Feeding Whiskey Jacks

Dan took Molly and Sam on a camping trip into the Boundary Waters for the weekend on October 1st through the 3rd. They had a great time. No trip into the BWCA is complete without feeding the Whiskey Jacks (aka grey jays). The "little girls" and I stayed home this trip and had a blast doing our own thing. I took them to town for a day, complete with lunch at Sven-n-Ole's and ice cream at Sydney's. We snuggled in my bed watching movies, and reading stories. It really was a blast for all of us! It was also great to be back together again and share our stories with each other when the other half of our family got home. Family...what a word that is...

OK, the main point of this post was to share the great video Molly got of a whiskey jack eating out of her hand, but I never can seem to get the video's to upload. Grrr...

Garden (or maybe I should say post garden) Update

Hi ladies! I'm finally getting around to a garden update. It's been a while partly because of business and partly because there hasn't been a whole lot happening in my garden for a while. We've had a few frosty nights, one pretty hard. Funny how some things really take a lickin' and keep on...tickin'? Well, growing, any way. I've been freezing swiss chard and picking beets, beet greens and spinach yet. That's it, I guess. We'd planted a green called broccoli raab earlier in the year, but we really didn't like it so it just grew while being ignored. It grew very well, and really I should have taken a picture of what it looks like now. It's quite tall, with beautiful yellow flowers that start out looking almost exactly like a tiny broccoli head, and it's completely unaffected by the cold weather. I've been cutting it and putting it in a vase.


This is the only squash I was able to grow this year. It made up for being an only child by growing huge!


Yesterday I took a peek into the bag of tomatoes and was surprised to see there was this whole bowl full that had ripened! They smell wonderful! Now I just have to decide what to make with them... :)


That one squash I grew made over 16 cups of squash. After using a big chunk for dinner and more for squash soup, I steamed and mashed about 13 cups to use like pumpkin. I'm sure it will make some great muffins.

I think that's going to be about it for this season as far as gardening goes... Except for seed catalogs and dreams of next spring!