not a large pumpkin, only weighing 3 pounds or so at maturity, but they are supposed to be excellent for pie making, as the name suggests, and loaded with seeds.  We like to roast the seeds in the oven and eat.  I'm sure I'll save some seeds for next year's pumpkin planting venture as well.

New England Sugar Pie

Here is a Jack-be-little Pumpkin.  They are the very first of the pumpkins to ripen. Even though the pumpkins are really small, the vines are prolific and will cover up a lot of landscape!  These little pumpkins are great for fall decorations, but they are good eating, too.  

Another great benefit of pumpkins that I might mention are the vines.  I planted our pumpkin patch in the yard.  This was very strategic thinking on my part as I knew that the vines would crawl all over the place, reducing the amount of mowing I would need to do throughout July - October!  That's using the old noggin.

Jack Be Little

Below is a Jarrahdale Pumpkin.  Of the three varieties I planted, this one is maturing the slowest for me.  It has an odd, flat shape, but the neatest thing about it is that it will be a blue-gray color. The ones growing now still have a light green color at the moment.  They are supposed to grow to 6 - 10 pounds, although I must say that I don't think my New England Sugar Pie Pumpkins or my Jarrahdale Pumpkins will reach the size they are supposed to get.  I attribute that to an extremely dry summer. Even though I watered them daily after the drought became severe, I feel that tap water is near as good for plants as good old rainwater, and that likely stunted their growth a bit.

Jarrahdale

Here is a New England Sugar Pie Pumpkin that has turned a beautiful orange color. If the stem is still green and the pumpkin itself is still soft to the touch after putting my thumbnail against it, I allow it to continue growing.  I'll keep my eye on this one for a week or so.

New England Sugar Pie Pumpkin Ripening

The vines were looking pretty rough with the hot dry weather, but with the cooler temperatures, I'm actually seeing new growth and new flowers.  I'll allow them to continue growing as long as they like.  More pumpkins = more pumpkin pie and that is a positive development in my book for sure.

Future Pumpkins...

I harvested 2 New England Sugar Pie Pumpkins and 14 Jack Be Little pumpkins this afternoon, and I'll allow them to dry on the back patio for a couple of weeks.  I learned that it is best to allow a long stem to remain on the pumpkin, and that wiping the pumpkin down with a 10 % bleach solution kills organisms that causes the pumpkin to rot prematurely.  

The First Pumpkin Harvest of the Year.  Many more to come

We have lots more to be harvested, but I'm allowing them to continue ripening on the vine.  I don't want to pick them prematurely and have them rot before we have a chance to convert them into delicious homemade pies.  I can't wait to see the Jarrahdale (blue gray) Pumpkins in all their glory. I'll be sure to share a photo when we pick them.  It's not everyday that you see a blue pumpkin.

A Moral to The Story

Almost a week ago, we moved from summer into autumn, and according to the weatherman, we'll be seeing some mild weather here shortly with lower temperatures and humidity.  In addition to nicer weather, autumn means that pecans will be ripening and falling and when I think of that, I think of a couple of things - pecan pies and Crows!

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Although we don't get many crows competing for our pecans here at our house, we do at the farm. The pecan orchard at the farm was planted by my great-grandfather and to be honest, the crows probably consume more of the pecans than we do.  You can hear them with their incessant, "Caw, Caw, Caw" echoing across the pasture as they alert all their feathered friends that there are pecans to be eaten.  Apart from being a complete nuisance in the pecan orchard, crows are pretty intelligent creatures.  In fact, they are one of the world's most intelligent creatures, approaching the intelligence of apes.

In thinking about crows, it reminds me of a favorite storybook of mine when I was a kid - Aesop's Book of Fables.  It was a big book and beautifully illustrated, but more than that, the stories all had morals.  There was a fable about crows called "The Crow and the Pitcher" that I remember.

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This Link recounts the fable that came from a poem by Bianor, a Greek poet from the First Century:

A Crow, half-dead with thirst, came upon a Pitcher which had once been full of water; but when the Crow put its beak into the mouth of the Pitcher he found that only very little water was left in it, and that he could not reach far enough down to get at it. He tried, and he tried, but at last had to give up in despair. Then a thought came to him, and he took a pebble and dropped it into the Pitcher. Then he took another pebble and dropped it into the Pitcher. Then he took another pebble and dropped that into the Pitcher. Then he took another pebble and dropped that into the Pitcher. Then he took another pebble and dropped that into the Pitcher. Then he took another pebble and dropped that into the Pitcher. At last, at last, he saw the water mount up near him, and after casting in a few more pebbles he was able to quench his thirst and save his life.

Depending on which book you read, there are several morals to the story:

• Little by Little does the trick, or as we say it, "Inch by inch, it's a cinch!" or
• Thoughtfulness is better than brute strength, or
• Necessity is the Mother of invention, or
• Where there's a will, there's a way.

Of course any of those morals are good to know and employ in our everyday lives.  I hate to get out-smarted by a bird, but I'll admit I often fail at the second bullet point below.  I try to just work hard to solve things instead of taking time to think things through, when there is an easier way.  I'm a 'roll up your sleeves' type guy.

Yesterday, while straddling over rows of recently planted fall vegetable crops, pulling out weeds that were crowding out the seedlings, I began thinking and I had an epiphany of sorts, not unlike the crow in the fable mentioned above. "There's got to be a better way!"  I hate weeding.  It is back breaking work and monopolizes time I could spend elsewhere.  Once the plants have grown, I mulch around them with hay and it acts as a pretty good barrier against weeds, but when the plants are young and less than two inches tall, hay mulch is useless.

So I emailed a horticulture professor from LSU about an idea that would make weeding the garden an obsolete task and he answered me today, saying that the idea would work, but would require a little tweaking to work in our growing zone. I'm going to experiment with that idea for my spring garden, because it is too late now for that fall garden.  I'll gather some information and will post a little later about the idea.  Thank you, crows, for the inspiration!

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