fall, in the garden

Late bloomer cosmos are providing quite a show in the garden, I am happily spying migrating monarchs in ever increasing numbers as they float through the yard, we are munching kale and spinach and romaine, pulling a parsnip or two when we need them, cutting bunching onions now and then, watching a couple pumpkins as they ripen, and eating the few (teeny tiny!) butternut squashes that grew this year.  The tomatillos are more than we need, with plans to make mole being put off daily.  The herbs are thriving, it's almost time to plant the garlic, and soon we'll need to pay some attention to the overflowing strawberry beds.  Mike added a row of chicken wire to our picket fence all around the backyard, so the chickens are now free to roam again.  With Wolfie at grandpa's we gave them free run of the yard.  Until they kept ending up under the neighbor's porch and down the block in the middle of the street.  Silly girls.  We are getting just one egg a day.  We have four chickens.  Two of them are in the super ugly phase of molting and one just doesn't lay.  We've been making plans for a new coop so that we can add 4 or 5 more hens in the spring.  I think we're ready for the whole shabang, too.  The picking up of teeny peeping chicks and the rearing and the oohing and ahhing and all the rest.  Or, we'll be there come spring, anyway.  I'm ready for more chicken entertainment and more eggs.  I don't like having to space out my french toast consumption, you know?

Mike has been reading through some homesteading stuff (we both do regularly, really) lately and said today that he'd "really like to make better use of our space".  Our yard, that is.  We are on slightly over a 1/4 acre and have hens, bees, 2 fig trees, 2 apple trees, 7 blueberry bushes, 1 grapevine, about thirty raspberry bushes, 2 strawberry beds, and 7 raised beds for vegetable gardening.  Oh, there's also a house and driveway and garage and front and side yards thrown into that space as well, of course.  I kinda thought we were already being fairly productive, but I can also easily see (and dream about) how we could more than double our gardening space and build a small greenhouse.  Not sure about the tilapia aquaponics system he's been tossing into conversations here and there, but I could definitely go for an outdoor oven and more raised beds.

Maybe we'll make this a little suburban backyard utopia one day, after all.  We'll see.  First I want to go watch some more Downton Abbey.  We finished season one on netflix quite quickly and I just signed up for a trial of amazon prime yesterday so that we could get season two.  Gotta balance out all that farmy stuff with some television, right?