Thanks to Pinterest I finally figured out how to finish off my lavender wreath with some tulle to cover the lavender stems and wire.

When I heard the weatherman talking about snow in the forecast, I knew it was time to cut as many nasturtium as I could for a few extra days of cheerful color. Jason brought home a bale of straw which I spread on my garlic to put it to bed for the winter. It’ll do quite nicely under it’s warm blanket and I’m hoping for bigger bulbs since I got an earlier start on it this year. I didn’t have enough to mulch the new strawberries so hopefully they survived their chilly night and I’ll get them mulched today.

While many of my friends are down at Juniper Moon Fiber Farm for shearing this weekend, I am up at Gilead Fiber Farm to help with a sewing machine introduction and lend a hand in general. Three of us came to visit this weekend and we spent this afternoon digging up as much burdock as we could find from the pasture nearest the barn. This will mean the animals can be moved to the barn and dry off for shearing. Burdock seeds are in the form of nasty burrs that were the inspiration for velcro and they make an insidious mess of sheep and goat fiber. It was very satisfying to see the pile of burdock grow and the four of us could barely pull the tarp out of the pasture when we were done. In the evening we had a delicious meal and a toast to the JMFF folks down south.

I’m really expanding my garlic in the garden this year since we seem to run out so very quickly. This time I’ve labelled things very clearly so I’ll know what’s what next summer when I harvest. We added 4 bags of compost to the garden and forked that in before I planted and we’ll add a layer of straw in late October when we begin to have frost at night.

Apparently, the new bird bath is much more bee friendly as they’ve been visiting it regularly this summer.

We harvested most of our potato bags this morning and though we didn’t have any rotted ones like last year, we still didn’t have a very impressive crop. We’re planning to toss the plastic bags we’re using now and switch to these more breathable ones next year.

What was I thinking when I planted 6 zucchini?

My hidecote and mustead lavenders are in full bloom right now with the grosso setting buds like crazy. We finally got a few dry days in which I could cut lavender for a wreath. In a week or two once it’s thoroughly dry I’ll add a bow or something to cover the stems and it’ll be ready to hang.